CHANGE: The A-10 Warthog Making One Final Flight — to the Boneyard.

JOHN NOLTE: Add ‘Indiana Jones’ to This List of Kathleen Kennedy’s Stunning Failures.

The Disney Grooming Syndicate spent $400 million on Dial of Destiny, which is one of the most popular and beloved movie franchisse in Hollywood history, a franchise that delivered four previous blockbuster hits, a franchise with so much audience goodwill, a chapter that sucked as hard as Crystal Suck grossed $317 million domestic and $790 million worldwide. If you account for inflation, Crystal Suck made $417 million domestic and $1.15 billion worldwide.

If you account for inflation, Crystal Suck opened to $141 million over three days and $212 million over five days.

If you account for inflation, Crystal Suck grossed $385 million worldwide over its three-day opening weekend.

Compare that to Dial of Destiny’s $65 million domestic opening and $140 million worldwide opening.

So pardon me for not inventing an all-new box office category to excuse the potential box office catastrophe called Dial of Destiny. Excuse me for comparing apples to actual apples, but now that the Supreme Court has outlawed the obscene, un-American racism that is affirmative action, it feels safe to tell some truths about the most destructive affirmative action hire in entertainment history: Mz. Kathleen “Franchise Destroyer” Kennedy.

Let us list her now 100 percent failure rate.

Related:

And: Disney Stock On Track For Worst Year Since 1974.

That last headline is from the end of 2022, before Kennedy killed Indiana Jones.

Disney’s problem isn’t just Kennedy’s tortured tenure as the company’s Lucasfilm division chief. They’ve tarnished the Pixar brand, the Marvel properties are on life support, and the company’s endless reboots of classic animation films as live-action aren’t exactly wowing audiences.

Even the theme parks are struggling, with a billion-dollar Star Wars bet gone wrong and attendance still below pre-pandemic highs.

PRIORITIES: The Biden Regime Is Doling Out Your Tax Money to Promote Trans Madness Worldwide.

SERIOUS, BUT SHORT: We need a serious conversation about Joe Biden’s brain.

Although many journalists did a fine job this week highlighting the president’s apparent confusion regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one can’t help but feel as if the news industry as a whole is avoiding the obvious follow-up question. Namely, “Is Biden okay?”

It’s not an unfair question, either, considering the Iraq/Ukraine gaffes were not an isolated series of incidents. They are simply the latest in a string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements from Biden in the much longer string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements that have come to define the Biden presidency.

“We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean,” the president said this month during an address before the League of Conservation Voters.

There is no such plan, of course, to build a railroad from the Pacific coast to the Indian Ocean. According to his White House handlers, the president was referring to a plan that would connect railroads across the African continent, linking ports on the Atlantic Ocean to ports on the Indian Ocean. Atlantic, Pacific. Tomato, tomahto.

On June 19, the president promised to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and water by — the year of his inauguration?

“I’ve committed to — by 2020, we will have conserved 30 percent of all the lands and waters the United States has jurisdiction over and simultaneously reduce emissions to blunt climate impact,” he said.

No, Biden is not “okay.”

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Never Mind Canada, France Is Burning.

RESTORING DECENCY TO THE WHITE HOUSE: Biden slammed after report reveals number of grandchildren his aides instructed to say publicly: ‘Monsters.’

ON THE OFF CHANCE YOU WEREN’T ALREADY CONVINCED: Fresh Evidence of Fauci-directed COVID Origin Coverup Emerges.

HE’S NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: Researcher says he found proof of extraterrestrial life in Pacific Ocean. “He believes that these findings can be traced back to the place from which the extraterrestrial matter originated, as the droplets were discharged from it in a characteristic manner for meteorites that enter and burn in Earth’s atmosphere. However, unlike regular meteorites, Loeb estimates that the spheres are likely made of a steel-titanium alloy, which is much stronger than the iron found in regular meteors.”

That seems like the kind of thing Loeb should have tested for before going public with his “extraterrestrial life” conclusion.

WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? White House Evacuated After Cocaine Found. “Despite the best efforts of some to insinuate that the cocaine hydrochloride found at the White House was innocuous nasal spray, it is highly probable that it was simply a bag of cocaine. There’s been no official indication that it was nasal spray, and the lack of interest in the story by the mainstream media raises some red flags.”

THAT’S FAST: Breakthrough quantum computer instantly makes calculations that take rivals 47 years. “The researchers said it would take Frontier, the world’s leading supercomputer, 6.18 seconds to match a calculation from Google’s 53-qubit computer from 2019. In comparison, it would take 47.2 years to match its latest one.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): How quickly will even strong encryption fall to a brute-force attack at this kind of speed?

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Thousands of Inadmissible Migrants Enter U.S. Through Biden Program.

SPACE: What’s next for Europe’s Euclid ‘dark universe’ telescope after stunning SpaceX launch?

Now that Euclid is in space and sending signals home, its first task is to put itself on the right trajectory for L2. That will happen roughly two days after launch, and its path will be verified along the way to make sure it is heading in the right direction.

The first month of Euclid’s space journey will see it fly to L2, naturally cooling down to space temperatures, while all instruments and systems will be checked out for space. Then months 2 and 3 will see engineers assess the performance of Euclid against what we’d expect on the ground (which will include, perhaps, the release of some calibration images — although mission representatives are tight-lipped about the timing.)

“After this total of three months, then we should be ready to start science observations, but we still have to make some particular calibration even then,” Racca said. Euclid will probably be fully ready in about eight months, assuming nothing goes awry during the testing.

Godspeed.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Climate Change Hysteria Is America’s Biggest Mental Health Crisis. “A lot of us conservatives used to joke back around the time of hurricane Katrina that libs behaved as if George W. Bush caused the hurricane. We’d say that they thought there was a ‘Bush/Cheney Weather Machine.’ We were, of course, merely joking. We hadn’t yet come around to the fact that they thought such a machine might actually exist.”

EXPERTS, WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT THEM? With just 8% of new vehicles costing under $30,000, ‘it’s the least affordable car market in modern history,’ expert says. “Not only are new vehicle prices near an all-time high, but the interest rate to finance a purchase has also jumped dramatically. Now, fewer affordable new cars even hit the market, according to recent reports.”

HEH: Mad Lads Hijack ‘Just Stop Oil’ Protest, Take Their Banner on Stag Party Trip to Ibiza.

COLD WAR II: Why China Looks Increasingly on the Back Foot.

Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the attendant severe cutback of energy flows to western Europe, drove home the need to avoid over-reliance on one source of supply.

Escalating tensions between the US and China, with Washington pressing its allies to curb sensitive tech exports to Chinese customers, is another dynamic—one that’s combined with Russian aggression to spur companies to consider what might happen if Beijing attacked Taiwan.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s crackdown on private enterprises in China, and his intervention with some foreign companies in particular, served as an additional reason for investors to reconsider the nature of the Chinese market.

And now that China’s underlying economic growth is only around 3%, the narrative is a whole lot different then when Western firms flocked to the country decades ago.

The Chinese market look a whole lot different just one decade ago.

DIDN’T A BOND VILLAIN TRY SOMETHING LIKE THIS? Biden Administration Considers Blocking the Sun to Slow Global Warming.

DEEP FAKES: Artist Banned by Midjourney Over Fake ‘Photos’ of Cheating Politicians. “The image series — which is entitled ‘AI will revolutionize the blackmail industry’ — was intended to show how the technology could be used as a weapon in the wrong hands and create scenarios that could hurt people.”

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: He Used WHAT to Open His Twisted Tea? “This week we have the classiest stolen police cruiser story in ages, a bloody Chief Brody imitation, and Georgia’s Mother of the Year.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: I’ve Got Some Bad News and Some Good News About Trans Suicide Rates.

CHANGE: Pornhub Closes up Shop in Virginia.

HEALTH: This app calculates portion size and calories using your smartphone camera. “It is reported to be 80% more accurate than other similar calorie-counting apps because of the use of depth sensors.”

MATT MARGOLIS: Elizabeth Warren: Affirmative Action Hypocrite.

A NIGHTMARE THE GREEN NEW DEALERS WILL NEVER LET YOU WAKE UP FROM: IEA’s Net Zero Dream Was Just Debunked as a Nightmare.

The RealClearFoundation asked the Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRF) to analyze the feasibility and consequences of a carbon-neutral world.

The results of the meticulous 92-page report weren’t pretty.

First, the report examines some of the more unreasonable assumptions. For example, the IEA plan is based on China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, also embracing the wisdom of going carbon-neutral, beginning in 2021. One immediate problem: China was producing two new coal plants per week in 2022. Addressing energy before a speech to the Communist Party Congress last fall, President Xi Jinping was focused on “getting the new before discarding the old.”

Second, to make up for fossil fuels (which account for 80% of the world’s energy supply), the world needs more electricity — a lot more electricity. In fact, global power supply needs to increase from less than 20% of all energy use to 50% by 2050.

Of course, setting aside feasibility questions, the consequences would be dire and all too recognizable. Soaring inflation. Spikes in gas prices as supply and production are constricted. More land gobbled up for wind and solar farms. An increased reliance on OPEC+ monopolizing the world’s oil supply, even as high as 82%, placing our nation’s geopolitical security in the hands of nations who wish us harm. If this sounds familiar, it is: it’s what we are going through right now because of bad decisions coming out of Washington, D.C.

Those decisions are only bad if inflation, land grabs, and diminished American security aren’t the goals.

I LIKE THE CUT OF HER JIB: Winsome Sears Nukes Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Dissent: ‘Chosen Because She’s Black.’