Archive for 2025
April 1, 2025
THE 22ND HAS ENTERED THE CHAT: Trump Versus Obama? ‘I’d Love That!’ Says Trump.
DISNEY ACTORS SURE MAKE AUDIENCES WANT TO FLOCK TO THE BIG SCREEN THESE DAYS: John Boyega Says Star Wars Is ‘So White That a Black Person Existing in It’ Is a Big Deal: Toxic Fans Are ‘Okay With Us Playing the Friend’ but We ‘Cant Touch Their Heroes.’
John Boyega called out “Star Wars” for being “so white” during an interview as part of the new Apple TV+ original documentary “Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Men in Hollywood” (via Entertainment Weekly). Boyega debuted as Finn in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and reprised the character in “The Last Jedi” and “The Rise of Skywalker.” His role in the sequel trilogy led to online harassment from racist and toxic “Star Wars” fans upset with a Black actor playing a lead hero in the space franchise.
“Lemme tell ya, ‘Star Wars’ always had the vibe of being in the most whitest, elite space. It’s a franchise that’s so white that a Black person existing in [it] was something,” Boyega said in the documentary. “You can always tell it’s something when some ‘Star Wars’ fans try to say, ‘Well, we had Lando Calrissian and had Samuel L. Jackson!’ It’s like telling me how many cookie chips are in the cookie dough. It’s like, they just scattered that in there, bro!”
“They’re okay with us playing the best friend, but once we touch their heroes, once we lead, once we trailblaze, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s just a bit too much! They’re pandering,’” the actor added, while also acknowledging that being cast in the franchise was a “fundamental moment” in his career.
Evergreen: The Critical Drinker: Why Modern Movies Suck — They Hate Their Own Fans (Video; NSFW language):
In addition to trashing his fans, Boyega makes Disney sound like an extremely toxic environment in his Variety profile. With all of the company’s myriad ongoing woes, it may be best to boycott all of their products, just to be on the safe side.
Related: As Snow Woke Crashes and Burns, Hollywood Scrambles to Cancel Woke Projects In “Crisis Mode Panic.”
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Firearm Due Process Protection Act Will Proceed To The House Floor. “H.R. 2184 is sponsored by Republican Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota’s 6th District, who also serves as House Majority Whip. The bill seeks to provide law-abiding Americans, improperly denied their right to legally purchase a firearm due to administrative errors during a background check, with legal recourse, for which there is shockingly no provision at this time. It is designed to enforce accountability within the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) by mandating finalized decisions on record correction requests within 60 days.”
PROMISE KEPT: Trump administration has arrested 113K migrants, deported over 100K since taking office. “Illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border have also fallen to levels not seen in decades — hitting a stunning new low in March — with DHS sources calling it ‘the Trump effect.'”
No word on self-deportations, not that there’s any reliable way to keep track of those. But you have to guess those are way up, too, as the crackdown continues.
GET OFF MY LAWN: Nanny State: NYC Will Start Digging Through Residents’ Trash Today.
MAKE FEEDING YOUR CATS EASIER: 7L Automatic Cat Feeders for 2 Cats. #CommissionEarned
CYNICAL PUBLIUS: Grifterism: The Economic Engine of Democrats.
It’s not socialism. It’s not capitalism. It’s not fascism. What, then, is the overarching label that explains the economic policies and priorities of Democrats and their leadership?
It’s Grifterism. (I did not invent that word, or at least that’s what Google tells me. However, I believe I am the first author to ever use that term to describe a formal system of national economic governance, so I’m going to run with it.)
Grifterism is, as the name suggests, a system run by and for the benefit of grifters. Webster defines the verb “grift” as “to acquire money or property illicitly.” Grifters have always been a part of human society, but it took the 21st-century Democratic Party to turn the idea into a comprehensive economic system. The best way to understand this system is to analyze the four classes of citizens upon which Grifterism relies, and into which all American citizens are divided one way or another: Billionaires, Productives, Dependents and, of course, Grifters.
(Before I explain these classes, I realize that there are some readers who will jump all over these categories and tell me I am being too absolute in describing them. Yes, Elon Musk is a good Billionaire. Yes, there are bad Productives who exploit the powerless. Yes, there are many entirely productive people in government who are not Grifters. Yes, the nice old blind lady down the street deserves the support given to the Dependent class. Yet, as the saying goes, these are the exceptions that prove the rule.)
On to the four classes of Grifterism.
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
Due To Tough Economy, Professional Tesla Bomber Forced To Take Second Job As Bernie Rally Attendee https://t.co/1ykzy7woMa pic.twitter.com/mOd5ywV3Kj
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) March 31, 2025
(The de rigueur septum piercing is a nice touch.)
FASTER, PLEASE: Cancer cells ‘hacked’ to expose themselves to immune attack.
ONE WOULD HOPE: Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Assassin Luigi Mangione Facing Death Penalty.
Related: The hottest of hot takes from Politico:
SATURDAYY NIGHT LIVE SHOULD HIRE JOHN KENNEDY AS A WRITER: WATCH: Sen. John Kennedy Destroys Nationwide Injunctions.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? New German government wants to ban ‘lies.’
The new German government coalition, which is likely to be the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) is looking to ban “lies,” according to a working paper that emerged from the group “culture and media” between the two parties.
Bild newspaper received a copy of the working paper, which outlines the goal of combating “fake” news on social media, including restrictions on it.
The paper from the CDU and SPD indicates that “disinformation and fake news” threaten democracy.
In fact, the paper argues that freedom of expression does not apply in such circumstances.
Bild contacted a number of constitutional lawyers, and they are highly skeptical of the law.
At least German universities aren’t on board with censorship, unlike too many of ours.
RED QUEEN’S RACE:
The fundamental challenge for every left-leaning managerial government in the West today is whether you can bring in migrant voters at a faster rate than your current voters turn against you. https://t.co/yVE6NwSEuw
— Jordan H Knight (@jhk_______) April 1, 2025
Flashbacks:
● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”
● Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller in February of 2021: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”
● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”
● Tom Cotton’s Response to Kamala Harris’ Border Failures Should Be the Default for All Republicans: “‘You know, Laura, Kamala Harris didn’t have to go all the way to Guatemala and Mexico to find the root causes of this border crisis because they’re not there,’ Cotton told Fox News host Laura Ingraham [in June of 2021]. ‘The root causes are in the White House.’ He further explained that it ‘happened on January 20th when Joe Biden took office, and he essentially opened our borders, reversing very effective policies that had our borders under control.’”
● And:
MSNBC is pretending this isn't their fault.
All they had to do was tell the truth about The Fine People Hoax in 2020. None of this would have happened.
And they know it. https://t.co/xvO8vP4BxM
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 2, 2025
TRUST THE EXPERTS, SHOT:
Notable reporting from Emily Kopp. A study purported to show that mortality is higher for black infants seen by white doctors. By now, the issues with this study are widely known.
FOIAed notes show how the authors in fact cut points that they said "undermined the narrative." pic.twitter.com/RtVe7inKcH
— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) March 31, 2025
the famous study that Black babies cared for by white doctors died at higher rates than Black babies cared for by Black doctors turned out to be complete bullshit pic.twitter.com/4w0htbmalg
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) March 31, 2025
CHASER:
ABC’s “experts” on clean water and air:
– a Colombia law professor
– an IU law professor
– an Obama appointee who was given a department at Yale called the “Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering” https://t.co/syPVCG00IH pic.twitter.com/fC1LwqlaYN
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) March 31, 2025
SO I WAS CHATTING WITH A COLLEAGUE ABOUT MY NEED FOR COFFEE BEFORE CLASS, and trying to think of a caffeine-related analog to Housman’s line, “Malt does more than Milton can, to justify God’s ways to man.” Couldn’t think of anything, so I asked GrokAI and got this: “Caffeine does more than Kant can dare, to lift the mind from dull despair.”
Not bad!
OUT ON A LIMB: Policies, not greed, driving California’s sky-high gas prices, study finds.
As Californians continue to wonder why they suffer disproportionately at the pump compared to other states, a new study from a prominent researcher says the state’s perpetually high gas prices are largely “self-inflicted.”
Michael Mische with the USC Marshall School of Business recently published “A Study of California Gasoline Prices,” diving into the reason why California is typically the most expensive state in the U.S. to fill up your vehicle.
The conclusion: California’s high gas prices are the “result of directed policies and a litany of regulations, taxes, fees, and costs,” according to Mische.
“The data is overwhelmingly compelling,” he told KTLA on Monday. “There is no evidence of price gouging, either by gas station owners or refiners or oil producers in the state — at least widespread.”
Mische came to that conclusion after examining about 50 years of gas prices throughout the state and analyzing what led to spikes and lulls.
“It is uniformly acknowledged that California has the most stringent regulatory … environment, for oil and gas companies in the world,” the study reads in part. “Regulatory oversight, irrespective of one’s (political) perspective, is layered into and accumulates throughout the supply chain, ultimately adding to the cost burdens of compliance for oil and gas industry operators, which, in turn, contribute to higher consumer prices at the pump.”
Mische and other experts refute Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claim that oil companies have been “gouging” California drivers for years and that greed has played a larger role than policies and market forces. The governor has targeted the industry with investigations and legislation aimed at increasing transparency and keeping prices in check.
In a statement to KTLA, a spokesperson for Newsom said he has “avoided severe gasoline price spikes like the historic 2022 spike” since he signed a price-gouging bill two years ago.
When Newsom transitions from podcasting to an actual presidential bid, it will be fun to him explain why oil companies aren’t attempting to price gouge other states were gas prices are much lower. In the meantime:
I’d say California is on the wrong track, has gone off the rails and is a train wreck, but that would imply we were capable of building rails and track.
— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) March 31, 2025
IT’S TOO LATE TO VOTE EARLY BUT YOU CAN STILL VOTE OFTEN: Republicans Anticipate High-Stakes April 1 Elections.
MAYBE WE SHOULD ELIMINATE THE ARTIFICIAL RESTRICTIONS ON MED SCHOOL ADMISSIONS AND RESIDENCIES: Physician shortages have hobbled health care for decades -− and it could get worse. Maybe we should also eliminate the paperwork and loss of professional independence that have driven many physicians out of the field.
ROBERTS AND THE COURT:
The Chief Justice's approach has been to incrementally move the Supreme Court to the right–but to appease the leftist media elite on high-profile cases, like ObamaCare.
He believes he is protecting the Court's legitimacy, which he conflates with his reputation in outlets like…
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) April 1, 2025
Full text:
The Chief Justice’s approach has been to incrementally move the Supreme Court to the right–but to appease the leftist media elite on high-profile cases, like ObamaCare.
He believes he is protecting the Court’s legitimacy, which he conflates with his reputation in outlets like the New York Times.
But the Chief Justice must understand and appreciate these lawless and dangerous orders by Democrat activist judges who sabotage the duly-elected President as he is carrying out his core Article II executive duties is the breaking point for the federal judiciary’s legitimacy.
If the Chief Justice doesn’t stop these judicial saboteurs, the federal judiciary will lose its legitimacy–which is all that it has.
Will the Chief Justice side with the Constitution–or protect his DC buddy Jeb Boasberg?
We will likely find out this week.
As Glenn noted a couple of weeks ago, Roberts is “very political, but with terrible political instincts.”
START THE GRILLING SEASON: Grilling Accessories – Stainless Steel Heavy Duty Grill Tools. #CommissionEarned
THE DARK SIDE OF AI: An AI Image Generator’s Exposed Database Reveals What People Really Used It For.
Tens of thousands of explicit AI-generated images, including AI-generated child sexual abuse material, were left open and accessible to anyone on the internet, according to new research seen by WIRED. An open database belonging to an AI image-generation firm contained more than 95,000 records, including some prompt data and images of celebrities such as Ariana Grande, the Kardashians, and Beyoncé de-aged to look like children.
The exposed database, which was discovered by security researcher Jeremiah Fowler, who shared details of the leak with WIRED, is linked to South Korea–based website GenNomis. The website and its parent company, AI-Nomis, hosted a number of image generation and chatbot tools for people to use. More than 45 GB of data, mostly made up of AI images, was left in the open.
The exposed data provides a glimpse at how AI image-generation tools can be weaponized to create deeply harmful and likely nonconsensual sexual content of adults and child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Disturbing stuff but also fringe — 45 GB of photos isn’t all that many images, really.
More common ailments are like the one I experienced on Sunday when an AI tech support chatbot instructed me to try using a function (on its own website) that didn’t exist. When I informed it that it had hallucinated, it apologized and then did it again.
THE ATLANTIC GOT CAUGHT LYING AGAIN. This Time on a Deportation Fake News Sob Story.
The Atlantic thought they could get a scalp with the Signal story involving top Trump officials discussing anti-Houthi operations. That chat, which was held on an encrypted, government-approved messenger app, accidentally added the publication’s editor and notorious anti-Trump writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who claimed classified information was divulged. It was not, and no one cared because we know the publication peddled in myth. The DC bubble is not the people. It barely dented Trump’s approval rating. When the usual anti-Trump critics come to full froth, it’s usually over nothing. Again, the people know Trump now; these stories aren’t going to work, especially when they’re soaked in lies.
So, imagine our surprise when this deportation sob story in The Atlantic turned out to be fake news trash. It’s another piece of propaganda aimed at trying to dent the immensely popular mass deportation policy Trump has initiated. Some father was taken off the streets and deported. Yeah, first, he’s an illegal alien. Second, he’s not some father: he’s a member of MS-13, which was buried in the story. This man was also cited by the courts as a danger to public safety six years ago:
Court filings show Abrego Garcia came to the United States at age 16 in 2011 after fleeing gang threats in his native El Salvador. In 2019 he received a form of protected legal status known as “withholding of removal” from a U.S. immigration judge who found he would likely be targeted by gangs if deported back.
Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Atlantic: Trump deported a poor father from Maryland to an El Salvador prison! 😡😭
Reality: He was an MS-13 gang member
You don’t hate the media enough https://t.co/mk3OObqyJb pic.twitter.com/9JPJLBOk2D
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 1, 2025
Related:
Stop being such a spineless loser.
Of course you fall hook, line + sinker for this total BS.
Dude was a gang member. The due process you’ve been simpering about proved it.
Can you people just once not be total wusses? https://t.co/LILkGMoRq5
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 1, 2025