LOS ANGELES NUKED, TRANS AND NONBINARY HARDEST HIT, HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS “REPORTS:” How a community rallied for trans and nonbinary recovery homes following LA fires.
But what about the women, children, Red Indians, spacemen, and a sort of idealized version of the complete Renaissance man?
IS IT A DAY THAT ENDS IN “Y?” Watch: Did a Senate Democrat Just Call for an Insurrection?
Do you remember when Democrats accused former President Trump of incitement for telling his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” march to the Capitol to make their voices heard? Well, fast forward to today, and we have a sitting senator engaging in rhetoric that does far more than make a call for peaceful assembly. Earlier this week, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) advocated for “revolution” while standing outside in snow-covered Boston, a site steeped in revolutionary history.
“Massachusetts is where revolutions are born,” Markey began. “And the revolution against Donald Trump and Elon Musk starts here.”
“This is the city of revolutionaries from the American Revolution to create checks and balances in the United States Constitution so that we did not have a dictator — a king — the way those colonists were living under it. And they fought all along Massachusetts Avenue. All coming out, the men and women to say, ‘no taxation without representation.’ We want to have a balance, we cannot have a king.”
Markey’s choice of words raises an important question: is “revolution” just a dog whistle for “insurrection”? His post on X proudly calls for this upheaval, and he pinned it to his account to make sure people see it. Perhaps he believes this kind of incendiary language is acceptable when those on the left wield it.
Markey’s words also raise another important question: Why is Markey now talking about the American Revolution and “no taxation without representation” and “we want to have balance,” when in 2019, he was in full “ban all things!” mode when he backed AOC’s infamous Green Nude Eel:
While Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a Green New Deal bill in the U.S. House in February 2019, Markey introduced a Senate version of the same bill.
Here’s the sort of “balance” that AOC and her colleagues was calling for at the time:
● The Green New Deal’s War on Cows.
● Cory Booker: ‘This Planet Simply Can’t Sustain’ People Eating Meat.
● “The authors state that the GND would like to replace every ‘combustion-engine vehicle’ — trucks, airplanes, boats, and 99 percent of cars — within ten years. Charging stations for electric vehicles will be built “everywhere,” though how power plants will provide the energy needed to charge them is a mystery.”
● Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Aims to Eliminate Air Travel.
As Jim Treacher wrote earlier this week, Apparently, the Green New Deal Runs on Gaslight.
The following year, Markey also didn’t sound very keen about America’s founding:
On Thanksgiving Day in 2020, Markey tweeted the following about the Thanksgiving holiday:
“While we celebrate all that we are grateful for today, we must also remember the true history of Thanksgiving and recognize the atrocities committed against Native Americans, as well as the widespread disease brought by European arrival which decimated the Native population. In Massachusetts, on this 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s arrival, we continue to stand with the Wampanoag people who first met the Pilgrims and celebrate their continued sovereignty and land rights.”
Given the Covid restrictions still in place in Massachusetts, and a governor who was saying, “The science on this one’s pretty clear — gathering in groups indoors for an extended period of time with family and friends is likely the worst possible scenario for spreading the virus…If you gather with people outside your household, limit guests as much as possible and keep it to your limited social network, who you see on a regular basis,” I’m sure Markey’s boilerplate leftism sold particularly well that Thanksgiving.
OH SURE, NEXT YOU’LL BE TELLING ME THAT GAMBLING IS GOING ON IN RICK’S CAFE: BBC Runs Heart-Wrenching “Documentary” About a Young Boy’s Struggle to Surive in the Israeli-Made Warzone of Gaza… Without Ever Disclosing This Boy is the Son of Hamas’s Minister of Agriculture.
BLOFELD HAS WON: James Bond’s long-serving producers give control to Amazon.
The James Bond film franchise will no longer be controlled by the Broccoli dynasty, after long-serving masterminds Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson announced they are stepping down.
The Bond films were launched by Albert “Cubby” Broccoli in 1962, before his daughter and stepson took over.
The pair will now give creative control to Amazon MGM Studios, which was formed when Amazon bought Bond’s parent studio in 2022.
The new deal comes after mounting speculation about the fate of the British spy, four years after his last outing in No Time to Die, which was also Daniel Craig’s final appearance in the role.
Amazon will now decide which actor will take over the famous character, but there is still no timescale for when that that will happen or when the next film will be made.
Flashback to December: Amazon Owns James Bond. Unfortunately It Hates Men. “‘I have to be honest, I don’t think James Bond is a hero,’ one Amazon executive said during a recent meeting about upcoming Bond content, the outlet reported. That quote seemed to point to Broccoli’s fear that Amazon does not understand the very character that she has dedicated her career to. Of course not. If you’re a woke, why would you think a white very heterosexual male defending a colonialist entity using violence against justice-involved persons is a hero?”
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH CHRYONS CALLED ON THEIR IGNORANCE: CNN anchor Pamela Brown insists she ‘doesn’t know anything’ about nonbinary ex-Biden nuclear official Sam Brinton during heated exchange: ‘I’ll be transparent.’
‘LAWYER UP!’ Senate Votes to Make Kash Patel the Next FBI Director As Dems Sweat Profusely.
UPDATE:
If they didn’t steal it in 2020, they would’ve had 4 years of Trump being hamstrung by a Democrat Congress and Chris Wray as FBI Director
Now they get 4 years of Kash
And it’s going to be hell on earth for the Deep State
Congratulations to America’s new FBI Director pic.twitter.com/w5KtGpdMjx
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) February 20, 2025
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A friend writes: “Yeah and then there were the unverifiable mail-in ballots. Boxes of them appearing hours, days, weeks after the fact. In many cases with only the presidential race checked. We didn’t have an election in 2020. We had a massive fraud operation.” It does seem increasingly like that.
But, as above, oft evil will shall evil mar.
BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN: If You’re a Fan, Catch It on the Big Screen.
My latest, over at Ed Driscoll.com.
KATHY HOCHUL LETS LOOSE ON TRUMP AFTER CONGESTION PRICING DISMISSAL:
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has adopted a more aggressive persona in response to the Trump administration’s move to end New York City’s congestion pricing, to mixed reception.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy informed Hochul in a Wednesday letter that the federal government was terminating approval of the controversial policy. Hochul responded aggressively, holding a press conference in which she swore, invoked the American Revolution, and vowed to see Trump “in court.”
“Donald Trump isn’t a ‘king’ and we won’t let him use New Yorkers as roadkill on his revenge tour,” Hochul captioned a post of her press conference. “We’ll see him in court.”
“I’m here to say: New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years,” she said Wednesday to cheers.
“We sure as hell are not going to start now.”Going beyond congestion pricing, Hochul said the issue was secondary and that Trump’s move represented “an attack on our sovereign identity, our independence from Washington.”
Fair enough, no more DOT funding for New York roads, then. “Congestion pricing runs counter to the federal highway aid program, which prohibits tolling on roads built with federal funds unless Congress grants an exception, the DOT said.”
THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Abandon Ship! Doctor Who Is Finished (Video).
HAMAS TERRORISTS LEAD GAZANS IN PROPAGANDA PARADE CELEBRATING THEIR MURDER OF JEWISH CHILDREN:
In their most shocking propaganda display to date, Hamas terrorists paraded the coffins of two dead children, their mother, and an 83-year-old man through the streets of Gaza before throngs of cheering Palestinians.
The macabre scene unfolded on Thursday morning as Hamas returned the bodies of four Israeli captives who were held for more than 500 days: Shiri Bibas, 32; her two children, 4-year-old Ariel and 9-month-old Kfir; and 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz. The caskets bore smiling pictures of those killed alongside messages listing their “date of arrest” as Oct. 7, 2023.
Hamas displayed the caskets on a makeshift stage in front of an anti-Semitic sign depicting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a bloodthirsty vampire snarling above a photo of the murdered captives. The sign included the caption, “The War Criminal Netanyahu & His Nazi Army Killed Them with Missiles from Zionist Warplanes.” There is no evidence to date that supports the claim.
Related:
Pay close attention to the journalists and media who made a bigger week long news cycle out of an Elon Musk hand gesture than they will this display. https://t.co/ylw6yPij8N
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 20, 2025
As Ben Shapiro writes, “Sometimes, Moral Clarity Isn’t Difficult.” “This is evil. If you side with those who deliberately kidnap babies and hold them for ransom, you are siding with evil. If you demand concessions to those who perform such atrocities, you are siding with evil. From college campuses to the streets of London, from the United Nations to the International Criminal Court, we can see just who sides with evil. And as Israel lays to rest the corpses of the Bibas family, we should be reminded that those who side with evil share its moral consequences.”
UPDATE:
The sacred Associated Press, ladies and gentlemen. https://t.co/4lLITg4aAk pic.twitter.com/iGi9TAiLmG
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) February 20, 2025
IT’S COME TO THIS:
This is peak Democrat party 2025.
Five assholes huddled around a microphone with zero constituent support, trying to block a patriotic American (@Kash_Patel) from doing his job. pic.twitter.com/kp1Q2BCq0v
— Brenden Dilley (@WarlordDilley) February 20, 2025
EUROPE DISDAINED U.S. REPUBLICANS FOR YEARS, NOW EURO-ELITES ARE IN A FRENZY:
Even now, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain – four of the largest EU economies – don’t spend the minimum 2 per cent of GDP on defence that has long been NATO’s goal or struggle barely to meet it.
Europe could have guarded against Trump’s wrath by building freer trade relations with United States during the Biden Administration. Instead, they ratcheted up regulations on American high-tech firms and maintained their barriers to American agriculture.
Europe now knows where it stands. If it wants a relationship with America, it must have a relationship with all of America, not just the half that it prefers to invite to cocktail parties.
If it wants a seat at the table to form a united front with the United States even in its backyard, it needs to develop the hard military power that commands respect.
If it wants respect from Washington, it must show respect to Alabama, Kansas, and the places in flyover country that elect Republicans. And it must also show respect to their own citizens, often from their own rural and forgotten communities, who feel and vote the same way.
European elites may decide they don’t want a relationship on those terms. That’s certainly one option, and an understandable, if regrettable, one.
But then that’s their choice, not Trump’s. And they will then need to sleep in the bed they have made.
Read the whole thing.
COCAINE MITCH CALLS TIME: Breaking: Mitch McConnell Announces He Won’t Seek Reelection Next Year.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Why German intercity trains are even worse than Britain’s.
Germany’s crumbling rail services are less punctual than even the worst operator in Britain, analysis shows, after the country’s leader mocked the state of UK railways.
Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, dismissed suggestions last week that the country’s network should be privatised arguing that it would “end as badly as in England, where nothing works any more”.
However, data shows that Deutsche Bahn, the German state-owned rail group, is consistently delivering one of the least reliable services in central Europe — even compared with Britain.
The rail network in Germany was once celebrated as sleek, efficient and reliable but has deteriorated dramatically in recent decades, blighted by unreliability, chronic delays and cancellations.The situation has become so bad that officials in Switzerland — celebrated for its to-the-second rail punctuality — have banned some late-running intercity trains from its network as they mess with the precise, synchronised timetable and disrupt local services.
Analysis showed that only 72 per cent of Deutsche Bahn’s intercity trains arrived within ten minutes of their scheduled arrival time in the 12 months to January, compared with 78 per cent of British long-distance services.
Clearly, there’s only man who salvage the situation — and fortunately, at the moment, he’s got quite a bit of free time on his hands!
DISPATCHES FROM THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS: ABC News’ Trump Headline Inspires Greg Gutfeld’s 4-Step Summary of Why Media Is Circling the Drain.
Greg Gutfeld outlined the legacy media’s four-step circle of life (or death as it were):
That ABC News headline is not unlike when the media devotes a lot of time to trying to make everybody think they’re about to die from climate change following that up with reports about all the “climate anxiety” people have.
Related: “Arrests for illegal border crossings have fallen to their lowest level since Trump’s last term. This isn’t because of non-enforcement. It’s because people aren’t coming now.”
UPDATE: Speaking of Gutfeld, it’s hard to think of a conservative getting anything approaching positive coverage in Variety until now:
JUST A BUCK, TRY YOUR LUCK: Yes, Newsweek Really DID Say That Out Loud…
Did you take the red pill of the blue pill?
If you took the red pill, you would be forced to live in the real world where things are messy, the truth is hard to swallow, and you are condemned to live in freedom with all its pains and pleasures.
If you take the blue pill, you can live in blissful ignorance of the fact that you are a slave totally manipulated by people indifferent to your well-being and your fate.
Newsweek chose the blue pill.
Ukraine is Schrödinger’s democracy. As long as we don’t measure whether Zelenskyy is democratically supported by his population, we can pretend that he is the legitimately elected leader of a democratic regime.
Zelenskyy was legitimately elected, but his term was to have expired last year. He is currently empowered by martial law to remain in power, and implicitly by the fact that the US government pays all Ukraine’s bills, including the salaries of the government, the budget for the military, the pensions, the media, the…everything. Zelenskyy is an American satrap.
I am not saying that to insult Zelenskyy. It is simply a fact. You may even think it is a good thing, and I certainly think that the current situation is at least better than having Putin own the whole damn country.
But this is not “democracy.” Any argument that it is is a joke.
To be fair, Newsweek did admit in 2023: “Ukraine Sure Doesn’t Look Like a Democracy Anymore.”
Democracies do not ban opposition parties. The fact that so many such parties ever existed says something about the level of opposition faced by the Ukrainian nationalist government that came to power after the 2014 revolution. Then in May of 2022, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law formally banning all these parties. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law. The list included the Opposition Platform for Life, which had held fully 10 percent of the seats in parliament. Among the 11 banned parties are the Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Progressive Socialist Party of the Ukraine, the Union of Left Forces, and the Communist Party of Ukraine.
Democracies do not ban elections, but Ukraine has put the democratic process itself on hold since declaring martial law in 2022. This hiatus was supposed to be temporary, but it has been repeatedly extended, most recently in July 2023. As a result of that vote in the Ukrainian parliament, where all opposition parties have been removed, the parliamentary elections scheduled for last month were canceled. Presidential elections were scheduled for March 2024, but under current rules they too will not be held, and Zelensky has stated that “now is not the time for elections.”
Like Ron Burgundy and the teleprompter, the editors at the zombie post-Washington Post Newsweek will seemingly run anything its writers put into WordPress.
Related: I don’t care, Volodymyr: J.D. Vance Warns Zelensky Over ‘Disgraceful’ Public Attacks on Trump, Confirms Ukrainian Elections Are Now U.S. Policy.
Elections in Ukraine are now U.S. policy, with Vance making it clear that Zelensky must submit to a democratic mandate if he wants continued legitimacy. “Certainly, that would give him the strongest position, Raheem,” Vance said when asked if elections were necessary. “And I think that it’s a little rich for some of our European friends to attack Donald Trump for suggesting that Ukraine should have elections when they say that this is a war for democracy. How can you attack elections when your entire framing for the war in Ukraine is that it’s a war for democracy? I just think it’s ridiculous. And, of course, the United States had a civil war. We had an election in, of course, at the, at the end of as scheduled. You know, Churchill found out that he lost. As I understand it, he found out that he lost the British election at Potsdam.”
Vance, fresh from his European trip, where he lectured European leaders on free speech and matters of conscience, hit them again in our exclusive interview for their hypocrisy on democracy, questioning their insistence on blocking elections.
“The idea that you cannot have elections in the midst of a war is, I think, kind of a preposterous idea. And the President has made very clear that he thinks that should happen. So, you know, that is, that is American policy. And I think it’s. It’s pretty simple and straightforward.”
Indeed.
OLD AND BUSTED: Reagan-era conservatives pretending it’s still the 1950s.
The new hotness? Hollywood lefties pretending it’s still the 1950s! Clooney’s Truth-Telling Play Arrives at Terrible Time.
Now, the actor/director is bringing “Good Night, and Good Luck” to Broadway. It’s a shrewd business move and, according to the star, a chance to praise the legacy media.
Here’s what Clooney said at a New York press conference tied to the play’s arrival.
“It’s a subject matter that is very close to our hearts, which is what [the press] does. Telling the truth and holding truth to power. It’s a play we’re very excited to do.”
Most Americans understand the legacy press no longer holds one party accountable for its actions. Reporters ignored President Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline, for example. Journalists also refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal until months after the 2020 presidential election wrapped.
Even then, the coverage proved muted and ineffective. Some truths must be hidden, apparently.
The same, apparently, applies to Clooney.
As Joseph Campbell has written, “Murrow ‘was very late in confronting McCarthy’ and ‘did so only after other journalists had challenged the senator and his tactics for months, even years,’” creating what Campbell would call a classic “media myth” that Clooney adopted into first a movie in 2005 and now a Broadway play. That being said, everyone in the media who lives to recreate those moments could have had their equivalent over the last four years with the endless number of failures of the Biden administration (not least of which, their lack of an actual functioning president), but chose to remain silent, and take one for the team. And so did Clooney! Until Obama apparently gave him his blessings to write a New York Times column condemning Joe’s senescence in his catastrophic debate with Trump last June.
And then there’s blacklist subtext of any film or play about McCarthy. That’s a topic that should never be touched by Hollywood again, since the industry has spent the last quarter century blacklisting anyone to the right of Stalin – and even blacklisting lefties who have made anti-blacklisting movies.
Still though, Clooney’s new play is a triumph on one level:
JIM TREACHER: It’s Okay Not to Get Mad at Every Little Thing.
I didn’t watch the whole SNL 50th anniversary deal last weekend, because I forgot it was on. The only time I pay attention to the show anymore is when one of the past guest hosts has shot somebody, or when Hollywood makes an embarrassing movie about the show’s premiere back in 1975*. I don’t hate the show. I just don’t care anymore.
So I didn’t see this sketch until today, after a bunch of people complained about it:
Huh. Well, that was pretty funny. Eddie Murphy does a great impression of Tracy Morgan, and I’ll take their word for it that black people don’t tend to watch SNL. The whole thing is self-deprecating humor. I ain’t mad at it.
Apparently, though, I’m supposed to be angry because Tom Hanks showed up at the end, playing a country-ass white fella in a MAGA hat who thinks a black man is threatening him instead of just wanting to shake his hand. Even the audience seemed taken aback by that one.
Outrage!
* * * * * * * * *
I’ll never understand sore winners. MAGA has been getting exactly what they wanted for a solid month now, and it’s still not enough. They have to bitch and moan about an SNL sketch, of all things. They’re more like the libs they hate than they care to admit.
The sketch worked perfectly in one sense. For almost 20 years now, SNL has existed only to provide Sunday column fodder for Beltway journalists. As John Hinderaker wrote in 2017 at Power Line, political reporters and wire services love to recap SNL episodes, because it allows them to get their biases in print while still maintaining a thin veneer of objectivity. “‘Respectable’ news outlets like the AP can’t publish absurd comedy skits ripping President Trump, much as they might like to,” Hinderaker wrote. “But by covering Saturday Night Live, they turn such meaningless attacks into fake ‘news.’”
Similarly, this week, SNL has gotten a ton of free press from outraged red staters who haven’t watched the show in decades, but took the bait and generated plenty of, to coin a phrase, outrage! over a sketch attacking someone wearing a MAGA hat. Whether it’s via the DNC-MSM or from outraged conservatives, generating plenty of ink has kept the show on the air long after its freshness rating (and real TV ratings) expired. At age 80, Lorne Michaels has to be laughing about chalking up yet another win.
* From your humble narrator last month: Live From New York, It’s ‘Saturday Night’ Member Berries!
AUTHOR OF GULAG NOW SIDING WITH THE NOMENKLATURA: There’s a Term for What Trump and Musk Are Doing.
Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency is not, so far, primarily interested in efficiency. DOGE and its boss, Elon Musk, have instead focused their activity on the eradication of the federal civil service, along with its culture and values, and its replacement with something different. In other words: regime change.
No one should be surprised or insulted by this phrase, because this is exactly what Trump and many who support him have long desired. During his 2024 campaign, Trump spoke of Election Day as “Liberation Day,” a moment when, in his words, “vermin” and “radical left lunatics” would be eliminated from public life. J. D. Vance has said that Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” Steve Bannon prefers to talk about the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” but that amounts to the same thing.
These ideas are not original to Vance or Bannon: In the 21st century, elected leaders such as Hugo Chávez or Viktor Orbán have also used their democratic mandates for the same purpose. Chávez fired 19,000 employees of the state oil company; Orbán dismantled labor protections for the civil service. Trump, Musk, and Russell Vought, the newly appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—the original regime-change blueprint—are now using IT operations, captured payments systems, secretive engineers, a blizzard of executive orders, and viral propaganda to achieve the same thing.
This appears to be DOGE’s true purpose. Although Trump and Musk insist they are fighting fraud, they have not yet provided evidence for their sweeping claims. Although they demand transparency, Musk conceals his own conflicts of interest. Although they do say they want efficiency, Musk has made no attempt to professionally audit or even understand many of the programs being cut. Although they say they want to cut costs, the programs they are attacking represent a tiny fraction of the U.S. budget. The only thing these policies will certainly do, and are clearly designed to do, is alter the behavior and values of the civil service. Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation.
Earlier today, Steve linked to “George MF Washington’s” Substack about the 1993 movie Dave, in which “Washington” wrote:
“Dave” (1993), and then later on “The American President” (1995) and “The West Wing” (1999) created a gauzy Federal fantasy land where Progressive Government was always and everywhere a force for good. Where all Americans aspired to a life beneath an all-powerful benevolent Government which did everything for us from birth to earth. In these movies, government never arrests you for speaking out at your local school board meeting. They don’t deny you disaster aid based on your political yard signs. And they never, ever, kick down your door and murder your pet squirrel. These movies built a world where the heroes were always coded Liberal, where they always did the right thing, and where screenplays written by prominent Hollywood Progressives ensured that Conservative-coded villains would always be frustrated by the ability of their opponents to tie them in rhetorical knots.
Most importantly, with the movies and TV shows of this era, Progressive Hollywood was telling us “this is how it ought to be… this is how Government should work.” But to watch “Dave” here in the post-Biden era… the era of Trump 2.0… is to realize that what Hollywood really did in the late-90’s, was to set a bunch of traps for itself and then gamely walk right into them thirty years later.
Now we’re up to 1996’s Wag the Dog, which began with a title card that read, “Why does the dog wag its tail? Because a dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.”
Or to put it another way:
Elon Musk on Hannity: “If the bureaucracy is fighting the will of the people. Then we live in a bureaucracy, not a democracy." pic.twitter.com/RS0PmArkxD
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 19, 2025
2025 will be the year of deciding who is in charge of Washington, the swamp dwellers, or the president.
Related: Continental Divide. Europeans are starting to realize that their governments are too big. Will Americans catch on next?
Throw your Euro stereotypes out the window: Last weekend, a Greek government that has cut public-sector pay and lowered pensions won a clear victory in local elections. Despite strikes and violence, despite the fact that Greece’s debt is still growing and more cuts are coming, there will be a Socialist mayor of Athens for the first time in 24 years. (And, yes, in Greece, the Socialists favor budget cuts, and the conservatives oppose them.)
Nor are the Greeks alone. Last month, voters re-elected a Latvian government that cut public-sector workers’ pay by 50 percent. The British government coalition, which is also trying to eliminate benefits and cut spending, remains strangely popular, too. Although—contrary to my previous observation—London witnessed its first Continental-style, anti-austerity riot last week, there wasn’t much general enthusiasm for the protesters. Some of their leaders wound up denouncing the riots, and they haven’t hurt the government’s poll numbers yet, either.
It’s saying too much to call it a pattern, and it may well not be a permanent change: I’m sure there are plenty of European politicians who won’t survive their next encounter with the voters. But there is something in the air. It almost seems as if at least a few Europeans have actually drawn some lessons from the recent recession and accompanying turbulence in the bond markets. They have realized, or are about to realize, that their state sectors are too big. They are about to discover that their public spending, which seemed justified in good economic times, has to be cut.
—Anne Applebaum, in the then-still Washington Post-owned Slate, November 15th, 2010.
I liked that version of Applebaum. What happened in the years since, beyond TDS?
C’MON, THAT’S AN EASY ONE: Guess Which Wicked Star Will Play Jesus in Hollywood Bowl Production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
We all knew this was coming, right?
In the era of wokeness, it was inevitable that some production would decide to make Jesus a diverse character, and it’s finally happening:
Will she keep her septum piercing while in character?
Exit quote:
Hey, let’s not lose our heads here — there are limits to stunning and braveness.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Whoopi Demands to Know When Was She Consulted on SpaceX-NASA Contracts.
There was a potent and toxic combination of righteous indignation and ignorance oozing from ABC News moderator Whoopi Goldberg, during Tuesday’s edition of The View. In addition to blaming the crash of a Delta Airlines flight on the runway of an airport in Toronto, Canada on Elon Musk, she demanded to know: when did she give permission to NASA to sign contracts with Musk’s SpaceX?
Here you go: Whoopi Goldberg Entertains Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories.
—Real Clear Politics, July 20th, 2009.
Incidentally, just a reminder that The View is a production of ABC News.
METAPHOR ALERT:
NEW: Trump hater and Star Wars actor Mark Hamill's pants appear to drop to his knees while he was presenting an award at the BAFTAs.
The 73-year-old could be seen giving his speech when his voice got shaky and he suddenly started grabbing at his pants.
Someone sitting in the… pic.twitter.com/BeXG5RycqH
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 18, 2025
WATCH: Shocking Video of Toronto Plane Crash Released.
As PJ Media previously reported, there was another commercial airline crash on Monday, when Delta flight DL4819, an Endeavor Air Bombardier CRJ900, crashed during landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport. Fortunately, all 80 individuals on board survived this harrowing episode, though 18 suffered injuries, with some requiring hospitalization. The crash on the snow-covered runway caused the plane to flip upside down and lose both wings.
NBC “News” knows exactly who to blame for the crash in, err, Canada: NBC News Aviation ‘Expert’ Blames Toronto Plane Crash on… Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Of course, NBC isn’t the only news group with a case of Toronto, err, Trump Derangement Syndrome:
Politico reporter claiming, without evidence, that planes are crashing because of Doanld Trump.
This is the world of BlueSky that Brian Stelter, Oliver Darcy, etc. don't have a problem with. Why? Because they believe it's reality. https://t.co/RekdMJQVEZ
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 18, 2025
C’mon guys — despite President Trump’s breakneck pace to kick off his second term, it’s not quite yet the 51st state.
THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Production Hell — It Ends With Us (Video).
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