Quick Hits

Sheldon Whitehouse voted in favor of bills and massive wealth transfers that benefited his wife's "non-profit" environmental grift.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., is being accused of violating ethics rules after backing laws that financially benefited his wife's environmental organization.

The Democratic senator and climate hawk voted for key laws that provided funding for grants to the environmental non-profit group that works with his wife, Sandra Whitehouse, and pays her through a consulting firm.

The ethics watchdog, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), is asking the Senate Select Committee on Ethics Chairman James Lankford, R-Okla., and Vice Chairman Chris Coons, D-Del., to investigate Whitehouse "to determine whether he violated the Senate ethics rules on conflicts of interest." The group works primarily to draw attention to potential Democratic lawmaker ethics violations.

Ocean Conservancy has received more than $14.2 million in federal grants since 2008, per USASpending.gov. During 2024 alone, it was given two sizable grants, one for $5.2 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for marine debris cleanup in September and another for $1.7 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), again to assist with marine debris cleanup.

The former was funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) championed by the Biden administration and voted for by Sen. Whitehouse. The latter was funded through the EPA's annual appropriations bill, which Whitehouse also voted for.

Supposedly, Doomcock is Finally Right. Puck says that Kathleen Kennedy, Destroyer of Billion-Dollar IPs, reckons she's done enough brand damage and can now retire.

According to Puck, Kathleen reportedly turned in her resignation notice, ending her 13-year run as head of Lucasfilm at the end of the year:

After years of speculation, and polite urging from observers like me, Kathleen Kennedy has informed Disney, as well as friends and associates, that she will exit as Lucasfilm president by the end of the year, per three sources. Disney and Kennedy's personal publicist declined to comment.

[...]

Kennedy has been telegraphing her exit lately, selling her and husband Frank Marshall's Malibu house, offloading art, and talking to friends about working with Frank more. She's also been collecting career honors from everyone from the Austin Film Festival to the American Society of Cinematographers to this week's Oscar Wilde Awards in L.A. Departing this year will allow a successor to handle the 2026 release of The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first Star Wars movie since 2019's The Rise of Skywalker. This year she's got only the second season of Andor, which will likely be an Emmy contender (the trailer looks good), and some kids' stuff on Disney+.

These rumors have been circulating for some time, and while it's still not wholly confirmed, as Puck notes, the reports are likely true.

This is a "who cares" thing for me. These brands no longer have any value or appeal. They were destroyed. People had been emotionally invested and begged them to not destroy billion-dollar modern myths, but they did anyway. Now no one cares. Star Wars is a dead brand, even Indiana Jones is a dead brand.

Their toys no longer sell. There are no new young fans being created.

They sought the "modern audience." Well, they got it. Except the modern audience doesn't exist. There is groundswell of twenty million radical left BIPOC transgenders who have taken up the mantle of LucasFilm Fandom.

Disney can't sell LucasFilm now, because Bob Iger can't take realizing (admitting publicly) that he's taken LucasFilm from a $4.05 billion evaluation to whatever it is now -- $1 billion? -- but eventually Iger will retire and Disney will unload it someone else.

Maybe whoever buys MSNBC will be interested in making flop Star Wars prequels and side-quels.

Sonny Hostin wants to be the next Joy Reid.

And there are rumors that she might be -- rumors are flying that ABC has ordered the ugly hens of The View to stop being so toxic and divisive, and may be looking to dump most of them.

So here's Sonny Hostin make her appeal to Middle America.

The fun began when noted Christian theologian Hostin declared (shouted) about how opposition to the cancer of "woke" ideology is "ungodly" and "not Christian."

...

That's how I feel. My parents, you know, they grew up in the Civil Rights movement. I grew up in the late '60s/'70s. I was always a part of it, and so I've never been asleep. And so it angers me when people are, like, 'this woke stuff's got to go.' That's telling me that you don't care about my lived experience! You don't care about the oppression of the LGBTQ community! You don't care about the oppression of the disabled! You don't care about the oppression of immigrants! You don't care about your fellow neighbor, and that is ungodly! That is not Christian! So.

Big Ben has tolled thirteen o'clock in the former United Kingdom. The police are now intimidating grandmothers for the crime of... criticizing the Labour government.

Furious Brits have slammed Manchester Police and Labour for 'shameful' behaviour targeting a grandmother exposed by The Mail on Sunday.

Two police officers were caught on camera paying a visit to a grandmother simply for criticising Labour politicians on Facebook.

Detectives have been accused of acting like East Germany's Stasi secret police for quizzing Helen Jones over her calls for the resignation of local councillors embroiled in the WhatsApp scandal exposed by The Mail on Sunday.

Police conceded that the 54-year-old had committed no crime -- yet Mrs Jones said she has effectively been silenced by the officers, as she was intimidated by them calling at her door and is too terrified to post on social media again.

Voters have rallied to her defence and blasted the 'shocking' incident as a waste of police time and accused the Government for alleged 'abuse of power'.

Former Tory Cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg called the behaviour 'extraordinary'.

It is the latest in a string of incidents in which police have investigated people for social media posts, including newspaper columnist Allison Pearson, feminist writer Julie Bindel, and former policeman Harry Miller, whose name was added to a database for his 'non-crime hate incident'.

Greater Manchester Police has one of the highest crime rates in Britain and fails to solve almost three out of four shoplifting incidents.

Mr Rees-Mogg told MailOnline: 'It is extraordinary that the police even for a moment thought that expressing mild criticisms of an elected politician of the governing party could constitute harassment.

'It is not just that this is a poor use of resources but it has sinister undertones.

'Opinion is legal and confidence in the police is damaged by this type of interference in free speech.'

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: 'This is a total waste of Police time.

'People's free speech is being infringed.

'So-called Non Crime Hate Incidents are not working. The Police should only investigate actual crime, or where there is a real and imminent risk of it.

'The Police must get back to their actual job.'

Tory MP Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, told MailOnline: 'It's absurd that the police are spending their time investigating critical tweets.

'Thefts and burglaries are going unsolved and yet the police are wasting their time with nonsense like this. We desperately need to go back to common sense policing.'

Fascism is forever descending upon America, but landing in Europe.

Below, a literal genius with a 4.4 GPA and 1590 SAT was rejected by all colleges he applied to. Because he's the Wrong Race, you see.

The reporter's question is, "Well, you got a good job at Google, why don't you let this go?"

This is a media that encouraged mass arson over a drug addict's accidental death. But whenever a Wrong Minority -- or a white person -- dares to complain about actual, provable race discrimination, their only question is "What's the big deal?"

posted by Ace at 06:30 PM

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