GREAT MOMENTS IN CLIMATE CHANGE:
Not surprisingly, California refuses to release the climate change from custody: Man accused of sparking Palisades Fire will not be released from custody.
Here’s the climate change’s booking photo from last month:
Archive for 2025
November 21, 2025
IT’S FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Does He Know About Shrinkage? “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn why you never want to catch Sheriff Grady’s attention, the worst way to rob a Tractor Supply, and why P. Diddy might never want to leave his New Jersey prison.”
READER FAVORITE: Orange Ninja 7-in-1 Garden Tool & Knife Sharpener. #CommissionEarned
ACE OF SPADES: Hollywood Is Dying and Good Riddance.
“Dying” is overstated. But they are experiencing a reduction in status, a loss of wealth and social position, which for almost everyone, and particularly for narcissists, is a deathly bitter pill.
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The palm-fingering Weird Sisters of the gay Oz movie have been put on hold, possibly because the studio just doesn’t want them weirding the public out before the second part of Wickeddebuts.
Wacko Wicked Press Tour Put on Ice After Erivo’s Voice Fails and Grande Opts Out “In Solidarity” — Did Universal Pull the Plug on Weird Interviews?November 18, 2025
The Wicked: For Good [the part two sequel] press tour was abruptly suspended in New York City just days before the movie’s release, with Hollywood outlets claiming Cynthia Erivo “lost her voice” and Ariana Grande refused to continue press appearances without her.
But the official narrative isn’t sitting well with online observers. After all, since when does a singer temporarily losing her voice require a full-blown solidarity pact from her co-star, complete with the studio shutting down scheduled interviews?
It’s a question fans, influencers, and industry watchers have been asking nonstop since the news broke. Speculation has only intensified because the Wicked press tour had already become something of a spectacle for reasons Universal probably didn’t anticipate.
Long before the Wicked: For Good press tour was pulled, fans noticed something unusual about the promotional circuit. Instead of straightforward discussions about the film, fans were treated to a highlight reel of baffling moments featuring Grande and Erivo seemingly locked in their own private wavelength — one that didn’t always translate to the rest of the audience. Or, you know, Planet Earth…
Here, a dirty man vigorously shook Ariana Grande’s hand in a “hail the victor” sort of way. She pretended her arm was injured, and her lesbian co-star kissed it to “make it better.” This guy isn’t a rando; it’s Marc Platt, producer of the movie. He’s promoting the movie, too.
Erivo always seems on the edge of a panic attack or nervous breakdown so Ariana Grande is always soothing her with uncomfortab-to-look-at hand holding.
Sometimes it’s just finger-holding.
If it sounds like I’m implying a lesbian relationship, I’m not necessarily claiming that. But I am claiming that they are definitely putting on a show of lesbian touching for the largely-gay fan base of the movie. Almost every gay-crazy twitter account is celebrating this touchy-touchy cringefest, some saying “We’re winning!” As in, “gays and lesbians are winning, just look at these Hollywood adult pretenders engaging in lesbian hand-play.” Erivo is a very out lesbian, and Ariana Grande is either a convert or else is just role-playing. Gay 4 Pay, as they say.
There’s another cringe-inducing element to Grande, as Kara Kennedy writes in a likely paywalled-posted at the Free Press: In ‘Wicked,’ There’s a Very Thin Elephant in the Room.
Since the release of the first film, Grande hasn’t explicitly addressed any concerns about her weight loss. But last December, when an interviewer asked how she deals with the pressure to always look perfect, she welled up and said “I’ve heard every version . . .of what’s wrong with me”—before saying she thinks it’s “dangerous” to live in a society where “if you go to Thanksgiving dinner and someone’s granny says, ‘Oh my God, you look skinnier! What happened?’”
“No one has the right to say shit,” she said.
When Grande did address fans’ concerns about her health, via a TikTok video in 2023, she claimed that those who point to old pictures of her looking healthier are in fact idealizing “the unhealthiest version of my body,” adding: “I was on a lot of antidepressants and drinking on them.”
She then asked for universal silence on the subject, saying we should all be “less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies. . . healthy, unhealthy, big, small, this, that.”
Grande’s comments have been met with overwhelming support from the same progressive media that once complained about “Disney’s teeny, tiny princesses.” “Ariana Grande Doesn’t Owe the Internet an Explanation of Her Weight Loss,” one headline scolded; another praised her for addressing “body-shaming” critics in her “heartbreaking” TikTok. The public has been instructed: Stand down. We look on as she wastes away, our tongues tied. Ariana is taking no further questions at this time.
And maybe silence is her prerogative. Maybe it is upsetting for strangers to ask, based on your appearance, if you’re okay. I guess it would be nice for famous people if we didn’t have opinions on their bodies. But we do. We always will. Their bodies, often, are part of the reason they’re famous. And it feels bizarre that viewers who flock to the theaters to feast their eyes on a spectacle should be told not to comment on what they see.
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And this is where the issue stops being abstract and becomes visceral. Mothers—especially mothers of daughters—have always been the first to sense when the culture is drifting into dangerous territory. They are the ones who watch their children inhale these images like oxygen, the ones who know that girls mostly do not dream of being “healthy” in the clinical sense; they dream of being beautiful and they dream of being chosen. When a celebrity appears on-screen looking as fragile as a porcelain doll, it’s personal. It’s the question every mother asks herself at some point: Is this the body my daughter will believe she must grow into?
For years, celebrities have acted as role models when it’s convenient for them to do so—when they can polish up their profiles by speaking about voting, or mental health, or recycling. But when being an influencer becomes inconvenient, they try to slip out of it. Miley Cyrus insisted she wasn’t a role model right after her chaotic post-Disney rebrand but that didn’t stop her haircut and wardrobe from instantly reshaping the aesthetic landscape for millions of girls. Female celebrities might not want that great power, but they’ve got it—and they ought to handle it with care. Instead of telling the millions who pay to watch their work: I owe you nothing.
In the end, the question isn’t whether Grande is too thin. It’s whether she will one day, like [Meghan] Trainor, admit that the body she insisted was beautiful wasn’t actually healthy. For now, we’re not allowed to talk about what’s standing right in front of us—a gorgeously clad frame that millions of girls have watched walking the red carpet on TikTok this week—even as their mothers, who came of age in the era of heroin chic models, get a weary sense of déjà vu.
Perhaps the producers of a film that takes place in the same universe as 1939’s beloved Wizard of Oz wanted to really adhere to the source material: Judy Garland Filmed The Wizard of Oz Under Grueling Conditions. The studio put the teen actor on a strict diet and encouraged her to take “pep pills,” a move that eventually resulted in her early death.
UPDATE:
Starving African Children Raise Money To Feed Ariana Grande https://t.co/xLGrA2aoj6 pic.twitter.com/8bohwarZKt
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) November 19, 2025
UPDATE (11/21/25): Ariana Grande tests positive for COVID after tumultuous ‘Wicked: For Good’ press tour.
Flashback to December of 2021: Jimmy Fallon, Ariana Grande and Megan Thee Stallion release pro-booster ‘It Was A (Masked Christmas).’
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Deranged man slashed two men in 10 minutes at Queens subway station in random attacks.
IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ — Conservatives Come to U of O and Campus Employee Organizes a Mob
Welcome to the West Coast, Messed Coast™ report, where this week you’ll see an excerpt from our first edition of the West Coast, Messed Coast™ podcast.
Also inside:
There are surprising numbers on public sentiment for an anti-gas tax petition from woke Portland.
The University of Oregon gets a visit from conservatives, and it may not work out very well for the university.
The feds make a move on the accused Pacific Palisades fire setter case.
And, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Let’s GO!
Let’s.
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro 3 Wireless Earbuds. #CommissionEarned
SERIOUSLY LONG-RANGE FIRES: The time to move ICBMs from the Air Force to the Army is now.
First, as Wilsbach’s message indicates, silo-based missiles are simply not core to the Air Force identity or mission, and they never will be. With a fleet of aircraft that is the oldest and smallest it has ever been, the nation needs an Air Force that is laser-focused on restoring and expanding US airpower — not managing a missile force.
Second, the missileer career field has no natural synergy with the rest of the Air Force and is increasingly orphaned and disconnected. Missile operators and maintainers train and work separately from the rest of the service, and gain experience that does not translate well to airborne missions or most senior leadership roles in the Air Force. Combined with an ICBM force that has been shrinking since the end of the Cold War, the missileer career field has chronic morale problems, limited promotion opportunities, and an unsustainable size — issues documented repeatedly over the past 30 years.
Third, because its missile fields are widely dispersed, the Air Force currently sustains a fleet of utility helicopters it does not otherwise need to fly crews between silos — along with helicopter pilots, maintainers, security forces, and training pipelines unique to the ICBM mission. At a time of shrinking force structure and financial pressures, maintaining a separate fleet of aircraft and supporting career fields just to protect the ICBMs seems wasteful.
In contrast, the Army already operates all of the nation’s other land-based missiles, including the military’s only other silo-based missiles — the ground-based interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Long-range fires is a growing and highly valued Army mission, and Army personnel in ICBM jobs would build skills better aligned with other jobs in the Army. Moreover, the Army already has the utility helicopters and force structure needed to take on the ICBM security mission more effectively and efficiently than the Air Force. The ICBM mission is a natural fit for the Army.
Left unsaid: The Army couldn’t possibly do a worse job managing the Sentinel program.
NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER: Streaming is overtaking theaters for movie watchers, new poll finds.
Americans are more likely to watch newly released movies from the comfort of their own homes instead of heading out to a theater, according to a new poll.
About three-quarters of U.S. adults said they watched a new movie on streaming instead of in the theater at least once in the past year, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, including about 3 in 10 who watched new movies on streaming at least once a month.
Meanwhile, about two-thirds of Americans said that they’ve watched a recently released movie in a theater in the past year, and only 16% said they went at least once a month.
The results suggest that, on the whole, American moviegoers are more likely to stream a film than see it in the theaters, a shifting tide that was only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Convenience and cost are both factors for many people who can’t find the time to go to a theater or pay the increasingly high price for a ticket.
Movies were one of the last mass-media events. I’m sorry to see them abandon this model after 125 frequently brilliant years: Like Golfballs Through A Garden Hose…This is the streaming suck of our lives.
UPDATE: There Are Too Many Streaming Services & Many Will Be Forced to Shutdown Soon or Merge.
UPDATE (11/21/25): If only there was a tried and true method to put butts in seats in front of a big screen:
THEY CALL IT “DOOM SCROLLING” FOR A REASON: Nighttime phone use linked to higher levels of suicidal thoughts in high-risk adults.
DISPATCHES FROM MR. KISS KISS FANG FANG: Eric Swalwell Runs for California Governor. Comedy Ensues.
Swalwell says he is ready to bring the fight home. The only question is which home. Californians are still trying to figure out where he actually lives, since his mortgage filings seem far more confident about Washington than California. Hard to govern a state when your paperwork thinks you are a part-time resident with a full-time East Coast hobby.
California is a beautiful but battered state, filled with people who deserve an actual leader. Someone who shows up, tells the truth, and does the work. What they do not need is another politician who treats public office like a personal spotlight. Or a man who seems more interested in pleasing cable news bookers than solving real problems. California has seen enough of that kind of nonsense.
Gooder and harder, California:
40 million people, and the two most likely individuals to become governor of California are a dude who fell for a Chinese honeypot and a woman who poured scalding mashed potatoes on her husband’s head.
Cooked. Absolutely cooked. pic.twitter.com/m5Qbf22Awh
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 21, 2025
AND LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY: New Bombshells Over Butler Shooter Mean It’s Time for Congress to Reopen Its Investigation.
LEFTISM AS A MENTAL DISORDER (CONT’D): Ex-Van Drew staffer staged fake attack, writing ‘Trump Whore’ across her stomach and alleging men held her down and cut her body.
A 26-year-old Ocean City woman who claimed she was brutally assaulted because she worked for Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Ocean City) instead orchestrated the entire incident — paying a scarification artist to wound her and staging the scene with zip ties and “Trump Whore” written on her stomach and “Van Drew is a racist” on her back, federal prosecutors alleged today.
Natalie Greene, a Rutgers law student, allegedly concocted the hoax in July, with an accomplice making a late-night 911 call to report that she had been ambushed by three men on a nature trail in Egg Harbor Township. Police officers found Greene bound with black zip ties, her shirt pulled over her head, and the political slurs scrawled across her torso. She told police that her supposed attackers had a gun and threatened to shoot her, and struck her in the head.
Prosecutors say nearly every detail was fabricated.
Many more details at the link.
HARD TO BE WORSE THAN I THOUGHT: Biden’s Weaponization of the DOJ Against GOP Lawmakers Was Worse Than We Thought.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: A look back at the Dayton accords that ended war in Bosnia 30 years ago.
“The central fact for us as Americans is this,” Clinton said in announcing the accords had been reached. “Our leadership made this peace agreement possible and helped to bring an end to the senseless slaughter of so many innocent people. … Now American leadership, together with our allies, is needed to make this peace real and enduring.”
Clinton’s rhetoric anticipated a more robust expression of “American Exceptionalism” by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who declared in a television interview in 1998: “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us. I know that the American men and women in uniform are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy and the American way of life.”
U.S. peacekeeping forces began arriving in Bosnia in December 1995; they were to stay no more than a year. As it turned out, the last U.S. peacekeeping troops left Bosnia in 2004. There was not one U.S. fatality in hostile action during the nine-year commitment.
The Dayton accords, though hardly without defect, gave rise to a creaky and uneasy peace that has lasted 30 years. Such longevity — remarkable as it was unimagined — signals a seldom-recognized reality that diplomacy’s fruits need not be flawless to endure.
Read the whole thing.
OLD AND BUSTED: “Only Nixon Could Go to China.”
The New Cold War Hotness? Only Trump Can Negotiate with Communist New York: Karoline Leavitt Minces NO Words Framing Trump’s Mamdani Meeting and Proves How Unhinged Dems Have Become.
🚨 KAROLINE LEAVITT responds to President Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Zohran Mamdani tomorrow
“It speaks volumes that tomorrow, we have a COMMUNIST coming to the White House — because that's who the Democrat Party elected as the mayor of the largest city in the country.” pic.twitter.com/WD1zQAWJIw
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) November 20, 2025
BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: Apple 2025 MacBook Air 13-inch Laptop with M4 chip. #CommissionEarned (Link fixed, thanks for pointing it out).
SHOCKER: ADEQUATE STAFFING LEADS TO HAPPIER WORKPLACES. Study says hiring more nurses leads to happier hospitals.
YES, PLEASE: McMahon calls on Congress to codify ‘hard reset’ at Education Department.
She went on to speak about the announcement this week of six interagency deals made between the Education Department and other federal agencies to transfer out some of the responsibilities of legally mandated programs.
The deals were made with the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior and State, moving entities such as the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which is headed to Labor, and the Indian Education Program, which will be moved to Interior.
A senior agency official said the Education Department would still be in charge of oversight while the other departments would largely take over administration of grants.
“I’ve talked to dozens of members of Congress to explain to them exactly what we’re doing, to bring them up to speed and to say to them, ‘Look, when we have completed some of these transfers that work incredibly well, then we will be looking to Congress to codify those,’” McMahon said Thursday.
“Zero them all out” has a nice ring to it.
LOOK, I FORGOT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE SALE…. The Annual Winter Sale.
But since there are two books on sale today, I thought it might be useful for your Christmas shopping. (As always remember you can buy today, schedule for delivery Christmas morning. No one needs to know you bought on sale.)
THIS:
People often ask: "Sure, the left is stupid and annoying – but what have they DONE to cause real harm?"
The eco-freako stuff is a good example. We were a few years from functional nationwide nuke – saving however many million lives via pollution externalities, wars involving… https://t.co/GcPsrRvkTe
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) November 21, 2025
More nukes is good nukes.