AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Lust From Victoria’s Secret Mailers Down 800%.

A recent study has found that the level of sinful lust generated by Victoria’s Secret mailers has plummeted a staggering 800% in recent years. Experts are now attributing this significant decline to one simple, yet profound reason: the once-sexy magazine just isn’t as seductive as it used to be.

“We were absolutely flabbergasted by the results,” admitted Dr. Albert Jones, lead researcher of the study. “Apparently replacing beautiful, in-shape babes with obese women and hairy dudes in lingerie causes the lust factor to plummet drastically for some reason.”

According to sources, many participants in the study reported feeling a different kind of deep sense of disappointment and shame than usual upon receiving the latest Victoria’s Secret mailer. One recipient even remarked, “I’ve seen more enticing, sexy photos in farm equipment catalogs.”

Flashback: Leave Supermodels Alone!

The other night, after I’d had a little too much of this world, I decided to bathe in cleansing waters and scour my soul by watching the new E! True Hollywood Story episode on Victoria’s Secret.  (Yes, I know. Life is sad.)

Best I can tell, this investigative blockbuster was largely derived from a New York Times story from last year, subtly headlined, “Angels in Hell: The Culture of Misogyny Inside Victoria’s Secret.”  The gory particulars of both the article and the E! documentary were enough to curl your hair, not unlike the bouncy locks of former VS model Jill Goodacre (a Victoria’s Secret OG). There were harrowing tales of handsy, lecherous  executives, and of models getting ready for Objectification Fest (the once-hallowed Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show) by eating an apple a day with no sides.  Ed Razek, the former chief marketing officer of Victoria’s Secret’s then parent company, L Brands, was so creepy, that he kept company with Jeffrey Epstein, the latter of whom posed as a Victoria’s Secret recruiter.  It was all genuinely awful.

But perhaps most unsettling of all, according to the ominous narration, VS didn’t show a commitment to diversity of body types  (women, you may have heard, come in all shapes and sizes!), and they continued to “market a standard of beauty that customers found male, stale, and hopelessly out of touch.” (Just imagine a woman so deluded, that she’d try to make herself attractive to a man while performing the sacred fourth-wave feminist rite of buying lingerie.)  After hearing this last bit, I sat there in stone silence for what felt like hours, but was probably just a few minutes or so, until E! aired another rerun of The Bradshaw Bunch, in which former NFL great Terry Bradshaw “still stinging from their embarrassing loss last year…..coaches the family for a repeat appearance on Celebrity Family Feud.”

I hurt for my supermodel sisters.  I asked a lot of unanswerable questions like, “Why, God, why?”  Then I asked one last question, which you’re not supposed to utter in public: “Whatever happened to skinny, beautiful models, and will they be coming back any time soon?”

As Iowahawk likes to say:

I’LL TAKE “WHAT IS HUNTER BIDEN’S NEXT VACATION SPOT?” FOR $500, ALEX: ‘Cocaine Sharks’ may be feasting on bales of drugs off Florida’s coast.

ON THIS DAY IN 1969: First manned moon landing still amazes the world today, a powerful example of American exceptionalism.

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Does Oppenheimer have a post-credits scene?

RIDICULE IS MAN’S MOST IMPORTANT WEAPON: Just Stop Oil protestors get surrounded by counter-demonstrator group Just Stop Pissing Everyone Off.

ARMOND WHITE: Barbie Gets Weaponized.

Greta Gerwig’s $145 million Barbie movie from Warner Bros. is not for children. Although founded on the Sixties doll made of vinyl compound and marketed by Mattel (whose rainbow-flag logo introduces the film), it only pretends to be fantasy storytelling. Set in pink-motif Barbieland, home of the iconic doll (played by Margot Robbie), it traverses a sci-fi “rip in the continuum between Barbieland and the real world” to allow Gerwig’s jaded-feminist adult social messaging.

* * * * * * * *

When Barbie grouses about “sexualized capitalism” and pouts “I’m not pretty,” Mirren interrupts: “Note to filmmakers: Margot Robbie is the wrong actress to cast to make this point.” Fact is, tough-blonde Robbie lacks slim, doll-like fragility. Granted, she achieves one of the film’s only two good moments: pantomiming crestfallen Barbie’s plastic stiffness. But Robbie’s lewd, manic stare (perfect for Suicide Squad) is too scary for Barbie. The film’s other good moment belongs, surprisingly, to Gosling, who lip-synchs Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” in perfect raspy parody of a corporate folk-rock teen idol.

After that, Barbie goes to plasticine hell. Diversity hires America Ferrera and Issa Rae give abominable speeches about Latino and black feminist sacrifice, and Rhea Perlman appears morphing Barbie inventor Ruth Handler into Ruth Bader Ginsburg. New Lizzo and Billie Eilish songs provide feminist equity. Things get more child-unfriendly when Gerwig tosses in terms such as “irrepressible thoughts of death,” “Proustian flashback,” and “patriarchy anxiety.” Most kids will probably be bored by Barbie, and even the cool kids might frown at Baumbach’s name-dropping hipster in-jokes about The Godfather (“Coppola’s aesthetic, the genius of Robert Evans, and the architecture of ’70s Hollywood”).

Worst yet: One of the man-hating Barbies sneers, “Like, I was really invested in the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League!” How could any decent industry professional attack another filmmaker this way? It’s the ultimate sign that Gerwig and Baumbach know nothing about making pop entertainment. They left the indie-world of American eccentrics to join Hollywood’s obnoxious elite. Frantic, uncheerful, and graceless, Barbie symbolizes a culture that devalues childhood and goodness.

Gergwig is set to infuse another beloved childhood icon with maximum wokeness: Barbie Director Greta Gerwig Provides Update On The Chronicles Of Narnia Films.

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Would an occasional blackout help solve climate change?

What’s more important: Keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or solving the climate crisis?

That is in many ways a terrible question, for reasons I’ll discuss shortly.

But it’s been on my mind as a ferocious heat wave roasts California and other states — and as I’ve watched Glendale respond to a Sierra Club lawsuit over the fate of the city’s gas-fired power plant, just across the L.A. River from Griffith Park.

I sat in a dimly lit courtroom in downtown Los Angeles last week as the lawyers squared off. An attorney representing the Sierra Club argued that Glendale officials had exaggerated the need for the gas plant as they urged the City Council to spend an estimated $170 million to keep burning fossil fuels. An attorney for the city countered that the investment — which the council approved in a 4-1 vote — is desperately needed to provide reliable electricity to Glendale’s roughly 190,000 residents, and avoid blackouts.

It’s a highly technical dispute. But it’s part of a larger conversation about how much blackout risk we consider acceptable in modern society — and whether our expectations should evolve in the name of preventing climate catastrophe.

(Bolding in original article.) Flashback: Are you ready for the climate lockdowns?

WATCH: House Democrats Vote to Censor RFK Jr. During Hearing on Government Censorship.

Thursday brought about another hearing on the weaponization of the federal government on Capitol Hill. In an ongoing affair as of this writing, Robert Kennedy Jr. is testifying before the select committee.

Kennedy has been the topic of recent controversy after he claimed that COVID-19 may have been bioengineered to be less harmful to those of Chinese and Jewish descent. That was immediately claimed to be an antisemitic comment, with even his own family denouncing him.

I’m not a fan of Kennedy (I think his record shows him to be a far-left hack who has whispered a few sweet nothings into conservative ears), but I think that charge is really unfair. I don’t believe he was trying to suggest Jews were somehow behind engineering COVID-19. He was citing a study, albeit he cited it incorrectly. Certainly, you can criticize him for that, but that doesn’t amount to antisemitism.

Regardless, in one of the most ironic moves I’ve ever seen occur in Congress, House Democrats voted to censor Kennedy in a hearing on government censorship. You quite literally can’t make this stuff up. Reality is too absurd.

Evergreen:

‘GET OVER IT:’ DANA LOESCH SAYS DEMOCRATS HAVE NO ROOM TO OPPOSE DIRTY HUNTER BIDEN PICS.

[As] Loesch pointed out, the photos Greene showed before the committee could be considered tame compared to what some of those same people were advocating to keep in school libraries where children could have access to them.

“For all the people mad that MTG showed Hunter Biden’s naughty photos at the hearing, they weren’t any different from the images in the books that the left is demanding kids read in school so get over it,” Loesch began.

Having spent decades trying to build Weimar America, you don’t get to then dive for the fainting couch when the other side points out the Frankenstein monster you’ve created.

EVERY INSTITUTION HAS BEEN CORRUPTED: FBI admits they knew Hunter Biden’s laptop was real when they killed the story.

GREAT MOMENTS IN DNC-MSM FACT CHECKING: Twitter’s Community Notes is doing media fact-checkers’ job.

Of all the changes that have come to Elon Musk’s Twitter , Community Notes, a fact-checking feature, has been the most consequential.

Community Notes offers both neutral fact-checking and context. But it’s also shining a glaring spotlight on how many in the media have abandoned their job responsibilities under President Joe Biden , responsibilities that they dutifully and eagerly performed under Donald Trump.

CNN’s Daniel Dale, for example, was hailed and praised for his “rapid fact check” segments on then-President Trump. His Twitter bio currently reads, “Fact checking the president.” Unfortunately, it seems that Dale’s Twitter bio needs a Community Note. He has only fact-checked President Joe Biden once in the past 90 days. Similar is the experience of the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. In April 2021, Kessler tweeted that the news outlet would discontinue a record of false and misleading claims by Biden. Kessler has not been as rigorous in fact-checking the current president.

This is where Twitter’s Community Notes has picked up the slack.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their four year vacation makes perfect sense.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Mass Panic As Jim Cramer Predicts Giant Bug Mutants Will Not Attack Earth Next Tuesday At 2:17 PM.

PARTY OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION UPDATE: Democrats Have a Muslim Problem in Michigan.

LGBTQ+ and transgender-supporting Democrats have a Muslim problem in Michigan as the conservative Muslim community pushes back against Democrat-supported LGBTQ legislation and policies.

In Hamtramck, the all-Muslim city council in the only Muslim-majority city in the United States, recently voted unanimously to institute a flag resolution called “Resolution to Maintain and Conform the Neutrality of the City of Hamtramck Towards its Residents.” In the resolution, they prohibit flags of any racial, ethnic, religious or sexual-oriented group on city property.

The LGBTQ+ community took offense to the resolution and showed up at the meeting to protest it on June 13th. Muslim Hassan Aoun was also at the meeting and said, “Don’t sit here and throw Pride Month, or being gay, down kids’ throat, my throat or anybody’s throat. You can be gay by yourself.”

After the vote was made concerning the flag resolution, a group of LGBTQ+ activists also protested in front of Hamtramck City Hall on June 24th. The protest included an appearance and speech by Attorney General Dana Nessel who compared their flag ban to being evil, homophobic and transphobic.

Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib has said publicly that he considers the protesters to be a “militia” and the protesters were comprised of folks sent into his community, including elected officials, to put pressure on them and threaten them.

FDR, who assembled a coalition of “Progressive” northerners and stone-cold racist southern New Dealers, smiles.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne announces his resignation after flaws were found in his research.

HOW IT STARTED: Next mayor wants NYC to be even more of a ‘sanctuary’ for illegal immigrants.

Every single one of the eight Democrats running for mayor vowed to protect illegal immigrants from deportation, solidifying the Big Apple’s often infamous status as a “sanctuary city.”

* * * * * * * *

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, the son of legal Taiwanese immigrants, said, “I appreciate anyone who comes to this country or New York City for a better life.”

And Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said migrants were his neighbors growing up in Queens.

“My mother worked two jobs to provide for the six of us and we had a group of undocumented residents that lived in our community,” Adams said.

The other candidates — city comptroller Scott Stringer, former Obama housing secretary Shaun Donovan and nonprofit leader Dianne Morales — also voiced their support for the Big Apple as a sanctuary city.

—The New York Post, June 2nd, 2021.

How it’s going: New York to distribute flyers telling migrants at U.S.-Mexico border to ‘consider another city.’

New York City will distribute flyers at the U.S.-Mexico border telling newly arrived migrants to “consider another city” and limit shelter stays for adult asylum seekers to 60 days as the city’s Democratic mayor says it is straining to house them.

In an announcement on Wednesday, the office of Mayor Eric Adams said the flyers would seek to “combat misinformation at the border” and that the city would help migrants find other housing and “take the next step in their journey.”

New York City says that it has provided services to 90,000 migrants since last spring and that nearly 55,000 remain in its care. Thousands of those migrants arrived on buses sent by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who has tried to shift the burden of receiving them to Democratic strongholds.

New York is bound by a decades-old consent decree in a class-action lawsuit to provide shelter for those without homes. As more migrants have arrived, Adams has tried a range of approaches to housing them, from tents to relocating them to other parts of the state.

—Reuters, today.

Mayor Adams' office is actively discouraging asylum-seekers from coming to New York City – releasing these flyers today. pic.twitter.com/xegNfGeacf

— Jeff Coltin (@JCColtin) July 19, 2023

This isn’t who we are. Adams clearly needs to reread the words on the Statue of Liberty — and his own promise that New York is a sanctuary city.

Earlier: Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive.

The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.

It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.

Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.

These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.

Saul Alinsky smiles.

FOX EXECS ARE ‘PANICKED’ OVER THE POST-TUCKER PRIMETIME LINEUP RATINGS:

With grand fanfare, Fox News rolled out its first night of the post-Tucker Carlson permanent primetime lineup Monday night. The ratings were released Tuesday, showing a freefall in viewership. Even Sean Hannity lost the ratings battle to MSNBC. Let’s just say that at this point, the guys in the executive suites might need some smelling salts.

As Robert Conquest’s Third Law of Politics states, “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”

EYES WIDE SHUT: Marjorie Taylor Greene Gives a ‘Parental Discretion’ Warning During Whistleblower Hearing, Shows Graphic Pics of Hunter Biden and His ‘Paralegal.’

LAS VEGAS POLICE SEARCH HOME IN CONNECTION WITH TUPAC SHAKUR MURDER:

Las Vegas Metro police searched a home Monday as part of the ongoing investigation into the death of Tupac Shakur, police confirmed to the 8 News Now Investigators.

Shakur, 25, was shot and killed one block off the Las Vegas Strip in September 1996. His murder remains unsolved.

The warrant, approved by a judge, reportedly involved Duane Davis, 60, who is also known as “Keffe D,” sources said.

Detectives served the search warrant at a home in Henderson near Interstate 11 and Wagon Wheel Drive on Monday, sources told the 8 News Now Investigators. It was unclear how Davis was connected to the address.

Flashback:

When Bing died, most Americans knew he was the guy who sang “White Christmas”. Elvis? “Heartbreak Hotel”. Lennon? “Imagine”. But 2Pac is a model of contemporary shortcut celebrity: he became a household name without ever having had a household song. First, he was famous for sexual assault; next, he was famous for being shot; now, he’s famous for being dead. His latest album, the prophetically titled All Eyez On Me shot (as we say) from 69 on the Billboard album chart to 18. Twenty years ago in Britain, a guy called Pete Wingfield had a hit single called “Eighteen With a Bullet” — a reference to Billboard’s practice of highlighting fast-selling records with the aforementioned ammunition. Poor old Tupac is the first guy on the Hit Parade to be literally 18 with a bullet.

—Mark Steyn from Mark Steyn’s Passing Parade: Obituaries & Appreciations expanded edition, 2014.

UPDATE: America’s Newspaper of Record has finally cracked the case: Trump Indicted For Murder Of Tupac.

RAND PAUL ASKS: Why are taxpayers still footing the bill for this special perk for Dr. Fauci?

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: Democrat Ted Kennedy Killed an Innocent Woman and Got Away With It.

POUNCING AND SEIZING! GOP Seizes on Pramila Jayapal’s Israel Misstep to Split Democrats.

When Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) called Israel “a racist state,” she was quick to apologize and walk back her comment.

But Republicans weren’t going to just let a good controversy die.

Ever since Jayapal made the comment on Saturday at the liberal Netroots Nation conference, Republicans have devoted much of their attention to humiliating the congresswoman, tying the rest of the Democratic Party to Jayapal’s words, and highlighting the divisions.

A one-page resolution from Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX) declared that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state,” said the U.S. would always support Israel, and announced that Congress condemns antisemitism and xenophobia. Republicans put the legislation to a vote Tuesday night, and overwhelmingly adopted the resolution 412-9-1.

Evergreen:

KYLE SMITH: Barbie Review: Beyond Her Ken.

As bubbly as the film appears, its script is like a grumpier-than-average women’s studies seminar. At one point, nearing the climax, “Barbie” stops cold so a Mattel doll designer (America Ferrera) with depressive inclinations can deliver a long monologue on how miserable it is to be female. For instance, she feels pressured to have lots of money but also pressured to not appear to seek it. Hearing characters issue denunciations such as “You fascist!” while Barbie muses that the fate of women is “Either you’re brainwashed or you’re weird and ugly—there is no in-between” is like going to the cotton-candy factory to find it producing lead pipes. Don’t we go to a movie like “Barbie” to escape the harrumphing tone of the most aggrieved Twitter users?

Who knew a movie about Mattel toys would have ended up so woke? Would Tom Hanks’ rumored Major Matt Mason movie have ended up as badly?

JON GABRIEL INTERVIEWS CAROL ROTH ON You Will Own Nothing (Video):

BLUE-ANON: CNN anchor claims Jack Smith visiting Subway is ‘a message to Donald Trump.’

An anchor on CNN claimed on Tuesday that special counsel Jack Smith visiting a Subway was “a message to Donald Trump.”

The statement comes on the same day Trump announced he received a letter notifying that “I am a TARGET” of Smith’s grand jury investigation. Footage of Smith leaving a Subway in Washington was played on the network and was discussed by network anchor John King.

“Jack Smith going to Subway today is a message to Donald Trump,” said King. “Donald Trump tries to intimidate people, he tries to bully people, he tries to scare you away. That was Jack Smith with no words and a simple $5 sub in his hand saying, ‘I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.'”

CNN’s TDS knows no bounds, But their obsession with Smith’s Subway run leads to the question: Just how much ham was in the sub? Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime: “Prosecutors themselves understand just how much discretion they enjoy. As Tim Wu recounted in 2007, a popular game in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York was to name a famous person—Mother Teresa, or John Lennon—and decide how he or she could be prosecuted. . . . With so many more federal laws and regulations than were present in Jackson’s day,8 a prosecutor’s task of first choosing a possible target and then pinning the crime on him or her has become much easier. If prosecutors were not motivated by politics, revenge, or other improper motives, the risk of improper prosecution would not be particularly severe. However, such motivations do, in fact, encourage prosecutors to pursue certain individuals, like the gadfly Aaron Swartz, while letting others off the hook—as in the case of Gregory, a popular newscaster generally supportive of the current administration.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Rand Paul Now Calling on DOJ to Probe Fauci for Allegedly Lying to Congress.