The Morning Report — 4/ 3 /25
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning kids. So Cory Booker, who I see as the poor man's Barack Obama took to the well of the Senate two nights ago to deliver what amounts to the world's longest presidential candidacy announcement. How appropriate that he chose April Fool's Day, for this uncunning stunt.
Sen. Cory Booker’s 25-hour congressional floor rant is being hailed as a major achievement, but nobody has ever questioned Booker’s ability to talk endlessly. It’s his greatest talent. That and making other people’s money disappear. The 25 hours of rambling summed up everything wrong with Booker as a politician and a man. Booker and his media allies tried to bill it as a filibuster, but it wasn’t because the senator from New Jersey wasn’t trying to fight an actual piece of legislation, just calling attention to himself.Why did Booker actually ramble for 25 hours in the Senate? To run for president.
As stunts go, this was the most obvious one yet. Booker’s next Senate election is in 2026, but he has a campaign page up which claims that “he cannot stay quiet and complacent while Donald Trump and Elon Musk shatter constitutional checks and balances” and urges, “Stand with Cory by making a donation today.” But his obvious long-term goal is 2028.
There’s a problem with Booker’s presidential aspirations. And it’s not just that every time he speaks, he reminds everyone of an unsuccessful Obama.
It’s his corrupt track record.
well, Obama was elected twice and ran the Biden junta from 21-25 from Kalorama after the 2020 election theft. Aside from that, Daniel Greenfield takes a good hard look at Booker's record of malfeasance, rank corruption and criminality during his stint as mayor of a quintessential Democrat Shithole Newark NJ and then his abortive 2020 presidential candidacy and asks the rhetorical question of where did all the millions in campaign cash thrown at him go?
Considering that, despite what happened in Wisconsin with the election of an in-your-face commie to the state Supreme Court and preserving the Leftist stranglehold on the court as well as much of the state government, the Democrat Party and Leftism in general is in total disarray as Donald Trump rolls on with his agenda, the criminal judicial law fare and borderline/crossing the line acts of domestic terrorism against Tesla and other targets notwithstanding. Here's just the latest example.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents from Dallas, Texas, arrested a man for making “terroristic threats against ICE agents” and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem.In a post on X, HSI Dallas, revealed that they had taken a man named Robert King into custody and explained that his “social media posts included intentions to ‘open fire'” if ICE agents were spotted “in his neighborhood.”
“Robert King, a U.S. citizen was recently taken into custody in McKinney, Texas for making terroristic threats against ICE agents and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem,” HSI Dallas said. “King’s alarming social media posts included intentions to ‘open fire’ if agents are seen in his neighborhood.”
The average American sees things like this, coupled with the disaster unleashed on us with the erased border, transgenderism insanity, wokeism and DEI and all the rest of it and for objecting to it, get called racists, Nazis, homophobes, xenophobes and every other slur imaginable. Perhaps Booker understands this and senses an opportunity to look like the sane alternative to Bernie Sanders and Titty-Caca Ocasio Cortez and their ilk, despite being fully in their camp ideologically. He knows when to keep his mouth shut. Or given25 hours of bloviating against Trump and an agenda that is indeed popular with a broad segment of the citizenry, maybe not. To paraphrase Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants' opinion of Barack Obama, Booker and his handlers are projecting or trying to project the image of the clean, articulate black man who only speaks Jive when he has to, so as to try to recreate 2008 20 years later.
The Democrat Party is polling about 27 percent approval — and sinking.In 2024, it lost the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and both the popular vote and the Electoral College, 312-226.
In 2024, Donald Trump won over 46% of the Hispanic vote, including a majority of Hispanic men. Trump also likely captured 26% of the Black male vote, doubling his 2020 total.
In 2024, Trump increased his 2020 vote total in every single state. And he won 89% of all the counties in the United States.
On every issue, Democrats sided with strident leftist movements rather than the majority of Americans. . .
Democrats claim no formal role in such terror — but more or less seem to approve of its ends and means.
Left-wing comic Jimmy Kimmel winks and nods on national television about the current violent Tesla terrorist campaign. Tim Walz celebrates the resulting drop in the Tesla stock price. As Minnesota’s governor overseeing his state’s sizable investment in Tesla, Walz could care less about trash-talking his own taxpayers’ investments. Rep. Jasmine Crockett boasts that Musk “must be taken down.”. . . Senator minority leader Chuck Schumer, who once issued threats to Supreme Court justices Neal Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh by name, now boasts, “We have people going to the Republican districts and going after these Republicans who are voting for this and forcing them to either change their vote or face the consequences.”
Furious at their own increasing impotence, these contemporary Democrat Jacobins are dabbling with their own version of a reign of smut terror.
All Trump has to do is keep on delivering on the promises he has made, one of the more critical and difficult things is not only turning the economy around, but reversing the disaster that globalism and unchecked trade unionism did to our once gargantuan manufacturing sector that over the east 60 years or so has been dismantled and shipped overseas.
Hence the battle over tariffs which will kick into effect this week.
President Trump and his team are telling top financiers his tariff plan unveiled today is all about playing the long game — getting trading partners who are clearly protectionist to reduce or remove their barriers to US exports in exchange for us doing the same.In the end, they claim, everyone will be happy — including the American public that will be on the receiving end of the long-term gain of economic prosperity.
But The Post has learned that top Wall Street execs have been warning the White House and Trump himself in recent days that getting to that long-term gain, while feasible, will not be easy.
It could well result in a significant degree of short-term pain, more than just the markets going haywire. It could ignite something known as stagflation of higher prices ie., inflation, and lower growth, a possible recession. It’s an economic disruption not seen in decades as we upend the global trade ecosystem and play chicken with the rest of the industrialized world over tariffs.
Will Trump play that game of chicken? He knows trading partners will respond in kind; US goods will get more expensive overseas and import prices spike. That’s where the stagflation comes in. Everyone I know who knows Trump says he’s committed to the tariff hammer because he believes in his heart that they will rebuild America, bring jobs back to the Rust Belt and as he explained in his press conference, the trade deals we have crafted with even our allies are so unfair.
But you never know what a little stagnation will do to a politician, even one as steadfast as Trump — which is exactly the warning financiers made to the president in recent meetings.
The White House was said to be all ears during these meetings, as Wall Street executives explained the grim details of the short-term tariff pain: Uncertainty over what Trump would announce has stymied business spending for large swaths of the economy, and it will fall further once the tariffs go into effect.
US automakers are readying price hikes because they source much of their parts overseas. Trump announced a 25% tariff on imported autos.
As a Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said Wednesday in a note: “The concept of a US car maker with parts all from the US is a fictional tale . . . tariff policy will cause pure chaos to the global auto industry and will raise prices to the typical Us consumer by $5k to 10K out of the gates.” Tariffs will impact farmers because we provide grain overseas and to China; our natural gas exports will be hurt, meaning a slowdown in growth on top of spending cuts businesses already enacted before in preparation of the tariff announcement.
That’s the bad news, but here’s what good could happen down the road: Trump’s art-of-the-deal making skills will change the protectionist behavior of our trade partners. He wants that stuff to stop, and if they do, he announced that he will reciprocate and things go back to normal. Perhaps even better than normal with new trade deals that don’t put US exports at a disadvantage, and bring jobs back home. . .
. . . Put all that together and it sounds like a great place to start talking and make this short-term pain that’s coming as short as possible.
Along with the effects of DOGE as well as the reversal of regulatory tyranny on American business, and the bolstering of our labor force by the sealing of our borders and sane immigration policy, we of a certain age might not live long enough to see the Rust Belt brought back to its former glory as the manufacturing powerhouse of the world.
Certainly, there are far too many individuals and institutions in and out of government, domestic and foreign which are desperate to thwart the American renaissance, economic, political, cultural and societal for a host of reasons.
So we shall see if the estimable Victor Davis Hanson is correct about the Dems' seeming impotence in thwarting the MAGA agenda. The seemingly lackluster turnout here in the Wisconsin special election is a puzzler given Trump's performance in '24. Is it mere complacency or what is it? Yes, it doesn't help that the GOP-e is worse than useless, and at times downright collaborationist with the enemy. We need to figure that out. See here and also see here.
yes, Trump endorsed Lindsay Graham, but it's either a good strategic move or a self-own. We can debate that for days, as we no doubt will.
Have a great day.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- Victor Davis Hanson: The Dems are too impotent to derail the country, but they are certainly destroying themselves.
From Profanity-Chic to Terrorist-Smut
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Daily Tech News 3 April 2025
—Pixy Misa
Top Story- While Microsoft really really wants you to use an online account the moment you install Windows, corporate customers really really don't want that, and indeed there is a new way to bypass it during the installation. (Bleeping Computer)
Farewell oobe/bypassnro. Hello start ms-cxh:localonly.
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Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - April 2, 2025 [TRex]
—Open Blogger
Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety.
This is the Wednesday night ONT.
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Sea Weirdoes Cafe
—Ace
Patagonia
via @Tina95003848248
Goat overpass. Though anything is an overpass to a goat.
Androids have advanced. (Yes, we can now speak of genuine androids.) Once they walked haltingly and always about to totter over, now they walk smoothly.
I don't know if this is real. I doubt it.
Guy is annoyed to discover an alligator reading over his shoulder.
New species discovered in the Springfield Nuclear Power Aquifer.
It's a day of Weirdoes from the Sea.
Border collies showing off their mad speed at agility contests as well as
at work.
Too much cursing in the audio here: Coyote approaches dog... to play.
A pigeon liked a woman's pink shoes, which reminded him of pink pigeon feet, so he gave her his sexy mating dance. They're now dating.
Gay ostrich does "flirty dancing" for guy.
Sheep-Leaping, the Sport of the Future.
An illegal dog-fighting ring run by, what else, cocks. They're turning the system against itself!
Tossing a bag of "organic waste" into a volcano, like in that movie erg was such a fan of.
Throwing a stone into the deepest known cave in the world.
He knows what he did. (But he's a good boy so he feels shame.)
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Nashville Trans Shooter Plotted Attack for Years, Was Obsessed with Other School Shooters
—Ace
Nashville police have released their final report on the Covenant School massacre -- a targeted March 2023 attack on a Christian school by a transgender shooter who killed three third-graders and three adults.Rather than a highly anticipated manifesto, the report found that killer Audrey Hale left behind numerous notebooks, art books and computer documents about her plans to commit the attack and gain notoriety, partly inspired by the Columbine school shooting in 1999.
Hale, the 28-year-old attacker and biological female, began "fantasizing" about and researching mass shootings as far back as 2017, according to investigators. A year later, she wrote "detailed fantasies" about shooting up the Isaac T. Creswell Middle Magnet School for the Arts, killing her father and killing her psychiatrist.
"In this case, a manifesto didn't exist," the document reads. "Hale never left behind a single document explaining why she committed the attack, why she specifically targeted The Covenant, and what she hoped to gain, if anything, with the attack."
Instead, her motivations were scattered across those many notebooks and other writings, investigators found. They included an image showing more than two-dozen notebooks seized from Hale's car and bedroom. They also said she left a suicide note addressed to her parents.
Read the Nashville police report:
"In short, the motive determined over the course of the investigation was notoriety," according to investigators. "Even though numerous disappointments in relationships, career aspirations, and independence fueled her depression, and even though this depression made her highly suicidal, this doesn't explain the attack. As Hale wrote on several occasions, if suicide was her goal then she would have simply killed herself."
Oh, I see, you're babbling inanities because this is a cover-up. I'm sorry, my mistake, I thought you were professional police investigators who would tell us the truth.
Hale wanted people to remember her after her death, according to the document, and was partly inspired by books and documentaries on the Columbine killers. She wanted similar records of her own life and expected her guns, artwork and journals to be preserved in museums around the world."Most disturbingly, she wanted the things she left behind to be shared with the world so she could inspire and teach others who were 'mentally disordered' like her to plan and commit an attack of their own," investigators wrote.
Because of Hale's consistent diaries over a period of years, police said they were able to collect far more information about her than in a typical investigation. They found no evidence of accomplices and said she wanted to prove her "superiority."
The Covenant School was attached to a church that Hale once attended, and she chose the target because of her connection to it, because children wouldn't put up a fight, and because she wanted to obtain infamy, according to police.
I'm noticing a distinct lack of reference to her belief that Christians persecuted her because of her trans delusions.
Her biggest fear in the attack, at 5 feet, 2 inches tall and 120 pounds, was running into a "hero" who could physically overpower her and force her to be captured alive.So she settled on an elementary school that she described as the setting for her "happiest" childhood memories.
"She never remarked of being bullied and ostracized there; on the contrary, she remarked on a couple of occasions how she established friendships, which included play-dates at the homes of other children and a sense of acceptance," police revealed. "She gave no examples of how anyone at the school belittled her or harmed her, as she did in other places she attended school. Because of this, Hale felt The Covenant was the perfect place to commit an attack, as it was the perfect setting for her death."
Related: Six "boys" of hidden ethnicity were arrested for raping a 15-year-old girl in the UK. Quick, make a Netflix show where you change the ethnicity of the perps to white and start running it in public schools to shame white boys who didn't commit the crimes.
The person who posted noted that said the BBC had shut down comments on the post so you have to imagine that this crime wasn't perpetrated by the BBC's Favored Criminals.
Related, as far as leftist criminal pathology: Another Tesla firebomber has been arrested.
A man accused of firebombing a Tesla dealership in Colorado is facing federal charges, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday.Cooper Jo Fredrick, 24, was arrested in Plano, Texas, on suspicion of attacking a Tesla dealership on March 7 in Loveland, Colo., Bondi said.
"Let this be a warning. You can run, but you cannot hide," Bondi said in a video message. "Justice is coming."
Frederick, a resident of Fort Collins, Colo., allegedly ignited an incendiary device and hurled it at the dealership, narrowly missing several parked vehicles. The device landed between two cars, and created a fire, Loveland police said.
This Trantifa Auxiliary looks much as you'd expect.
Frederick was arrested a week after the attack. Federal prosecutors are seeking 20 years in prison, Bondi said.In addition to the federal charges against him, Frederick is also facing local charges, including second-degree arson and possession of explosives or incendiary devices.
...
Lucy Grace Nelson, 42, also known as Justin Thomas Nelson, is also facing charges in connection with a separate Feb. 27 incident at the same Loveland dealership.
Lucy looks like Thor so you'd better use the "right" pronouns with him. I mean, her.
And speaking of rancid sex criminals protected by the Deep State:
Hunter Biden has agreed to give up his license to practice law in Washington, D.C., as a result of his criminal record.The D.C. Bar's Board on Professional Responsibility, which oversees attorney discipline proceedings, revealed the decision by former President Joe Biden's son in a series of filings made public this week.
The voluntary decision to accept disbarment avoids potentially protracted proceedings over whether Hunter Biden's two prior criminal cases required him to lose his law license. Last June, he was convicted of owning a gun while using illegal drugs and lying on a gun-purchase form about his drug use. And in September, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other tax crimes.
A Consensus of Experts: French Academy of Medicine Agres Near-Unanimously That Covid-19 Leaked from the Wuhan Lab
—Ace
It's so strange how the media and Deep State only credit some consensuses of experts but not others.
Like: There are two sexes.
Origin of Covid-19: A Near Consensus in Favor of Laboratory Release
While the answer may never be known, five years after the Covid-19 pandemic, the French Academy of Medicine is leaning more toward an error at the Wuhan laboratory than toward a natural emergence of the virus. In its new report, it draws recommendations on both risk management in research and the monitoring of viral outbreaks."97% of the French Academy of Medicine voted almost unanimously to say that we believe SARS-CoV-2 originated from a laboratory error and that lessons must be learned from it to take precautions in the future," revealed Professor Jean-Francois Delfraissy at a press conference of the French Academy of Medicine on April 2, 2025. "It's true that as a virologist, I don't see many arguments in favor of the natural emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus," added Professor Christine Rouzioux, a virologist at Necker Hospital (Paris). In a new report co-authored by these experts, the French Academy of Medicine draws on the assessment of known elements regarding the origins of the Covid-19 virus to recommend significant improvements in monitoring the emergence of zoonoses, and especially greater safety in laboratory biological experiments.
More arguments in favor of laboratory errorIn 2019, the Wuhan laboratory was working on coronaviruses, this new report highlights. Another surprising element is that the first SARS-CoV-2 sequences obtained at the beginning of the epidemic in China were very homogeneous. "An RNA virus mutates very quickly, so it's a virus that had circulated very little," comments Christine Rouzioux.
A naturally evolving virus would, on the other hand, have lots of different mutations. This one didn't, because it was created to be hyperinfectious from the start.
Professor Patrick Berche, a microbiologist, agrees. "Once in circulation, this virus explodes with mutations, but when we discover it, there is no sign of adaptation to an intermediate host!"In addition, the virus contains in its genetic material the sequence of a cleavage site for a protein called furin. "This particularity facilitates the cleavage between S1 and S2 and greatly increases the affinity of the virus's Spike protein for human cells and therefore its infectivity," explains Christine Rouzioux. Finally, Patrick Berche points out the strangeness of the pandemic's epidemiology. "The animals at the Wuhan market were transported from other locations, yet there were no animal or human outbreaks at the point of departure of these convoys. It's as if everything had magically appeared in Wuhan."
...
Lessons remain to be learned, and this is the real objective of the report from the French Academy of Medicine, which does not aim to resolve the question of the origins of Covid-19, which may never be definitively answered. "The work underway in Wuhan was carried out in a BSL2 laboratory, which is therefore insufficient in terms of bioprotection of personnel and the environment," points out Christine Rouzioux. BSL2 laboratories provide for the use of laminar flow hoods (with an airflow reducing the risk of contamination).
I think this just means that workstations have hoods with fans above them... like your oven. That's it for "biosecurity."
That's why people keep saying that the Wuhan lab had about the same "biosecurity" as a common dentist's office.
But handling dangerous viruses of this type would require a BSL3 system, requiring the wearing of masks, gowns, and gloves, and stricter waste disposal. It is therefore necessary to develop "a culture of risk and responsibility" among researchers, argue the scientists from the French Academy of Medicine. "The risks are underestimated by a number of researchers," Christine Rouzioux diagnoses.
I used Google to translate the article.
Trump Announces "Liberation Day" Tariffs; Will Calculate the Direct Tariffs and Non-Monetary Barriers to Entry Foreign Countries Impose on Us and Slap Them Each With Reciprocal Tariffs Equalling About Half of Their Own Tariff Level
—Ace
President Trump displays a chart showing foreign countries'
tariffs on US goods, contrasted with the reciprocal tariffs he
proposes to impose on those countries. In most cases, his
reciprocal tariffs are about half the level of the foreign countries'
tariffs on US goods.
He's speaking now in the Rose Garden. Video below.
President Donald Trump is set to announce his decision on the implementation of an array of new tariffs Wednesday as some of the tariffs he has already announced will take effect. Trump has dubbed Wednesday "Liberation Day" and is planning an event at the White House's Rose Garden to unveil his decision on broader tariffs.Trump announced tariffs on Mexico and Canada earlier in his administration, but agreed to postpone both following negotiations with the leaders of those countries that led to agreements to bolster border security. Each tariff adds 25% on goods from the respective country. While those tariffs were part of border security negotiations, Trump is expected to unveil broader tariffs to achieve his stated goal of rebalancing American global trade.
On Tuesday, he received reports from the Treasury, Commerce Department, and Office of the Trade Representative on possible tariffs and their potential impacts, though he reportedly has already made up his mind on what to implement. "I've settled, yeah," he told the The Wall Street Journal on Monday.
Ahead of the Rose Garden event, moreover, he unveiled a 25% tariff on auto imports that earned praise from union workers, including from United Auto Workers (UAW) leaders who opposed his candidacy. Trump notably feuded with UAW President Shawn Fain during the election, but Fain had high praise for the commander-in-chief after the auto tariffs.
"We applaud the Trump administration for stepping up to end the free trade disaster that has devastated working-class communities for decades," Fain said. "Ending the race to the bottom in the auto industry starts with fixing our broken trade deals, and the Trump administration has made history with today's actions."
Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs are expected to go much broader, though the details remain unclear as of press time and interested parties are expected to push for limited exemptions all the way to the deadline.
The point of conjecture at present is whether Trump will announce an across-the-board 20% tariff on all foreign imports, with few if any exceptions, or whether he will opt for a more targeted, reciprocal tariff policy of matching each nation's respective rates and negotiating on an individual basis.
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LOL: Politico Is So Sad That Anthony Fauci's Wife and His Other Allies Just Got Fired from NIH
—Ace
As Black Conservative Perspective would say, they're all boo-hoo whinin' and cryin'.
As an anti-vaccine activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent years attacking Anthony Fauci and sowing doubts about the successful effort he led to develop a Covid vaccine.As HHS secretary, he's exacting his revenge.
Kennedy on Tuesday fired Fauci's wife, Christine Grady, and reassigned at least three of Fauci's longtime colleagues at the National Institutes of Health, as part of a purge of senior officials involved in the government's development and distribution of the Covid vaccine, eight people familiar with the matter said.
BRB, organizing a Giggle Party
...The removals, which came amid a mass reduction in force across the health department, effectively gutted leadership at the NIH's infectious disease office and key parts of the Food and Drug Administration, stunning agency employees and leaving the broader public health community in disbelief.
"It's like a Fauci fixation," said Dr. Eric Topol, a public health expert and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. "So many of these people are just dedicated, they really want to do good and now they're losing their jobs senselessly."
POLITICO spoke to 11 people for this story, many of whom were granted anonymity for fear of retribution.
LOL. So brave.
Several NIH leaders were told to accept reassignment to outposts in states like Alaska or leave the federal government altogether, according to three people familiar with the matter. One of them was Jeanne Marrazzo, who succeeded Fauci at NIAID....
In a post on X, Kennedy called the firings a "difficult moment" but insisted that HHS needed an overhaul.
"The reality is clear: what we've been doing isn't working," he wrote. "HHS needs to be recalibrated to emphasize prevention, not just sick care."
...
Peter Stein, who heads the FDA Office of New Drugs that aided work on Covid vaccines and treatments, was fired on Tuesday amid a gutting of his office's policy shop. His removal came just days after Kennedy and new FDA Commissioner Marty Makary agreed to force out top vaccine regulator Peter Marks, who played a central role in creating the Operation Warp Speed initiative that delivered the Covid vaccine in record time. Marks' deputy, Julie Tierney, was also put on leave on Tuesday.
The abrupt house-cleaning -- delivered to officials in early-morning messages -- generated near-universal dismay across the public health landscape on Tuesday. And while Kennedy and his allies have argued that the overhaul is necessary to restore trust in HHS, the removals fueled suspicion among Fauci's supporters that Kennedy was using the mass firings to rid the department of top Covid-era scientists and others close to Fauci.
Really? Is that your suspicion?
In addition to purging leadership at NIH and FDA, Kennedy ordered cuts to a range of divisions focused on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases -- the area where Fauci first gained prominence as a leader of the government's response to the AIDS epidemic. The moves follow a crackdown already underway on grants related to Covid and vaccine hesitancy....
Makary and new NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya are also Fauci critics who gained prominence as opponents of the government's Covid response, with Bhattacharya at one point calling Fauci's role during Covid a "propaganda campaign." They have both vowed to overhaul the agencies and refocus public health priorities.
In a message to NIH staff on Tuesday, Bhattacharya wrote that he would "foster an environment where varied perspectives are valued and encouraged at NIH and the broader scientific community" -- a pointed contrast to his accusations that Fauci and his allies shut down dissent at the agency.
...
"This is the darkest day that I've had in 50 years of public health," said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, who called reassigning Marrazzo and others to far-flung locales "almost a way of punishing them for what they have done."
Cry moar, commie thugs and gaslighters.
Thanks to Jay in PA.
Brave and Righteous Reporters Finally Report on Biden's Mental Incapacity, After It No Longer Matters, and They Can Grift Money Off of Information They Hid for Six Years
—Ace
THE BIDEN BOOK DELUGE: The race to shape Joe Biden's legacy is on. The former president's extended orbit is bracing for a steady march of no fewer than four books dropping over the next few months that promise to excavate and relitigate not only the historic 2024 presidential campaign but the former president's own physical and mental condition before dropping out.Biden allies are already prebutting some of those books' authors, challenging their framing and questioning their fact-checking approach in an attempt to protect the former president's image. Dozens of former and current Biden aides have engaged on the books, according to a person with visibility into the process. Biden allies seem to be defining a satisfactory fact-checking process as one that includes readouts of dates, people, memos and meetings mentioned and a chance for Biden world to respond, item by item.
...
Starting Tuesday, the crush of books will begin with Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes' "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House" ($32). Already, the duo have produced reporting that depicts Biden's decline in vivid detail, including that he forgot the identity of one of his 2020 rivals and that Democratic officials had "hush-hush talks" to game out Biden's withdrawal as early as 2023, according to an excerpt in The Guardian.
There's also a book by Chris Whipple which whitewashes the Biden camp and the media from all responsibility, claiming they "believed what they wanted to believe" so nothing to see here folks.
Then comes Fake Jake Tapper's sudden realization that you can judge someone as being senile despite not having a medical degree and specialization in neurology and gerontology:
Biden aides who participated in the reporting of that book, according to the person familiar, were shocked to read the "cover-up" framing on the book jacket, as such framing wasn't used explicitly in some of the interviews facilitated by Biden handers, this person claimed. They say while Thompson and Tapper openly grappled with Biden's age prior to the book's release, allegations of a cover-up or conspiracy broke new ground.Asked about this, a spokesperson for Tapper and Thompson told Playbook: "Starting after Election Day, Jake and Alex began working on 'Original Sin' and found people post-election much more willing to talk candidly than they had been. Jake and Alex interviewed more than 200 people to figure out just what went behind the scenes of the Biden White House, conducting an extensive reporting and fact-checking process, including with former President Biden's team. We're not going to discuss who participated but stay tuned for what they discovered."
Couldn't have reported any of this before the election, huh, Fake Jake
Some former Biden aides don't expect the books to make much of a splash. They're betting amid the tumult of Trump's second term, Biden's legacy could look better. "Our attitude is the focus is on 'How can you help?' and most of his alumni are," a former Biden adviser told Playbook. "There will be [book] parties in D.C., but we're also going to move onto the next Signalgate in 30 seconds."
Signalgate >>> Having a Senile Mental Incompetent as Fake President for Four Years
Still, that may be wishful thinking from Biden world. "The next six weeks will be rough for the entire Biden family, because they're going to be the primary focus (and likely villains) in all of these books," said Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic campaign veteran who worked for Biden Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
Ed Driscoll excerpts some of these non-bombshell revelations at Instapundit.
Biden's close advisor -- and suspected Shadow President for most of Biden's fake term -- Ron Klain knew that Biden was unfit.
Ron Klain, a longtime aide to former President Joe Biden known for his intense loyalty, is insisting he "never doubted" Biden's mental fitness -- as a new book describes Klain's distress ahead of Biden's dismal June 2024 debate against Donald Trump.In "Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History," author Chris Whipple writes that Klain viewed Biden, then 81, as "out of it" and even "half-seriously" worried that Biden thought he was "president of NATO."
"I never doubted the president's mental acuity," Klain told The Post Wednesday after a report on Whipple's book was published by the Guardian.
"He had become singularly focused on foreign policy and detached from Democratic allies in the pursuit of GOP support on Ukraine and Israel," Klain said of his impressions of the 46th president.
"He thought that being a great foreign policy president was enough."
It's still bitterly funny that Biden, often called the man who was wrong about every major foreign policy question of the 20th century, had that Old Man Vanity of believing himself to be some kind of wise man of world relations.
I think he believed this because everything with foreign policy is 1, ideology and 2, wild-ass guessing. It's hard to be proven wrong in foreign policy -- which is how Biden avoided coming to this conclusion despite always being wrong.
It's a sketchy field where idiots can think themselves profound thinkers. People like George W. Bush, for example.
This is from the whitewash "they believed what they wanted to believe book:"
"[Biden] had answers on cards, and he was just extremely exhausted," Klain said."And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with NATO leaders."
Klain, Whipple writes, "wondered half-seriously if Biden thought he was president of NATO instead of the US."
"He just became very enraptured with being the head of NATO," Klain said. "Domestic political leaders don't really care what [French President Emmanuel] Macron and [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz think."
More from Whipple's book, as quoted by The Guardian:
According to Klain, it turned out that Biden "didn't know what Trump had been saying and couldn't grasp what the back and forth was"; left preparation and fell asleep by the pool; obsessed about foreign leaders, saying "these guys say I'm doing a great job as president so I must be a great president"; "didn't really understand what his argument was on inflation"; and "had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job".As described by Klain to the reporter Chris Whipple, at one point Biden had an idea.
"If he looked perplexed when Trump talked, voters would understand that Trump was an idiot. Klain replied: 'Sir, when you look perplexed, people just think you're perplexed. And this is our problem in this race."
See Ed Driscoll at Instapundit for more about "President Klain."
Quinippiac Poll: Democrats Fall to Lowest Approval Level Ever, Now at 21% Approval
—Ace
A lot of their disapproval comes from fanatical extremist Democrats (also known as "Democrats") who demand that the Democrat Party double down even harder on the 20 side of every 80/20 issue.
CNN showed the Democrats at 29%, then NBC showed them at 27%, now they're down to 21%.
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Republicans Boost Their Razor-thin Majority With Two Wins in Florida
—Ace
Republicans had held these seats, but Matt Gaetz resigned and Mike Waltz joined the Trump Administration as NSA. So both seats, while won by Republicans, were empty.
Now two more actual Republican Representatives are in the House.
Republicans held on to two important congressional seats in Florida on Tuesday, boosting their slim House majority. Trump-endorsed Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis each secured victory, with Trump celebrating the results, saying his support proved stronger than the "Democrats' forces of evil."Key Details:
State Sen. Randy Fine defeated Democrat Josh Weil in Florida's 6th Congressional District, securing the seat vacated by former Rep. Mike Waltz.
Fine faced a major financial disadvantage. Weil had raised over $9 million and ended the race with more than $1.3 million in cash on hand.
In the Panhandle-based 1st District, state CFO Jimmy Patronis led Democrat Gay Valimont by nearly 15 points.
Unfortunately, we lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The liberal won, securing a 4-3 liberal advantage.
Note that I have repeatedly sowed Russian Disinformation about this. I thought the Court had a 4-3 conservative advantage, which was threatened. In fact, the liberals already held a 4-3 advantage; the conservative judge was the challenger and would have flipped the court.
On the plus side, Wisconsin passed a constitutional amendment to make voter ID the law of the state.
Merry Wednesday! We're at the Great Hump of the Week.
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Wednesday Morning Rant
—Joe Mannix
In the wake of USAID's effective dissolution, the left has been hurling numerous arguments at the wall about why USAID is important, without ever discussing the real reason USAID is important. USAID is important because it's a slush fund for various transnational leftist causes and operations. Money goes in to USAID, where it is loaded onto helicopters and then dropped directly into the gaping maws of countless left-wing organizations and governments.
"YOU'RE TAKING AWAY OUR DIRTY MONEY WE USE TO SUBVERT ALL THAT IS GOOD AND RIGHT" is not a good argument, and people won't respond to it with anything other than demands for more of the same medicine. So instead, the propaganda and NGO complex keeps trying to find other reasons why USAID is important. They need it to play in Peoria. The spin is on full display. The recent example I've seen comes from Bill Gates.
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Mid-Morning Art Thread [Kris]
—Open Blogger
Minotaur
Jordi Garriga Mora
Greek mythology has some of the most memorable monsters — centaurs, cyclopes, gorgons, sirens, harpies, and more. They are instantly recognizable and still capture our imaginations thousands of years later. Many provided worthy adversaries for the great Greek heroes to prove themselves. Herakles killed several during his Twelve Labors. Oedipus outsmarted the Sphinx . Odysseus defeated Polyphemus the Cyclops, survived the sirens, and bypassed Scylla and Charybdis (at the cost of half his men). Perseus killed Medusa and Theseus killed the Minotaur. Some were true beasts who threatened humanity and had to be stopped. Medusa and the Minotaur were tragic victims who suffered for the crimes of others.
According to the story, Minos, King of Crete, insulted the sea god Poseidon. As punishment, the god caused Minos’ queen to fall in love and mate with the king’s prized bull. Later, she gave birth to the Minotaur, a hideous, man-eating monster with a human body but head and tail of a bull. Appalled, Minos imprisoned the creature in the seemingly unbeatable maze called the Labyrinth. Sometime later, Crete won a war against Athens, who had to send a tribute of seven boys and seven girls to Crete to feed the creature. Theseus, one of the young Athenians, was able, with the help of Minos’ daughter, to find his way through the maze, kill the Minotaur, and get back out.
The battle between Theseus and the Minotaur was a popular subject in ancient Greek art. It represented the conflict between the natural and unnatural. Theseus would become one of the great heroes of Athenian culture. In later centuries, artists, such as Auguste Rodin, Antonio Canova, and Pablo Picasso, would see the myth as representing the fight between civilization and barbarism.
Named Asterion, after Mino’s father, by its mother, she attempted to tie or graft the creature into the family. She loved it, but it didn’t last. It was eventually seized and thrown into the Labyrinth. Now, the only human contact were his victims.
In this painting, I think Jordi Mora is looking at the Minotaur from this human angle. He sits atop a column, high above his prison, looking out. I see him making this climb often — to find some escape from his existence. But all he sees is the vast maze and the empty expanse of the ocean beyond. No city. No people. No family. He is alone.
For me, the most powerful part of this painting is the figure’s body language. He just sits there, staring out at a world he’ll never know. He slouches with his arms hanging limply down. If you enlarge the work and look closely, you can see a slight correction. Mora changed the angle of the Minotaur’s head. He used to look down. Now he looks out. In my opinion, this changes the mood of the piece. When the creature’s head hangs down, I can almost hear the sighs and sobs. With the correction, with his head up, there is nothing. The Minotaur just stares out. Instead, I see deep, deep loneliness and sadness. I think the flat blackness of his form represents this. Other objects in the painting have dimension and mass. Not him. He is a minotaur-shaped void in the canvas. He’s empty.
Mora painted many variations of this theme, but this is the one that grabbed me. Other versions are more colorful or have more detail. One excludes the Minotaur completely. This is the one that works. I think it’s because of the color. Red could hint at the myth’s bloodiness, the red-hot anger of Poseidon, and the carnality of the creature’s origin. I think it represents the Minotaur himself. The rusty red of the painting is heavy and dark. The sun barely shines through it. The red sky feels like a wall. He is trapped, unloved and alone. There is little light in his world and his existence is a curse.
The Morning Report — 4/ 2 /25
—J.J. Sefton
Well, Wisconsin disappoints yet again. There were reports late last week of serious election integrity shenanigans in Milwaukee and considering what we all saw in 2020, the only thing that really ticks me off is that both the state and national GOP, which had plenty of time to organize and marshal the resources to both rally voters and do what they could from the legal standpoint to fight the cheat, did nothing. On a positive note, the resolution requiring photo ID to vote actually passed. And, the special elections in Florida were big wins for our side.
The Leftists were and are making the Wisconsin race for an open state Supreme court seat into a supposed mandate on Trump. I fully expect the spin machine to either ignore the two wins in Florida or else claim them to not mean anything. These elections aside, all recent polling shows broad support for Trump and the MAGA agenda across the board and a concomitant disaffection with Democrats. More crucially, the reactions to the butchery of "Snow White" as well as full on rejection of the Democrat platforms of Woke, DEI and all the rest I think are a bellwether of a societal shift away from the depredations and madness of unchecked Leftism. There is a sea change in the culture that will be seen and felt over the course of quite a few years to come. If nothing else, I hope to live long enough to see and feel it in the final twilight of my sunset years, whenever that is to be.
On a personal note, I somehow managed to rear-end someone resulting in the likely write off of my car. And it happened right in front of a polling station. How's that for irony. Anyway, most importantly no one was injured but suffice it to say that considering the year I've already had this is the last thing I needed. Like the proverbial hole in my head that I quite literally have.
Anyway, basta cosi on that. Life goes on, Oh-blah-dee, and this too shall pass. As for the local politics, now comes the full court press (pun intended) to gerrymander the hell out of this place so as to eliminate two solidly GOP seats, one of them belonging to my congressman Brian Steil.
So, some scumbag in Philadelphia got arrested for tossing nails in the driveways and at the cars of Trump supporters. Well, at least we can be thankful hat his neighbor down the block wasn't Bill Ayers who could have advised him about the efficacy of steel pipe, black powder and long fuses. Or Mohammed the Clock Boy. . .
And with that, I give you this effluent to chug down on this dreary morning.
Mystal said, “I set out to start to kind of try to write Project 2029,” Mystal explained. “When Republicans come into office, they come in with a sledge hammer. They come in smashing things that I hold dear. When Democrats come into office, they come with like superglue and tape. And, so they try to put things back together. So, I thought about writing ten Constitutional Amendments that would be super cool if we had. But, I was like, ‘No, no, no.’ We need to smash the things that they like. We need to smash the things that are holding this country back. And, so I came up with ten laws that we could just get rid of — not reform, not update for the modern era. Ten things that we can smash if we ever are allowed to get power again that would make this country better tomorrow.”Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “One of the laws you write about is playing out right now, the Immigration and Nationality Act,” Hostin said. “Now, this administration is using this statute to justify the detentions and possible deportations actually of visa and green card holders who they seem to deem a threat to U.S. foreign policy. What do you make of the administration’s use of the act, and more broadly, is Trump really setting up a First Amendment showdown — which is what Whoopi’s been talking about?” One of my premises for the book is that every law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be presumptively unconstitutional. Because before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, we were functionally an apartheid country. Not everybody who lived here, could vote here. So, why should I give a about some law that some old white man passed in 1920s like, the Immigration and Nationality Act?”
By this logic, if you could call it that, Mystal Blue Persuasion seems to be advocating for the legalization of murder. But hey, what about the Civil War amendments that officially freed the slaves and recognized their citizenship. Meh, I guess the Constitution itself is unconstitutional, eh?! the stupidity is just off the charts, but there you have it. In any case, sorry to inflict that on you, but it is nothing if not illustrative of the mindset, will to power and hubris to presume to have any moral authority that is Leftism.
Have a great day.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- Falling birth rates in rich nations threaten collapse, while poorer regions boom—forcing tough questions on economics, culture, and why modern women choose not to have children.
Can We Fix Our Demographic Doom Loop?
- Meet the billionaires funding the left-wing agenda . . . with dark money.
The Left’s Oligarchy
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Daily Tech News 2 April 2025
—Pixy Misa
Top Story- Intel has entered "risk production" on its new 18A process. (Tom's Hardware)
That's 18 angstroms - 1.8 nanometers - in case you were wondering. Though it's just marketing; nothing about the process measures 18 angstroms.
Risk production is when a new process seems to work, but nobody has used it in volume yet. Hence the risk.
Intel cancelled its planed 20A process, so this will be the first time we see new features like gate-all-around transistors from them.
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Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - April 1, 2025 [scampydog]
—Open Blogger
I typically try to avoid jumping into the deep end of the political pool on Tuesday evenings, but this one requires some discussion. Not quite Flaming Skull worthy. Another activist judge ruling.
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Dogs Are Good People Cafe
—Ace
Hospital therapy dogs can't wait
to start their shifts and start healing!
A good dog will follow you anywhere.
Capybara will not concede its favorite sitting-spot to an invader.
Little 'roo begs to be picked up.
Dogs can be generous. But sometimes a dog has to look out for Number One.
Dog without forelegs walks around on two feet, like a boss.
Anteaters have a special natural defense: Their heads look like arms and their arms look like heads.
Videogame is enjoyed by cats, especially because it doesn't ask them for their preferred pronouns.
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60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl Attacks Former Hamas Hostage: How Do You Know They Were Deliberately Starving You? Maybe The Poor Hamas Terrorists Just Didn't Have Food!
—Ace
She's an exceeding low-intellect and evil woman.
CBS News' "60 Minutes" has been one of the worst offenders in recent times, deceptively--and favorably, of course--editing a Kamala Harris video leading up to the '24 presidential elections and then in February arguing that there should be "boundaries" on free speech. What they mean is "boundaries" only on free speech that they don't like.
If you thought they'd learned anything or couldn't go any lower, you'd be wrong because on Sunday's episode of "60 Minutes," anchor Lesley Stahl posed a question to freed Hamas hostage Keith Siegel that was so jaw-dropping, so clueless, that you had to wonder if she was punking us. Maybe the terrorists were short on food, and that's why they starved you, she posited to the recent captive who had endured months of physical and psychological torture:
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A UK Panel Calls for Getting Tough on Violent Offenders... Except...
—Ace
A pair of so-called migrants -- or at least the descendants of non-Britons, as verifying immigration status is made intentionally difficult by the state -- squatting in Great Britain recently got stabby with another so-called migrant/migrant offspring.In response, Keir Starmer, the PM also squatting over the country -- incidentally, the birthplace of the Magna Carta and common law -- took a break from throwing citizens in prison for unauthorized speech on X to promote a ban on what he termed "ninja swords."
Via Express (UK) (emphasis added):
The mother of a schoolboy stabbed to death by a thug armed with a weapon "of war" has welcomed a ban on ninja swords.
Ronan Kanda, 16, was killed with a 20-inch blade just yards from his own in Wolverhampton in a case of mistaken identity.
The Home Office on Thursday confirmed ninja swords will be outlawed, with anyone caught with one of the weapons facing six months in prison.
Officials have also drawn up plans to increase the maximum penalty to two years behind bars.
Now, I had to do some serious digging to come up with the identities of the perpetrators in this recent outburst of knife violence.
Upon discovering their names, it was clear why the corporate state media had buried them.
Via ITV News (emphasis added):
A ban on ninja swords, campaigned for by the family of murdered Wolverhampton teenager Ronan Kanda, is set to come into force by summer.The 16-year-old was stabbed to death in a case of mistaken identity, yards away from his home on Mount Road in Lanesfield in June 2022.
Prabjeet Veadhesa and Sukhman Shergill, both 17, were sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum of 18 years, for Ronan's murder.
Of course, if their names had been "Winston" or "Edwin," and their victim a precious migrant, their names and faces would have been splashed across every TV screen in Britain. Inquisitions would be held. Whoever the Muslim equivalent of Jesse Jackson is over there would hold rallies/riots in the streets for days on end.
Keir Starmer has found the silver bullet solution: ban ninja swords. See the article for that.
But the British globalist establishment also got another proposal: Maybe we can just put violent offenders in jail for longer periods.
Sounds like good sense.
Except... we don't want to imprison women in jail for longer periods. So let's sentence violent offenders to longer sentences, except for women.
And oh yeah-- we also shouldn't, couldn't sentence violent offenders who are of a minority religion to longer sentences, so we'll except members of minority religions.
And of course we absolutely must not sentence minorities to longer sentences -- so racial minorities are also excepted.
Because I know no one does math on this blog, I've worked out the arithmetic for you: Keir Starmer is proposing longer sentences only for White Christian Men.
Everyone else falls into an exception.
British Council Institutes Harsher Criminal Sentencing, But Only For White Menby Tyler Durden
The Sentencing Council of England And Wales, a non-departmental public body (faceless bureaucracy) which determines the guidelines for court punishments of convicted offenders, has recently made controversial changes and ignited a firestorm among the native British populace.The council has announced that special exceptions in sentencing will be made for ethnic minority offenders (the majority of violent crime in Britain) and religious minority offenders, as well as female offenders. In other words, everyone except white males will enjoy reduced sentencing, creating a two tier justice system that targets white men for harsher treatment.
Conservative shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick has called the guidance "two-tier justice" and "blatant bias" against Christians and straight white men, as he said it would make "a custodial sentence less likely for those from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community".
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood claim they oppose the policy change and will take action to pass legislation against it. However, such a process could take many months and both Starmer and Mahmood have expressed favoritism for migrants and Muslim groups in the past. Their "opposition" could be purely theatrical and few Brits believe that they will actually make an effort to block the Sentencing Council's two-tier system.
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Industry Analyst: Hollywood's Long String of Bombs Is Creating Negative Feedback Loop Which Will Further Depress Theater Attendance
—Ace
In other words, they're pumping out so much bad product that theaters will go bankrupt, and then Hollywood will have fewer "stores" to sell their future terrible products at.
Hollywood is at risk of entering a "negative feedback loop" with fewer wide movie releases and a shrinking theater footprint combining to squeeze box office revenue, a veteran media analyst says.In his annual assessment of the theatrical sector, billed as a "memo to Hollywood," TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz notes that he has taken a "bearish stance" on the theatrical window for some time. Results from 2024, with total grosses slipping 4% from 2023 to $8.57 billion, the number of wide releases down 6% from pre-Covid levels, and other factors have only reinforced his view.
"We have said for several years now that the outlook for a sustained recovery looks questionable, and that we don't think the existing global theatrical footprint can be supported solely by a handful of blockbusters," Creutz wrote in the 20-page report.
The number of screens in the U.S. has declined to about 35,000 from 41,000 before Covid struck in 2020, with exhibition also facing big challenges in 2023 and 2024 due to the strikes. That smaller footprint might help theater owners in the near term, but it could end up hastening the decline of the overall business, Creutz believes. Downsizing "risks having more films skipping theatrical and going direct to streaming services...and now you have all the ingredients for a negative feedback loop."
One of Hollywood's biggest mistakes, many believe, was embracing the streaming model of exhibition. Previously, Hollywood sold its movies multiple times. First, it would sell tickets to shows in theaters. Then, three months later, it would sell DVDs or Blu-Rays, and also make the movies available on Play on Demand video. Then, three months after that, they'd sell the movies again to pay TV services like HBO.
Finally, after a year or year and a half, they would sell the movies to over-the-air broadcast TV networks or cable networks like TBS.
Now they only show movies in theaters and then on streaming. But they've shortened the window so much that fewer and fewer people bother going to movies. In some cases, movies turn up on streaming just thirty days after being shown in movies.
In other cases, it's even worse -- movies that do particularly poorly in the theaters are yanked out quickly, and then offered for streaming in just seventeen days.
The old system encouraged people to see movies in theaters because otherwise you'd have to wait a long, long time to see them. But anyone can wait 17 days or 30 days.
Add to that the minor fact that Hollywood is putting out just terrible movies lately, and you have the possibility of a mass die-off of theaters, followed by a wrenching contraction in Hollywood.
Theater owners have been demanding for some time that Hollywood lengthen the window between theatrical exhibition and streaming, but Hollywood is refusing.
Creutz emphasizes that he is "not calling for a complete collapse of the theatrical window, but we think box office is more likely to decline than rise over the next few years, particularly as major studios continue to cut back on the number of films they make in favor of concentrating their box office efforts in fewer, bigger, established IP films."Movie theater boosters, who are slated to gather next week in Las Vegas for CinemaCon, have characterized the pandemic as a major setback but insist they are on a path to a full rebound. Creutz disagrees.
"We believe that theatrical demand likely permanently declined 20% as a result of changed consumer behavior during the pandemic, in addition to what had already been a secular decline in attendance," he wrote. One worrying sign coming out of 2024, he notes, is that "attendance remains concentrated in relatively fewer films than market norms pre-2015."
Right. So people are skipping out seeing movies in theaters except for a few buzzworthy blockbuster spectacles. So those are the only movies worth making. But at the same time, people are sick to death of the endless would-be blockbusters.
I used to like blockbusters a lot, but this form of storytelling is very repetitive. And we keep seeing nothing but the same type of stories -- Chosen One Heroes, for example -- and are getting tired of them.
Plus, Hollywood is making very poor copies of old blockbusters, with the only "fresh" features being woke messaging plus gender- and race-swapping.
So people are tired of would-be blockbusters -- now mostly flopbusters, a new term coined because of the huge number of expensive mega-flops -- at at the same time, would-be blockbusters are also the only movies people will bother showing up at the theaters for.
That is an evil pair of trends that bodes ill for Hollywood, and for the poor mom-and-pop theater owners who will be the first to go bankrupt.
In very related news, Kathleen Kennedy Junior has been fired from Amazon.
I'm talking about Jennifer Salke, who ran the studio into the ground changing almost every male-skewing property to be a girlboss power fantasy.
Note that Barbara Brocolli, despite overseeing an increasingly woke James Bond series, has always insisted that James Bond is male. But as soon as Amazon bought the property, out came news that they were developing a "Moneypenny" series.
Yes, Moneypenny, M's secretary, would be turned into a double-o agent and girlboss badass. (Note that the movies already did this under Barbara Broccoli, but she had the good sense to have Moneypenny retire from being a Girlboss Badass to be a secretary once again.)
Salke will not be missed, except for a couple dozen Twitter bot accounts.
Hollywood was perhaps shaken, but not stirred, by this week's news that Salke has exited after seven years at Amazon -- and how James Bond was perhaps among the issues that led to her departure. Talk of Salke's departure amid a power struggle with Mike Hopkins, the head of Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios, had been swirling for a while -- and last month's deal putting the Bond IP into the creative hands of Amazon was a further signal that Hopkins was about to make a change.Salke and Barbara Broccoli, the longtime steward of the Bond IP, had not seen eye-to-eye on the fate of the franchise from the moment that Amazon acquired MGM -- including that valuable property -- for $8.5 billion in 2022. It was Hopkins, a non-creative exec who has been Salke's boss since joining Amazon in 2020, who instead had been developing rapprochement with the Broccolis.
As Variety recently noted, Broccoli is believed to have told others that she did not feel inspired by working with Salke.
Broccoli called Amazon executives "idiots." That's a bit more than "not feeling inspired" by Salke.
Things came to a head when the WSJ published an article in December about the Bond standstill. That caused a high alert within the studio that Salke's relationship on the film side was lacking and that she didn't have the creative chops to land the plane on one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood history. (It also helped to accelerate to Amazon's deal to buy out the Broccolis, after negotiations began in early 2024.)Sources said Salke wanted to make Bond into a broader, less dangerous character who could star in TV shows and carry video games. But her desire to make 007 into a cuddly hero for Middle America made Broccoli wince, according to multiple sources. Insiders snarked that Salke's vision of Bond suggested him as a rebellious cookie-cutter spy out of an NBC drama, not serious IP that only a handful of the most esteemed directors could tackle.
Salke is infamous for her hatred of man-skewing entertainment.
Salke cancelled a Conan the Barbarian series, which was being developed by the guys who would later have great success with House of the Dragon for HBO. She cancelled the show for having too much, get this, "toxic masculinity." Instead she greenlit Wheel of Time, changing it from featuring a male hero to female heroes, and Rings of Power, turning it into another girlboss fantasy property.
Amazon Studios founder Roy Price, kicked out of the company over #MeToo style claims, is now laughing at Jennifer Salke and calling for a full reboot/retcon of her prized girlboss show, Rangz of Power. He thinks the only way to save the billion-dollar investment in the show is to pretend the first two wretched seasons never happened.
In a recent post to his Substack, Price shared his advice on what Amazon should do in order to stop losing when it comes to TV. As part of his advice, he called for a purging of the company's TV department explaining that it has become too big and is relying on "consensus decision making"Not only did he call for Amazon MGM Studios' TV department to be cut down to size, but indicated it needs a new attitude as well. It needs leaders that will "get out their knives, put them in their teeth, and learn how to be nonconformists again."
READ: John Boyega Implies 'Star Wars' Fans Are Racist And Describes Franchise As "The Most Whitest, Elite Space"
Speaking specifically to the shows on the docket and already in development, Price made it abundantly clear that the type of thinking that created The Rings of Power must be done away with.
He suggested, "One thing I would tell this team to do is to completely retcon everything Rings of Power so far. That was an experiment. It is now non-canonical and we are starting over from scratch. It basically never happened and we are literally throwing it away."
Price even suggests that a single episode of Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne's The Rings of Power may be created "where everyone is slaughtered in an orgy of blood that would make John Woo blush and they are finally eaten by Tom Bombadil who then larks through the forest covered with gore singing 'Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo! Ring a dong! hop along! Fal lal the willow! Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!'"
To be clear, it's not just The Rings of Power he wants to retcon, he wants to retcon any scripts or pre-production done for potential James Bond spin-offs such as 008 and Moneypenny as well as Henry Cavill's Warhammer series and the Red Dead Redemption. "All these shows are being developed (or redeveloped) from scratch," he declared.
He specifically notes that these male-skewing shows should not be turned into "big female draws" and claims this thinking is ridiculous by asking, "Why on Earth would you do that? Has it literally ever worked?"
Hire this guy back.
Update: From Sharon, shut up and sing.
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