Links - 19th October 2024 (2 - Harris-Walz)

Carmine Sabia on X - "If you believe the most unpopular vice president in the history of the United States became America's Sweetheart in two weeks, congrats. You are the mark the mainstream media was looking for."

Meme - "SHE WENT FROM THE MOST UNPOPULAR VP IN HISTORY TO THEIR SHINING STAR IN 2 WEEKS. WITHOUT AN INTERVIEW, PRESS CONFERENCE, DEBATE, OR A POSITION ON ANY ISSUES. AND THIS IS WHY WE CALL WE THEM SHEEP."

Monica Crowley on X - "Kamala thought she’d hang w/ Oprah & other celebs, shoot the breeze & giggle her way through softballs. But she panicked & we got this trainwreck. Even Oprah was like WTF. She’s a total mess."

Tim Young on X - "The audience laughed at Kamala when she told Don Lemon that she thinks t*rrorists and people on death row should have the right to vote... This is why they avoided a primary... she's a joke."

Bad Hombre on X - "Tim Walz: “We can’t afford four more years of this.” Kamala is in office right now. She’s the “this”"

Eric Daugherty on X - "KAMALA: We have to guard that spirit. Let it always inspire us. Let it always be the source of our optimism - which is that spirit which is so uniquely American. And let that then inspire us by helping us to be inspired to help solve the problems."

Meme - johnny maga @_johnnymaga: "Tim Walz is now filming videos pretending that he's working on his truck to appeal to "regular white dudes."   He simply pulls out his air filter and puts it back in place without even changing it, then starts talking about Project 2025.   Pure theater."

Meme - Tim Walz: "How do you do, fellow blue collars?"

Kamala Harris' intentional lack of clarity on Israel raises red flags - "Amid her many flip-flops and reversals, nowhere are the vice president’s opinions more convoluted and confusing than on Israel. Harris insists Israel has a right to self-defense — but continually complains that the Jewish state is doing it wrong... The Harris team immediately put up its own ads, microtargeting the very same Michigan Zip codes as Future Coalition PAC, to play up her comments on the suffering in Gaza. “What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” a somber Harris says in one of the spots. “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.” Microtargeting of this kind — especially when trying to deliver vastly different messages to different groups — might have worked in the pre-Internet world. But now any micro message can be easily shared across social media so anyone can see it. It’s not that a presidential candidate can’t support Israel while also feeling sorry for the Gazans (at least those who aren’t Hamas operatives). But war is hell, and when a friendly democracy is battling for its very survival after a brutal terror attack, the correct response is to stand with our ally. Harris claims to do that — while sending a very different message to voters in heavily Arab Zip codes. Worse, she’s blaming Israel for the deaths of innocents as it fights an enemy that strategically hides behind its own civilians. The high casualty rate is the point for Hamas, to get tender-hearted Westerners to pressure Israel to back off. The strategy appears to have succeeded with the Democratic presidential nominee. The Harris campaign’s disingenuousness proves she’s no friend to Israel. As with most of Harris’ positions, we can’t quite know where she really stands. She opposed the border wall, she supports the border wall. She opposed fracking, she supports fracking. She wanted to defund the police, now she doesn’t. And so on. On top of that, in her rare interviews, she never bothers to explain her ever-shifting beliefs; we find out second- or third-hand. For instance, we learned from unnamed “campaign officials” in July that Harris no longer supports eliminating private health insurance, or a mandatory gun-buyback program. It would have been nice to hear about these fundamental policy changes from the candidate herself. For Israel, these drifts between positions can mean life or death — and the unknowns presented by a President Harris could be catastrophic... The trouble with using a whisper network to communicate a presidential candidate’s critical stances is that we don’t know what’s true. Sources might be right. Or they might be wrong. And the ambiguity is deliberate. Kamala Harris’ political ambition has her talking out of both sides of her mouth. Voters deserve to know what she really believes — on Israel, and on everything else, too."

Kamala Harris wants to move on from Kamala Harris? We couldn't agree more - "Kamala Harris wants to move on from the “failed policies” of … Kamala Harris and her current boss, Joe Biden? This was the bizarre line of attack the vice president used at a speech to the Economic Club of Pittsburgh: “We just need to move past the failed policies that we have proven don’t work.”... Harris somehow figures she can pretend she hasn’t been in power for the last four years (it helps that much of the media let her get away with it)... She’s plainly trying to slam Donald Trump for these failed policies — though on the evidence, he delivered vastly better results: a world-class economy and far less global conflict. In other words, Harris is ordering voters to vote for her opponent. That’s been a theme of her veep pick, Gov. Tim Walz, too: At a rally last Saturday, he railed, “We can’t afford four more years of this.”"

Harris' 'Opportunity Economy' a wrecking ball of fed control - "Former President Donald Trump this week denounced Kamala Harris as a “one-woman economic wrecking ball,” and that sure fits her plans to create an “Opportunity Economy.” Her vision to radically transform American life bizarrely presumes that politicians are benevolent, bureaucrats are competent, and there’s never any cost for government giveaways or debacles. In a Pittsburgh speech and an MSNBC interview Wednesday, Harris portrayed socialistic political control over the private sector as the key to economic progress. She promised to “engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation” — but didn’t mention that FDR practically copied Mussolini’s economic policies verbatim. Harris is calling for “equity,” which she defines as equal results: “Some people need more so we all end up in the same place.” How much more? It’s a secret. Which groups receive more? It’s a secret. The only certainty in her Opportunity Economy — a term absurdly capitalized as a branding effort throughout her slapped-together online platform — is that politicians will determine who gets what. Bureaucrats will be like football referees who continually move the goalposts and boundary lines. And anyone who complains about the rigged game will be castigated as an enemy of fairness or the woke hobgoblin of the week. To understand how Harris’ Opportunity Society would function, recall President Biden’s federal student debt scam. Biden announced a $500 billion student-loan-forgiveness scheme shortly before the 2022 congressional elections, hoping to buy votes for Democratic candidates, but the Supreme Court struck down the plan as an illegal abuse of power. Biden boasted he’d ignore the court’s ruling and issued one new loan forgiveness ploy after another, despite more judicial rebuffs. His debt schemes sought to compel plumbers and ditch diggers to pay off loans for the benefit of lawyers and doctors. The founders included a Bill of Rights in the Constitution because politicians are notorious for foul play. But traditional American protections for individuals will be decimated if they impede Kamala’s grandiose plans. “Due process” will simply be any process that government does to people. Harris’ Opportunity Economy will maximize grandstanding and minimize legality. For a prototype, look to the federal harassment of the Sheetz convenience-store chain. Sheetz, like many businesses, uses criminal background checks to hire staff for its 600-plus outlets. In April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Sheetz for violating the rights of job applicants who failed such checks. The EEOC — which itself uses background checks in hiring — claims the common procedure violates civil-rights law, because black men’s imprisonment rate is nearly seven times higher than that of white men, restricting their chances of landing a Sheetz job. To assure all job seekers “end up in the same place,” the EEOC would effectively make it a federal crime for businesses to refuse to hire ex-convicts. But the agency offered no evidence that Sheetz had shown bias against any particular applicant, or violated any law passed by Congress — only that it had run afoul of the EEOC’s lawless enforcement guidance. Harris urges Americans to be “unburdened by what has been” — especially, it seems, the disastrous record of past federal boondoggles. She wants to give $25,000 grants to favored first-time home buyers, even though similar Bush-era handouts, along with a deluge of subprime mortgages and reckless home-loan policies, led to the 2008 housing crash that slashed in half the median net worth of black and Hispanic households: “Wrecking-ball benevolence,” as I’ve called it. The Harris Opportunity Economy rests upon faith in modern monetary theory, which presumes gushers of free government funding can solve every problem. It’s irrelevant that young Americans will be financially skewered to service the $35 trillion (and counting) federal debt, as long as voters fail to connect foolish federal policies to their personal financial struggles. Those who expect the Opportunity Economy to boost prosperity will be cruelly disappointed. But that won’t matter, because Harris’ policies will produce “equity” — based on secret, ever-changing White House definitions. If claims of equity don’t fly, “social justice” can provide a default victory lap. And if the policies fail to benefit any favored minority or newly discovered gender group, they’ll be surefire fixes for “climate change.” Harris portrays Uncle Sam as a cornucopia, but what about all the real-world opportunities that government destroyed in recent years? Scores of thousands of businesses were bankrupted by the COVID lockdowns that began in 2020. Tens of millions of children have never academically recovered from the school shutdowns championed by Democrats and extended by the Biden administration. Millions of American families remain ravaged by the inflation unleashed since 2021. Harris justifies sweeping new federal interventions to achieve “equity.” But in her Opportunity Economy, every American would be further subjugated to Washington. Endless vote-buying schemes will be an economic wrecking ball, unleashing perpetual political warfare guaranteed to make America poorer."

KanekoaTheGreat on X - "NEW: Joe Rogan and Chamath discuss how Biden, Harris, and the Democrats have allowed over 10 million people to enter the country illegally in the past 3.5 years to secure future Democrat voters.
ROGAN: "The flying people in and the utilization of an app to fly people in, that seems insane... This incentivized effort to move people into this country illegally will undoubtedly bring in people that you don't want here: gang members, cartel members, and terrorists. That's real, and we've documented that."
CHAMATH: "I think that Donald Trump has had a clearer view of this issue for much longer. I think that Kamala has had to shift her position to make herself more palatable to centrists."
ROGAN: "@elonmusk has talked about this. The real fear is that they're bringing these people in to give them a clear path to citizenship, which will allow them to vote, and then you've essentially bought their vote. They're giving them EBT cards. They're giving them housing. They're giving them things that they're not giving to veterans and poor people in this country... If you give them the opportunity to vote, they're going to vote for the party that got them to America."
The Biden-Harris administration took 94 executive actions in their first 100 days that decimated border security:
• Paused Deportations
• Suspended "Remain in Mexico"
• Stopped Border Wall Construction
Since these policy changes, over 10 million people have illegally entered the country, with millions more slipping past border patrol undetected."

Jack Poso 🇺🇸 on X - "BREAKING: Kamala just called for "PATHWAYS TO CITIZENSHIP" for the millions of illegals here in America She wants mass amnesty"

Trish Regan on X - "OMG. Seriously, America…We have officially hit rock bottom with the DNC putting this woman up for President. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone SO ill informed on economics in a position of power in my lifetime."
"and assistance to state and local governments around transit dollars, and looking holistically at the connection between that and housing, and looking holistically at the incentives we in the federal government can create for local and state governments to actually engage in planning in a holistic manner that includes prioritizing affordable housing for working people."
Gad Saad on X - "No human with the possible exception of @justintrudeau  has ever been able to create a meaningless concatenation of gibberish as well as @kamalaharris .  She should be studied by neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and linguists.  She converses using a form of empty sounds that appear to be words yet they NEVER communicate anything of substance.  In this sense, her lobotomy is a form of brilliance."

Scott Adams on X - "Is Harris a smart and capable candidate who is often inebriated in public or is she an idiot? Or is she an inebriated idiot? Don't tell me you haven't noticed."

Andy Ngo 🏳️‍🌈 on X - "CNN reporter to a child in a classroom: “What’s the first word that pops into your head when you hear the name Kamala Harris?”"
"Liar"

Dustin Grage on X - "The single most astroturfed Presidential campaign in modern U.S. history. The stunning endorsement that “normally backs Trump?” They are referring to the Police Leaders for Community Safety, which was founded in March of THIS YEAR. It’s a fake group."

‘Leading’ Police Group Backing Harris Actually Run By Dem Political Operative - "Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign bragged on Monday that a “leading” law enforcement group had endorsed Harris, however, the organization is only a few months old and is run by a veteran Democratic political operative.  Police Leaders for Community Safety, which endorsed Harris on Sept. 23, only launched publicly on June 11, according to a press release from the group. A registration document filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) indicates that the organization is led by Gail Hoffman, a long-time Democratic staffer who worked on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign as director of surrogates and in the Clinton administration in various high-level roles, according to a biography on her website.  Hoffman has never worked for a police agency, per her biography... The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest law enforcement interest group, took issue with framing Police Leaders for Community Safety as a “leading” organization...   The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed former President Donald Trump on Sept. 6, according to a press release. Police Leaders for Community Safety claimed to be “the only national police leadership organization that endorses candidates for political office” when announcing its support of Harris."... Police Leaders for Community Safety justified its nonpartisan bona fides in its statement to the DCNF, claiming that it is “comprised of Democrats, Republicans and independents” and that its endorsements are “based on issues of concern to law enforcement leaders, not on parties.”  All five of the people sitting on the organization’s board of directors, which includes Hoffman, are either Democrats or have a history of making liberal statements. Despite this, Police Leaders for Community Safety describes itself as a “nonpartisan national advocacy organization.”...   “Police Leaders for Community Safety is the only national police leadership organization that endorses candidates for political office, and this is the group’s first endorsement,” the group’s endorsement of Harris reads. “This and future endorsements will be based on candidates’ alignment on issues vital to law enforcement.”  Harris praised the defund the police movement multiple times in 2020."

Western Lensman on X - "Actress Julia Luis Dreyfuss: I don’t know anything about the issues, but I have strong opinions on who should be president, because feels, kindness and other stuff I struggle to articulate. The Hollywood lib political worldview explained in 30 seconds:"

Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives on X - "🔥🚨BREAKING NEWS: Recovered footage from a 2004 ABC segment shows Kamala Harris, actively working with the Santa Barbra police trying to destroy Michael Jackson’s life and send him to jail while Donald Trump defended Michael. Michael Jackson was another victim of Kamala Harris who was later vindicated on all charges and proven innocent. Click the YouTube video in the post under this one for the full video."

Wall Street Apes on X - "I can’t believe what I just heard  🚨 The Kamala Harris Administration is allowing illegal migrants to present WARRANTS FOR THEIR ARRESTS as documentation to board airplanes to enter America  US Senator Josh Hawley to TSA Director “People who have done absolutely nothing wrong are law-abiding citizens in every respect are subject to the most invasive screenings at these airports, yet you're allowing illegal aliens to present warrants for arrest and waving them on to airplanes. How does that make sense?”"

Eric Abbenante on X - "Bret Stephens asks Stephanie Ruhle why Kamala Harris has not done interviews and stated clearly what her policy positions are. Ruhle responds that 'We don't live in Nirvana':
Bret Stephens: "I'm an undecided voter. I'm not sure I want to vote for Kamala. My fear is that she doesn't really have a very good command of what she wants to do as president. It would be great for her to sit down with you, or George Stephanopoulos, or you Stephanie.  It's not too much to ask Kamala 'Are you for a Palestinian state, if Hamas is going to run that state?'"
Stephanie Ruhle: "If you don't like her answer, are you going to vote for Trump? Kamala Harris is not running for perfect, she is running against Trump. We have two choices. There are some things that you might not know her answer too. In 2024, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy."
Bret Stephens: "The problem that a lot of people have with Kamala is that we don't know her answer to anything."
Ruhle: "But you know his answer to everything."
Stephens: "People also are expected to have some idea of what the program that you're supposed to vote for. I don't think it's a lot to ask for her to sit down for a real interview."
Ruhle: "When you move to Nirvana, I'll be your next door neighbor. We don't live there."
Stephanie Ruhle thinks it's 'utopian' to demand Kamala Harris go through the process that every other candidate for president has gone through, a public vetting process.  Turns out, Stephanie Ruhle and her ilk are the true 'threats to democracy'."

Meme - @Chicago1Ray: "The Amish are being harassed by the Govt in Pennsylvania, so their resolve is to get registered and vote for the candidate that is running to ensure their's and the American people's freedoms aren't stripped away THE AMISH ARE VOTING FOR TRUMP 100%"

Meme - Tulsi Gabbard: "Kamala says she believes in freedom, but I was put on a secret terror watch list after I publicly criticized her. No one will be safe from political retaliation under a Harris administration. I put my life on the line for this country. Now the government calls me a terror threat."

Dan Crenshaw on X - "This is a frightening philosophy. According to Harris, disaster aid should be based on race and gender, not how much water flooded your home. That’s insane."
Remarks by Vice President Harris During Fireside Chat with Priyanka Chopra Jonas | The White House - "it is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making... we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity; understanding that not everyone starts out at the same place.  And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work."

Charlie Kirk on X - "In newly unearthed video, Tim Walz BRAGS about overwhelming small-town America with migrants:  "We have more refugees per capita than any other state. That's not just morally a good thing, it's our economic and cultural future.   "This beautiful diversity we see out in Worthington when I’m there, you see 50 languages spoken in the school."  These useful idiots gloat as regular Americans suffer the destruction wrought by their ideology.   Cloward-Piven in action."

Meme - Seamus (FreedomToons) @seamus_coughlin: "Tim Walz only reminds liberals of a father figure because we've had 40 years of media that represents dads as goofy bumbling dorks  If he reminds you of your actual father, I can only offer you my condolences"
Peachy Keenan @KeenanPeachy: "America’s [ … ] Dad"

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Maybe after 248 years it would have been a good idea to nominate a smart and capable girl that we could give a try.   (Actually this isn't really fair because whatever you thought of Hilary's character and politics, few doubted that she lacked intelligence or competence. Kamala Harris is completely different matter though.)"
Amy Siskind: "Amen."
"Maybe after 248 years IT'S TIME.TO GIVE THE GIRLS A TRY"
Ironically, when Trump was first running, left wingers kept bashing him for being the first potential President to have neither military nor public office experience.

Meme - BoosterGold: ATX Irish Gal @Notmyfau...: "Oprah is pure evil. Asking people to donate to Maui. Then donates $150,000,000.00 to Kamala Harris"
"Hawaiians are still living like shit because this & administration still refuses to do anything about it. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump wins Hawaii"

BLAIRE WHITE on X - "Hot take, but I don't think voting for the party that's been in power for 12 of the last 16 years is going to bring you the "change" you're looking for."

Meme - Ben Shapiro: "Kamala Harris IS the current administration"
Girl: "Where is that written?"
Ben Shapiro: "In the name Biden-Harris Administration"

Harris Supporters Trying To Figure Out How To Convert Joy Into Groceries | Babylon Bee

Brigitte Gabriel on X - "First, it was build back better. Now, it's I will fix it on day 1."

Woman Who Made Career Singing About Her Bad Choices Endorses Kamala | Babylon Bee - "Pop icon Taylor Swift, who has written a veritable library of songs about her being a poor judge of character, made the announcement last night. "I know I'm internationally renowned for regretting every major decision in my life, but this choice will turn out different, I just know it," said Swift. "She's the one!" A longtime Democrat, Swift's songwriting is known for chronicling how each man she thought would be the one turned out to be a total scumbag, but she was too blind to see it. More recently, her writing has evolved to explaining how she's mentally unstable and makes terrible, destructive decisions about other things in her life outside of romantic relationships."

Meme - "YOU SUPPORT KAMALA HARRIS? TELL ME WHY YOU LIKE HER WITHOUT MENTIONING TRUMP, VANCE: REPUBLICANS, OR THE FACT SHE'S A WOMAN OF COLOR"

Meme - "KAMALA'S RECORD AS VICE PRESIDENT:
ALLOWED 15 MILLION UNVETTED ILLEGALS INTO AMERICA
DECLARED WAR ON AMERICAN ENERGY
COVERED UP BIDEN'S MENTAL DECLINE
TIE BREAKING VOTE ON POLICIES THAT LATER CAUSED HISTORIC INFLATION"

Meme *Venn diagram*
"DODGING
BULLETS: Trump
INTERVIEWS: Harris"

Meme - July 2024 - NPCs: "The economy is great under Biden"
August 2024 - NPCs: "Kamala is going to fix the economy"

Stephen L. Miller on X - "3 jump cut edits from .42 to .47"
Tim Murtaugh on X - "This might be the worst television interview by a candidate in U.S. presidential history.
Bill Whitaker: “You’ve changed your positions so much that no one believes anything.”
Harris: “Well, I’m the vice president and I travel a lot.”"

Kamala Harris's 60 Minutes interview was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness | The Spectator - "Somebody give Bill Whitaker a prize. In his 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which aired last night, the CBS correspondent did what no other journalist has successfully done since the Vice President was thrust to the top of the Democratic ticket: journalism. He asked Harris challenging questions about the matters voters care about most. He was civil, unaggressive, but professional enough to push her for clear answers. And Harris just couldn’t cope. Her performance was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness. On immigration, for instance, Whitaker asked Harris why the Biden-Harris administration had only recently started tackling the issue, after almost four years and an unprecedented surge in illegal border crossings. Harris robotically blamed Congress and Donald Trump, ‘who wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem so he told his buddies in Congress “kill the bill, don’t let it move forward”.’    Whitaker was not deterred. ‘But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration,’ he continued. ‘As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen immigration policies as much you do did?’   That caused the Harris-bot to malfunction. ‘It’s a long standing problem,’ she warbled. ‘And solutions are at hand and from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions…’ ... That’s Harris’s overwhelming weakness as a political candidate. She can talk in soundbites and managerial slogans about ‘solutions not problems’ but on issues of substance she can’t actually offer any solutions, which is a problem...   Moving awkwardly on, Whitaker turned to the economy, and again Harris offered only platitudes. ‘My plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses you invest in the middle class and you strengthen America’s economy,’ she said. ‘Small businesses are part of the backbone of America’s economy,” she restated. Quizzed on how America might fund her trillion-dollar spending plans, she said she would make the rich ‘pay their fair share.’ ‘We’re dealing with the real world here,’ said Whitaker. ‘How are you going to get this through Congress?’ Harris replied that she ‘cannot afford to be myopic…I am a public servant, I am also a capitalist’ – as if that clarified things...   Harris’s campaign recognises that a majority of Americans don’t feel they know or can trust Harris. That’s why she is now on what her team is calling a ‘media blitz’. But the clarity never comes. On MSNBC last week, she used the word ‘holistic’ three times to describe her housing policy. At the weekend, she did the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast with Alex Cooper, who asked how it feels to be attacked for being childless and why men get to decide what women do with their bodies. Harris was comfortable spluttering bromides in response. When confronted by a serious journalist asking serious questions, however, she melts.   In the hours before the 60 Minutes interview aired, the betting markets spiked in Donald Trump’s favour. Gamblers understand that the more voters see of Harris, the less they hear, and that’s an issue which is only going to worsen in the last three weeks of her campaign"

Links - 19th October 2024 (1 - Migrants)

Meme - *Migrant at border fence*
Man: "Look's like another illegal alien..."
Woman: "If you'd just let them in they wouldn't be illegal"
Woman: "HELP HE'S TRYING TO RAPE ME"
Man: "But if you just gave him consent it wouldn't be rape??"

David Atherton on X - "The ONS publishes figures on unemployment.
Muslims -51.4% have jobs -48.6% are reliant on family or the state
Christians -73% -27%
Jews -72.6% -27.4%
Hindus -72.4% -27.6%
No wonder the pension ages are rising."
Mass migration is the way to keep the welfare state sustainable

Trump accuses Kamala Harris of 'killing' Black 'heritage' with her historic candidacy - "Trump lashed out at "[i]llegal Migrants who are POURING INTO OUR COUNTRY, in record numbers, are taking the JOBS away from Black and Hispanic people who have held them for years."... economists said that he was wrong.  "The claim is absolutely not true," Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute Action told ABC News. "The bottom line is immigrants aren't pushing out Black workers," University of Massachusetts at Boston professor Christian Weller said."
Immigration and the Economic Status of African‐American Men - "The employment rate of black men, and particularly of low-skilled black men, fell precipitously between 1960 and 2000. At the same time, their incarceration rate rose. This paper examines the relation between immigration and these trends in employment and incarceration. Using data from the 1960–2000 US censuses, we find that a 10% immigration-induced increase in the supply of workers in a particular skill group reduced the black wage of that group by 2.5%, lowered the employment rate by 5.9 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate by 1.3 percentage points."
Weird. We keep being told that immigration doesn't reduce jobs for natives

Share of foreign-born in the U.S. at highest rate in more than a century, says survey - "The share of people born outside the United States increased in 2023 to 14.3% from 13.9% in 2022, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey... The rate of the foreign-born population in the United States hasn’t been this high since 1910 when it was 14.7%"

Is Germany’s far right about to go mainstream? | The Spectator - "violent crime is escalating. In Berlin alone, burglaries are up by a third in a year. Serious bodily harm is at an all-time high and police say that 40 per cent of all crime suspects are foreign nationals. Police are calling for extra tools to handle a new wave of knife crime from a new type of criminal. There is plenty to point to for those arguing that Germany’s economic and political models are broken."

Germany to bring back checks at all borders amid migration debate - "German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has ordered passport controls to be resumed along all German land borders in a bid to sharply curb the number of people entering the country without visas, government sources told dpa on Monday. The border controls will go into effect on September 16 and are initially expected to remain in place for six months, sources said... North Rhine-Westphalia's Premier Hendrik Wüst welcomed the additional checks at all German land borders ordered by Faeser. As long as the EU's external borders are not protected, it must be possible to protect the internal borders, Wüst said... All of Germany's neighbours are fellow members of the Schengen Zone, which is normally supposed to allow control-free travel across all borders inside the bloc. But in October 2023, Germany has already resumed some border controls along its frontiers with Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Poland to deter the movement of migrants into Germany. Those border checks are officially on a temporary basis but have been repeatedly extended by Berlin. Similar controls on the border with Austria have been temporarily in place since September 2015... Some proposals discussed in recent weeks include denying entry to undocumented foreigners or those who have already filed a request for asylum in another country. Bavaria's conservative state premier, Markus Söder, reiterated demands that German guards turn away migrants at the borders in a speech on Monday to local political leaders. "We must massively reduce immigration," Söder said. "This must be solved now." Söder also called for large-scale efforts to deport people from Germany whose asylum claims have been denied or who otherwise have no right to remain in the country. At a separate event on Monday, Finance Minister Christian Lindner also argued that the government has a responsibility to deliver solutions on migration. Lindner, who leads the free-market liberal Free Democrats (FDP), said it is of "paramount interest" that a cross-party solution be found to manage migration into Germany."
Clearly, they are re-erecting the Berlin Wall. Fascism must be stopped!

Meme - Andy Craig @AndrewRCraig: "There is no humane, pretty, sanitized way to enforce closed borders. Unjustly using violence against peaceful people is inherent to anything other than letting people cross borders freely. Reminds me of the efforts to sanitize the death penalty. Most people are rightly repulsed by the idea of using guillotines or a bullet to the back of the head... but they're horrified by the honesty of it, and deceived by the idea that pseudo-medicalizing it makes it any better. Hiding closed borders enforcement behind paperwork and bureaucrats might be less visceral than men on horseback screaming at innocent, desperate people fleeing in terror. But that's just obscuring the violence, not stopping it."
If you're against open borders, you're a fascist
This applies to the legal system too. But left wingers hate the police, so

Thread by @sam_bidwell on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "In recent years, asylum applications to the UK have skyrocketed - in 2023 alone, 84,425 people applied for asylum here.  But many of these applications come from safe, stable countries.  A 🧵 on some of the countries that the UK received asylum applications from in 2023...
First - the UK does not need to have an asylum system.  The system is designed to accommodate a small number of low-impact individuals from repressive or unstable countries.  It is not a tool for economic migration, or a means to escape criminal justice.
In 2023, the UK received 5,682 asylum applications from India 🇮🇳  India is widely regarded as a safe, stable, and democratic country. It is a key economic and diplomatic partner of the UK. Millions of foreign tourists visit India each year without incident.
In 2023, the UK received 4,542 asylum applications from Albania 🇦🇱  Albania is a safe, stable, European country. Though its democracy is imperfect, the country is widely regarded as democratic. There is no ongoing civil or political conflict in Albania.
In 2023, the UK received 4,419 asylum applications from Turkey 🇹🇷  Turkey is an imperfect democracy with a relatively high level of civil liberty. It is a key economic and military ally of the UK - in 2023, 3.8 million Britons visited Turkey, most without incident.
In 2023, the UK received 2,469 asylum applications from Vietnam 🇻🇳  Though undemocratic, Vietnam is a safe, stable country that hosts millions of foreign tourists each year. The UK is the only European country which accepts Vietnamese asylum applications.
In 2023, the UK received 2,198 asylum applications from Sri Lanka 🇱🇰  Though the country has suffered economic difficulties in recent years, Sri Lanka is a safe country with some degree of democracy. The country has been at peace since the end of its civil war in 2009.
In 2023, the UK received 2,175 asylum applications from Brazil 🇧🇷  Though Brazil suffers a high level of petty criminality, it is a stable and consistently democratic country with no ongoing civil or military conflicts. Millions of tourists visit Brazil each year.
In 2023, the UK received 1,408 asylum applications from Georgia 🇬🇪  Georgia is a safe, stable, and largely democratic country. It is home to a growing international tourist industry, and is rated as free or mostly free by the majority of international observers.
In 2023, the UK received 1,180 asylum applications from Namibia 🇳🇦  Namibia is one of the safest, most stable, and most democratic countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It has no ongoing civil or military unrest, and no ongoing conflicts.
In 2023, the UK received 627 asylum applications from Botswana 🇧🇼  Botswana is arguably the most stable and developed country in sub-Saharan Africa. It has had no coups, no civil wars, and no conflicts since independence in 1966. It is rated 'high' on the Human Development Index.
In 2023, the UK received 359 asylum applications from the Philippines 🇵🇭  Though an imperfect democracy, the Philippines is widely regarded as democratic - most of the country is safe and stable. The country is rated 'partly free' by Freedom House and it is highly developed.
In 2023, the UK received 353 asylum applications from Trinidad & Tobago 🇹🇹  The Caribbean island nation is safe, stable, and democratic. It is one of the most developed countries in the Americas, and has no outstanding civil or military unrest.
In 2023, the UK received 352 asylum applications from Morocco 🇲🇦  Though an imperfect democracy, most Moroccans enjoy a high degree of social and political freedom. The country is relatively safe and stable, barring the low-level conflict in Western Sahara.
In 2023, the UK received 344 asylum applications from Malaysia 🇲🇾  Though an imperfect democracy, Malaysia is widely regarded as relatively safe, stable, and democratic. It is well-developed, and a close economic partner of the UK.
It gets weirder.  In 2023, the UK received 413 asylum applications from members of the European Union 🇪🇺  This includes 126 applications from Poland, 61 applications from Romania, 45 applications from Hungary, and 34 applications from the Czech Republic 🇵🇱🇷🇴🇭🇺🇨🇿
And there are also a number of applications from other safe, stable, democratic countries.  This includes 104 from the United States 🇺🇸, 57 from Jamaica 🇯🇲, 18 from Chile 🇨🇱, 9 from Singapore 🇸🇬, 8 from Canada 🇨🇦, and 7 from Japan 🇯🇵
Plainly, our asylum system is not working.  The UK receives thousands of spurious applications from safe, stable, democratic countries on an annual basis - one might reasonably question the motives behind these applications. If the UK Government wants to continue offering asylum status, it should massively expand the list of countries considered 'safe' by default, and outright ban applications from other developed Western countries.  Why is taxpayer resource being spent on processing these claims?  This is plainly absurd.  If you want to check out these figures yourself, you can find them at the link below.  It's the 'Asylum applications, initial decisions and resettlement detailed datasets, year ending June 2024' dataset."

MichaeloKeeffe on X - "- Be Irish
- Enjoy quiet, peaceful life in rural Ireland
- One day government says hundreds of strange foreign men will be planted in your community
- You protest
- Get beaten and pepper sprayed
- Media calls you racist
- Huge fences
- Masked foreign men
- Life is never the same"

Convicted rapist from Guadeloupe jailed in France for attempted rape of 102-year-old nursing home resident - "the Seine-Maritime Assize Court found 39-year-old Laury Jean-Baptiste guilty of the offense, which occurred on Feb. 17, 2023 in the Sapins district of the city.  The court heard how the elderly victim had been found in an adjacent room to her own in the early hours of the morning in shock and with scratches on her forearms, face, and lower abdomen.  She told carers that a man had attempted to rape her while she lay in bed but she had managed to resist and cause him to panic and flee.  Sadly, the victim passed away less than a month after the attack.   CCTV footage from the home confirmed the intrusion of a tall male of slim build, leading police to the suspect who was due to complete a personal assistance internship at the home.  Further investigations found positive traces of the suspect’s DNA on the victim’s clothing, bed, and the window ledge to her room, which is believed to be how he had gained access...   Up until his trial, the suspect denied the attempted rape charge, initially claiming to have been at his former girlfriend’s house on the night of the attack, before later changing his story to accepting his presence at the home but insisting he was simply trying to find a place to store his belongings.  His story changed further still this week in court, telling the judge: “I confused the lady with my 58-year-old lover that I had already come to see at night — a secret relationship.  Speaking about the encounter, he added, “I lay down next to her. I caressed her. She was afraid, I was panicked. I left without brutality. I like it when relationships are sensual. I was not erect, my penis was not in the mood.”...   A psychiatric report provided to the court found no psychiatric disorders but a significant criminological dangerousness within the suspect who was described as “perverse.” The expert added that the suspect has “below-average intelligence.”  He told the court he endured a difficult upbringing, claiming that his mother had been particularly violent and practiced witchcraft with animal carcasses."

Meme - Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: "We can deny them these rights/privileges/opportunities, both "morally" and logically, because giving these to often-hostile strangers would be bad for the people in the country now - to whom we clearly owe a greater duty.   That's it."
Theo Jordan @Theo_TJ_Jordan: "Critical Immigration Theory is here!"
The New York Times: "None of Us Deserve Citizenship. On what moral grounds can we deny others rights, privileges and opportunities that we did not earn ourselves? By Michelle Alexander Opinion Columnist"

Rebecca Mistereggen on X - "A migrant in his 20s threatened to perform jihad if he couldn’t import his wife to Norway. 🤡  — In several of the e-mails, he threatened to carry out serious acts of violence against police officers and expressed a desire to "commit jihad" if he was arrested or imprisoned by the police, if his spouse was not allowed to come to Norway and as revenge for the injustice he believed PST and the police had committed against him, the indictment states.  The man in his 20s wrote over 90 e-mails to Oslo Police District, PST and the Correctional Service between December last year and April this year."

Heba Gowayed هبة جويد on X - "My father sat me down and began to explain.He started to talk about the Japanese internment camps, how people who had nothing to do with anything became imprisoned. It was the first time it dawned on me how race worked, how conditional our safety was. 4/"
wanye on X - "The progressive position is that race is primary, that minority groups exist always on a tightrope, that racism is pervasive and ineradicable, and that immigrants will never fully be accepted or safe in the countries they immigrate to...but also that this is *not* an argument against immigration. Like, this person appears to be way more pessimistic about integration than I am. And yet I'm sure they'd never accept a characterization of their position as a downside of immigration, though quite plainly it has to be."
Mullet Matthew on X - "Beautiful beautiful point, so it’s not integration they want, it’s something else"

Meme - "Flashback: Saruman the Diverse explaining to Uruk-hai children the amazing life they could have in Gondor"

Meme - "The Shire ranked as the Least Orc Friendly Place in the West, Again. Thromgar Littlejewelfiddler. The Shire may be relatively quaint, but first impression is deceiving. Behind facade of carefree cheerfulness hides a monstrous face of orcophobia. An appaling sight presents itself for any foreign visitor: flocks of vile, ignorant countryside Hobbits. Both blissfully comfortable and unperturbed, they don't seem appear to be ashamed of existing in a bubble. An urgent task force is needed to introduce the light of civilisation to these wicked creatures - without it, the Shire will not survive.
Trending Now: Border skirmishes in Gondor escalate in a bout of orcophobic violence, Men of the West are to blame"

Meme - Daily Gondor: "Elf-right is surging throughout Middle-earth. Can a ban stop it?
Throdrir Goldmountain
Despite being only a small percentage of the population, the elves are responsible for torrent of orcophobia. Is it moral to exterminate an irre- deemable species, only capable of violence and grief? Saruman says "Yes."
Ugly, deformed maws twisted in a hateful grimace - wickedness of elves contrasts sharply with nobility of Orcs, the word we capitalise to make Orcs look more important than elves.
Trending Now: Hobbit's "hurt feelings" not an excuse for rudeness: a Nazgul knight opens up about the traumatic encounter in the Shire, where unwelcoming residents caused "sorrow and distress" to the warrior."

Meme - "You will die screaming and you will be happy
Karzan Goldnose
Ambitious plans for development of local communities aim to bring nicer, cleaner world for those who get to live
The elf-right and alt-rohirrim may question our right to decide what happens in their lands and with their people, but luckily nobody is going to ask them
"If you're a man or an elf, your life will change. In this utopian, idyllic future you will never need to work, worry, fight or pay taxes. You will never have to endure of inconveniences of so-called "orc raids" because you will stop existing and make space to the servants of Sauron, We all agree that's a small price to pay for a better future for us all."

Meme - ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 @kunley_drukpa: "“And how is Italy reducing refugee numbers?”
“We’re deporting them”
“So you’re opening more direct routes for asylum seekers?”
“No we’re deporting them”
“Processing claims in country?”
“Offshore and then deporting them”
“You’re resettling them in rural communities, I see”"
The Telegraph @Telegraph: "Sir Keir Starmer is to fly to Italy this weekend to see how Giorgia Meloni's government has more than halved the number of illegal migrant crossings this year"

Meme - Klaus Arminius @Klaus_Arminius: "A German friend whose grandparents emigrated to Argentina had his settlement application for Germany rejected.  The same happened with an Italian friend who had his settlement application for Italy rejected.  Meanwhile, both Germany and Italy accepted millions of Africans, Indians and Arabs."
"My Argentinian friend today had his settlement application for #italy rejected. He is a ground engineer; and Italian too. His grandparents went to Argentina in the 1940s. He told me he is one of 9 Argentinians who had their applications rejected today. How African and Arab migrants did Italy take in so-far this month?"

I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 on X - "HOLY FVCK! A cop tells a citizen who is reporting a crime committed by an immigrant:
"I've arrested a double homicide suspect in this city before, I let him walk out the door because we're sanctuary city. We do not report illegals, undocumented immigrants."
CITIZEN: "So you're gonna let a person who went to prison, he committed crime in America, who's illegal right now, you re gonna let him go free right now?"
OFFICER: "That's exactly what I'm saying because we are sanctuary city"
This is going to be Harris’ America!"
Erich Hartmann on X - "I lived in Long Island City in 2000, and woke up one night to a series of horrific crashes on the street. A blind-drunk illegal immigrant had crashed into almost every car on the block, all of my neighbors (legal immigrants) came outside as the cops simply let the perp go 🤷"

I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 on X - "NEW: Shelter for illegal aliens causes disturbances in NYC neighborhood.  Neighbors in a Queens community say they are tired of loud music, garbage and kids hanging out in the streets late at night, keeping them up.  The building they live in is right next to a hotel that was turned into a shelter for illegal aliens in Long Island City.  If you import a third-world country, you become a third-world country. Remember this in November and vote for Trump if you want this madness to stop."

Tom Rowsell on X - "NEW STUDY: 33 samples from rural Roman era Cambridgeshire show "homogeneity in their North/West European ancestry"..."we find no evidence of long-distance migration from the Mediterranean  region among the 33 imputed genomes from Roman Cambridgeshire"  Paternal lineages were also indigenous, all deriving from the Bronze Age Beaker Folk except one man with I1  (NWC010) and a single G2a (DUX006) lineage both of which likely arrived before the Roman period.   The Romans did not leave a genetic mark on the Britons. Only a few Roman cosmopolitan areas like York had foreigners and they didn't leave a genetic legacy here."
Low Genetic Impact of the Roman Occupation of Britain in Rural Communities

Nebraska community in 'uproar' after two illegal Honduran migrants kill American bald eagle - "The sheriff's office cited Ramiro Hernandez-Tziquin, 20 and Domingo Zetino-Hernandez, 20, both of Norfolk, Nebraska, for unlawful possession of the eagle, a misdemeanor, which is the 'most we can do,' Unger said. Killing is bald eagle is a violation of the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, a federal law that carries a punishment of up to one year in prison, a $100,000 fine, or both, for a first offense, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. But the federal authorities must bring those charges, Unger said, adding that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has not responded to him... An investigation revealed that the men, who were both nationals from Honduras, had shot and killed the eagle and had said they planned on cooking and eating it. Unger said the eagle was shot on private property, which upset the property owners, who had called the authorities to report the suspicious vehicle... While the men were only cited for unlawful possession of the eagle, causing an uproar in the community, Unger said more serious charges are possible. 'People locally that I've talked to are quite upset, and they wish for something to be done. And the federal government is the one that really has the authority and the ability to prosecute these gentlemen to the highest degree,' he said. 'I have tried [to call] numerous times and I have yet to speak to a human.'... The eagle had been shot with an airsoft rifle that Unger said could have been bought with cash and that an ID was not needed to purchase the weapon. 'Again, people locally that I've talked to are quite upset, and they wish something could be done,' he said. 'And the federal government is the one that really has the authority and the ability to prosecute these gentlemen to the highest degree.'"
Clearly, Haitians would never do similar things in Ohio
When the federal government doesn't care about the effects of the migrant crisis

Meme - "10 heartbreaking photos that will make you give up having a border, a country and let the entire third world move into your neighborhood"

Meme - ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 @kunley_drukpa: "TFW when the German Right just won their biggest electoral victory since the end of World War 2 so you try and de-escalate the situation by… ‘welcoming 250,000 semi-skilled Kenyans’ to Germany but then suddenly you hear people playing Gigi D’Agostino songs outside the Reichstag"
Disclose.tv @disclosetv: "JUST IN - Germany to welcome 250,000 "skilled and semi-skilled Kenyan workers" in labor deal — BBC"

158 House Dems vote against deporting illegal migrants convicted of sex crimes - "Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., on Wednesday called out over 150 of her Democratic colleagues for voting against her bill to deport migrants convicted of sex crimes.  The measure, titled the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to make those who commit sex crimes inadmissible and deportable. It passed the House Wednesday, but was not unanimously supported by all lawmakers.  “158 Left-wing members of Congress just voted against deporting rapists, pedophiles and murderers of women and kids,” Rep. Mace wrote via X. Among those voting no were Reps. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., Cori Bush, D-Mo., Ayanna Pressley, D-Ma., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.  Supporting the bill were 51 Democrats. All 215 present Republicans voted in favor... voting against it was Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., who described the legislation as an attempt to "scapegoat and fearmonger about immigrants."... The bill comes as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials continue to announce the arrests of migrants accused of sex crimes. The agency this month announced the arrest of a Guatemalan national accused of raping a Massachusetts resident."

Links - 18th October 2024 (2 - Get Woke, Go Broke)

Meme - *Say the line, Bart*
GAME DEVS: "IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, DONT BUY IT."
GAMERS: *Cheering*

Konami Deletes Post Announcing 'Silent Hill 2' Remake Was Designed For "Modern Audiences" - "At the end of May, Konami published a post on X, that has since been deleted, where it announced, “See how the Bloober Team devs working on SILENT HILL 2 preserved authenticity while adapting a horror classic for modern audiences.”...  a rumor from YouTuber Endymion indicated that video game developers would attempt to hide the woke propaganda by no longer marketing it publicly.  He shared, “According to my sources — and this was one of the most damning allegations so please listen carefully here — is that the game industry across plenty of studios will start to market their games as being devoid of identity politics and pandering almost completely.”  “However, the actual content within these games in the future will not be altered or lessened in terms of identity political content despite this tonal change in marketing,” he continued. “Simply put many studios and publishers are still all in on DEI and wokeness in the future. Like, they are not changing that. And they still want you to consume this content whether you want to or not. But they will now sell you the games by marketing them to you to trick you into thinking that they’re not woke basically.”"

Over 95% of Players Don't Consider Inclusivity Important In Gaming - "95% of gamers voted they don’t care about inclusivity in gaming in a recent poll... Inclusivity has emerged as a proven culprit that ruins an entire game. We have had some clear examples in the last few years including Concord, Suicide Squad, and more, and the backlash from the fans was quite apparent. Now, inclusivity isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, it’s always good to see characters from different origins, genders, and races in a game, but what’s offsetting is the forced inclusivity narrative that pushes political agendas into gaming.   For context, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice introduced Mrs. Freeze in its last season. The character has a huge history in comics, movies, and TV shows and has always been Victor Fries or Mr. Freeze. The idea of changing that attracted a lot of criticism. Forced inclusivity was never a problem a few years ago. Ever since consultation companies like Sweet Baby Inc. emerged, this unfortunate trend has been forced into the industry, ruining many great games.   Sweet Baby has a bunch of notable names working with it including Santa Monica, Xbox Game Studios, Warner Bros, Ubisoft, and more. The influence is quite visible in their recent titles as well. Square Enix should be appreciated for being pulled out of the list. One of Sweet Baby’s employees even admitted that the company’s goal is to ‘burn the industry to the ground,’ indicating a massive threat to the gaming industry. Nonetheless, this trend needs to stop; otherwise, we’ll see a lot more big-budget games fail poorly"
Clearly, gamers need to be reeducated

Video Game Developers Are Leaving The Industry And Doing Something, Anything Else - "From line cooks to bike repairs, people who used to be video game developers are being forced to try something new. It's been a hellish few years for people employed in the video game industry, as big studios have been laying off workers every chance they get while smaller studios are just straight up closing. We’ve all read the stories, and scanned the numbers of people affected, but what happens to the individual in the wake of their career (and life) being upended?"
Official Bounding Into Comics Fans | It's like cancer | Facebook - "It's like cancer. Removal is risky but for the betterment of the body. Not to mention I still have lots of games to play, and Asian devs exist. Let them burn after not listening to us for years till we're blue in the face."
What happens when you rather destroy an industry than not push the left wing agenda

Common Sense Extremists on X - "You know how recent Star Wars shows and films are clearly made by people who hate that their previous more beloved product is largely enjoyed by the demographic they hate most? (Young, introverted white men) Joker 2 is the same way towards the previous installment."

Meme - ">wake up
>hollywood seethes at your existence
>do nothing
>hollywood seethes at your existence
>do nothing
>don't watch any of their movies
>hollywood seethes at your existence
>go on the internet and say a series is g a y
>said series gets cancelled
>watch a movie
>you actually like it
>hollywood seethes at your existence
>do nothing
>they make a sequel dedicated to seething about you
>do nothing
>it bombs
>do nothing
>you won"

Meme - Paul @WomanDefiner: "You have to realize the only reason this movie is being made is because you enjoyed the first movie the wrong way."
jeremy @jeremylovesyall: "'JOKER 2' director Todd Phillips confirms the Joker is bisexual #CinemaCon  "He's bisexual and stuff""

Joker 2 Tracking to Open Within Range of The Flash and The Marvels at the Box Office - "Following negative reviews and poor word-of-mouth, the Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga-fronted jukebox musical and courtroom drama is pacing to open below industry expectations... If Box Office Theory's forecast is correct, a sub-$60 million opening weekend would put Joker 2 on par with the first Joker's second weekend ($55.8 million), which is the eighth-best October weekend of all time. Should it come in on the higher end of projections at $57 million, that would be below 2022's Black Adam, Dwayne Johnson's DC movie that took in $67 million over the Oct. 21 weekend despite a similar Rotten Tomatoes score (Black Adam's 39% versus Joker 2's 40% "rotten").  The lower end of projections would put Joker 2 within range of DC's The Flash, which got off to a slow start with $55 million before ending its run with $266 million at the global box office, and Marvel Studios' The Marvels, which flopped with a worldwide total of just $199 million after a franchise-low opening weekend of $46 million. $1 billion is now out of reach for Joker 2, which could join the list of films to flop despite its predecessor reaching the milestone"

"Joker 2" Panned By Critics but Even Audiences Don't Like It, Give $200 Mil Bomb a 37% Rating! - "Newsday: A listless, depressing “musical” that seems to hate its characters, and itself.
Vanity Fair: It’s startlingly dull, a pointless procedural that seems to disdain its audience."

DiscussingFilm on X - "Warner Bros declined to test screen ‘JOKER 2’ to audiences at all before the film was complete."
pagliacci the hated 🌝 on X - "this makes more sense when you understand that this sequel wasn’t meant to do well at the box office - it was intended to be a humiliation ritual to destroy the movie’s legacy as punishment for it resonating with the “wrong” people"

'Joker: Folie à Deux' Falls Flat at Box Office, Lands D - "Todd Phillips' movie starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga is the first Hollywood comic book pic to receive the failing grade from audiences and may only open in the mid-$40 million range."

Joker 2 Box Office Opening Lower Than Morbius and The Marvels - "2019's Joker — which grossed $39.3 million on its first Friday — went on to earn $96 million and set the record for the biggest October opening of all time over the same time frame five years ago"

"The Boys" Audience Scores Plummet - "Amazon’s “The Boys” has unveiled the first three episodes of the fourth season, and a major critical/audience divide is once again showing – not unlike the new “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte”.  On Rotten Tomatoes, critics scores have remained fairly steady – 85% (7.7/10) for the first season which is the weakest to date. The second landed a 97% (8.2/10), the third a 98% (8.1/10), and the fourth a 95% (7.7/10)... Audience scores, however, fell steadily and have now taken a nosedive. The first season of “The Boys” racked up a 90% (4.3/5), the second an 83% (4.1/5), the third a 75% (3.8/5) and the fourth has now plummeted to a 49% (2.9/5).  The results are similar on Metacritic with critics scores for the four seasons are 74, 80, 77, 76 out of 100 and audience figures are 7.7, 6.9, 7.1 and 4.0 out of 10. This has led to calls of review bombing.  Plenty of the negative dub it ‘woke garbage’ and a substantial number either directly or indirectly quote or respond to showrunner Eric Kripke’s comments the other week saying those who find the show ‘woke’ should “go watch something else”. Others take issue with Frenchie’s small subplot involving a romance with a man, or the show making its far-right satire so overt this season as, up until this point, they’ve seen the show as apolitical.  In terms of non-political-centric complaints, there’s plenty who seem to have issues with the writing"

‘Go woke, go broke’ not true for brands, says global advertising study - "It found that when an advert can authentically and positively portray a full range of people – devoid of stereotypes – it can provide an edge in the marketplace when it comes to consumer preferences and long-term sales figures."
When you misdefine woke, of course "wokeness" is good for business

Meme - Possum Reviews @ReviewsPossum:
Green Haired Man: "WE MADE THIS SHOW SPECIFICALLY TO ALIENATE PEOPLE LIKE YOU!" "*TRASH *woman kicking man on chin*
Green Haired Man: "WE DIDN'T MAKE IT FOR YOU, YOU ENTITLED WHITE MALE! THIS IS ALL ABOUT THE MARGINALIZED GROUPS! DOES THAT BOTHER YOU HUH?! I BET IT DOES, YOU RACIST, SEXIST, HOMOPHOBIC, INCEL, GAMER CHUD! DON'T LIKE IT, DON'T WATCH IT! HA!"
Normal Man: "WELL BOYS, I GUESS THIS SHOW WASN'T MADE FOR US. LET'S GO WATCH SOMETHING ELSE"
Green Haired Man: "WAIT! STOP! WE NEED THE 18-34 MALE DEMOGRAPHIC TO SEE THIS SO WE CAN BREAK EVEN! COME BACK HERE, YOU SEXISTS!"
jess I ceo of torbin!! @cyarecadera: ""the show sucked" great!!! have u ever thought it's not for you????"

Meme - "When the beer company puts the big scary rainbow on your can"
These are the people who get triggered by the ok sign

Audiences Hate Bad Writing, Not Strong Women - YouTube - "Hateful commentary only finds any significant audience if the wider less spiteful viewing public dislikes the character for their own more sensible reasons. The main reason of course is that so many lead women in film and TV in the past decade are just horribly written... this is a problem most notable in Disney projects as you could tell from my list but since Disney owns half the world at this point it feels like a wider issue... to then earn the power given them the hero should have to struggle in some way, to grow into his or her abilities... Kate Bishop from the Hawkeye show... despite being an incredibly talented Archer and martial artist from the get-go, Kate is woefully inexperienced in the world of crime fighting and has to learn how to apply her skills in each new situation, relying on the mentorship of Hawkeye himself. On the flip side we have characters like She-Hulk and Rey Sky-patine. Rey's progression through her Jedi training was basically just whatever the plot required at any given moment. Jen Walters woke up as She-Hulk and immediately was in full control of her Alter Ego. The central struggles that defined the characters from whom these heroines were derived are just Stripped Away and not replaced by anything meaningful... let's talk about Disney's obsession with promoting and elevating women. It's one thing to have female characters who are smart, strong, persistent and courageous. It's quite another to simply promote the power of women by setting them up on a pedestal. That kind of treatment is nothing more than pandering and stories that contain it suffer greatly... do you know why the Lost Boys were originally all boys? It's because they fell out of their prams or strollers for you Americans and were carted off to Neverland and girls are far too clever to do such a stupid thing. But apparently no one involved in the casting decision had ever read the original novel so here we are... it should come as no surprise that these shows and movies don't just fail at writing good female characters, they're terribly written across the board... it's not just Rey that the audience dislikes. No characters from the Disney Trilogy won the hearts of the audience... Galadriel['s] introduction in the first episode is basically a how-to course on annoying audiences. We first meet her as she's being tormented by other elf children for having the audacity to think that her origami swan will float. Not only does this display a severe lack of understanding of what elves are in Tolkien's legendarium on the writer's part. it demonstrates a cheap trick that modern media likes to use in order to attempt to make the audience like a character: forced sympathy... why is this character being mistreated? For all we know Galadriel was being a complete twerp just moments before this scene and is totally deserving of having her boat sunk. There's no narrative reason that the show gives for Galadriel to be tormented... because if you're a victim how can anyone hate you? Well it's pretty easy when you're incredibly smug and don't give a rat's ass about the safety of your troops... these warriors hand-picked to exterminate Sauron and the remnants of his armies are completely and totally hapless and helpless to the point that they might as well be a different species than their leader. It's totally fine to have protagonists who are supremely skilled but it's a really poor choice to have the supporting characters be complete buffoons in order to showcase that skill. Galadriel might as  well just be out there on her own really... Characters who need only achieve self-actualization are not only boring and lack meaningful character work, they teach us awful lessons. The idea that all that is needed for success is to seize the strength and power already within you is a harmful notion that discredits the value of relationships, personal growth and humility... indeed some of the most admirable characters in fiction, ones who do not suffer all that much personal growth due to having already attained great virtue, find themselves insufficient. This is most clear in Tolkien's work... I just realized two of those characters are played by Emily Blunt. No surprise they are, considering her publicly stated thoughts on the strong female lead Trope"

Warner Bros. Discovery Earnings Reports Reveals 'Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League' Caused A 41% Loss In Video Game Revenue - "their overall studio revenues for the quarter compared to the same period the year prior “decreased 4% [excluding drops resulting from changes in foreign currency exchange rates]” due to struggles in their TV, theatrical, and video game studios.”  “TV revenue declined 27%, primarily driven by the timing of initial telecast productions as well as lower licensing sales,” reported WBD. “Theatrical revenue increased 19% ex-FX, primarily due to higher home entertainment revenue from Dune: Part Two, and higher box office carryover due to the performance of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which was released at the end of March.”  And while these double digit declines are significant, they pale in comparison to the damage done to the company’s financials by the under performance of their video games division, wherein “games revenue declined 41% , primarily driven by the weak performance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League this year, compared to the strong performance of Hogwarts Legacy in the prior year.” Speaking to this revenue drop during the company’s accompanying Q2 2024 earnings presentation, WBD CFO Gunnar Wiendenfels again outright admitted that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a major reason for their financial stumble."

Warner Bros. Discovery Admits To Taking $200 Million Loss On 'Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League'

'Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League' Character Artist Confirms Industry Bias Against Attractive Female Characters: "It's Very Difficult To Pitch Beautiful Or Vain Black Women In Games Without Them Coming Back Like Grocery Store Aunties" - "According to a developer who absolutely has no love for the people or ideologies who regularly raise the issue, the Western video game industry does in fact hold a very, very real bias against “beautiful” female characters... Confirmation to this fact was provided by Del Walker, an industry character artist whose credits include such notable titles as Batman: Arkham Knight, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Retweeting a picture of English footballer Bukayo Saka’s girlfriend Tolami Benson wearing a jacket emblazoned with the Arsenal right-winger’s original jersey number on June 18th, Walker recalled, “There’s been a handful of times I’ve pitched black women characters that look like this, then after 10 iterations the concept or model comes back without a speck of the original beauty I pitched. Proceeding to compare another photo of Benson against an official promotional image of Commander Wright from SEGA’s cancelled hero-shooter Hyenas, Walker then elaborated, “I’m not taking about mild changes. I’m talking about pose, aura, style, softness, age, flair.” “I hate giving gamergate men fuel,” he added, “but it’s very difficult to pitch beautiful or vain black women in games without them coming back like grocery store aunties. There is room for both.”... Further, as to what he considered an ‘attractive black female’, Walker would agree with Rocksteady Games character artist Lois Starkey that Alan Wake 2‘s Saga Anderson was “both beautiful and soft in a way I hadn’t seen for a while in games.”... So, there you have it, players. The next time someone attempts to belittle you or write you off for noticing that your favorite female video game characters – at least in the West – are starting to look more and more ‘rough’, you can rest easy knowing that even industry insiders are aware of and fed-up with this insulting trend.
Weird. We're told these are just "realistic" female characters and there's no conspiracy to make them ugly

Former Suicide Squad game dev, who bragged about race swapping Deadshot and condemned SBI criticism, has an issue with studios stripping black female characters of the original beauty he designed them with. He ignored and made excuses when it happened to characters in remakes or based off irl models : r/KotakuInAction

Coddled affluent professional on X - "Just out of boredom, for no real reason at all, without anyone asking, we decided to Sovietize cultural and intellectual life. LOL! Too bad journalism, publishing, and Hollywood aren’t publicly subsidized and are now imploding! (Academia we’ll have to work on.)"

Meme - Nina Infinity @Nina7Infinity: "I keep reading people say "in what world is Gal Gadot not prettier/fairer than Rachel Zegler". The answer is, in this world, where men win Olympic gold medals for beating up women."

Meme - "WHO DID IT BETTER?
*Rachel Zegler Snow White* *Lord Farquaad*"

Meme - "ONCE SHE LAUGHED ON THE CHARACTER  *Rachel Zegler pointing to Snow White and laughign mockingly*
NOW ALL ARE LAUGHING ON HER"

Major Studios Are Assembling "Superfan Focus Groups" In An Effort To Combat Online Backlash
Imagine actually listening to your customers. Of course ComicBookMovie.com thinks this is a bad idea, because pushing the left wing agenda is key

Meme - Tim Seeley @NYCC ARTIST ALLEY J-27! @HackinTimSeeley: "There’s a subset of fandom whose view is that if anything isn’t for them it must not be for anyone. Your goal as a creator should be to never, ever make anything for those people."
Deansdale @Realsdale: "You mean progressive social terrorists, right? That's the only group actively attacking content not aimed at them, and they're hellbent on harming creators as well. Normies couldn't give less of a hoot about content aimed at purple haired pansexual trigender parsleys or whatever."
Left wingers hate their fans and customers so much

Reply to Michael Walzer on Israel’s Pager Attack and Just War Theory

The moral of the story seems to be that democratic countries can't win wars, because they are held to impossibly high standards:

Reply to Michael Walzer on Israel’s Pager Attack and Just War Theory

Michael Walzer has argued in a New York Times opinion piece that Israel’s “pager attack” on thousands of Hezbollah operatives throughout Lebanon was “an act of terrorism,” since it failed to respect “the distinction between combatants and civilians” crucial to the rules of just war. This is strange, because this attack was, as a matter of fact, one of the most “targeted” that a state can possibly launch against a terrorist or guerilla force operating amongst a civilian population. With greater precision than is usually possible, it was clearly aimed at actual enemy combatants, with far less risk of “collateral damage” and indeed inflicting much less actual damage than most such operations. Nevertheless, Walzer insists that “the attacks … came when the operatives were not operating; they had not been mobilized and they were not militarily engaged.” He stresses that the pagers exploded when the Hezbollah operatives were at home or in various public places, among innocent people. However, this criterion, “when the operatives were not operating,” if accepted, would make it impossible not only for Israel, but for any state, to effectively fight a terrorist/guerilla force engaged in killing its citizens from within a civilian environment, in an area outside its jurisdiction, and under the protection of a foreign government. This holds true even in the case of an ordinary terrorist group, far less powerful than Hezbollah, and which, unlike Hezbollah, does not possess tens of thousands of rockets aimed at the heart of the country it is fighting, is not committed to its destruction, and does not operate in the service of a hostile regional power – Iran. In fact, Walzer’s suggested rules of engagement are every terrorist’s paradise.

Nobody in Lebanon probably uses pagers nowadays except for Hezbollah operatives. If anyone does, theirs did not explode, because only those pagers distributed by Hezbollah to its operatives, which opted for this antiquated technology for security reasons, had been compromised. Those targeted were not merely political supporters or even members of the movement, but people belonging to Hezbollah’s network of operatives. According to the figures of casualties provided by Hezbollah, there were thousands of people wounded and dozens killed. The ratio of fatalities to wounded was much lower than the normal one, by a huge margin. Obviously, the reason for this is that the power of the explosion was very limited, thereby limiting the danger to surrounding people. It is unclear whether this limitation was only for technical reasons, because it was not possible to insert a larger quantity of explosive material into those pagers without it being detected, or because there was also a deliberate decision to limit the power of the explosion in order to limit collateral damage. If the latter was the case, then this consideration came at a heavy operational price. Some of the Hezbollah commanders killed in a subsequent bombing in Beirut are said to have been wounded by the pagers, and had already been released from hospital. So, the limited force of the pager explosions meant that many of the Hezbollah operatives hurt remained “un-neutralized,” not merely “un-killed.”

This means that in the vast majority of cases, those standing near the person in whose hands, or pockets, the pagers exploded would not have been harmed – although inevitably there were several such cases among the thousands of explosions. There is no comparison between the rate of “collateral damage” in this case and any other form of military attack aimed at terrorists operating among civilians. Of course, there were many explosions in public places filled with uninvolved civilians, such as markets, etc. They caused panic, and some people were also directly hit by the explosions. But the images that have become an “iconic” representation of the event – those from a food market, with people buying fruits – show a man falling to the ground while those in close proximity to him run away in panic, apparently unharmed physically. The person in question was obviously a Hezbollah operative, who was targeted very specifically through the pager in his possession. Contrary to the impression that many people get when they hear that markets and other public places were “targeted” by the explosions, there was no “indiscriminate attack” on the market just because there was a Hezbollah operative there. Aesthetically, this was surely not a pretty sight. Ethically, it was much less problematic than most attacks against terrorists, which ordinarily employ much greater firepower and tend to lead to much greater civilian casualties, as in the U.S. “War on Terror.” War is ugly, but the point of jus in bello is to minimize civilian casualties, not to avoid unpleasant sights or to guarantee chivalrous treatment to terrorists.

And yet, Walzer believes that an attack on those Hezbollah operatives was illegitimate because “the operatives were not operating; they had not been mobilized and they were not militarily engaged.” This would mean that a Hezbollah operative who has just fired a rocket from or near a house full of civilians and then leaves his position, as such operatives routinely do, and goes home, or to a café, cannot be targeted there, even if this is done in a relatively “surgical” way. Supposedly, he can only be attacked either when he is engaged in firing rockets, from this or some other house, the next time, or if the IDF knows for sure that he is on his way to his “military post.” The first and main scenario, most clearly a classic combat situation, is the one which will usually mean killing and wounding civilians on a much greater scale (not to mention the danger to Israelis if the rockets are fired). What is the logic of such a precept, and what is its morality?

Such a rule can reasonably be applied to an armed group that fights a government within its own country in an area under their government’s (more or less) effective control. An armed band of “mobilized” partisans can roam a forest or a mountainous area and be a legitimate target for a military attack when it is on the march. However, when a partisan goes out of the forest and sits in a pub, enjoying his drinks, he is, at that moment, not a combatant that can be targeted but rather a suspect who should be arrested. By contrast, if an operative of Hezbollah sits in a café in Beirut, which of course they often do, the State of Israel cannot arrest him, and he can only be targeted. It is a great pity that the late Nasrallah did not have a habit of taking a rest from his labors in one of those cafés from time to time, relying on the immunity prescribed by Walzer. If the aim is to avoid killing innocent people as far as possible, then taking him out in a place like that would have been much preferable to bombing his underground headquarters, deeply entrenched within an urban civilian environment. The more “mobilized” the operative is, as Walzer requires, in a dense civilian environment, the greater will be the risk to civilians in attacking him. It is when the operative “is not operating,” and thus, according to Walzer, should enjoy immunity, that it is often possible to target him personally and as precisely as possible, as was done in the pager attack. When applied to an organization like Hezbollah, the rules prescribed by Walzer would mean that what is legitimate is far more costly in terms of civilian casualties, and what helps minimize civilian casualties is illegitimate.

The crux of the problem is this: Those who fear the abuses to which the notion of “war against terror” can lead say, “Give us a situation as close as possible to a real military combat before we allow you to treat alleged terrorists like combatants rather than suspects.” This line of thought is understandable, but it harbors a cruel paradox: In a hostile territory where no law enforcement is possible, and given the way Hezbollah and similar organizations work, the “cleanest” case of combat will usually be the most lethal one for uninvolved civilians.

Walzer seems to believe further that attacking a legitimate target at the risk of causing collateral damage can only be justified to the extent that the armed group that is being targeted has a deliberate “strategy of putting civilians at risk for political gain,” as he points out that Hamas has been doing in Gaza. Not so in the case of the exploding pagers according to Walzer: “They were not distributed by Hezbollah in order to put its people at risk. This was not a plot to force Israel to kill or injure civilians. The plot was Israel’s, and the plotters had to know” that innocent people would be hurt. Indeed, Hezbollah was plotting to kill Israelis, and Israel was plotting to kill those plotting to do so.

However, if terrorists operate in a civilian environment not because they actually want to put civilians in harm’s way for political gain, but simply due to their operative considerations and constraints, then what difference does it make for the state that is fighting them? It still faces the same dilemma: It can either attack them in this environment, or allow them to operate undisturbed, thereby rendering them undefeatable. One of us once had an argument with a British journalist about dilemmas of collateral damage regarding Israel’s attacks on Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon. The journalist exclaimed, in response to the argument that Palestinian militants put their bases and headquarters in refugee camps, making civilian casualties inevitable, “Where do you expect them to put the goddamn headquarters?!”

“Well,” answered the Israeli interlocutor, “you have a point … but then, where do you expect us to bomb them?”

Osama bin Laden surely did not plot to put his youngest wife and their children in harm’s way for political gain when he was hiding in his compound in Pakistan, where American forces attacked and killed him, together with one of his daughters, as “collateral damage.” President Obama, who ordered this operation and took pride in it, must have known that civilian casualties could be expected. There is no proof at all that Bin Laden was engaged in, or actively planning, some military activity when he was attacked. It is a moot point whether he presented, at that point of time, a graver continuous threat to American lives than Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon to Israeli lives right now – there might even be, God forbid, a suspicion of an element of revenge in his killing. Although not “shopping in a food market,” he was definitely “at home with his family,” in Walzer’s words. Can an unarmed old man in the bosom of his family be considered a combatant? Indeed, Amnesty International strongly condemned this “extra-judicial execution” – as if the U.S. could have done anything “judicial” in such a case. Perhaps Amnesty thought Obama should have dispatched U.S. marshals to that compound with an arrest warrant. From Amnesty International we expect nothing less. Is Michael Walzer now adopting similar views?

A further criticism is directed by Walzer against the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, chairman of Hamas Political Bureau, without any harm to civilians, in a high security compound in Tehran: “But when a government authorizes the killing of men it is directly or indirectly negotiating with, such as the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July, we have to conclude that the government isn’t committed to the negotiations’ success … That is politically and morally wrong.”

In fact, Israel has been indirectly negotiating with Sinwar rather than Haniyeh, and there is not the slightest reason to think that the killing of Haniyeh affected negatively Sinwar’s readiness – very dubious in any case, at least according to the Biden administration – to close a deal. But really, can it be seriously maintained that negotiations between Israel and Hamas after Oct.7 – and while Hamas is holding, and occasionally murdering, Israeli hostages – can be or should be based on mutual trust and goodwill that must not be undermined by one side targeting, in an ungentlemanly way, another side’s leaders?

Are talks in a hostage situation typically based on mutual trust? Israel was having indirect negotiations with the hijackers in Entebbe, while also planning a rescue operation. The government of the time was willing to go ahead with an exchange of hostages for prisoners in case there would in the end be no viable military option available; to this extent it was genuinely interested in a positive outcome of the talks. Eventually the IDF killed the very people Israel was negotiating with. Was it wrong? The German-Palestinian terrorists in Entebbe, just like Sinwar in his tunnel in Gaza today, had no illusions about Israeli goodwill, and their readiness to negotiate was not based on any such expectations. Of course, in the present case there is also the wider issue of the conditions for putting an end to fighting. But there is no reason to think that the killing of Haniyeh harmed the prospects of agreement on either side of the talks.

In the Haniyeh case, there is no question of innocent civilians being harmed – but still, Israel is, according to Walzer, “politically and morally wrong.” If liberal sensibilities are to be associated, in the mind of the Israeli public, with such claims, what chance is there for any kind of liberalism in Israel – or anywhere else, under similar conditions? 

In a conference in New York attended by one of us some years ago, Walzer expressed his view that “if the bad guys are going to win, then, sure, they must be prevented from doing so by far-reaching means.” Apparently, Israel attacked from all sides by fanatical forces that not only aim at its destruction, but believe, today more so than in the past, that this is a realistic goal, is so strong that it is in no grave danger. Walzer’s theory of just war has a justified reputation of being eminently sensible, and he holds a life-long record of commitment to the existence and well-being of Israel. So, one must ask: In terms of his theory of just war, do his precepts advance or imperil the safety of civilians? And in terms of the real world in which clouds of catastrophe are gathering everywhere along the borders of the Axis of Evil, has Walzer not noticed that there is some danger that the bad guys might actually win?

Links - 18th October 2024 (1 - Covid-19)

Meme - Supervaccinated person and normal person both thinking: "Why aren't they dead yet?"

Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics? - "The present coronavirus crisis caused a major worldwide disruption which has not been experienced for decades. The lockdown-based crisis management was implemented by nearly all the countries, and studies confirming lockdown effectiveness can be found alongside the studies questioning it. In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth. Our aim was to learn lessons and analyze ways to improve the management of similar events in the future. The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past. The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save. It is suggested therefore that a thorough cost-benefit analysis should be performed before imposing any lockdown for either COVID-19 or any future pandemic."
In July 2024, a covid hystericist still claimed that the IFR for covid was 4% and that "A totally dispassionate, objective and scientific response to a respiratory pandemic would involve essentially the same measures". Covid hystericists don't learn.

Did the Covid inquiry just admit lockdown was a mistake? - "The Covid inquiry has this afternoon published a full report on its first module, assessing the resilience and preparedness of the UK’s pandemic response. It has so far been met with apparently predetermined headlines of how the UK Government failed its citizens by “preparing for the wrong pandemic”, and that the country was “ill-prepared”. The impact of austerity meant that this was certainly true — but the currently unreported and biggest story in the report is its wholesale attack on the lockdown approach itself.  Baroness Hallett’s full report contains remarkable criticisms of the Government’s preferred lockdown policy, which was also adopted across the world. Far from stating that the UK should have locked down sooner and harder, as many predicted, Hallett’s team has concluded that “the imposition of a lockdown should be a measure of last resort […] indeed, there are those who would argue that a lockdown should never be imposed.” Strikingly, the initial media reactions have barely anything to say about the report’s conclusions on lockdowns, just as the word “lockdown” was not mentioned once in the WHO’s September 2019 report on non-pharmaceutical interventions in pandemics. This is because, though it’s long been an article of faith in these circles that earlier and harder lockdowns were the solution, this is not the conclusion that the report comes to. Instead, Baroness Hallett has concluded that there were devastating failings in imposing lockdown in the first place. First, the report highlights the fact that lockdowns were untested as a means for responding to a pandemic. One section notes that former chancellor George Osborne “said that no one had thought that a policy response up to and including lockdowns was possible until China had commenced one in 2020, and so there was no reason for the Treasury to plan for it”. This confirms the initial reports in outlets such as the Washington Post that China’s response was “unprecedented”. There is also extensive weight given to the evidence of epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University, who is quoted as telling the inquiry that lockdown “was an ad hoc public health intervention contrived in real time in the face of a fast-moving public health emergency. We had not planned to introduce lockdown […] there were no guidelines for when a lockdown should be implemented and no clear expectations as to what it would achieve.”  Even more importantly, the report for the first module emphasises that one of the failures of the “ad hoc” lockdown approach was that its novelty meant there was no time to interrogate its consequences. The inquiry notes that “if countermeasures in the form of non-pharmaceutical interventions are not considered in advance […] their potential side effects will not be subject, in advance, to rigorous scrutiny.” In other words, the imposition of ill-prepared policies meant that there was no chance for politicians and the public to interrogate what the consequences would be, a weakness the UK Government has only acknowledged since the end of the pandemic.   The report goes on to refer to the work of the new UK-wide Pandemic Diseases Capabilities Board (PDCB), which noted the upshot of this failure of a cost-benefit analysis. Hallett’s team quotes the PDCB’s summary that the current assessments “do not include a full risk assessment for the use of [non-pharmaceutical interventions]. Given that the imposition of lockdown in part accounted for a 25% drop in GDP between February and April 2020, the largest drop on record, and numerous secondary and tertiary impacts on all sectors, this represents a significant gap in the UK’s assessment of pandemic risk.”  And so the real story of Hallett’s report is not that the UK was prepared for the “wrong pandemic”, but that it resorted to a hitherto-unimaginable policy, on no evidence-base, where the risks were not fully assessed. The real story is the report’s analysis that lockdowns should only be resorted to in future as “a last resort”, and quite possibly should never be resorted to at all. While there are gaps — the UK government’s own evidence that its Test and Trace system reduced Covid infections by at most 5% at a cost of UK£29.3 billion isn’t discussed — today’s report of Module 1 delivers a devastating blow to the lockdown consensus. It offers an admirable discussion of the many factors to be balanced in a health emergency, citing former chief medical officer Sally Davies and her advocacy of a need to “balance the biomedical model”, so that Government decision-makers receive advice from a wider range of perspectives. This would include economic impact, social wellbeing, and the effect on children and young people in education.  The report pulls the rug from under those whose declamations were taken as quasi-religious pronouncements throughout the terrible years of the pandemic. The real question to emerge is whether the media will honestly report what Hallett’s team has actually said — and what the consequences of this should be."

Jay Bhattacharya on X - "In Fall 2020, German ethics professor @chluetge  pointed out the obvious immorality of lockdown for the lives of children and the poor. German state authorities, in the grip of a zero-covid delusion, fired the ethics professor from its ethics board.  Sweden protected human life better than Germany without locked and with less collateral damage. The German authorities should have listened to the ethics professor rather than narrow minded virologists like @c_drosten  who lacked expertise and judgement."

High rates of COVID are causing outbreaks, rising hospitalizations and deaths heading into the school year : r/ottawa - "Honestly, wouldn't mind covid lockdowns again. Empty roads, wfh, chill environment.  Any based redditors feel the same?"
Clearly, inflation is the result of corporate greed

High rates of COVID are causing outbreaks, rising hospitalizations and deaths heading into the school year : r/ottawa - "Swiss cheese theory! Add in masking, sanitization, social distancing, capacity limits during peak COVID months, changing work and social culture to be more inclusive instead of isolationist and all of these things would greatly increase our health and help minimize COVID. Every room should have a screen indicating its CO2 levels to help you make informed decisions, and companies should be held to high standards to keep the cleanest air possible.  This wouldn't just help with COVID but many airborne illnesses like the flu and cold."
The covid hystericists are still at it

Autopsy findings in cases of fatal COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis - "COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to myocarditis, which, in some circumstances, can be fatal. This systematic review aims to investigate potential causal links between COVID-19 vaccines and death from myocarditis using post-mortem analysis. We performed a systematic review of all published autopsy reports involving COVID-19 vaccination-induced myocarditis through 3 July 2023. All autopsy studies that include COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis as a possible cause of death were included. Causality in each case was assessed by three independent physicians with cardiac pathology experience and expertise. We initially identified 1691 studies and, after screening for our inclusion criteria, included 14 papers that contained 28 autopsy cases. The cardiovascular system was the only organ system affected in 26 cases. In two cases, myocarditis was characterized as a consequence from multisystem inflammatory syndrome. The mean age of death was 44.4 years old. The mean and median number of days from last COVID-19 vaccination until death were 6.2 and 3 days, respectively. We established that all 28 deaths were most likely causally linked to COVID-19 vaccination by independent review of the clinical information presented in each paper. The temporal relationship, internal and external consistency seen among cases in this review with known COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis, its pathobiological mechanisms, and related excess death, complemented with autopsy confirmation, independent adjudication, and application of the Bradford Hill criteria to the overall epidemiology of vaccine myocarditis, suggests that there is a high likelihood of a causal link between COVID-19 vaccines and death from myocarditis."

Meme - "REMEMBER WHEN THEY OUTLAWED FRESH AIR & SUNSHINE BECAUSE THEY CARED ABOUT YOUR HEALTH? *Park bench with tape on it*"
One cope is that it was a pandemic. Clearly during a pandemic, any measure supposedly taken in the name of public health - even one contradicted by the science - is justified
Other copes include mocking people who criticise this as covidiots or selfish

Chinese lab linked to Covid leak may have also released ANOTHER deadly virus, new research claims - "A bombshell new study suggests that this polio strain, which infected a four-year-old boy amid a wider viral outbreak in China's Anhui province, is '99 percent' identical to a polio variant that was stored 200 miles away, during that same time period, at the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology. Researchers at France's Pasteur Institute cannot say with certainty where this strain, dubbed 'WIV14,' originated. But they insisted two possibilities 'must be explored' — including the chance that WIV14 polio originated within the Wuhan institute itself."

China 'carried out disinformation campaign to force world economy into lockdown', says US lawyer in extraordinary theory - "Michael Senger suggested the Communist Party promoted nationwide shutdowns in a bid to "cripple rival economies" amid the coronavirus pandemic... Senger however claims the Communist Party may have weaponised social media in an aggressive psy-op to spread hysteria to push for the lockdowns. The campaign may have pushed nations into committing economic suicide. He points to thousands of tweets which were encouraging world governments to try out the draconian rules first adopted by China. Senger even alleges Prime Minister Boris Johnson was targeted by Chinese disinformation after he first suggested herd immunity rather than a lockdown. The lawyer, from Atlanta, Georgia, laid out his theory in an article for Tablet Magazine titled "China's Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign". Writing on Twitter, he said: "By promoting fraudulent data, aggressively deploying disinformation, and flexing its institutional clout, Beijing transformed the snake oil of lockdowns into ‘science’, crippling rival economies, expanding its influence and sowing authoritarian values." He argued lockdowns "might not even be science it all" and claimed they are based on brutal policies used by Chinese leader Xi Jinping... Senger claimed it was a "domino effect" of country's following China's policy after Italy became the first nation to lockdown. Senger said: "Is there something more sinister behind this? Was this actually planned so it would crash rival economies and spread authoritarian values?" WHO described the lockdown of Wuhan as "unprecedented" in January, before actively encouraging other nations to follow China's lead just one month later. Senger claims the "smoking gun on the genesis of the coronavirus lockdown" is the fact Twitter removed tens of thousands of fake accounts promoting China's message. Twitter confirmed in June it had took down 23,750 accounts which were "highly engaged" in disinformation - and 150,000 which were engaged in amplification. The social media giant confirmed the accounts were deleted as they were promoting China's response to the coronavirus outbreak. Tweets included videos of Chinese workers disinfecting streets - each of which were accompanied by suspiciously similar messages praising in China. Senger writes much of this campaign was focused on bombarding Italy as it went into lockdown - sparking much of the rest of the world to follow. He also brands videos began emerging from China earlier in the pandemic, including people collapsing in the street with scenes reminiscent of apocalypse movies as "fake". Speaking of Sky News Australia, Senger said: "The only purpose behind these is to spread fear. To show this virus is really, really scary." And the lawyer accuses China of having "fake numbers" over the virus, with its figures "manifestly forged"... Senger claims the Britain's Prime Minister may have been targeted by misinformation when he suggested using herd immunity to beat the virus. He wrote: "On March 13, suspicious accounts began storming his Twitter feed and likening his plan to genocide. "This language almost never appears in Johnson’s feed before March 12, and several of the accounts were hardly active before then." FBI officials also revealed in July that US politicians had been approached by the Communist Party to endorse China's strategy on coronavirus. Chris Wray, FBI director, said: "We have heard from federal, state and even local officials that Chinese diplomats are aggressively urging support for China’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis. "Yes, this is happening at both the federal and state levels. Not that long ago, we had a state senator who was recently even asked to introduce a resolution supporting China’s response to the pandemic."... "The most benign possible explanation for the CCP’s campaign for global lockdowns is that the party aggressively promoted the same lie internationally as domestically – that lockdowns worked. "And then there’s the possibility that by shutting down the world, Xi Jinping, who … envisions a socialist future with China at its centre, knew exactly what he was doing.""

Richard Hanania on X - "People who took Wegovy were 33% less likely to die from Covid, and the effect kicked in before they even lost weight. They were 19% less likely to die of all causes. Incredible. The evidence is accumulating that it might be a good idea for everyone to be on this."
Obesity Drug Wegovy Prevents Covid Deaths, Study Suggests - The New York Times

Man, 34, died of cancer after GPs dismissed concerns, inquest hears - "Oliver Philpott, 34, called his GP practice at least six times during the Covid 19 lockdown complaining of severe pain in his back and long-term fatigue. Instead of being seen by a doctor in a face-to-face appointment, he was repeatedly assessed over the phone. He finally saw his GP at the medical centre four months after he first reported symptoms, but tragically died three days later. A post mortem later found the 34-year-old had a large 20cm tumour wrapped around his heart and lungs. The aggressive sarcoma had infiltrated his right lung and had eventually caused pulmonary emboli which caused a heart attack that killed him. In a double family tragedy, his father, Anthony - wracked by guilt and grief over the death of his son - took his own life. Today at an inquest into Oliver's death in Hastings, his doctor, Fiona Warner, said Covid 19 had restricted the number of patients doctors could see face-to-face."
Monsters! Why do they want grandma to have died?!

Meme - "While he locked you down, this communist czar was spreading aids"
"WATCH: NYC'S FORMER CORONAVIRUS ADVISER SAYS HE ATTENDED SEX PARTIES DURING PANDEMIC TO 'BLOW OFF STEAM'"
WATCH: NYC's Former Coronavirus Adviser Had Sex Parties During Pandemic - "New York City’s former coronavirus adviser, Dr. Jay Varma, apparently had parties involving sex and drugs during the pandemic, according to secretly recorded footage of him speaking about the instances...   Varma said he was the one who convinced de Blasio to issue the vaccine mandate... It is important to note that a New York State judge ruled in October 2022 the city employees fired for not taking the coronavirus vaccine must be reinstated and given backpay because the vaccine mandate was unconstitutional, according to Breitbart News.  Per the recent Post article, Varma has said he takes responsibility for not using the “best judgment” while also saying the private conversations were taken out of context."

The Real Lesson of Jay Varma's COVID Sex-Party Scandal - The Atlantic (aka "Public-Health Officials Should Have Been Talking About Their Sex Parties the Whole Time")
Right on cue...

The Surgisphere Scandal: What Went Wrong? - "It sounds absurd that an obscure US company with a hastily constructed website could have driven international health policy and brought major clinical trials to a halt within the span of a few weeks. Yet that’s what happened earlier this year, when Illinois-based Surgisphere Corporation began a publishing spree that would trigger one of the largest scientific scandals of the COVID-19 pandemic to date. At the heart of the deception was a paper published in The Lancet on May 22 that suggested hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug promoted by US President Donald Trump and others as a therapy for COVID-19, was associated with an increased risk of death in patients hospitalized with the disease. The study wasn’t a randomized controlled trial—the gold standard for determining a drug’s safety and efficacy—but it did purportedly draw from an enormous registry of observational data that Surgisphere claimed to have collected from the electronic medical records of nearly 100,000 COVID-19 patients across 671 hospitals on six continents.  The study was a medical and political bombshell. News outlets analyzed the implications for what they referred to as the “drug touted by Trump.” Within days, public health bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) instructed organizers of clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment or prophylaxis to suspend recruitment, while the French government reversed an earlier decree allowing the drug to be prescribed to patients hospitalized with the virus.  Before long, however, cracks started appearing in the study—and in Surgisphere itself. Scientists and journalists noted that the Lancet paper’s data included impossibly high numbers of cases—exceeding official case or death counts for some continents and coming implausibly close for others. Similar data discrepancies were also identified in two previous studies that had relied on the company’s database. Inquiries by The Scientist and The Guardian, meanwhile, failed to identify any hospital that had contributed to the registry. It also emerged that, for a company claiming to have created one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated patient databases, Surgisphere had little in the way of medical research to show for it. Founded by vascular surgeon Sapan Desai in 2008 and employing only a handful of people at a time, the company initially produced textbooks aimed at medical students. It later dabbled in various projects, including a short-lived medical journal, before shooting to fame this year with its high-profile publications on health outcomes in COVID-19 patients.   The provenance of Surgisphere’s database—if it even exists, which many clinicians, journal editors, and researchers have questioned—has yet to become clear. Most of Desai’s coauthors admitted to having only seen summary data, and independent auditors tasked with verifying the database’s validity were never granted access, leading to the June 4 retractions of the Lancet study and a previous paper based on the database in The New England Journal of Medicine. Over the following days, The Scientist and other media outlets pointed out inaccurate claims made on Surgisphere’s website, which it had launched in February and gradually erased as accusations of fraud mounted. Desai, who spoke to The Scientist at the end of May, is no longer responding to requests for comment... While a heightened sense of urgency during the pandemic undoubtedly contributed to the problem, there were many people and institutions that theoretically could have prevented Surgisphere’s effects on science and public health, notes Rachel Cooper, the director of the Health Initiative at the nonprofit organization Transparency International.  Desai’s astonishing influence on COVID-19 policy was dependent on multiple parties, Cooper notes, from the institutions that employed him to the coauthors on his research studies, the journals that published the work, and the organizations that issued public health decisions based on his research. Seen that way, the scandal represents “a perfect storm of issues that have always been there”"
From 2020. If you don't Trust the Science (and we all know that the Science is Settled), you are a conspiracy theorist, science denier and spreading misinformation

Trump Promoted Hydroxychloroquine, A Drug Now Linked To 17,000 Deaths
Those Published “17,000 Hydroxychloroquine Deaths” Never Happened - "The CDC describes HCQ as “a relatively well tolerated medicine” and that “HCQ can be prescribed to adults and children of all ages. It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers” referring to its long-term use in chronic diseases.   Basic logic dictates that, if a drug is safe for long-term use, it would also be safe for short-term use, including (and especially) in Covid-19 early treatment/pre-exposure prophylaxis type indications.   These are pharmacology fundamentals that ought to be known by any pharmacist or physician – let alone to a professor serving as a Journal Editor-in-Chief at a taxpayer-funded state College of Pharmacy.   Did not even one person on her editorial board of over 50 “peer-reviewers” and staff ponder the celebrated and storied history of HCQ (and its predecessors) and how incongruent this study’s findings were before choosing to publish data denigrating HCQ safety?   The correct answer to that might actually be: “no”…  The publishing editorial board all seem to be laboratory bench (non-clinical) research scientists, per their biographies. Although the board does promote itself as meeting DEI requirements of being “gender diverse,” a more important question might be is if they have the appropriate credentials and experience to review and opine on clinically complex drug safety/epidemiology subject matters in the first place... there were never “17,000 deaths;” it was always a hypothetical extrapolation of people that could have died, based on “unreliable” (eg, actually, fraudulent) databases on top of the previously mentioned, problematic late-stage RECOVERY-trial-type dosing and timing.   Still, Josh Cohen, a Forbes.com PhD senior healthcare columnist, used this publication to headline an absurdly biased op-ed against HCQ, stating that Trump’s HCQ proposal was “Linked To 17,000 Deaths.” Forbes’ Tufts, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania- trained “healthcare analyst” misrepresented or appeared to not understand the now-retracted study methodology or projections.   It went downhill from there. Mere hours following the publication, very similar, now objectively inaccurate, highly politicized, and seemingly coordinated attacks on HCQ and Trump were published by: The Hill, Politico, Frontline News, Scripps News, the Guardian, KFF Health News, News Nation, Newsweek, AOL.com, Yahoo News, and Daily Kos, in addition to a multitude of prominent regional, international, and US federal news outlets, many falsely estimating that 17,000 deaths had already taken place and that the (imaginary) victims’ blood was already on Donald Trump’s hands... Here are some screenshots of headlines referencing non-existent deaths based on a now-retracted study... Almost immediately following the January 2, 2024 publication, its critical flaws including basic miscalculations among many other deficiencies were brought to the attention of Dr. Townsend by Xavier Azalbert and non-profit BonSens.org attorneys starting on Jan 7, 2024. In fact, a total of 9 communications were sent by the above individuals, but none of them were ever shared as “Letters to The Editor” by Dr. Townsend in good faith to inform readers of specific potential shortcomings, as is otherwise commonly done.   Dr. Townsend seemed to forget that bad medical data and publications can do actual patient harm, and kept legitimate and important study criticisms to herself. Instead of taking responsibility and making a leadership decision, she passed the buck to a Committee on Publication Ethics, delaying the needed retraction. It appallingly took 234 days (~7 months, from the January 2nd publication to August 26th) for Dr. Townsend’s Journal of Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy to finally retract the “unreliable” article. But at that point, untold millions around the world had already been (and continue to be) polluted with outrageously incorrect information about non-existent HCQ deaths. This raises some questions about Dr. Townsend’s duties and responsibilities as the Editor in Chief"

Kevin Bass PhD MS on X - "Deborah Birx from her memoir, explaining how "two weeks to flatten the curve" was just marketing for harsh, months-long lockdowns that she was really planning:  "On Monday and Tuesday [March 9th and 10th, 2020]…we worked simultaneously to develop the flatten-the-curve guidance I hoped to present to the vice president at week’s end. Getting buy-in on the simple mitigation measures every American could take was just the first step leading to longer and more aggressive interventions. We had to make these palatable to the administration by avoiding the obvious appearance of a full Italian lockdown. …  No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.""
The "myth" of the slippery slope strikes again

Thread by @GeauxGabrielle on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " The revisionist history of COVID is crazy but I was there. I journaled through it. I screenshot through it. We were (and still are) living through history. And as an epidemiologist I want future generations to know how fucking stupid and selfish you dumb sons of bitches were Don’t talk to me about a goddamn fucking thing I’m doing. Y’all do not know me. People who DO know I be COVID conscious down."
From 2024. Covid hysteria is still raging

Kevin Bass PhD MS on X - "2023 meta-analysis of 40 high-quality studies:  COVID death rate in 2020 for people younger than 70 was 0.07%.  1-in-1500.  We locked down for that?  We created massive learning loss in children for that?  We forced everyone to take a novel mRNA vaccine, that didn't stop transmission, for that?  We destabilized our society and economy and created runaway inflation for that?  We destroyed countless small businesses and participated in the largest wealth transfer to elites in history for that?  We implemented mass censorship for that?  We fired and canceled hundreds of thousands of people for that?  We decimated trust in medicine and public health for that?"
Mankosmash on X - "At the time, I was getting banned on Reddit for pointing to evidence that the case fatality rate was about 0.2%. The media was saying the CFR was over 2% to scare people. Supposedly credible "experts" were "conceding" that it was over 0.5%. We knew this all AT THE TIME."
As usual, the covid hystericists got very upset by peer reviewed research exposing their delusions
Ironic. Even Fauci knew this in 2020, that "the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively"

Meme - Puritans burning witches at the stake: "Oops, turns out the masks and vaxes were pointless"
Puritans to fire (the witches are dead): "Mistakes were made on both sides"