Quick Hits

Update on Phloebiana Jones:

WDW_Pro, Valliant Renegade, and ThatParkPlace.com: "Chaos" at Lucasfilm; Disney executives have been playing the blame game for the Indiana Jones disaster since the first box office numbers came in last night, arguing with each other late into the night.

Jonas J. Campbell reports there is actual internal pressure for Kathleen Kennedy to spare the company further stress, and voluntarily resign.

He claims that the people responsible for making the movie are trying to blame its failure on the those who marketed it. There are "factions" forming to blame either the film itself (and Kathleen Kennedy) or claim the hundred million dollars+ in marketing just wasn't enough. He says the head of all of Disney studios, Alan Bergman, wants Kennedy out. Meanwhile he says some female executive, Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, is fighting for Kennedy to keep her job. I guess she's blaming the marketing.

Boy, LucasFilm sure has had a lot of bad "marketing" since Kathleen Kennedy has been running things, huh?

Update: Alan Bergman and Dana Walden are apparently co-chairs of Disney Entertainment, which overseas all of the studios.

WDW_Pro points out that while the media have been covering for, propping up, and spinning for Kathleen Kennedy (and Disney) for years, the stink is now too much to ignore. They'll have to start admitting the truth about Kathleen Kennedy and Disney.

Guys... I think it's really happening...

I think the real question is now: Is she allowed to pretend she's "moving on to other projects" of her own free will, or does Iger feel forced to make it clear she's being told to resign due to years of poor performance?

If Kathleen Kennedy goes, then the man who enabled her for nine years has to go to: Bob Iger. And Bob Iger has overseen disasters in all the six studios Disney operates.

So maybe he needs to pretend to be decisive executive who's not afraid to fire an employee due to years of terrible performance.

Clarence Thomas rubbishes Affirmative Action Baby KJB:

Accordingly, JUSTICE JACKSON's race-infused world view falls flat at each step. Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything--good or bad--that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals' skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism.

JUSTICE JACKSON then builds from her faulty premise to call for action, arguing that courts should defer to "experts" and allow institutions to discriminate on the basis of race. Make no mistake: Her dissent is not a vanguard of the in-nocent and helpless. It is instead a call to empower privileged elites, who will "tell us [what] is required to level the playing field" among castes and classifications that they alone can divine. Post, at 26; see also post, at 5--7 (GORSUCH, J., concurring) (explaining the arbitrariness of these classifications). Then, after siloing us all into racial castes and pitting those castes against each other, the dissent somehow believes that we will be able--at some undefined point--to "march forward together" into some utopian vision. Post, at 26 (opinion of JACKSON, J.). Social movements that invoke these sorts of rallying cries, historically, have ended disastrously.

Unsurprisingly, this tried-and-failed system defies both law and reason. Start with the obvious: If social reorganization in the name of equality may be justified by the mere fact of statistical disparities among racial groups, then that reorganization must continue until these disparities are fully eliminated, regardless of the reasons for the disparities and the cost of their elimination. If blacks fail a test at higher rates than their white counterparts (regardless of whether the reason for the disparity has anything at all to do with race), the only solution will be race-focused measures. If those measures were to result in blacks failing at yet higher rates, the only solution would be to double down. In fact, there would seem to be no logical limit to what the government may do to level the racial playing field--outright wealth transfers, quota systems, and racial preferences would all seem permissible. In such a system, it would not matter how many innocents suffer race-based injuries; all that would matter is reaching the race-based goal.

Worse, the classifications that JUSTICE JACKSON draws are themselves race-based stereotypes. She focuses on two hypothetical applicants, John and James, competing for admission to UNC. John is a white, seventh-generation legacy at the school, while James is black and would be the first in his family to attend UNC. Post, at 3. JUSTICE JACKSON argues that race-conscious admission programs are necessary to adequately compare the two applicants.

As an initial matter, it is not clear why James's race is the only factor that could encourage UNC to admit him; his status as a first-generation college applicant seems to contextualize his application. But, setting that aside, why is it that John should be judged based on the actions of his great great-great-grandparents? And what would JUSTICE JACKSON say to John when deeming him not as worthy of admission: Some statistically significant number of white people had advantages in college admissions seven generations ago, and you have inherited their incurable sin?

As rioters looted stores, burned down buildings, and set fire to dozens of cars, French Emmanuel Macron wen to an Elton John concert.

Of course he did.

Via John Sexton, NBC "News" reports on all the sad leftwing brokeasses who are butthurt and assmad that they'll have to pay off the loans they took.

Among the most upset about the Supreme Court's decision are the nearly 20 million people, according to the Biden administration, like Joy Morales-Bartlett who stood to have their debts fully canceled.

"It's disheartening," said Morales-Bartlett. "We've done the right things this whole time, and we are being punished for it."

With a remaining balance of $19,000, the 47-year-old former teacher was looking forward to seeing her decadeslong journey toward repaying $89,000 in student loan debt finally come to an end.

She did all the right things, except for actually repaying her lenders.

Sexton comments:

Another disappointed borrower, Nick Marcil, racked up $20,000 for an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in education. But he's not a teacher. Instead he's now working as a community organizer for a group that seeks to cancel student debt. "Certainly, this is a gut punch feeling, but one by a court that continues to show its illegitimacy and lack of ethics," he told NBC News. Calling the Supreme Court illegitimate because they are making you pay your own debts is the height of ethics I guess.

Biden is promising another extraconstitutional executive order to "protect" borrowers and to transfer money to them from his non-voters (the taxpayers who don't borrow more than they can pay). But he hasn't disclosed the details yet. He's just claiming he already planned his backup strategy out, and is just waiting for the right moment to spring it on us.

Biden is famously a 12th-dimensional genius, you know. He's totally not bullshitting that he already has a plan. No, not at all.

Live Action trolled abortion supporters, posing as a men's rights advocate who really, really likes abortion, for the times when his sidepieces get "clumpy."

"Abortion is a woman's right," he says, "and women's rights are men's rights."

From andycanuck: do the Biden shuffle...

posted by Lamont the Big Dummy at 06:24 PM

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