June 7, 2025

WAIT, I THOUGHT THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE WAS JUST PARANOID FICTION:

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: To be fair, the destruction of L.A. is very a group project: Attempted Obstruction of L.A. ICE Raid by SEIU President Makes Him New Poster Child for ‘Resist Trump.’

And:

MORE:

Posted at 2:51 pm by Ed Driscoll 221

KURT SCHLICHTER: Patriots Are the Losers in the Trump v. Musk Feud.

My parents were Scottish and German, so they didn’t actually yell at each other. I can only imagine that this is how little kids with Latin parents feel like when Mami and Papi are fighting. People fight and then they make up. Now, some people are speculating that this is a giant put-on designed to blow people’s minds, and if I hadn’t been alive for the last decade of insanity, I would write that off completely. It’s possible this is some sort of 4D chess match between grandmasters that is beyond my capacity to comprehend. More likely, Elon is just really, really angry. And  when somebody swings at Trump, he swings back

But it’s time to stop swinging. We need both of these guys on our team. We need Donald Trump on his A game, and we need Elon doing what Elon does. Elon’s at terrific personal risk here if this relationship goes completely off the rails. He’s got zero friends on the left. They are out for his blood. They will literally take everything he owns and throw him in jail – if not try to murder him – should the Republicans lose power. How do I know? Because we saw what they did to Donald Trump when he was on a temporary power hiatus.

But Republicans still love Elon Musk, and the Republican Party needs guys like Elon Musk, not just for his money but for his brains. There’s no going to the left for him. There’s no sitting out politics. He got in the game and now there’s no escape. Elon Musk needs the Republican Party because the Democrat Party wants him in a cell or a hole. The Republican Party needs Elon Musk because he’s Elon Musk.

Additional thoughts from Joel Kotkin: Musk’s outbursts reveal a deeper rift in MAGA: Trump is squandering the chance to build a coherent populist programme.

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 197

SIMON BILES AND RILEY GAINES DUKE IT OUT OVER TRANS ATHLETES:

Okay, buckle up folks, because something truly bizarre happened this week that you probably didn’t see coming. We’re talking about Olympic golden girl Simone Biles suddenly deciding to take a bizarre, unprovoked swipe at none other than Riley Gaines, the fearless advocate for saving women’s sports. I mean, seriously? Simone Biles attacks Riley Gaines? Didn’t have that on my bingo card.

Most of you know Riley Gaines. She’s the former NCAA swimmer who experienced the absurdity of competing against a biological male, Will “Lia” Thomas, firsthand. Since then, she’s become a national voice, tirelessly fighting to protect female athletes and the integrity of women’s sports. She’s been instrumental in getting legislation passed, and even President Trump signed an Executive Order on this issue back in February.

The whole dust-up started on X after Gaines reacted to a tweet from the Minnesota State High School League congratulating the Champlin Park Rebels for winning the state championships. Comments were disabled on the post because this is the team that cheated its way to victory by having a male pitcher.

Read the whole thing to see Biles sadly towing the establishment left’s party line:

Posted at 2:16 pm by Ed Driscoll 90

STOP BRO-FEUDING, TELL US HOW BAD SOCIAL SECURITY REALLY IS: Remember all those headlines earlier this year about millions of Social Security recipients on the rolls despite being 120, 130, even 150 years old? President Donald Trump and former DOGE driver Elon Musk appeared to be pushing differing data.

But a new analysis by OpenTheBooks points to an obvious reconciliation — of the conflicting data, not the conflicting super egos. Even so, as I explain in my latest PJMedia column, the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) laughable response to OpenTheBooks’ FOIA request suggests things are far more seriously wrong in America’s oldest entitlement benefits program than even the most extreme DOGE deductions.

Posted at 2:04 pm by Mark Tapscott 27

THIS INTERVIEW WITH THE SHOWRUNNER FOR ANDOR IS PRETTY INTERESTING:

The show is more political than anything Star Wars had done before. The villains are all participants in a dictatorship and the heroes are all independent people who become victims of that dictatorship in various ways. There weren’t a lot of 4th wall breaking clunkers of the kind you see in most politically minded shows these days. They aren’t beating you over the head with the message.

And yet, as I was watching it I kept having the same thought: This is a show about China that thinks it’s a show about America.

So I was interested to read this interview with showrunner Tony Gilroy because NY Times columnist Ross Douthat isn’t shy about a) saying he loved the show and b) framing it as a left-wing show. What’s interesting is that Gilroy seems genuinely not to like this framing, as if admitting his own politics would be a failure of some kind.

In a portion of the interview that John Sexton doesn’t quote at Hot Air, Gilroy rather simplifies the history of Hollywood:

Gilroy: I mean, the bar is higher. Seriously, man. This is a trickier conversation than most of the ones I have to have on this. I listened to the podcast that you did with the — I don’t know the gentleman’s name. The one who’s trying to revive the vibe shift into the ——

Douthat: Jonathan Keeperman.

Gilroy: Right wing. Yeah.

Douthat: Right-wing publisher. Yep.

Gilroy: You could say: Why has Hollywood for the last 100 years been progressive or been liberal? I think it’s much larger. I’ll go further and say: Why does almost all literature, why does almost all art that involves humans trend progressive?

Let’s stick with Hollywood. Making a living as an actor or as a writer or a director — without the higher degree of empathy that you have, the more aware you are of behavior and all kinds of behavior, the better you’re going to be at your job. We feed our families by being in an empathy business. It’s just baked in. You’re trying to pretend to be other people. The whole job is to pretend to be other, and what is it like to look from this? People may be less successful over time at portraying Nazis as humans, and that may be good writing or bad writing, and there may be people that have an ax to grind. But in general, empathy is how I feed my family. And the more finely tuned that is, the better I am at my job.

For the last 50 years, Hollywood has been “Progressive or liberal.” But prior to that, as Neil Gabler wrote in his 1988 book, An Empire of Their Own, the moguls who founded the industry were quite conservative, in their politics, their worldview, and in the product they released. Did the best of their movies have less “empathy” than today’s product? It wasn’t until 1960s as they aged and lost control over the institutions they founded, and the mostly leftist “Easy Riders-Raging Bulls” crowd of New Hollywood took over. In a 2009 interview with the late Andrew Breitbart, Peter Robinson asked, “How did Hollywood go from Republican David Selznick, who produced Gone with the Wind to liberal David Geffin. What happened?”

Andrew Breitbart: Well two things, the studio system ended and now the celebrities are in charge.

Peter: The studio system ended, what bearing did that have on the politics?

Andrew: Well, there were people, actors have always been held in low regard by society and the businessmen who ran the studios cleaned up after their messes around town. I mean that is sort of the LA Confidential movie, you know. That changed in the 1960s to a great extent, but I would attribute a majority of this to the cultural revolution in the late 1960s and at the end part of John Wayne’s career, he no longer had the swagger. He was 60 something years old, the movie were no longer original. They were doing the same hackneyed thing over and over and over and simultaneously you know, there is a youth revolution going on in the country. And while the left was never able to take over the White House while George McGovern was not able to be victorious, Hollywood was taken over by the left and they have never relinquished it. And in fact I would argue that the right has abrogated its place in Hollywood because they were told that you are not wanted here anymore and they never fought for it. So, I don’t know who I have more contempt for, the left for its totalitarian behavior of those that disagree with them or the right the conservative movement just for allowing it to happen and not to fight back.

In his new book, Suddenly Something Clicked: The Languages of Film Editing and Sound Design, Walter Murch, Francis Ford Coppola’s longtime editor and sound designer, recalls running into George Lucas in New York shortly after Star Wars debuted in 1977, and Lucas was stunned by the massive runaway hit he had created:

I reminded him of his pre-Star Wars attempts to get Apocalypse Now off the ground, and that what interested him about that story was that it grappled with the success of the ‘rebel’ Vietnamese against the overwhelming might of the American military empire.

George: ‘Star Wars is Apocalypse Now in a galaxy long ago and far away.”

Me: Ironic that millions of Americans are now cheering for the Rebels to defeat the overwhelming might of the Empire?

It’s difficult to picture old Hollywood greenlighting Apocalypse Now, and it was only by burying that same theme that Lucas was able to get funding for Star Wars.

John Sexton concludes that “At the end of the day, Andor was made for a mostly American audience by Hollywood progressives who think it’s a show about the American right wing in some sense. That’s how I see it, but of course your mileage may vary.”

But then, that was the theme of the original Star Wars, and Lucas began writing the first drafts of his script a half century ago. Maybe it’s time for the “progressives” of Hollywood to find some new ideas about the country they inhabit.

Posted at 1:15 pm by Ed Driscoll 87

GRETA THUNBERG AND THE GAZA CLOWN SHOW:

Her Asperger’s diagnosis became mythologized, seen as a superpower, a divine lens through which she perceived what the rest of us supposedly could not. Her social awkwardness was cast as purity. From the start, she was denied the ordinary messiness of youth. No room for uncertainty, no space to stumble, no chance to figure things out without the world watching. There were no years of trial and error, only slogans, superficiality, and scripts. She wasn’t raised. She was constructed. Greta became a pawn in adult ambitions before she ever had the chance to be a teenager. And now, she’s trapped, not just publicly, but developmentally. There’s no path out of the role she was assigned. She can’t evolve, can’t step back, and can’t show doubt, because doubt would crack the mythology. Growth would threaten the brand. Every appearance must top the last. Every stance must be louder, starker, more “historic”. Climate, capitalism, Gaza, colonialism — every issue fashioned into an end-times narrative. The machine she rides runs on moral absolutism, and if she slows down, it leaves her behind. Her parents should be ashamed — not just for allowing it, but for facilitating it. They didn’t protect her from the spotlight; they handed her to it.

And the worst part? She’s not even the main beneficiary. The NGOs, the think tanks, the activist collectives — they are. They need their martyr. They need their icon. Because an adult saying these things would be just another angry activist. But a child, frozen in time, still radiating that wounded urgency from 2018 sells.

But she’s not a child. In 2023, before she settled into her new role as an antisemite, Ezra Levant wrote, “Greta Thunberg, you know the name. She’s a young lady, a girl, really. And she is the face of the climate movement. Except the thing is, she’s not actually that young anymore. I mean, listen, I wish I was just 20 like she is, but she is 20. That’s not a teenager anymore. It’s certainly not a girl. Although meeting her in person today reminded me of how physically small she is. And I don’t know if it’s a medical condition or just a particularly unique look, but she truly looks like someone who is 12 or 13.”

She’s now 22. Since yesterday was the anniversary was D-Day, it’s worth mentioning who else was that age: “The average age of a soldier landing on Normandy was just 22.”

They were most definitely men. And despite that moon face, Greta no longer gets to play the permanent child victim role anymore.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 120

CAN CALIFORNIA GET ANYTHING RIGHT? More California Bar Exam Chaos. “More than 200 people who took California’s disastrous February bar exam will go from failing to passing under a new round of grading changes approved on Friday, boosting the test’s overall pass rate from 56% to 63% — nearly double the state’s historical average of 35%.”

Posted at 12:14 pm by Glenn Reynolds 92

CURIOUS:

Posted at 8:42 am by Glenn Reynolds 298