ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Emilia Perez and the Greatest Hollywood Awards-Season Story Ever Told.

I don’t think it’s activist protesters who are going to take Perez down, even though “the Groups” have been out in force complaining about the film as early as November of last year. (GLAAD: “How dare you associate transgenderism with Mexican drug lords?” Mexicans: “How dare you associate Mexican drug lords with transgenderism?”) But Hollywood is still the same industry that patted itself on the back for Crash and Green Book; months of whinging and activist pressure wasn’t enough to prevent them from nominating this farce 13 times over.

No, the real problem is that it turns out lead Karla Sofía Gascón — the first-ever transgender Best Actress nominee, another woke Hollywood “milestone” — has been uh, hilariously unwoke. Back during worldwide Covid lockdown, Gascón was tweeting in Spanish about how George Floyd was “a drug addict and a hustler” and denying that all police were murderers. Years before that, Gascón was arguing that “Islam is becoming a hotbed of infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured.” Gascón doesn’t understand why world opinion disfavors Hitler, it turns out. But nothing beats this take on 2021’s Oscar winners: “I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8-M.”

Well, maybe Gascón has a future writing opinion columns  on Substack. But probably not as the Best Actress winner, because the publicity tour for Emilia Pérez has predictably gone to hell now that sleuths (read: paid opposition researchers from rival studios) dumped Gascón’s past words onto a liberal Hollywood ecosystem already torn by how best to demonstrate Resistance to resurgent Trumpism. “By awarding a statue to someone who speaks a lot like a Trump voter” is apparently one possible answer.

Exit quote: “It’s downright athletic how Emilia Pérez presses nearly every single woke button imaginable, almost suspiciously so, as if created in a lab to play to critically fashionable political ephemera.”

KEEP YOUR HOUSE SAFE: Veise Fingerprint Door Lock with 2 Lever Handles. #CommissionEarned

BOB GRABOYES: The remarkable story of a song, a singer, and triumph over unthinkable adversity.

HOW IT STARTED: In Adam Carolla’s epic rant from a hotel room on January 8th as the Pacific Palisades Fire was rampaging through Los Angeles, he predicted:

You guys all voted for Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles. You all voted for Gavin Newsom, and now you fucking get what you get. now that your house is on fire. So here’s what’s going to happen. All these people who are deep blue Democrats are now going to have to pull a permit to rebuild, and they’re going to get the 28 year old bitch from the Coastal Commission telling them to go f*** off and then they’re going to vote for Trump or whoever’s Trumpian next. When they start getting the regulation, they’re going to go nuts. And when they start running into the bureaucracy and the red tape, they’re going to start going nuts and they’re going to vote for Rick Caruso next time.

How it’s going:

He's such a poor leader. https://t.co/MQag62kNnk

— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) February 9, 2025

In his emailed daily Commentary newsletter on Thursday, Abe Greenwald noted:

Part of the fun of getting into conservative thought (particularly if you’re moving away from liberalism) is discovering that counterintuitive ideas can be morally sound and effective. For former liberals, this can strike with the force of epiphany. To take a basic example: reducing or reforming welfare. The intuitive approach is to provide those in need directly with the means to purchase goods and services. What you learn, however, is that this kind of assistance has the unintended consequence of creating a class of dependents who don’t find work or meaning in their lives. So the counterintuitive approach—reducing welfare and incentivizing productivity and responsibility—turns out actually to help people.

There many circumstances in which conservatives can make the case that counterintuitive policies have been or should be vindicated. Lowering taxes on high-income earners can increase tax revenues, giving excess foreign aid can hurt poorly governed countries, affirmative action can harm minority students, and so on.

It’s gripping when you first realize that doing the obvious thing isn’t the same as doing the right thing. But there’s a downside to embracing this two-step thinking: It’s a hard sell. You need to convince people to take an intellectual leap and forgo the quick fix.

* * * * * * * *

If you want to know why, for the first time in 30 years, more Americans identify as Republican than Democrat, it’s because Republicans have been given the easy task of asserting intuitive common sense in a country whose leaders got high on reality-altering theories. It’s now liberals who have to explain why, even though every instinct tells you its monstrous, its ultimately good to toy with children’s gender. Why your daughter should face-off against a boy on the playing field. Why, even though, we have a massive illegal-immigration crisis, it’s ultimately good to keep criminals in the country that they entered illegally. Why, it’s ultimately good to spend your money on a Peruvian transgender comic book.

If it was hard for conservatives to argue for worthy counterintuitive ideas, think how hard it is for liberals to argue for ruinous ones. Watching them try is as fun as discovering conservatism all over again.

Homeowners in Los Angeles looking to rebuild are really going to get it gooder and harder from Newsom, a reactionary environmentalist who hates all brands of Big Oil except Brylcreem. Will they continue to toe the party line? (If San Francisco over the last half century is any indication, of course they will. But 2025 is a reminder that there is an alternative.)

OH, GROW UP: Leftist student groups: ICE recruiters at Duke job fair a ‘societal attack against our humanity.’

CHANGE: Coast Guard Academy rolls back DEI as cuts at Naval Academy may soon follow.

JUDICIAL #RESISTANCE.

The judicial resistance has begun. The Trump administration will ultimately win most of these legal battles—they’re lawyered up well this time—but the establishment won’t give up without a fight. https://t.co/CwNfwkStR0

— Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) February 8, 2025

It’s not like the establishment is going to respect election results, or the Constitution, if either one threatens its feedlot.

BUSINESS AS USUAL IN L.A.

He’s getting paid $500,000 for 3 months of work? And they call this a charity.

Gross. Offensive.

I’m getting paid $0 – as are many people.

It’s a good thing there will be strings on the Federal money for California. https://t.co/ZWabYTxOxg

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) February 8, 2025

OVERHEAD RATES HAVE BEEN A SCANDAL FOR YEARS. AND NEGOTIATING RATES INSTITUTION BY INSTITUTION IS A RECIPE FOR CRONYISM, AND REMOVES INCENTIVES FOR EFFICIENCY.

The freakout over this is something to behold. To be clear, this revolt is in response to administrative bloat being held at 15% of overall grants.

Charities are routinely held to overhead costs well below this or else their donations suffer. https://t.co/9JG6vDAzFz

— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) February 8, 2025

LIGHTNING DEAL: PHILIPS TB7301G 12 Volt Refrigerator. #CommissionEarned

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

DOGE has forced democrats into the position of defending waste, fraud and abuse.

Idk if that was ever the intention, but democrats have fallen into this trap. And the more info comes out, the worse they will look. They will end up like the proverbial deer in headlights.

— FischerKing (@FischerKing64) February 8, 2025

ACTUALLY, SOME OF US ARE EXPRESSING SUPPORT: As Trump’s DEI Crackdown Escalates, Law Faculty Choose Between Silence And Resistance. And a lot of the silent ones are fine with it but are afraid to say. DEI has been made unchallengeable in the academy by bullying and enforced conformity, not persuasion.

THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: Everything You Thought You Knew About Tetanus is Wrong. It’s not really news, though, that rust isn’t what causes tetanus.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:  History Friday: The Handcart Saga.

MATT TAIBBI: On “Internews:” A big rock overturned.

AND EVERYTHING ELSE TOO:  The Media Is Lying to You About Their Government Funding.

GOOD FOR OUR ALLIES? IS THAT ALLOWED?  The Trump “Administration Is a Great Chance for Israel”.

WOODCHIPPER GO BRRRRRR:  Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Website Goes Dark and the Woodchipper Warms Up.

WHEN THEY FIRST USED THE ACRONYM IT WAS DIE:  Do You Expect Me to Fly? No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to DEI.

… Then they decided it was too on the nose, I guess.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED, BEHOLD MY SHOCKED FACE:   EXCLUSIVE: Ilhan Omar DID marry her brother and said she would ‘do what she had to do to get him “papers” to keep him in U.S.’, reveals Somali community leader.

THE PEOPLE ARE DONE WITH CANCEL CULTURE AND THE LEFT. JUST DONE:  It’s pretty amazing how all the parts of Trump’s strategy are coming together: from DOGE’s giant testicles to the Proxy War and resorts in Gaza, it is all connected. I’ll show it to you.

THE UK’S AG THINKS THE BRITISH EMPIRE WAS RACIST FROM TOP TO BOTTOM:  Lord Hermer called British Empire ‘deeply racist’ and fought for reparations.

Oikophobia and nonsense!

IT’S NOT JUST A CULT. IT’S A VICIOUS ONE:  Statolatry.

BECAUSE FEMINISM IS A SUBSET OF MARXISM:  Why elite feminists prefer to target white men as the UK’s primary sexual predators.

FROM WHAT I CAN SEE, HE’S NOT WRONG:  Trump: No Need To Deport Prince Harry, Being Married to Meghan is Punishment Enough.

Poor Harry. Just another E4 who thinks the stripper loves him.