CHICAGO MAYOR BLUFFS; LOSES ROUND OF TEXAS HOLD ‘EM POKER: Lori Lightfoot Made Big Show of Accepting Texas-Bused Migrants, Then Immediately Ships Them Somewhere Else: Report.

When the first busload of illegal immigrants arrived, Lightfoot called the moment an important episode in Chicago’s history.

“This is such an important moment for Chicago as our city has been a sanctuary for thousands of newcomers. We are welcoming them and we will not turn our backs on those who need our help the most,” Lightfoot said in a statement, according to WMAQ-TV.

“We understand that many are fleeing violent, traumatic, or otherwise unstable environments,” the statement said. “We will respond with essential services while these individuals navigate the next steps of their journey and our community partners have been working diligently to provide a safety net.”

Lightfoot bashed Abbott for not working with her.

“We shouldn’t have to guess,” she said, according to WLS-TV.

“We shouldn’t have to have folks on the ground whispering to us about what’s happening. If you don’t want these folks to stay in Texas, then make sure that you collaborate with the cities before you put them on buses so that we can be here and make sure that our services are welcoming.”

But lo and behold, 64 of 175 illegal immigrants sent to Chicago were soon sent to a Hampton Inn in the suburb of Burr Ridge with no notice to local officials.

“I am concerned neither the village administrator nor I were told about this,” Burr Ridge Mayor Gary Grasso said, according to WGN-TV. “We want to know: Why Burr Ridge?”

“Neither village elected officials nor staff were consulted or contacted about this decision and we are now gathering information to keep our community updated,” he said to WMAQ.

Grasso also said it was hypocritical for Lightfoot to criticize Abbott for sending illegal immigrants up north and then ship them out to his community, according to Fox News.

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.

Related: Democrats Discover Only The Federal Government Can Solve The Border Crisis.

More: Democrat mayors prepare to be next targets on Governor Abbott’s sanctuary city list.

IT’S NOT A TUMAH — Maybe: So we’ve finally seen Senate candidate John Fetterman’s neck since his stroke and the internet has questions … and a whole lotta memes.

Related: Fetterman’s 9/11 Abortion Rally Is His Most Disturbing Performance Yet. “You really have to press play on the clip and watch it to understand just how bad it is because it is that bad. This is not a man who is well enough to be a US Senator, and there are no signs that he’s getting any better. In fact, I would suggest that he’s in worse condition now than he was a month ago.”

Bob Torricelli, tanned, rested, and ready!

YIKES: Elizabeth Warren wants your credit card company to report you to the government.

While President Joe Biden is decrying “MAGA Republicans” as fascist, members of his own party are actively working to get your credit card company to start tracking you and reporting you to the government. Because that’s not fascist at all.

Democratic lawmakers including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Dianne Feinstein just sent a letter to the CEO of American Express pressuring the company to start monitoring gun purchases. They essentially want the credit card company to create a special category for gun purchases — right now they’re categorized as “miscellaneous retail stores” — and use that information to report people to the police.

“Banks and credit card companies could help law enforcement preempt some mass shootings by identifying suspicious gun purchases through the implementation of a new MCC,” the lawmakers wrote. “MCCs are four-digit codes maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that classify merchants by their purpose of business.”

Earlier: Visa, Mastercard, AmEx to start categorizing gun shop sales. “A reader comments: ‘Have you seen this yet? It sure feels like there is a very coordinated effort throughout the woke financial sector to create ‘private’ gun control. I wonder if it is being driven by interaction with the ATF, etc like the censoring of private speech by coordination between government and social media. Also, wouldn’t this enable the card companies to create a gun registry? The credit card transactions include our names and what we bought and the card company knows our addresses, etc. Seems like another example of actual fascism where government coerces private companies to do their bidding.’”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Seattle Public School Teachers on Strike, Since 6-Figure Pay Isn’t Good Enough. After a whole year of COVID-related learning loss, kids are now losing out on even more instructional time thanks to Seattle’s teachers union.

CHANGE:

● New Zealand scraps mask and vaccine mandates.

● NY mask mandate lifted on subway and public transportation, Gov. Hochul announces.

Related: Meet Hiroo Onoda, The Japanese Soldier Who Kept Fighting World War II For 29 Years After It Ended.

COMING SOON TO NETFLIX: A German-Language Version of All Quiet on the Western Front.

Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) was arguably the first, and inarguably, amongst the very best anti-war movies ever made. Adapted from Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel, which Remarque based on his own experiences as a German soldier in the trenches of World War I, the film went on to win Oscars for best picture and best director. All Quiet on the Western Front was remade for American television in 1979, with Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine.

But it has taken nearly a century since the publication of Remarque’s book for it to be adapted in German, the language in which it was written. Partly, this has to do with the book’s history in the Third Reich. The Nazis banned and burned copies of All Quiet on the Western Front for its “treasonous”, and decidedly unheroic, depiction of war. Remarque’s story follows Paul Bäumer, a student who, inspired by his teacher’s patriotic speeches, leads his class to volunteer to serve on the front. But that patriotic fervor does not survive the first day of battle. What follows is a brutal, and shockingly honest, depiction of the horror and trauma of war and the toll, both physical and psychological, that it takes on the young men who fight.

Capturing that horror, and giving a very unheroic cinematic vision of war, was one of the main goals for director Edward Berger in his new, German-language adaption of All Quiet on the Western Front. The film, which premieres Sept.12 at the Toronto Film Festival, stars newcomer Felix Kammerer Bäumer, Albrecht Schuch (System Crasher) as his brother-in-arms Stanislaus Katczinsky, and star Daniel Brühl (Rush, Inglourious Basterds) as a German diplomat negotiating his country’s surrender in the war’s final days.

All Quiet on the Western Front was just named Germany’s official entry for the 2023 Oscars in the Best International Feature category. After its TIFF premiere, the film will go out in select theaters in Germany on Sept. 29, in the U.K from Oct. 14 and after an exclusive engagement at the Paris Theater in New York from Oct.7, in select theaters in the US from Oct.14. It bows on Netflix worldwide Oct.28.

The trailer looks epic:

Though looking at the poster atop the film’s Wikipedia page, I thought it starred Scarlett Johansson for second!

Of course, we all know that this new remake will never top the epic chemistry and cinematography of the aforementioned 1979 made for TV version staring Richard Thomas (fresh off playing John Boy in The Waltons) and Ernest Borgnine…

JEFF DUNETZ: I Was In Manhattan 9/11/01, The Sights And Smells Are Still Fresh In My Mind.

THE CALLS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE! Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) Equates “Election Deniers” With Terrorists On the Anniversary of 9/11:

“I remember, as most Americans do, where they were on 9/11. I was in the middle of a political campaign and suddenly, the differences with my opponent seem very small in comparison and our country came together. And in many ways, we defeated the terrorists because of the resilience of the American public because of our intelligence community, and we are safer, better prepared,” Warner told CBS’s “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan.

“The stunning thing to me is here we are 20 years later, and the attack on the symbol of our democracy was not coming from terrorists, but it came from literally insurgents attacking the Capitol on January 6th,” he added.

Warner said that he felt the country is “stronger,” and the “intelligence community has performed remarkably,” compared to 21 years ago.

“I think the threat of terror has diminished,” he said.

However, he added that he’s concerned about internal threats.

“But I do worry about some of the activity in this country where the election deniers, the insurgency that took place on January 6th, that is something I hope we could see that same kind of unity of spirit,” he said.

Warner might to start by rooting out “election deniers” in his own party: Of Course: Defeated Democrat Congressman Claims Election Was ‘Stolen’ by Republican.

Mere weeks ago, Joe Biden declared that anyone who questions the results of an election is a “threat to our democracy.”

“Democracy cannot survive when one side believes that there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated,” he said.

Biden claimed this is something unique to MAGA Republicans, but in reality, Democrats frequently refuse to recognize the legitimacy of elections they lose. The latest example is the Democrat congressman who lost the special election for Texas’s 34 Congressional District to Republican Mayra Flores, whom he claims stole the election from him.

“Our democracy is at stake…there’s millions and millions of dollars from outside our region and outside our state that are coming here to try to steal our elections and take away your value and take away the process that we rely on, which is elections,” Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) said. “And we don’t have the resources to compete with these outside resources. We can’t compete with the Koch brothers, we can’t compete with big oil, and big tobacco, and the NRA. They can outspend us, but they can’t outwork us.”

Gonzalez is far from alone in being a Democratic Party “election denier:” Karine Jean-Pierre Easily Tagged As An ‘Election Denier.’

As well as these ladies and gentlemen:

THE HYPOCRISY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ON THE QUEEN VS. GORBACHEV:

Hey, no bias there!

This week the world learned of the passing of England’s 96 year old Queen Elizabeth II. A couple weeks ago Russia’s 91 year old Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Communist Soviet Union, passed away. And the difference in coverage in the media was, shall we say, interesting.

The New York Times published an essay by one Maya Jasanoff. Jasanoff is described as “a professor of history at Harvard, is the author of three books about the British Empire and its subjects.” The title of her essay:

Mourn the Queen, Not Her Empire

Among other things Professor Jasanoff says this on the Times pages beneath a photo of the Queen with the leaders of the British Commonwealth:

“What you would never know from the pictures — which is partly their point — is the violence that lies behind them. In 1948 the colonial governor of Malaya declared a state of emergency to fight communist guerrillas, and British troops used counterinsurgency tactics the Americans would emulate in Vietnam.”

Fighting communist guerrillas is bad? Hmmm. Also, 1948? Elizabeth didn’t become queen until 1952.

Contrast this with the Times obituary of Gorbachev’s death.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Reformist Soviet Leader, Is Dead at 91

Adopting principles of glasnost and perestroika, he weighed the legacy of seven decades of Communist rule and set a new course, presiding over the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R.

If you really want to see the Times slobber over a much bloodthirstier Communist, read their obit for Stalin: “Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State.”

GREAT MOMENTS IN DIVERSITY: Private School Diversity Director: ‘BIPOC Students’ Must be Protected from ‘White Gaze.’

The Director of Diversity and Inclusion for a private school in Baltimore expressed support for racial segregation in order to protect students from the “white gaze” and promoted turning children into woke activists.

Kalea Selmon, the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Maryvale Preparatory School, gave a presentation where she argued that nonwhite students must be given spaces away from white students and described how those who work in education can use students as activists.

The presentation was given at the People of Color Conference, which is hosted by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and tells teachers and administration how to embed the tenets of Critical Race Theory into their schools. The NAIS is America’s largest accreditation agency for K-12 private schools.

In a video of part of her presentation, Selmon claims that “BIPOC spaces are sacred.” The term stands for “Black, Indigenous, People of Color.”

Selmon then goes on to say “It’s necessary for BIPOC students to have space away from white gaze and that it is absolutely okay to give black and brown students things you’re not giving white children because the white children are fine.”

So the spaces are separate — and equal as well?

NEVER FORGET THE COVID FASCISTS:

I submit to you that the COVID policies—shutdowns and lockdowns; “stay home, stay safe;” mandatory masking, social distancing, testing, and vaccines; and so on—perpetuated by the American left and those like-minded were the greatest demonstration of fascism the United States has ever known. In the nearly 250-year history of the U.S., never before has the American government exercised such power over its citizenry as it did in the name of “slowing the spread,” “following the science,” and the like. And never before in the history of the U.S. has the exercise of government power been so misinformed and misguided, with such disastrous results.

Of course, with elections looming, in an attempt to escape responsibility for their COVID tyranny, Democrats and their lackeys in the media want to blame “the pandemic,” and whenever possible, Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda. For example, last week, the American drive-by media widely reported on the “dismal learning loss” suffered by U.S. students “due to the pandemic.” The idea that “the pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading” was frequently parroted by said media.

Tens of millions of American students suffered far more than “learning loss” from the late winter of 2020 until now, but almost none of this was “due to the pandemic.” Rather, it was all due to a widespread foolish—and often downright evil—reaction to the pandemic.

When confronted with the national test results that revealed the scope of the “learning loss” suffered by U.S. students, “turning reality on its head,” the Biden administration pointed the finger at Trump and the GOP and said that re-opening schools “was the work of Democrats in spite of Republicans.” As Guy Benson at Townhall.com noted, this is a “brazen lie.”

Indeed, one of the political reasons that schools remained closed in Democratic party areas and states for as long as they did is because President Trump called for them to be open, and because designated villains, like Gov. Ron DeSantis, were following the data and permitting in-person learning to resume. In an era of negative partisanship, kids were actively and needlessly hurt—with lasting deleterious impact—because politically addicted adults didn’t want [to] admit the ‘wrong’ sort of people were right about something. Just look at the metrics on states that opened schools first versus last. If [White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s] pathetic spin were accurate, the red states would be the holdouts.

We all know that’s not true. It’s the opposite of the truth. Conservative governors were assailed for ‘killing’ children as they made the right call, as Democrat-funded teachers’ unions blasted school re-openings as white supremacy, and other such insulting nonsense. They cannot run away from their policies, and they cannot run away from their words.

Related: When the masks come off in blue states. “As he walked away, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a single mask or Covid-crazed person of any sort at the Vermont State Fair. Yet here in New York, the cosmopolitan capital of the United States, there are still people who act like they stepped out of Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. This comes after the CDC announced its general amnesty: masks don’t work; never did; never mind all that social distancing. We were wrong, said the insufficiently contrite CDC, after having plunged the economy into an unnecessary shutdown, obliterated education for more than a year, and instilled terror into the hearts of millions of Americans incapable of reading statistics or independently assessing medical information.”

In February, the artist formerly known as Allahpundit wrote, “Having spent two years convincing themselves that maximum COVID precautions at all times is the ne plus ultra of civic virtue, Democrats will now have to somehow accept that abandoning that view doesn’t amount to sinking into right-wing vice. Essentially, they’ll need to be deprogrammed. Biden and his party’s establishment have less than nine months to do it.”

Good luck, apparently, deprogramming the mass formation psychosis that thinks of itself as Fun City.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE:

● Shot: Biden Demeans MAGA Voters in Vile Labor Day Speech, Including Recycled Lies About January 6.

—Legal Insurrection, Tuesday.

● Chaser: Call for unity. Biden says Americans have ‘duty’ to stand up for democracy at 9/11 Pentagon ceremony.

—The New York Post, today.

Dammit, who typed a question mark on the teleprompter? How many times do I have to tell you — anything you type, Ron Burgundy will read!

SWISS SOCIAL MEDIA ABUZZ OVER ‘RAT OUT YOUR NEIGHBOR’ ENERGY USE POSTERS:

As Switzerland takes drastic measures to reduce its gas use this winter – including fines and up to three years in prison for citizens who violate new regulations, a viral poster circulating on Swiss social media telling citizens to rat out neighbors heating their homes above 19C (66.2F) has raised eyebrows.

“Does the neighbor heat the apartment to over 19 degrees? Please inform us,” reads the poster currently circulating on messaging services such as Signal and Telegram, according to Swiss media.

Except, it’s fake.

But accurate, as the New York Times would say:

And while the poster above may be fake, a DEF spokesperson told Blick that “if the infringement was reported and checked and could then be proven,” they may take action against violators.

Precisely, checks are not excluded, especially if one is denounced by a disgruntled neighbor or a neighborhood vigilante who is a little too zealous. In these cases, whoever heats up to 20 degrees instead of 19 can expect a fine. -Blick

“If a complaint is filed in this direction, the police must act,” added the director of the Swiss police.

1984 — a warning for the rest of us; a how-to guide for the left.

KENYAN TV IS UNDEFEATED:

GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: Chuck Todd Shocked by Harris Claim That The Border Is Secure. “On Sunday’s Meet the Press, viewers learned that there are indeed Democrat lies so preposterous even Chuck Todd won’t fall for them. During his exclusive interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, Todd appeared flabbergasted by Harris’s claim that the southern border is secure.”

DON’T GET COCKY: Poll: Herschel Walker Increasing Lead In Georgia Senate Race.

QUESTION ASKED: The Forgetting of 9/11: How did this coordinated mass murder become so irrelevant?

Muslim alienation and fear inside the U.S. has become the perennial 9/11 story, not the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and the costs associated with the attacks that have mounted into the trillions of dollars. So breathless are they to tell this tale that they produce news stories in which they have to admit that the lead item was not classified as a hate crime by the FBI. Overlook that fact, we are told, and focus instead on the words of the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a radical group which has had demonstrable ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood: “9/11 is always a particularly difficult day.”

In these stories, there is never any effort made to consider how much more difficult the anniversary might be for the many Americans who lost loved ones on that day.

By contrast, look for commemoration of, for example, the heroic deeds of the passengers of United Flight 93, who overwhelmed the terrorists who hijacked their plane and prevented the completion of their dreadful mission. When you do find such stories in the mainstream media, they’ll inevitably be spun in a direction consonant with Woke politics. For example, Mark Bingham, one of the passengers on Flight 93, will appear in a story together with Rev. Mychal Judge, who died at the World Trade Center. Beyond the two of them having died on 9/11 while endeavoring to aid others, what’s the connection?  Both “never missed a Pride parade” and “were grateful that God made [them] gay.”

9/11 has already reached a space of collective oblivion that it took Pearl Harbor many more decades to reach. This is because the force that ultimately pushed both of these hallowed days of  our civil religion into the twisted narratives of the America-hating Woke elite is the same: the fracturing of our culture into two irreconcilable sides, and the vast and rapid increase of the cultural reach of those who want all narratives of traditional American heroism and national identity to disappear.

Read the whole thing.

A NEW WESTERN BRINGS LEGENDARY LAWMAN BASS REEVES TO NAVARRO COUNTY:

“Being a Texan, I was so intrigued by what I didn’t know,” [Isaiah] Washington said prior to [Corsicana’s] Dallas premiere in April. “Bass Reeves was probably the guy who created the careers of John Wayne and any tough guy on a horse who could shoot straight.”

After connecting with the screenplay by Robert Johnson, an actor who also happens to be Corsicana’s police chief, Washington immersed himself in research about Reeves and about the city.

Washington didn’t expect, however, to take over behind the camera. But then the original director dropped out just 48 hours before production was set to begin in August 2020.

“People thought I had lost my mind,” Washington said. “It sounds scary, but I had already been envisioning it.”

The ambitious project became a labor of love for the first-time filmmaker. Besides directing a Western period piece on a limited budget while adhering to strict COVID protocols, Washington helped to shape the screenplay even after the cameras started rolling.

Sounds like the end product will be a lot of fun; read the whole thing.

CALIFORNIA’S ELECTRIC BOOGALOO TO NOWHERESVILLE:

As it did with emissions standards, California likely thinks it can strong-arm other states or Congress to adopt its electric-car mandate. Texas (among other states) might have something to say about that. And what if car companies and consumers don’t go along with this extravagant target? The New York Times reported a crucial caveat:

To enforce its rule . . . California would fine automakers up to $20,000 for every car that falls short of production targets. The state also could propose new amendments revising the sales targets if the market doesn’t react as state leaders hope, said Jennifer Gress, who leads the California air board’s sustainable transportation division. [Emphasis added.]

That language about “amendments” is the Emily Litella “never mind” clause. It has happened before. In a prequel to the current madness, in the early 1990s California tried to mandate that 5 percent of all new cars sold by the year 2001 be emission-free, which meant electric cars in practice. GM publicized lots of happy talk about its EV-1, a crappy electric car that cost six-figures (though it was “leased” at an implied purchase price of about $35,000), had a pathetically short range (50 miles on a good day), and took several hours to recharge. Not long before the mandate was set to take effect, it was quietly abandoned.

Electric cars have gotten much better in recent years, but in a state where lots of drivers travel well beyond the range of an electric vehicle every day, EVs still won’t meet the needs of a large number of Californians—never mind citizens of rural states that need vehicles that can run all day long. Look for history to repeat itself with the California EV mandate.

Perhaps California should sorted out its “Potemkin environmentalism” and shored up its electrical generation issues before it paid lip service to banning the internal combustion engine.

GOODER AND HARDER: The fall of Los Angeles.

For much of the 20th century, Los Angeles symbolised the future. Over the course of the century, the population grew 40-fold to nearly four million people.

But now, for the first time in its history, the population of Los Angeles is in decline, falling by 204,000 between July 2020 and July 2021. LA was once a magnet for investors. But recently many of the area’s corporate linchpins – including aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Hilton Hotels – have left, taking with them high-paying jobs and philanthropic resources.

Worse still, conditions in LA today are bordering on the medieval. Anyone visiting some of the most famous districts of urban Los Angeles – notably downtown, Hollywood and Venice Beach – sees clear signs of destitution, including sprawling homeless encampments, vast numbers of people living in vehicles and rampant crime. Last year, a UN official compared conditions on LA’s Skid Row, a poor downtown neighbourhood, to those of Syrian refugee camps. Smash-and-grab thefts at local 7-Elevens and the persistent theft of goods from railyards suggest this is a city that has lost control to the modern version of lawless highwaymen.

So-called progressives have long dreamed of transforming the famously sprawled Los Angeles into a dense, transit-oriented, sun-kissed version of New York. But despite massive corporate and government investment, attempts to do this have failed. Rather than a vibrant hipster paradise, LA’s urban core is dominated by the homeless, the poor, government workers and a few creative types – making for an odd juxtaposition of homeless camps and low-rent hotels alongside high-end restaurants and artists’ lofts. Meanwhile, newly built luxury apartments have suffered vacancy rates as high as 14 per cent – remarkable in a city so short of housing.

As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 wrote in 2010 when the failed city of Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer.”

QUESTION ASKED: Could Russia’s Sudden Ukraine Retreat Mean a Tactical Nuclear Weapons Strike Is Coming?

DISNEY’S BOB IGER, WHO ALSO BACKED OUT OF BUYING TWITTER, SAYS LOTS OF USERS WERE BOTS:

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s excuse for trying to back out of his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter—too many bots, he says—is gaining steam. First, it was the Twitter whistleblower’s claims. Then, on Wednesday, Musk received an assist from former Disney CEO Bob Iger, who had wanted to buy Twitter for the House of Mouse years ago but ultimately didn’t. Iger’s revelation: Bots made up “substantial portion” Twitter’s users.

In an interview at the Code Conference, Iger went into detail on why he decided to back out of the potential acquisition in 2016. Many points he touched on were not new. At that time, Disney was looking for a distribution platform to get into streaming, and Twitter seemed like a great fit. However, the level of “nastiness” on Twitter did not mesh well with the entertainment company’s squeaky-clean brand, and acquiring it seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

Iger dropped a new nugget of information he hadn’t spoken about before, one that quickly caught the attention of the richest man in the world: bots.

“Interestingly enough, because I read the news these days, we did look very carefully at all of the Twitter users—I guess they’re called users?—and we at that point estimated with some of Twitter’s help that a substantial portion, not a majority, were not real,” Iger explained. “I don’t remember the number, but we discounted the value heavily. But that was built into our economics. Actually, the deal that we had was pretty cheap.”

Why, it’s like “Twitter sentiment is a Styrofoam iceberg. You may think 9/10 of it is underwater, but actually, 9/10 of it is visible,” to coin an Insta-phrase. Somebody should write a book about this stuff.

GERARD VAN DER LEUN: Last Light: The Twin Towers on the evening of September 10, 2001.

HOW IT STARTED:

How it’s going: Karen Bass says two guns stolen from her house during break in.

—L.A.’s Fox 11, yesterday.

ISRAELI SUPERHERO SABRA ENTERING THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE: “If the haters had not already found reason to boycott Marvel films, they will now. We are getting ourselves an Israeli superhero!”

Related: Shira Haas to join next ‘Captain America’ film as Israeli heroine Sabra.

Israeli actress Shira Haas, who gained international fame through her starring role in the hit Netflix series “Unorthodox,” will play an Israeli superhero in the next “Captain America” film, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, according to multiple reports.

According to Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and others, Haas will play Sabra, a little-known character who first appeared in Marvel comics in 1980.

In the comics, Sabra, aka Ruth Bat-Seraph, is a former superhuman agent for the Mossad spy agency who sometimes knocks up against other superhuman characters such as the Hulk and the X-Men.

Her powers include super strength and stamina, and her costume often incorporates the Israel flag and the Star of David.

The reaction from the uber-woke leftist crowd that Disney courts, and possibly the uber-woke language that Disney’s scriptwriters craft for Haas’ character will be fascinating to watch.