DON’T TRUST FOOD — OR ANYTHING ELSE — FROM CHINA: Heavy metal toxicity found in Chinese port poses risk to seafood safety.
Archive for 2025
February 8, 2025
IT’S COME TO THIS: Her son died ‘surfing’ BART trains. Now she’s suing the agency.
Daniel Baran graduated from Lowell High School and was a history student at Skyline College. He died Jan. 29 after climbing out of the BART train and falling on the tracks around Balboa Park Station.
Marina Baran previously told The Standard that her son was last seen climbing between the two rubber spacers where the train carriages meet.
“The spacers allowed and encouraged riders to contact the train’s exterior, and to climb the spacers to the train’s roof,” the lawsuit states. “Indeed, before Daniel’s death, riders had used spacers to climb to the top of BART trains, a practice called ‘train surfing.’”
The lawsuit says the trains should be “equipped with monitors, sensors, or alarms” to prevent passengers from accessing the exterior.
I’m so old, I can remember when railroad passengers – even in the Bay Area – instinctively knew that climbing onto the roof of a train had an extremely high probability of not ending very well.
WELL SAID, J.D.:
I cannot overstate how much I loathe this emotional blackmail pretending to be concern.
My kids, god willing, will be risk takers. They won't think constantly about whether a flippant comment or a wrong viewpoint will follow them around for the rest of their lives.
They will…
— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 7, 2025
UPDATE (From Ed):
More:
RIP: Tony Roberts dead at 85: Woody Allen collaborator who shot to fame in Annie Hall passes away in NYC.
Annie Hall and Serpico actor Tony Roberts has died aged 85.
The Tony Award nominated star and frequent Woody Allen collaborator died from lung cancer on Friday, February 7, with his death announced by his daughter Nicole Burley to the New York Times.
His marriage to Jennifer Lyons ended in divorce. He is survived by his daughter.
He originated roles in Broadway musicals including How Now, Dow Jones (1967); Sugar (1972), an adaptation of the movie Some Like It Hot, and Victor/Victoria (1995), in which he co-starred with Julie Andrews when she returned to Broadway in the stage version of her popular film.
He also was in the campy, roller-disco Xanadu in 2007 and The Royal Family in 2009.
He first met Allen backstage when he was starring in Barefoot in the Park, having replaced Robert Redford.
Roberts had unsuccessfully auditioned four times for Allen’s first Broadway play, Don’t Drink the Water.
After seeing Roberts perform in Barefoot in the Park, Allen changed his mind and cast him.
According to his memoir, Allen told him: ‘You were great. How come you’re such a lousy auditioner?’
He appeared on Broadway in the 1966 Allen comedy Don’t Drink the Water, repeating his role in the film version, and in Allen’s Play It Again, Sam (1969), for which he also made the movie.
A close friend of Allen’s and often playing his best friend on screen, Roberts is known for his turn in 1977 hit Annie Hall as Alvy Singer’s best friend Rob.
As James Lileks has noted, Roberts was the only character having fun, blissfully free of obvious neuroses, during his multiple co-starring roles in Woody’s movies.
As you enjoy the Super Bowl on Sunday, pay special attention to one of the 30-second ads that will be airing during the time-outs.
The ad, which features Shane Gillis, Post Malone, and NFL great Peyton Manning having fun at a wild barbecue, fueled by bright-blue cans of Bud Light beer, is no ordinary TV commercial. With its almost cartoonish celebration of masculine excess, the spot communicates two conventional beer-commercial messages: Bud Light is fun, and Bud Light is for guys. What makes it notable, though, is a third point, one it communicates only by implication: Bud Light is really, really sorry.
Bud Light is still trying to make up with the customer base it alienated on April 1, 2023. On that day, a brand that had been the top-selling beer in America for over two decades launched a social media campaign that would rock its customers, and not in a good way. Starring a transgender activist, Dylan Mulvaney, it celebrated Mulvaney’s first year of “girlhood.” Bud Light even sent Mulvaney a personalized can to mark this milestone date in Mulvaney’s transition from biological male to transgender woman, which millions had already followed on Instagram and TikTok.
This was not an April Fools’ Day prank as some believed, but a serious effort by the world’s largest beer company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, to “rebrand” its product.
For Bud Light, the consequences were no laughing matter. Consumers immediately recoiled and targeted the beer with one of the largest boycotts in recent history. Bud Light sales declined 11 percent that week compared to the previous year. By April 15, 2023, sales were down 21 percent. In the ensuing months, the company shed billions of dollars of shareholder value, laid off hundreds of employees across the Anheuser-Busch ecosystem, damaged its reputation, and plunked itself in the middle of a highly contentious political issue. Almost every Anheuser-Busch stakeholder—wholesalers, employees, customers, and shareholders—lost trust in the company.
Data would later confirm that, although conservatives were most outspoken about the Mulvaney campaign—Kid Rock posted a video of himself shooting cases of Bud Light with a rifle—millions of consumers from across the political spectrum were offended by it, too. Nearly two years later, Bud Light has yet to win beer lovers back; sales remain roughly 40 percent below where they were before the boycott began. Some analysts say the beer might never recover.
I don’t drink very much beer these days, and I was never Bud Light’s target demographic, but it seems like going from Mulvaney to a another freakshow – a guy with a face full of hideous tattoos – may be overcompensating just a little bit for their previous error. Or perhaps choosing Malone as a spokesman may be a would-be Don Draper’s idea of continuing the intense loathing that Ivy League execs at Bud Light still harbor for their core customers.
Related: Will the Super Bowl Ads Be Woke? “We might yet see a resurgence of woke. That coalition is down — but probably not totally defeated. I do, however, think that most advertisers know the winds have changed, at least for now. But mark my words: I’d bet on at least one major company stepping on a rake. Someone is going to Jaguar themselves on Sunday night.”
DON’T DO THIS: “Moral of the story: lawyers at large firms can misuse ChatGPT as well as anyone. And although Morgan and Morgan is a plaintiff’s firm—which might cause snobby attorneys at big defense firms to say, with a touch of hauteur, ‘Of course it is’—I think it’s only a matter of time before a defense-side, Am Law 100 firm makes a similar misstep in a public filing.”
THE DIRTY SECRET OF DOGE: Dems Built It.
Petards, hoisting, some assembly required. By Democrats.
For the past three weeks, Democrats have screamed about how an unelected multi-billionaire has gained access to the levers of federal spending, mainly to pull them to the OFF position. At first they claimed that Elon Musk had no authority to operate his DOGE project or access government information, until it turns out … he did.
As attorney Tom Renz explained in a lengthy Twitter/X thread, Trump took an agency launched by Barack Obama in 2014 called the US Digital Service and renamed it the US DOGE Service, and made Musk a special adviser to it. Trump then installed Musk’s team as US DOGE Service staff and retasked the agency to find and expose all government spending in the executive branch.
How was Trump able to do this? The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak did a deep dive of his own and discovered that Trump has Joe Biden to thank. Trump largely ignored the previous iteration of USDS, assuming its work revolved around its ostensible mission of improving exec-branch information technology. Instead, it became a beehive for left-wing activists, and Biden reversed Trump’s action to protect it from political interference once in office.
Oh, and even better — it has an ObamaCare angle, too! Emphasis mine:
DOGE took over the U.S. Digital Service, a 300-person technology office President Barack Obama set up inside the Executive Office of the President in 2014 to fix his beleaguered HealthCare.gov. Bureaucrats had bungled the site, so USDS sought out Silicon Valley innovators, and was authorized to circumvent federal hiring procedures to get them. Hiring young people from the tech world and putting them together to work for Obama, unmoored from the stuffy rules of a typical government building, led to an environment of overt left-wing advocacy.
And thus:
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING, BESIDES EVERYONE WITH A BRAIN?
Like clockwork. This is what always happens to these socialist countries.
And remember, it was Joe Biden and Democrats who helped push Lula da Silva over the finish line by meddling in that election. https://t.co/2mNTzG2SSj
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) February 8, 2025
It wasn’t just Joe Biden and the Democrats, but specically USAID that helped put Lula over the top in a super-shady election that began with a politically compromised court removing his lifetime electoral ban.
YES, THE LEFT HAS TO BE LEFT TOO CRIPPLED — AND TOO AFRAID — TO RESTORE THE PREVIOUS STATE OF AFFAIRS:
I don't know how to overstate this… but
Trump HAS to succeed in completely hamstringing the government.
When Democrats take the white house again (and they eventually will) the gloves will be completely off. When Leftists are in power they don't play.
Trump has to DISMANTLE…
— Declaration of Memes (@LibertyCappy) February 8, 2025
WHEN YOUR COUNTRY IS RUN BY EVIL MORONS: British Cancel New Nuke Plant Because? ‘Impact on Welsh Language.’
READER FAVORITE: Etekcity Camping Lanterns for Power Outages 4 Pack. #CommissionEarned
WHY THE WORST IS YET TO COME FOR THE LEFT: The underlying Trump strategy and the initial feints, counter-actions and deep penetrations of the first two weeks are becoming much clearer now. Check out my latest PJMedia column to see how it happened.
YES, THANK YOU.
Thank you Elon.
❤️ pic.twitter.com/XtxknvMrf3— Sadie (@Sadie_NC) February 8, 2025
LIMITED TIME DEAL: DEWALT 20V MAX Cordless Drill and Impact Driver. #CommissionEarned
THAT’S A BOLD MOVE, COTTON: Salem State leans into DEI, transgender ideology, and illegal immigration in wake of Trump presidency.
SHOT: “ZOMG, ELON MUSK WILL HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER!!!”
Chaser: More Rich Taxpayers Learn Their Data Was Stolen in Huge IRS Leak.
MEGYN KELLY INTERVIEWS VDH: Super Bowl Ads For Carl’s Jr. and Bud Light Shows American Culture is Returning to Normal (Video).
HOW TRUMP OUT-SMARTED THE DEEP STATE BUREAUCRATS: There are no sources for this otherwise inspiring report on EKO. I can’t vouch for it’s accuracy, but, if it is true, then the Left had no clue about what was about to happen to them after November 5.
OUT ON A LIMB: ‘If you genuinely think Trump is a fascist, go and have a lie down.’
Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump. Il Duce, der Führer, The Donald. The Roman salute, the Sieg Heil, the YMCA dance. The comparison is so absurd it practically debunks itself.
Anyone who genuinely thinks that Trump’s America – whatever else you might think of the man or his policies – can be mentioned in the same breath as fascist Italy or Nazi Germany needs to get a grip.
Because let’s be clear about what we are talking about here. Fascism, and especially its Nazi incarnation, was an evil the like of which the world had never seen before. Or, thankfully, since.
Totalitarian control. Messianic dictatorship. A cult of racial superiority. Paramilitaries crushing the left at home. A Darwinian military struggle for supremacy abroad. The worship of war and violence. The mechanised attempt to murder all of Europe’s Jews.
If this sounds anything like America in 2025 to you, then I suggest you leave here right now and go and have a nice, long lie down.
Trump is many things. He’s a right-wing populist. He’s a trenchant opponent of illegal and mass migration. He’s a culture warrior. He can also be a thin-skinned, occasionally conspiratorial, blowhard.
But try as I might, I am struggling to find the extermination camps or the goose-stepping gunmen killing with impunity. Perhaps my colleagues on the other side can enlighten me.
Orange Hitler is really fumbling that whole Gleichschaltung thing quite badly for some strange reason:
