Author Archive: Stephen Green
January 29, 2025
IT WOULD TAKE A COUPLE OF YEARS TO CLEAR IT OUT, AND THAT’S IF DISNEY EVEN WANTS TO: Disney’s Pipeline Still Clogged With Woke. “Disney is in a weird place right now. They’ve sort of, kind of, announced that (like most of the rest of corporate America) they’re backing away from wokeness, to the extent that they’re cutting woke storylines from Pixar properties, and Disney was able to course correct in enough time to make Moana 2 and Inside Out 2 big hits last year (plus Deadpool & Wolverine, which I suspect was too rude to ever be infected with wokeness), but the company itself is still infected with DEI, and they still have an awful lot of very expensive turds, conceived and crafted in the woke era, sliding down the alimentary release canal.”
Related (From Ed): The Critical Drinker on “Captain Anti-America.”
I’M EXPECTING AT LEAST TWO YEARS OF FREAKOUTS AND ENJOYING THEM ALL — THE INJUNCTIONS, NOT SO MUCH: The Great Federal Freeze Freakout Is on Hold.
COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP:
Shia Muslims take over Westminster Bridge in London and conduct self-flagellation in honor of Imam Musa Kazim Martyrdom Procession 2025
26th January 205
Westminster Bridge
London pic.twitter.com/tbwWclNhLW— Actual Coverage (@actualcoverage) January 27, 2025
HOWARD BEALE VS THE DEEP STATE: We’re as Mad as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take This Anymore.
JOANNE JACOBS: Dumber and dumber: Americans, young and old, are slipping.
“Americans are getting dumber,” writes Chad Aldeman on The 74. Achievement peaked about a decade ago on “a wide range of national and international tests, grade levels and subject areas.” Since then, students — and adults – are doing worse.
The pandemic made it worse, but the downward trend started years before lockdowns and zoom school.
Scores have fallen faster for lower-performing students, he notes. Achievement gaps, which were narrowing, are growing, points out Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute. In a new report, he writes that “external societal factors — not just school-related influences —are at play.”
At the start of the decline, writes Aldeman, the Obama administration relaxed federal accountability rules. It would make sense to blame that — except that U.S. adults are doing worse in literacy and numeracy on international tests, with lower achievers again losing the most.
Just another case of the better-off closing doors of opportunity to potential competitors from the less well-off.
Thanks, Obama.
BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DO:
Astounding. Reporters at RFK hearing have pre-written negative headlines. pic.twitter.com/CY5VGXJH2O
— Calley Means (@calleymeans) January 29, 2025
“Astounding? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
More seriously, those anti-Trump/pro-government narratives don’t establish themselves, you know — and the busy little beavers in the legacy Complicit Media understand that their job is to further the Cause, not report the truth.
ROBERT SPENCER: Former CNN ‘Journalist’ Makes a Stunning Admission About Fauci. “I screwed up. Back in May 2020, I wrote how Anthony Fauci had ‘crushed’ Donald Trump’s lab-leak theory for how Covid-19 originated The CIA said over the weekend that they now believed the virus leaked from a lab.”
The screw-ups still always seem to go in the same direction.
CHANGE (IT BACK):
🔥 New EO:
“Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another…” pic.twitter.com/GkR8Yn9RpV
— Jon Herold (@patel_patriot) January 28, 2025
He doesn’t rest, does he?
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Hey, Elon — Take a Chainsaw to THIS.
Congratulations, taxpayers of America. Last year you spent more than $15 million on [checks notes] advanced concepts in yarn.
Courtesy of DataRepublican (small r) — a data-crunching genius on X — there’s now a searchable, online database of federal grants to nonprofits and NGOs. “Ever wonder exactly which government grants fund nonprofits? Now you can know—because I’ve cracked the code,” DataRepublican explained in her X announcement on Monday. “Unlike older tools that only sift through nonprofit 990s (which don’t directly show government dollars), I’ve mined the USASpending database to create fuzzy matches between nonprofits and their linked government grants.”
She set it up so you can search by keyword, recipient, funding agency, and much more. Or you can do what I did this morning and be a jerk about it. I thought, “What is the most boring thing in the world and how much taxpayer money is Washington giving away on it this year?”
“Yarn,” I immediately decided.
Much more at the link.
FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY: Trump administration will offer all 2 million federal workers a buyout to resign.
A senior administration official told NBC News that they expect 5%-10% of the federal workforce to quit, which, they estimate, could lead to around $100 billion in savings.
“American taxpayers pay for the salaries of federal government employees, and therefore deserve employees working on their behalf who actually show up to work in our wonderful federal buildings, also paid for by taxpayers,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “If they don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again, then they are free to choose a different line of work, and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of 8 months.”
Those are permanent, annual savings, and I presume they’ll come on top of the savings generated by firing workers who refuse to come back to the office and DEI “burrowers” for insubordination.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I’ll Take My New Immigration Policy on ICE, Please. “It’s so refreshing to see the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents being allowed to do their real jobs again. The fact that the Biden administration hamstrung them so severely while taunting them with open borders is yet another example of the Democrats’ hatred for all law enforcement.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (MOSCOW EDITION): Putin growing concerned by Russia’s economy, as Trump pushes for Ukraine deal.
President Vladimir Putin has grown increasingly concerned about distortions in Russia’s wartime economy, just as Donald Trump pushes for an end to the Ukraine conflict, five sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters.
Russia’s economy, driven by exports of oil, gas and minerals, grew robustly over the past two years despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But domestic activity has become strained in recent months by labour shortages and high interest rates introduced to tackle inflation, which has accelerated under record military spending.
That has contributed to the view within a section of the Russian elite that a negotiated settlement to the war is desirable, according to two of the sources familiar with thinking in the Kremlin.
Trump, who returned to office on Monday, has vowed to swiftly resolve the Ukraine conflict, Europe’s biggest since World War Two.
This week he has said more sanctions, as well as tariffs, on Russia are likely unless Putin negotiates, adding that Russia was heading for “big trouble” in the economy. A senior Kremlin aide said on Tuesday that Russia had so far received no specific proposals for talks.
“Russia, of course, is economically interested in negotiating a diplomatic end to the conflict,” Oleg Vyugin, former deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia said in an interview, citing the risk of growing economic distortions as Russia turbo-charges military and defence spending.
I don’t pretend to know what Putin’s concerns are and, for all anybody outside the Kremlin knows, Reuters’ five sources could be deliberately spreading misinformation about Putin’s concerns.
That said, Russia’s 21% interest rate is real, is expected to rise, and is unlikely to do much to combat inflation. Most of Russia’s inflation is due to the war, and reducing war expenditures won’t happen until there’s peace.
As for Putin’s cheerleaders in the West who seemed convinced Trump would sell out Ukraine, Trump says he’ll go after the Russian economy even harder.
Trump wants peace. Hopefully he’ll get it. But selling out to Putin is no way to get it — something Trump clearly understands.
DON’T GET COCKY: Democrats’ 2026 Problems Have Already Started.
Democrat Gary Peters won’t seek re-election in 2026, the two-term Michigan senator said Tuesday, complicating Democrats’ path to reclaiming a majority in the chamber.
“At this point in my life, I have been able to write many different chapters, and I look forward to the new ones with both anticipation and excitement,” Peters said in a video message. He cited the birth of his grandson as a reason for stepping away from Congress.
Peters’s announcement comes after a bruising 2024 election for Democrats in which they failed to win back the House and lost control of the Senate and the White House. Republicans now have a 53-47 Senate majority, and Democrats were hoping to claw back seats in 2026 in competitive states such as North Carolina and Maine. Michigan was already expected to be a tossup seat, as is Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff’s in Georgia.
President Trump won Michigan last fall—49.7% to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s 48.3%—en route to his demolition of the “blue-wall” states, and Republicans hold the majority in the state’s delegation to the House.
There might not be anything better Trump can do to secure midterm victories than to keep delivering on his campaign promises.
LEFTISM AS A NEUROSIS, PART #1,000,006: Leftists Are so Upset About Trump That Even the Shrinks Need Shrinks.
January 28, 2025
BOOM:
🚨🇺🇸HEGSETH REVOKES GEN. MILLEY'S SECURITY DETAIL AND ORDERS REVIEW
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the immediate revocation of retired Gen. Mark Milley's personal security detail and security clearance.
He cited allegations that Milley "undermined the chain of… pic.twitter.com/mdLb5IJIA5
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 28, 2025
Civilian control of the military isn’t just written into the Constitution, it’s paramount for a civil society — and Milley undercut nearly 250 years of it.
GLENN SUGGESTED THIS MORE THAN 20 YEARS AGO: Mike Lee Proposes Issuing Letters of Marque.
FAIL, BRITANNIA: Navy bosses rename HMS Agincourt to avoid annoying the French.
The government has been accused of “craven political correctness” after it approved a Royal Navy request to change the name of HMS Agincourt to avoid offending the French.
In 2018 the Astute-class submarine became the fleet’s sixth vessel to be named after the 1415 English victory over the French in the Battle of Agincourt as part of the Hundred Years’ War.
The decision has also prompted anger from former Tory defence secretaries, who called the decision “sacrilege”.
n a social post late on Sunday evening, the Royal Navy announced the ship would be renamed HMS Achilles, subject to approval by the King. It added the decision had been made “in light of the 80th anniversaries this year of VE and VJ Day”, when many French and British troops fought alongside each other.
Spoiler: You can’t avoid annoying the French, particularly if you’re British. We make things work, anyway.
SCOTT PINSKER: The Left’s Worst Nightmare: Second Acts, Donald Trump, and ‘Chimps with Machine Guns’ “If you wanna be a big shot in Big Tech, the secret is to be like Nancy Kerrigan.”
DEMOCRATS AT WORK: “Death by a thousand cuts”: Colorado’s restaurant industry in crisis.
The big picture: The food industry in Denver and across Colorado has been battered over the past five years — and it’s adding up.
Rising costs for food, rent and property taxes combined with shrinking profit margins, growing regulatory pressures and budget-conscious diners are all pushing restaurants to the brink, industry experts tell us.
By the numbers: More than 200 restaurants closed statewide in 2024, per the Colorado Sun. Denver alone accounted for 82% of those losses, according to the Colorado Restaurant Association (CRA).
In the past three years, the city has lost 22% of its restaurants, the Denver Post reports. Some of the most recent closures include longstanding institutions like Fruition, Lao Wang Noodle House and Melita’s.
What they’re saying: “We’re in this kind of perfect storm moment,” CRA spokesperson Denise Mickelsen tells us. “It’s death by a thousand cuts.”
Zoom in: One major pain point is Denver’s increased tipped minimum wage, which is creating ripple effects industrywide. Local restaurant consultant John Imbergamo says it disproportionately affects back-of-house staff and forces price hikes that turn diners off.
You don’t say.
To top it off, the state assembly in Denver has a set of restaurant-unfriendly bills waiting in the wings.
IT GIVES MEANING TO UNHAPPY LIVES: The Left Never Runs Out of Reasons to Complain.
A HELPFUL (AND SPICY) GUIDE FROM BATTLESWARM: Jeremiad To The Democrats The First: Abandon The F***ing Idiot Transsexual Woke Bullshit. “Because I’m such a helpful, big-hearted fellow, I’m going to start a series where I tell Democrats how to find their way out of their current slough of despond. But since I’m so very, very tired of their useless shit, and of them making the same mistakes over and over again, I’m going to give said advice in a way that brutally goosesteps all over their precious feel-feels, ensuring that they will stop reading it in a fit of blind rage, which will in turn make them incapable of learning from it, ensuring that they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.”
ANOTHER STEP ALONG THE ROAD TO DISNEY’S SUICIDE: Woke Captain America Says Captain America Doesn’t Represent America. “People want the story in the book to match the cover. We want the cereal that’s on the box. We want the shirt to match the label. So when the dude’s name is CAPTAIN AMERICA, you’d better put some all-caps AMERICA in the damn movie.”