DNC Riot Season Begins

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Lawrence Person

The Democratic National Convention kicks off this week, and Chicago businesses are getting ready…by boarding up their widows and doors.

Chicago business owners, reeling since the lootings and vandalism that occurred during the 2020 civil uprisings, are taking no chances with the thousands of anti-Israel activists who are set to arrive at the Windy City’s downtown area this week to “shut down the DNC for Gaza.”

Although the Democratic National Convention is set to kick off Monday, business owners in the downtown area have already taken measures to protect their stores from belligerent rioters, boarding up their windows and barricading their doors. By Thursday, several storefronts had been shielded by plywood, local media outlets reported.

“As we know, this city has a poor track record when it comes to protecting businesses,” a local store owner, Scott Shapiro, told ABC Chicago. “We felt it was more prudent to board up, since our customers and their employers have told them to stay home throughout the convention for their own safety.”

Mr. Shapiro’s menswear shop on Clark Street, Syd Jerome, nearly went out of business four years ago after it was repeatedly ransacked and lost nearly $100,000 in merchandise. His shop was just one of the businesses that suffered from repeated break-ins during the George Floyd protests that took hold of Chicago in summer 2020.

Gee, do you think it’s possibly that all those “pro-Palestinian” protesters descending on Chicago just might want to loot and torch a shop run by someone who’s last name is “Shapiro”?

The owner of Chicago Board-Up Services, Vicki Fichter, said her crew has already worked on more than a dozen businesses in the past week and she has received more than 40 requests for board-up jobs in the downtown area.

“We’re boarding them up tight, so that there’s no entry,” Ms. Fichter told ABC.

Sounds like Chicago business owners know exactly what “mostly peaceful” Democratic Party activism looks like.

Another sign of the fun and games in store for Chicago? Someone has been delivering pallets of bricks to various locations in Chicago.

As the Democratic National Convention (DNC) approaches, Chicago has noticed a concerning trend that has raised alarm among residents and law enforcement. Pallets of bricks have mysteriously appeared on street corners, sparking speculation that the city could experience a new wave of organized chaos similar to other violent protests of previous years.

The presence of these bricks is not an isolated incident but a strategy with a well-known history. In the summer of 2020, similar deliveries were reported in various cities across the United States, including Minneapolis, New York, and Portland. These cities experienced protests against police brutality that turned into riots. Authorities and citizens connected these pallets of bricks to groups such as Antifa, alleging that the groups used them to arm protesters and stoke violence under the guise of legitimate demonstrations.

(Hat tip: Director Blue.)

Worse still for Chicago, the police seem to be calling in sick. “According to some reports on social media, more than 1,000 officers are calling in sick.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

What’s more, the perimeter security is evidently easily breached. And protesters have already breached the outer perimeter fence.

It seems that some social justice factions of the Democratic Party actively want destructive riots, even when they harm Democrats and Democrat-run cities, presumably to keep other factions in line. This time around, the riots will ostensibly be about the Israel Hamas War (which, much to the frustration of jihad-friendly social justice warriors, Israel is winning handily), but we know that even if the Middle East were enjoying a rare respite of peace, the brick hurlers would just find another reason to riot…

Posted in Crime, Democrats, Jihad, Social Justice Warriors | Tagged , , , , , | 12 Comments

Paxton Sues Biden Administration Over Transexual Madness Yet Again

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Lawrence Person

Yesterday I covered the Supreme Court blocking the Biden Administrations unilateral rewrite of Title IX by executive fiat to impose transexism on colleges, but that’s not the only place Democrats are trying to impose their twisted gender ideology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issuing the Biden Administration over their attempt to impose their gender ideology in Title VII.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is once again challenging the Biden administration, filing a lawsuit against the federal government in an effort to block enforcement guidance that the state argues unlawfully compels employers to adopt “transgender” mandates under the threat of discrimination or harassment lawsuits.

Specifically, the lawsuit points to a change the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) made in April to the “enforcement guidance on harassment in the workplace” that now includes the definition of “gender identity” under the category of “sex.”

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created the EEOC to enforce the prohibitions on employment discrimination.

The EEOC guidelines explain how sex-based harassment includes harassment based on “sexual orientation or gender identity,” including misusing pronouns and “the denial of access to a bathroom… consistent with the individual’s gender identity.”

Forcing pronouns on people and making the peasants acquiesce to allowing men in women’s restrooms seems like a huge goal for the Democratic Party, one they’re been relentlessly pushing for over the last decade.

Paxton argues that the EEOC guidance “relies on an intentional misrepresentation of the Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.” He adds that the decision “did not discuss how such employers must accommodate such employees in the workplace.”

In Bostock v. Clayton County, the court ruled that firing someone for being “gay or transgender” is a form of sex discrimination, but Paxton argues that this does not extend to accommodations such as pronoun use, bathroom access, or dress codes.

“Thus,” the lawsuit states, “EEOC may not interpret Title VII to require employers to comply with the Pronoun Accommodation, the Bathroom Accommodation, or the Dress Code Accommodation.”

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the 2024 guidance unlawful, invalidate it, and permanently prevent its enforcement, as well as cover their legal costs and provide any additional relief deemed appropriate by the court.

Paxton is joined by the conservative Heritage Foundation in this legal challenge.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is attempting yet again to rewrite federal law through undemocratic and illegal agency action,” Paxton wrote in a statement.

“This time, they are unlawfully weaponizing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in an attempt to force private businesses and States to implement ‘transgender’ mandates — and Texas is suing to stop them.”

Pronouns and tranny bathrooms are popular with far leftwing activists, but deeply unpopular with ordinary American citizens. No voters outside of San Francisco (and possibly not even there) would vote for these policies, so the Democratic Party’s activist cadres must impose them by stealth via judicial and executive fiat. Just as with the Title IX cases, expect this radical activist regulation to wither under judicial scrutiny.

Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Supreme Court Blocks Title IX Rewrite

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Lawrence Person

Multiple lower courts have blocked the Biden Administration’s attempt to unilaterally rewrite the meaning of Title IX in favor of transexism via executive fiat, holding that it violates the clear intent and language of the original statute. However, the Biden Administration has constantly appealed those injunctions. Now the Supreme Court has weighed in, upholding the lower court injunctions.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has rejected the Biden administration’s request to reinstate most of its new Title IX guidance.

With a 5 to 4 decision that saw Justice Neil Gorsuch joining the three liberal justices in dissent, the rule remains blocked while further litigation continues.

In April, the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) issued the rule that includes changes to how federal civil rights law protects against “discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”

Several states, including Louisiana and Tennessee, filed lawsuits against the DOE, arguing that the new Title IX guidance overstepped legal boundaries or conflicted with state laws.

In the litigation that preceded this SCOTUS issuance, the lower courts blocked the new rule from being enforced in some states, and the higher courts, the Courts of Appeal for the 5th and 6th Circuits, allowed that block to stay in place while the legal process continued.

The federal government then filed an emergency application with SCOTUS to stay the preliminary injunctions, pending resolution of the appeals in the 5th and 6th Circuits.

“The Court denies the Government’s applications,” states the majority SCOTUS opinion.

The leading opinion explains that the provisions of the DOE rule that include the new definition of “sex discrimination” to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” will remain blocked from implementation, but added that this part is too connected to the rest of the rule to allow other parts to go into effect.

The majority opinion states that “the Government has not provided this Court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim conclusions that the three provisions found likely to be unlawful are intertwined with and affect other provisions of the rule. Nor has the Government adequately identified which particular provisions, if any, are sufficiently independent of the enjoined definitional provision and thus might be able to remain in effect.”

For perverse ideological reasons, Democrats seems to have made exposing children to homosexuality and transexism a central tenet of their party, despite widespread opposition from American citizens in general and parents specifically. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has sided with the multiple states and school districts that have sued to stop this particular instance of woke madness, though the narrow 5-4 nature of the ruling is concerning.

Given that the same radical Obama retreads would also man a theoretical Harris Administration, expect Democrats to continue to push hard to impose their radical transexual agenda on America’s children.

Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

LinkSwarm For August 16, 2024

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Lawrence Person

Real inflation is running about 20%, Kamala parties like it’s 1971, the New York Times is shocked, shocked to discover Hunter Biden asking for state favors for foreign cronies, gold hits new highs, laughing at an old SNL skit is now a thoughtcrime, and an update on Intel’s woes.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • How do Democrats plan to win in November? But working overtime to magically turn illegal aliens into citizens so they can vote for Democrats.

    The New York Times reports that the federal government is accelerating the naturalization of immigrants in America as part of a process of “reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” according to one observer quoted in the piece.

    “The federal government is processing citizenship requests at the fastest clip in a decade, moving rapidly through a backlog that built up during the Trump administration and the coronavirus pandemic,” reports the newspaper.

    One Honduran woman marveled at the fact that authorities were able to process and approve her application in as little as six months.

    The story highlights how many of these new citizens will immediately become eligible to vote in key battleground states, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

    The piece includes a very revealing quote from Xiao Wang, chief executive of Boundless, a data analysis company.

    “The surge in naturalization efficiency isn’t just about clearing backlogs; it’s potentially reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” said Wang.

    “Every citizenship application could be a vote that decides Senate seats or even the presidency,” he added.

    In other words, knowing that immigrants are far likelier to vote Democrat, the Biden administration is importing them at breakneck speed in order to tip the scales for Kamala Harris.

    3.3 million immigrants have become citizens during Biden’s time in office, with data showing that more will vote Democrat than Republican.

    This has partly driven the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal more to “Jamal” and “Enrique,” and not so much “Karen,” although the strategy has caused division amongst Trump’s base.

    The legacy media has consistently denounced the idea of mass migration being a deliberate ploy to increase the voter base for Democrats as part of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, while simultaneously admitting it’s happening.

    Democrats have declared that they have no confidence in the electorate and must create a new one…

  • Restaurant owner says that the real inflation rate is closer to 20% over six months:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • How does Kamala Harris plan to combat inflation? By channeling Richard Nixon from 1971 and imposing wage and price controls.

    After the unoriginal Vice President Kamala Harris stole former President Trump’s proposed ‘no tax on tips’ policy, she’s at it again with yet another recycled idea. This time, she’s echoing President Biden’s actions and rhetoric to crack down on sky-high food prices by proposing the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries”—a move that reeks of socialism.

    “There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign wrote in a statement, adding, “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”

    The Harris campaign said the vice president will unveil the new federal proposed ban on Friday at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina as part of a broader economic policy platform. The proposal will ensure food companies can’t exploit consumers to increase profits, according to CBS News, citing Harris-Walz campaign officials.

    Harris’ policy speech will also call on the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys to examine corporations violating price-fixing rules. Her remarks are expected to echo Biden’s actions and rhetoric, especially with his war against meat processing companies that he alleges are responsible for higher burger prices at the supermarket.

    VP Harris’ campaign argues that lowering Americans’ costs is a function of socialist-style price controls. Yet this is the quickest way to understand that Harris’ economic team has no actual understanding of inflation.

    Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni explained, “Here’s your “price gouging” narrative: average costs paid by businesses have risen just as much as costs charged to consumers – if businesses are being “greedy,” they’re doing it all wrong…”

    Instead of curbing out-of-control government spending, which debt rises $1 trillion every 100 days, and understanding that monetary inflation driven by the Federal Reserve’s money creation is the root cause of inflation, Harris deflects the actual problem: The Fed. She instead goes after big corporations for ‘illegal price gouging.’

    Thus unable to understand the disasterous economic policies of the past are doomed to repeat it…

  • “Conversation Between Musk And Trump Generates Over A Billion Views.” You can see a transcript of the interview here.
  • Trump appears to be winning over Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

    In a post last month (“How The Democrats Los Silicon Valley”), I mentioned that top Silicon Valley venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz had endorsed Trump.

    Ben Horowitz, in particular, seemed like an unusual Trump supporter, coming from a liberal Jewish background. Now it looks like Trump has another, thanks to his X space with Elon Musk last night: Zynga founder Mark Pincus. During the first Trump administration, Pincus opposed Trump’s “Muslim ban”, but after the leftist celebrations following October 7th last year, he seemed to have some second thoughts about that.

  • Despite the fawning coverage, the Kamala Harris campaign must think it’s not fawning enough, as they’ve been using ads with altered media headlines.

    Despite corporate media’s unabashed u-turn to support Kamala Harris, her campaign has been busted creating made-up headlines next to the names of real news outlets to trick people into thinking they’ve stumbled upon the real thing, Axios reports.

    Upon hearing the news, The Guardian lost their shit, telling Axios: “While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”

    The ads include links to real articles from the outlets, however the headlines and supporting text were altered.

  • “Democratic California State Lawmaker Switches To Republican Party…State Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, who represents the state’s fourth Senate district, said she joined the Senate Republican Caucus and party after deep reflection and to help ‘in their fight to fix California.'”
  • “Hunter Biden Asked State Department To Aid Burisma Deal While Father Was VP.” Because of course he did.

    While Joe Biden was vice president, his son Hunter attempted to obtain State Department assistance in securing a deal for Ukrainian gas company Burisma, of which Hunter was a highly-compensated board member despite having no experience in its industry, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The revelation of the 2016 episode underscores allegations that Hunter sought to enrich himself by trading on his father’s influence.

    The Times report draws on newly-released government records pertaining to Hunter’s pushing of a Burisma deal in Italy. The Biden White House had resisted releasing the files for years, only to relent soon after Biden was pressured into abandoning his reelection bid.

    One wonders how long the New York Times would have waited to report this if Biden were still seeking reelection? My guess is never.

  • More on that thought.

    Go figure. It’s amazing what some actual reporting — and a withdrawal from a presidential election — can shake loose, no?

    Just four short years ago, we were all assured by the Protection Racket Media that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and that allegations of influence-peddling by the Bidens were just political dirty tricks, right? Right? Wrong. The New York Times’ Ken Vogel reports that Hunter’s efforts to sell influence within the administration were well known during Joe Biden’s term as Vice President. It’s even about Burisma, the company that we were told paid Hunter a lot of money for his energy-industry expertise.

    Oh, and the records of it got “withheld” by the Biden administration for “years,” too:

    Hunter Biden sought assistance from the U.S. government for a potentially lucrative energy project in Italy while his father was vice president, according to newly released records and interviews.

    The records, which the Biden administration had withheld for years, indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was a board member.

    Well, we did have records in October 2020. Hunter Biden kept records of these dealings on his laptop, which he abandoned in a repair shop. When the New York Post reported on the contents of the laptop, including a number of emails that made clear he leveraged his fathers office to sell influence at Burisma and elsewhere, the media ignored it — even though one of Hunter’s partners (Tony Bobulinski) publicly authenticated the messages when asked.

    Nearly four years later, the NYT gets around to the truth. And if you’re questioning the timing, you have good company, because Vogel appears to be somewhat curious about it as well:

    The department’s release of documents to The New York Times came shortly after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, and as his son prepares to stand trial next month on charges of evading taxes on millions of dollars in income from Burisma and other foreign businesses.

    Go figure again! It’s as if the cover-up extended as long as Joe Biden had electoral interests to protect. Now that Biden has pulled out of the race, there’s no need to keep covering up for Biden Inc.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • “California Sheriff Blasts Harris For Using His Image In “Misleading” Campaign Ad, Says He Supports Trump.” “In light of a recent political ad put out by Kamala Harris featuring Sheriff [Mike] Boudreaux, as well as other local law enforcement, the Sheriff wants to make it abundantly clear that his image is being used without his permission, and he does NOT endorse Harris for President or any other political office.”
  • The same Jew-haters who drove Columbia University’s president Minouche Shafik off are now coming for Kamala Harris.

    Only a short week ago, Harris was heckled by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters, like those who has spilled out from college campuses after October 7. Protesters screamed out at her as she stood on stage repeating her stump speech. As they yelled, Harris tried to shame them. “I’m speaking,” she said, hearkening back to her VP debate against Mike Pence in 2020. “I’m speaking” in context means several things, including an attempt to grab control based on her identity factors: black, female. By identitarian logic, the vice president is oppressed, and by the logic of progressive discourse, that means that she gets to speak first, and that what she has to say carries all that much more weight. An event simply in favor of her candidacy was crashed in New York City on Wednesday night where agitators set off smoke bombs and held up signs saying “No Votes for Bombala’s Genocide.” 14 of them were arrested.

    The agitators wanted some kind of response, some kind of indication of what Harris’ policy on Israel and Gaza might be if she gets voted into the White House. And they haven’t gotten it. Meanwhile, there are clearly massive anti-Israel events planned for the Democratic National Convention next week. While Kamala is trying to keep the euphoria going, attempting to dance and sing her way into the White House, her base will be out in the street demanding answers. Will she be lenient like Magill? Bend over backwards like Gay? Or call in a bigger force, like Shafik, because she doesn’t know how to handle it on her own?

    The far left of Harris’ party hates Israel. They love Palestinians not for their culture or policies–which include anti-LGBTQ and anti-female regulations as in other strict, Muslim countries–but simply because they are “oppressed.” And Harris can’t handle them. Even at her speech, rarefied identity wasn’t enough to keep them in their place. The campus riots will likely start up again. As soon as the college-bound finish their orientations, they’ll be picking up their marching orders and protest signs to join their comrades on the quad.

    There is already noise that Harris would like to throw Israel under the bus, to eradicate funding and arms shipments. The same woman that waved the flag of Ukraine in Congress as she promised to send him endless weapons and aid, may think the aid packages and arms sales to Israel go too far. Harris may sympathize with the protesters.

  • “Ten Things to Know About Tim Walz and His Ties to Communist China.”

    before his honeymoon [in Communist China in 1994], Walz launched a company called Educational Travel Adventures, which specialized in bringing American students to China. An article in the local Chinese media reported that he and his bride brought 50 students from America. The company continued to send students to China until 2003. It is important to note that operating a business in China requires all kinds of permits—both official and unofficial—from Chinese authorities at the local, provincial, and central levels. These permits were typically obtained either by paying bribes or by securing endorsements, whether tacit or open, from government officials.

  • As Ukraine continues to take more Russian territory, they just destroyed the Glushkovo bridge in Kursk oblast.
  • “Democratic Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg Backs Cruz in Senate Race.” The redpilling of Kin Ogg would make an interesting long-form essay, especially if she’s willing to tell what George Soros and his minions were asking for the first time they backed her…
  • How Houston-area HEBs keeps the lights during power outages. They contract a network of backup power generators fed by natural gas.
  • Followup: The EU is now saying that Thierry Breton got out over his skies when he demanded Elon Musk police Donald Trump for #Wrongthink. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • U.S. district judge Reed O’Connor bars the Biden Administration from trying to impose their tranny-pandering Title IX rewrite on school districts.
  • Army Sgt. Korbein Schultz just pled guilty to selling military secrets to China.
  • Gold breaks the $2,500 per ounce barrier.
  • Disney trying to get lawsuit filed by widow of man who died from allergy at Disney restaurant on the basis that he agreed to binding arbitration on all disputes when he signed up for Disney+.
  • Nothing says “protecting the taxpayers money” like California’s Democratic governor Governor Gavin Newsom hiring a state photographer to follow him around for $200,000.
  • Professional atheist Richard Dawkins posts that men and women are different and male boxers shouldn’t be competing with female boxers. Result: Facebook nuked his account.
  • So what do you do when your software problem brings a customers operations down hard? Well, if you’re Crowdstrike and the customer is Delta airlines, then you slam Delta for not recovering fast enough.
  • Python Development Foundation suspends developer for enjoying old “Jane, you ignorant slut” skit. I can only imagine the snowflake reactions to the Chevy Chase/Richard Pryor word association skit…
  • Flock of self-driving Waymo cars in San Francisco honk all night in their parking lot. As you might be able to guess, nearby residents are just thrilled at this development…
  • Speaking of electric cars, there’s concerning over letting them park in parking garages because of the possibility of them catching fire and the difficulty of extinguishing same.
  • Remember how Intel said the problem with their chips was microcode? Yeah. That may not be the case (or at least not the whole case), and it may actually be a process problem involving oxidation of vias (i.e., the connection between two metal layers).
  • My pants, my pants, my pants are on fire. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Also via Dwight: Fraud charges dropped against AISD Chief Financial Officer Eduardo Ramos. The charges were unrelated to his AISD work.
  • Chinese car has cryptographicly locked headlights so no one but the company can replace them..
  • Wow, Greenspoint Mall in Houston just shut down, but parts of it look like it’s been shut down for decades.
  • Interesting video essay on how changing street light technology informed the looks of several iconic films.
  • “Kamala Harris Suggests Americans Struggling To Make Ends Meet Just Try Sleeping With Their Boss.”
  • “Kamala Announces Plan To Hang ‘Joy’ Sign Above Bread Lines.”
  • “In Latest Bond Film, 007 Tasked With Taking Down 83-Year-Old British Grandma Who Shared Inaccurate Meme.”
  • Ambition:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • Still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

    Biden Recession + Wokeness + Streaming + Strikes = Extinction Event For Hollywood

    Posted on August 15, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    Right now Hollywood is taking it on the chin, the gut, the head, and just about every other metaphorical body part that can be punched.

    Thanks to the Biden Recession and its resultant inflation, people are cutting back severely on their entertainment budgets to concentrate on such luxuries as “food” and “rent.” At the same time that started to kick in, Hollywood fully embraced wokeness, resulting in movies and TV shows that alienated large segments of their existing customer base. From 2015 to 2019, Hollywood brought in more than $11 billion in domestic box office, thanks largely to once-juggernaut franchises like Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar (a studio that used to function like a franchise) and Jurassic Park, and even throwing out Flu Manchu-wrecked 2020, they have yet to return to that level of ticket income. Note that the first three of those franchises all belonged to Disney, which came down with one of the worst cases of Social Justice, from which hasn’t entirely recovered, and Disney stock has been on a mostly steadily downward trend since 2021.

    On top of that, the last five years saw most major studios jump headlong into the streaming wars. The result? Everyone lost except Netflix. Everyone lost money launching their streaming services, and the huge need for new content, plus the mind virus of wokeism, meant garbage like Rings of Power, Velma and She-Hulk got green-lit. For Disney, the need for content not only radically increased costs, but also helped cheapen the previous powerhouse brands of Marvel and Star Wars with too much mediocre-to-bad content.

    But the jump into streaming didn’t just increase costs, it decreased the income from existing revenue streams like broadcast and cable TV (now referred to as “linear” TV). With so much premium content moving to Internet-based services, a whole lot more people cut the cord for cable TV.

    While all this was happening, Hollywood’s actors and writers unions looked at the money being shoveled into streaming and went “Hey, we want a bigger cut of that,” and went on strike, some even losing their houses (which honestly for a four month strike, seems like really poor financial planning) in the process. As a result, they won pay increases and additional “seats” in writer’s rooms right before everything started to collapse.

    The results? Layoffs. “During the 2023 Hollywood strikes, the Los Angeles region’s share of national Film and TV employment fell to 27%, compared to 35% just the year before.” More: “Employment is down 9.1% (12,900 jobs) from 2013 to 2024 for the traditional entertainment industries of Film and TV, Sound, Print Media and Broadcasting.” I don’t think anyone thinks of 2013 as any kind of “golden age.” (Well, except maybe for the finale of Breaking Bad.) More: “Employment in ‘motion picture and sound recording’ has grown nationwide, but the share of workers in LA or New York went from just under half at the beginning of 2023 to just one-third earlier this year.”

    This is why Deadline has a regular Hollywood Contraction section. Things are so bad that they’re even laying off executives (I know, world’s smallest violin), and many don’t expect to ever be employed in the industry again. “If you’re a middle-age white man, you’re feeling really struggling to see if you’re going to be hired again.”

    Let’s list a few of Hollywood’s litany of woes, some of which we’ve covered here before.

  • Warner Brothers Discovery took $9.1 billion write-down on it’s network TV assets.
  • The Cartoon Network and MTV are two Warner properties that could be sold or shut down entirely.
  • Paramount was pretty much forced to merge with Skydance, resulting in massive layoffs.
  • Including: “Paramount Television Studios Shut Down by Paramount Global Cost Cuts. Paramount Television Studios, a production facility originally aimed at getting Paramount Pictures back into the business of making TV series, will shut down, the latest bout of cost cutting by parent corporation Paramount Global as it seeks to eliminate $500 million amid a chaotic shift in the entertainment industry.” They were the ones producing the Time Bandits TV show for Apple+ that pretty much no one thought was a good idea.
  • Speaking of Apple (not strictly speaking a Hollywood company, but one that plunged into the streaming wars), they’ve throttled back the money hose after being one of the more profligate streaming spenders. “Shaw also points out some examples of runaway spending at Apple, including bloat on ‘Severance,’ its glum, well-regarded dystopian/workplace series. The new season of that show will cost $20 million an episode — a staggering sum for a series that doesn’t have any digital dragons.” $20 million an episode. Season 2 had ten episodes. At $20 a month for an Apple+ subscription, you would need to pull in nearly a million new viewers, subscribing for an entire year, to break even. Apple+’s entire subscriber base is evidently 18 million, so that seems…unlikely.
  • There are reports that Marvel Studios (a division of Disney) has actually purged woke producers from its ranks, but that Lucasfilms (another division of Disney) has retained head Kathleen Kennedy, whose woke girlboss storylines have run both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises into the ground.
  • Disney reportedly moved all hand-drawn animation work to other countries.

    • And then, as this contraction runs its course, all of Hollywood has to worry about the looming threat of AI. AI is not good enough for Joe Schmo to make movies that rival Hollywood from his PC, but given enough computing power, we may live to see it. But in the meantime, a whole lot of technical jobs are probably going to disappear into AI expert systems. Instead of five lighting techs, there will be one lighting tech overseeing the AI automatically adjusting the networked smart lights.

    It’s possible that 2019, the year when Avengers: Endgame was setting box office records, may be looked back on as the pinnacle of Hollywood’s 21st Century Golden Age…

    Posted in Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, unions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

    Harris County Democratic Election Official Charged With Corruption

    Posted on August 14, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    Another indictment handed down for another Harris County Democratic official, this one for the election official who helped screw up the 2022 election.

    Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced Tuesday that a data analyst with the now-defunct county Elections Administration Office (EAO) has been charged with six felonies in relation to the 2022 general election.

    Hired by the EAO in April 2021, Darryl Blackburn oversaw allocation of resources — including the number of paper ballots provided to polling sites — but investigators say he took another full-time job in the oil and gas industry in October 2021. While submitting time sheets to the county claiming he was working from home, Blackburn was working at his other job during an overlap period of about 15 months.

    Blackburn has been charged with five counts of tampering with a government document, and one charge of theft by a public official. According to Michael Levine, Chief Assistant District Attorney of Public Corruption, Blackburn earned $43 per hour for a total of $90,000 from the county while drawing a salary of more than $250,000 at his other job.

    I know the Biden Recession has been tough on a lot of people, but if you’re making $250,000 a year, you hardly need to be double-dipping to make ends meet.

    On Election Day 2022, Blackburn reported working 18 hours for Harris County but also claimed to work 8 hours for his other employer.

    His bond has been set at $65,000.

    The charges stem from the county’s fraught November 2022 elections that drew not only multiple election contests but also criminal complaints. While the county’s election problems included delayed openings, malfunctioning equipment, and missing staff, a Texas Secretary of State audit listed a ballot paper shortage as the reason voting came to a halt at multiple polling locations on Election Day.

    Remember that the lack of ballots was a big issue, with some charging that it was Republican precincts that got slighted.

    “We know there are some people in Harris County who did not get to vote. We know this was a failure in terms of an election that the government has a responsibility to run effectively, ethically, and most importantly, accurately,” said Ogg.

    Don’t forget that the last election coordinator before Blackburn, Isabel Longoria, screwed up so badly she had to resign. More:

    Harris County Commissioners Court created the EAO in July 2020, but the first appointed administrator Isabel Longoria was forced to resign after several botched elections. The second administrator Clifford Tatum presided over the 2022 election, but was ousted by a new state law returning elections to elected officials last year.

    “The Harris County Commissioners Court are the ones who placed themselves … in supervisory control because they created the Office of Elections Administration,” said Ogg. “So, they had control. The Elections Administrators Isabel Longoria and Clifford Tatum did not report to the public.”

    “It’s unclear to us whether they ever reported to anybody other than the statements that they made in commissioners court,” said Ogg, who noted that Tatum had come from out of state. “We see a lot of people from other places appointed here in this county.”

    While Ogg has been lambasted by her own Democratic Party for pursuing the investigation, she said that on receipt of two or more complaints the Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) is required by law to investigate. In late 2022, the HCDAO turned the complaints over to the Texas Rangers.

    “It is extremely important to look at these crimes in a non-partisan way and go based on the evidence by applying the law, which is our oath in Texas as prosecutors,” said Ogg.

    Corruption and incompetence under the management of Democratic Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo (including felony indictments for her aides) seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Texas, Waste and Fraud | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

    MSNBC Deceptively Edits Joe Rogan. Lawsuit?

    Posted on August 13, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    Evidently MSNBC saw CNN being sued for being worthless partisan shills, and went “Hey, we can do that too!”

    In this case, they deceptively edited a Joe Rogan segment critical of Kamala Harris that went on to praise Tulsi Gabbard to make it appear that Rogan was praising Harris.

    Just watch the first three minutes of this:

  • It’s extremely blatant. (And they evidently took the video down.)
  • Tulsi Gabbard:

    Not only does Joe Rogan deserve an apology, there’s actually something far bigger at stake here. This is yet another example of how MSNBC is working hand-in-glove with the Democrat elite and the Kamala Harris campaign uh to try to spread lies, simply things that are not true. What this means is MSNBC is a for-profit corporation, they are helping Kamala Harris’ election campaign, and what they are doing through their platform would qualify as an in-kind contribution to her campaign. It’s worth a lot of money. The fact that they are doing this should require the Federal Election Commission, that manages campaign spending and campaign finance, require them to report this as an in-kind campaign contribution, or to be punished for abusing their position in trying to use their platform, that has nothing to do with journalism it is purely a propaganda platform, and that they are using this in order to try to help Kamala Harris get elected.

  • The clip brings up that this is not the first time the MSM has lied about Rogan for propaganda purposes, bringing up the “horse dewormer” lie over taking Ivermectin to fight his bout of Flu Manchu. “I can afford people medicine, motherfucker.”

    • Given MSNBC’s blatantly false editing, Rogan is reportedly suing MSNBC for $30 million. I say “reportedly” because stories about the lawsuit with that $30 million amount have popped up all over the Internet, but I have yet to find a primary source or real court documents stating that. Let it never be said that I have the callous disregard for truth shown by the likes of CNN and MSNBC.

    Given how obviously blatant and deceptive the video editing was, you wonder why they even tried it in the first place. But given the outlandish, over-the-top lovefest the MSM has thrown to gaslight the American public into thinking that unpopular, perpetual mediocrity Harris is somehow smart, accomplished and popular despite all evidence to the contrary, I wonder if all MSNBC staffers are under specific orders to produce segments that make Harris look good by any means necessary.

    I would say the MSM will do everything it can to drag Cackles McSidepiece across the finish line, even if it means destroying what’s left of their own credibility, but I don’t see any left to destroy…

    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

    EU Tries To Suppress Trump Interview

    Posted on August 12, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    First came news that Elon Musk was going to interview Donald Trump on Twitter/X at 7 PM tonight.

    Then came word that the EU is very, very upset that Donald Trump might be allowed free speech.

    The European Commission is threatening X owner Elon Musk with possible legal consequences for his plans to air an uncensored interview with former president Donald Trump, and calling for Musk to balance the importance of free expression with the need to suppress “harmful” content.

    European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton, one of the world’s most aggressive tech regulators, warned Musk that his planned Monday night interview with Trump could violate the Digital Services Act, or DSA, if X does not limit the spread of certain forms of online speech connected to the interview.

    “As the individual entity ultimately controlling a platform with over 300 million users worldwide, of which one third [are] in the EU, that has been designated as a Very Large Online Platform, you have the legal obligation to ensure X’s compliance with EU law and in particular the DSA in the EU,” Breton wrote in a letter to Musk shared on X Monday.

    “This notably means ensuring, on one hand, that freedom of expression and of information, including media freedom and pluralism, are effectively protected and, on the other hand, that all proportionate and effective mitigation measures are put in place regarding the amplification of harmful content in connection with relevant events, including live streaming, which, if unaddressed, might increase the risk profile of X and generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security.”

    Translation: We can’t be allowing Donald Trump to commit #wrongthink we disapprove of, and as your global lords and masters, we demand the right to censor anything we disapprove of, and time, anywhere.

    Breton reminded Musk of the ongoing proceedings against X related to alleged DSA violations, and the measures Musk must take to remain in compliance with the European Union’s restrictive tech regulation package.

    Thankfully, Musk already told them to get fucked.

    “Therefore, we are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political – or societal – events around the world, including debates and interviews in the context of elections,” Breton added.

    Where did the EU get the idea that unelected Euroelites have a right to censor the free speech of an American President being interviewed by an American tech billionaire on that same billionaire’s free speech platform?

    The Thierry Bretons of the world should be ignored, mocked and sued when their pretensions of ruling the world clash with the rights of Americans to enjoy free speech unfettered from government control, or any other situation the ambitions of global elites clash with the Constitution of the United States of America.

    (BTW, if anyone at Twitter is reading this, the appeal process for Twitter is still broken and my account is still suspended.)

    Update: Looks like technical problems are doing a better job of silencing Donald Trump than the EU right now…

    Posted in Elections, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

    The Z-List: Harvard’s Can’t Fail Track For Moneyed Morons

    Posted on August 11, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    Neal Brennan’s interview with Simon Rich offers a revealing glimpse into the American ruling class, where letting their obtuse, opulent offspring fail simply isn’t an option.

  • Simon Rich: “They had these sort of easier classes that were designed to allow children of affluence to continue at Harvard.”
  • SR: “They have something called the Z-list.”
  • SR: “So the Z-list is—”
  • Neal Brennan: “Donor kids?”
  • SR: “Yeah. To get on the Z-list I mean I think you need to donate like particle accelerators. Ambassadorships. Pardons.”
  • SR: “The Z-list is like, you have a student who is so academically inept that no tutor, no study drug, no recommendation from a senator, can can mask the fact that this is a person does not belong here. This is a dumb person.”
  • SR: “They concoct a fake volunteer project that lasts a year that is the front cover to justify their admission.”
  • SR: “I don’t know who it’s designed to trick. I think it might be designed to trick the child themselves.”
  • SR: “The smartest people at Harvard are often the poorest people.”

    • So there’s your glimpse into America’s ruling class, where moneyed morons can’t be allowed to fail.

    If a Harvard grad was born rich and has a well-known last name, what are the odds they’re actually a Z-lister?

    What are the odds that Yale and the other Ivies have their own version of the Z-list? I’d say pretty good.

    Our country is in the best of hands…

    Posted in video | Tagged , , , , | 17 Comments

    WhistlinDiesel Torture Tests A Cybertruck To Destruction

    Posted on August 10, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    Enjoy some light content for the weekend.

    Some car review channels and magazines like to brag about putting a vehicle through a “torture test.” YouTuber WhistlinDiesel sets out to show they’re amateurs, and puts a Cyberturk through a real torture test, starting with backing it off a flatbed without lowering the bed.

    Other tests: Driving over large concrete pipes, door slamming, beating on it with tools and rakes and implements of destruction, etc.

    To be fair, he tested it against a Ford F-150 for the same tests, which did better on some tests and worse on other. For example, the Ford cracked an axle driving off the truck bed. But the tow hitch for the Cybertruck literally tore off trying to tow the Ford.

    Overall, the Ford scored better than the Cybertruck. It turns out that when you abuse the Cybertruck this badly, a whole lot of the electronics go bye-bye. But the Cybertruck was surprisingly resistant to C4…

    Posted in video | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments