Archive for 2025

“I HAVE SOME PRETTY GOOD NEWS ABOUT WHAT’S HAPPENED WITH YOUR STOCKS OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS:”

Related: “Avinatan has come home:” Jensen Huang hails release of Nvidia engineer after two years in Hamas captivity.

A SUCCESSFUL STARSHIP TEST FLIGHT:

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: John Oliver Slams Bari Weiss’ Takeover of CBS News: She’s ‘Spent Years Putting Out Work’ That ‘Is at Best Irresponsible and at Worst Deeply Misleading.’

“She’s been given editorial control of a massive news organization even though she’s never run a TV network, has no experience directing television coverage and, as one ’60 Minutes’ producer pointed out, is not even a reporter,” Oliver said. “That is true. She didn’t come up through the news side of a newspaper but through the opinion pages, which are a very different thing.”

Oliver then dissected her publication, the Free Press, which he said enforces a “pronounced theme” that “the left has gone too far.”

“Basically whatever issue you feel that is true for — Israel, campus politics, DEI or police reform — you’ll find articles there to reinforce your opinion,” he said. “And look, I’m not saying the left never goes too far or that it’s immune from criticism at all. But it can sometimes feel like the Free Press’ conclusions can get out ahead of its evidence, which brings us to the fact that some of its pieces can be pretty poorly fact-checked, and in ways that feel important.”

Though Oliver said that “there are many opinion-heavy outlets out there” — of which “Last Week Tonight” is one — he acknowledged that his show is “not the news.”

“I wouldn’t want anyone who led a pure opinion outlet, not even one that I happened to agree with, to suddenly be running CBS News,” he said. “But it is especially alarming to have someone doing it who has spent years putting out work that, in my opinion, is at best irresponsible and at worst deeply misleading.”

Actually, it should be a perfect fit in one sense — CBS has been “a pure opinion outlet” for over a decade longer than Oliver has been alive.

Exit question:

SPACEX FLIGHT UNDERWAY:

Watch live here.

JON MANCHIP WHITE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Earth’s Crust Is Breaking Apart off the Pacific Northwest.

White was a University of Tennessee colleague of mine. Aside from Crack in the World, he was a script doctor on Day of the Triffids, and wrote episodes of The Avengers. My friend Doug Weinstein took his screenwriting course in college and liked it very much.

IF YOU STRIKE ME DOWN, I SHALL BECOME MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE:Megyn Kelly to Lead Her Own SiriusXM Channel in New Multi-Year Deal.

Megyn Kelly led one show at a time on the schedule of Fox News Channel and, subsequently, NBC. Soon, she’s going to spearhead many at SiriusXM.

The popular talk host, who has created a new content empire under her own Devil May Care Media production company, will lead her own SiriusXM channel starting November 4. Her “Megyn Kelly Channel” will transmit on Sirius’ channel 111, formerly the home of “Triumph,” a channel that featured Kelly along with shows from Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace and Dr. Laura Schelssinger, among others. Some of those programs will move to Sirius’ channel 123.

The new channel will continue to air Kelly’s “The Megyn Kelly Show,” which is heard first on SiriusXM before becoming available in podcast form, and will also feature new programming, including the debut of an exclusive daily after-show program. Additional series, shows, and specials are expected to be announced in coming weeks.

“Linear television news is dead. People can’t stand those stilted, censored conversations anymore, which is exactly why this medium is thriving. I’m thrilled to deliver our bold brand of no-B.S. news live on SiriusXM and to be expanding my relationship with such a stellar, blue-chip brand and great partner,” said Kelly, in a prepared statement. “Soon our listeners will have the Megyn Kelly Channel to enjoy and trust for the conversations and content they love.”

As Kelly mentioned last week in an interview with Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the L.A. Times, the rushed format of television news meant that she had to prep for a couple of hours for a segment, but the person she interviewed was reduced to largely generating soundbites to fill the limited time available between commercials. Satellite radio allows for much more in-depth conversations:

Classical allusion in headline: Megyn Kelly is being fired because she shone too much light on NBC’s #MeToo problem. “Kelly has made it clear that she will not welcome back abusers. When asked about Matt Lauer, NBC’s lovely, $20 million anchor who had a door lock on his desk to more easily prey on female subordinates, Kelly minced as few words as she could without condemning her employers for their complicity in Lauer’s persistent harassment.”

PRESIDENT BARTLET HAS THOUGHTS ON PRESIDENT TRUMP: Martin Sheen’s blistering anti-Trump speech is branded ‘self-important’ and ‘cringe’ by furious fans.

Martin Sheen didn’t hold back while slamming the Trump administration during a fiery interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Monday.

While filming a live-taping of The Best People podcast, the three-time Emmy winner, 85, criticized the president’s inner circle for lacking integrity and failing to meet the public’s ‘great hunger’ for truth.

‘It’s a mighty battle going on. It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about being in touch with your own personal humanity because there’s such a lack of it coming from this administration,’ Sheen said.

The West Wing star, known for portraying a fictional U.S. president, went on to describe the atmosphere he believes surrounds Trump’s cabinet.

‘I’m convinced of this — that when you look at this group of people at the round table in the White House, the cabinet room, every one of those people look across the table and they do not see anyone who is better than they are,’ he said.

He continued: ‘They generally see a reflection of their [worst] selves. There’s no heroes in there. There’s no music. There’s no laughter. There’s no self-effacement. There’s no joy in that room. It smells of ego and fear and false worship.’

Exit quote: “Sheen went on to advise Trump start speaking from his ‘heart and start being human.’”

Beyond the extraordinarily bad timing of Sheen’s meltdown on this of all days, it’s a reminder that the veteran actor has no problem with a president’s inner circle displaying a complete lack of humanity – as long as that president has a (D) after his name:

Flashback: Magical Sorkinism:

Among the worst disasters for progressivism in recent decades has been the work of Aaron Sorkin, whose impossibly articulate ratatat dialogue made it way too easy to imagine sexy technocrats saving the world. It’s great entertainment, but normalized unreasonable expectations of the flawed human beings who happen to have high IQs and impeccable credentials.

As a child of the New Left, I never missed The West Wing: it was irresistible catnip for my adolescent hopes and dreams, and so much more satisfying than whatever was on the news—except for the eloquent public intellectuals on the Bill Moyers show on PBS. Later, as an idealistic policy major at Brown, I was surprised and disappointed to find basically nobody operating on that level.

It was only when I’d lucked into joining the Moyers organization that I began to understand how such Sorkinesque eloquence was manufactured each week—not with deliberate dishonesty, but ever more misleading as years passed and the scene grew shallower.

Or as Megan McArdle reminded leftists at the Daily Beast over a decade ago: Memo: The Aaron Sorkin Model of Political Discourse Doesn’t Actually Work.

DISPATCHES FROM ABC NEWS: Majority of The View’s Cast Refuse to Credit Trump for Ceasefire.

Up next was Sunny Hostin, a very staunch hater of the Jewish state of Israel and staunch supporter of their opponents. Despite being very outspoken and spending two years calling on Israel to accept Hamas’s ceasefires, Hostin didn’t have much to say now; only four sentences:

I think we’ve said it all. It’s just, as a faithful person, it has been my daily prayer that there be peace there. And I remain a faithful person that this truly is the dawn of peace in the Middle East. I truly hope that this is what — this will be a lasting, lasting peace there.

Before quickly pivoting to spending the rest of the pre-commercial break time on remembering actress Diane Keaton, Goldberg chimed in with misinformation trying to distance the Palestinian people from the terrorist government they knowingly elected to control them. “And also it’s good to be able to say to people, remember the Palestinians are separate from Hamas. Remember they were not able to vote. They could not do anything. They had no rights in their country,” she argued.

I look forward to Alyssa Farah Griffin not keeping her word on this promise:

 

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why RiyadhGate Spells Bigger Problem for Trump-Era Comics.

This isn’t Cancel Culture redux. It’s the Strange New Respect comedians are receiving across the cultural landscape. And it comes with serious strings attached.

Just ask Bill Burr, one of many comics hounded by fans and fellow stand-ups for performing at the recent Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia. The hard-charging Burr is part of a rebellious stand-up class, the truth tellers who thumb their noses at the woke mob … and thrive.

Why would he cash in on a gig funded by a suffocating regime?

Fellow participants, including Aziz Ansari, have faced similar heat. The host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” pressed Ansari on his inclusion in the festival.

Burr remains defiant about his critics, calling them “sanctimonious c****.” Jessica Kirson, an openly lesbian performer, took a different approach. She belatedly returned the money she made from participating in the event.

Saudi Arabia’s record on gay rights is less than stellar.

Others who took the money and yukked it up? Dave Chappelle, Andrew Schulz, Jo Koy, Mark Normand, Louis C.K., Kevin Hart, Whitney Cummings, Jim Jefferies, Sebastian Maniscalco, Tom Segura and Jeff Ross.

Marc Maron, who seems to always find fault with fellow comics, and David Cross skewered their peers for performing at the festival. Suddenly, picking up a fat paycheck isn’t as simple as it once was.

What’s a comic to do? More importantly, why are we suddenly holding comedians to a higher standard?

Read the whole thing.

FAIL, BRITANNIA:

Read the whole thread.

Background here: 4chan to British Censors: Get Stuffed.

WELL, WHEN HAS THE WOKE LEFT TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING?

TO THE WOODS-SHED:

WHO SAYS MINIMUM WAGE JOBS CAN’T LEAD TO RAPID CAREER ADVANCEMENT?

Still hard to believe that last year, Biden was jettisoned by his party because he was too infirm to handle basic retail politics, only to be replaced by a candidate who couldn’t manage them herself.

As I wrote in November, the media were furious in October of 2024 that Trump was doing Retail Politics 101, because it simultaneously undermined all of their efforts to portray him as Orange Hitler, and because it demonstrated that Kamala couldn’t or wouldn’t do these sorts of basic campaign stunts. Biden never thought he’d get called on his plagiarism by the media in the 1980s, and curiously, in the 21st century, Kamala never thought anyone would call her on inventing a job at McDonald’s to grab some populist street cred, as the Washington Free Beacon did in August of 2024. Even so, it’s a safe bet that numerous local Mickey D owners, particularly in California, would have been thrilled to have her spend an hour or two posing at making fries. That she couldn’t be bothered to do so speaks volumes about her overall failure as a presidential candidate.