April 3, 2026

THAT SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE LEG CAN BE TOTALLY WORTH IT? There’s a Basic Lesson From the Jill Biden Secret Service Detail Negligent Discharge. “What the spokesperson couldn’t or wouldn’t explain was why an on-duty Secret Service agent, away from his protectee and with no threat present, drew his service weapon, therefore requiring him to re-holster in a manner that led to him negligently shooting himself in the ass. That seems a bit fishy even to the casual observer.”

Posted at 8:38 am by Stephen Green

EUROPE IS FUNCTIONALLY ON THE OTHER SIDE:

Posted at 8:23 am by Glenn Reynolds

REMAIN CALM! ALL IS WELL!

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

“SO YOU’RE SAYING YOU’LL MISS HER?”

Heh. Flashback to the infamous 2018 train wreck “interview” that instantly made Peterson a superstar by easily swatting back all of Newman’s hectoring interviewing techniques: Jordan Peterson, Hero. Clinical psychologist triumphs over ideologically-driven journalistic idiocy.

As Rod Dreher wrote at the time, “The interview ought to be shown in journalism classes as an example of what happens when a journalist believes that ideological ardor substitutes for reason, and that contempt for her interview subject should rightly override professionalism.”

Similarly, the London Spectator responded, “If I was Channel 4 I would take it down. If I was Cathy Newman I would sue or seek a super-injunction. I don’t think I have ever witnessed an interview that is more catastrophic for the interviewer.” In response, Newman initially tried to shrug off the debacle, before descending full-on into victimhood:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

DEPOSING NON-EXISTENT MONARCHS IS A LUCRATIVE GRIFT:

I looked into these two last year during the anti-Tesla/DOGE/Musk protests, and here’s what I found:

Indivisible Project’s parent organization — more on that in a moment — was founded and is run by the husband-wife team of Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin. Greenberg is your typical NGO type — nice upbringing, good schools, brief Capitol Hill career with Tom Perriello (D-Va.) and at State. She followed up with the creation of an online anti-Trump publication called “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda,” and the establishment of the Indivisible Civics organization.

While DataRepublican doesn’t show Indivisible Civics receiving any taxpayer money, it has received $5,424,005 from somewhere, with about half of those funds going to wages and salaries and another 10% to benefits.

But here’s where it gets fun. The fine print disclaimer at the bottom of the since-deleted signup page reads, “Indivisible.org is a joint website of Indivisible Project and Indivisible Action. Indivisible Project is a registered 501(c)(4). Indivisible Action is a Hybrid Polítical Action Committee. They are separate organizations.”

That’s legalese for “the parent organization (Indivisible Civics aka Indivisible.org) is legally and financially shielded from any stupid stuff people do with the money and encouragement of the new organization (Indivisible Project).” But again, money is fungible — so wink-wink, nudge-nudge, comrade.

Back in the ’80s, we called that “plausible deniability.”

And now we know they’re more well-to-do red-diaper grifters shilling for George Soros — surprising exactly nobody.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green

PRETENDING THE FRINGE IS MAINSTREAM IS HOW THE PRESS SMEARS THE GOP; PRETENDING THE FRINGE DOESN’T EXIST IS HOW THE PRESS PROTECTS DEMS:

More:

Posted at 7:20 am by Stephen Green

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT, SOCAL EDITION: Fears grow of ‘Detroit-Style’ decline as Hollywood jobs evaporate.

Real fear is growing that Los Angeles’ once-thriving TV/film industry is taking a “Detroit-style” decline with Hollywood jobs evaporating over the last few years.

A staggering 30% drop in film and TV employment since 2022 has experts warning that the city is following the path of the Motor City where the auto industry used to boom, according to the U.S. Labor Department, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Recent stats show that as of March 2026, jobs in the motion picture and sound recording industries have dropped from where they were at their peak in July 2022 of more than 455 thousand jobs to 344,000.

That’s a lot decline to hide!

Ann Coulter and Mickey Kaus wonder how much Hollywood getting woke has caused them to go broke:

In 2007, private jet enthusiast Leonardo DiCaprio told Vanity Fair, “We are in the environmental age whether we like it or not. So, what does the future look like? We know the United States, the greatest consumer and source of waste, needs to make a transition to a greener future, but will our pivotal generation create a sustainable world in time?”

In response, I suggested: Ban The Bombs–From Hollywood.

Wouldn’t banning movie production be a way to save resources? Films involve miles of celluloid, a petroleum-based resource. Plus the fuel involved in transporting the celebrities, crew, and equipment. They involve thousands of watts of electricity for their lighting. Imagine what the lights themselves are doing to the ozone. Then more reels of celluloid when the finished product is shipped to theaters. What about the chemicals involved in processing the film? Then all of the DVDs, which are made of plastic. Then there are the forests cut down to produce magazines to promote them, such as Vanity Fair. And what about the obesity issues caused by theater concession stands? Is the popcorn grown organically? Is the CO2 in the Coke machines harming the atmosphere?

I call on Leonardo DiCaprio to put his money where his mouth is. He’s made enough. It’s time to (a) quit the film industry and (b) call on studio executives to voluntarily cease production of all movies and television shows.

In 2010, the late Andrew Breitbart made a similar modest proposal to James Cameron:

I challenge James Cameron to lead the charge with Big Hollywood to stop eco-unfriendly Hollywood film and television production. We’ll call our initiative: “Lights Off, Camera Off, Action Now!” We can start with an immediate moratorium on wasteful and redundant sequels. Then we’ll create a government bureaucracy to decide what can and cannot be made, with a heavy entertainment surtax for the producers to incur. Our delicate and depleting ecosystem cannot handle more energy-sucking television and film production, especially the size and scope of the average James Cameron production. And anyone that disagrees with me is swine and an effin’ demagogue.

At the first link above, the New York Post noted that tax cuts are being suggested by the establishment left as a solution to revitalize the increasingly beleaguered film industry:

At a March congressional hearing, California Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff met with others who work in the industry to gain support for a bill that would create a federal film tax incentive for movies to be made in the U.S.

During the hearing, Schiff noted that LA County has lost 42,000 entertainment jobs in the last two years.

“These are great jobs and we want to keep them here at home,” Schiff said. “It’s not rocket science how we do that. It’s largely drafted. It needs to be bipartisan. We are working to gather bipartisan support for this.”

As Conquest’s First Law of Politics posits, “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.” But why would Hollywood and its shills turn to tax breaks now to salvage the industry, when for decades, it’s been propped up by Eisenhower-era tax cuts. In 2012, Glenn was demanding: Repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts!

It’s no coincidence that much of the Democrats’ base doesn’t have to worry about taxes much, either because they work for nonprofits and public entities that don’t pay taxes, or because they live off government benefits, or because they work in industries — like the motion picture and recording industries — with a long history of shady accounting and favorable tax treatment. Republicans, if they’re smart, can nonetheless teach them that tax increases do, in fact, hurt.

They should head into the next budget battle with a list of proposals for tax increases that will sting Democratic constituency groups, but which will seem eminently fair to voters.

The first such proposal would be to restore the 20 percent excise tax on motion picture theater gross revenues that existed between the end of World War II and its repeal in the mid-1950s. The campaign to end the excise tax had studio executives and movie stars talking like Art Laffer, as they noted that high taxes reduced business income, hurt investment and cost jobs.

The movie excise tax was imposed in response to the high deficits after World War Two. Deficits are high again, and there’s already historical precedent. Of course, to keep up with technology, the tax should now apply to DVDs, downloadable movies, pay-per-view and the like. But in these financially perilous times, why should movie stars and studio moguls, with their yachts, swimming pools and private jets, not at least shoulder the burden they carried back in Harry Truman’s day — when, to be honest, movies were better anyway.

For extra fun, they could show pictures of David Geffen’s yacht and John Travolta’s personal Boeing 707 on the Senate floor. You want to tax fat cats? I gotcher “fat cats” right here! Repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts!

Raising taxes inevitably results in a painful economic slowdown, which of course “unexpectedly” decreases tax revenues. Hollywood heavyweights have been calling for higher taxes and a worse economy for the rest of us — but their blue state economic worldview is now making life painful for the below the line technicians in their own industry:

Exit quote:

 

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

GET WOKE GO BROKE:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

COVID SIX YEARS AGO TODAY: “They got covid 100% wrong,” Don Surber wrote on Boxing Day of 2022:

On April 3, 2020, the Daily Breeze reported, “Malibu surfer in handcuffs after enjoying empty, epic waves.”

Los Angeles County sheriff deputies arrested a man who was by himself in the ocean, in the name of stopping the spread of covid. The deputies were unmasked. It was a crazy time in which authorities erred on the side of authoritarianism to stop the spread of a virus.

The experts sided with closing down the world.

[On April 2nd, 2020], The LA Times reported, “Kim Prather, a leading atmospheric chemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wants to yell out her window at every surfer, runner, and biker she spots along the San Diego coast.”

She told the paper, “I wouldn’t go in the water if you paid me $1 million right now.”

Why?

Covid is a virus. Viruses spread from person to person — or according to those covering up for Red China, from bat to person. And yet the government ordered everyone inside.

That was dumb. But it is worse. We now know by staying indoors and vegetating, people made themselves weaker.

NPR reported two days before Christmas, “A regular exercise routine may significantly lower the chances of being hospitalized or even dying from COVID-19, recently published research shows.

But so much for aquatic exercising in the once-Golden State. As Jack Dunphy noted at the PJ Mothership on April 6th of 2020: Crackdowns on Lone Surfers and Paddleboarders Threaten to Erode Respect for Law Enforcement Even Further.

Despite, as Surber noted, their getting covid 100% wrong, corporatists on both sides of the equation weren’t afraid to use their power to bend reality: The Twitter Files show the unholy alliance of state and corporate power.

Even if social media content is not protected by the First Amendment, and even if Twitter, as a private company, can create its own “terms of service” and just decide to banish whomever they want, a key question posed by the Twitter Files is: what if the government is telling this private company to do so?

Isn’t that just an end run around the First Amendment’s protections of our right to free speech? I’m no lawyer but it sure seems so.

And, even worse, what if the cozy relationship between government and social media evolves to the point that platforms censor users without needing to be specifically asked to do so by the government? Like a Mafia don ordering a hit with a sideways glance, no words are ever spoken, but the order is made clear.

Just like that, an unholy alliance has been created, with government and private companies working in lockstep to censor our guaranteed right to free speech.

There’s a name for when private companies and the government work hand in hand: fascism. Benito Mussolini said that “fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

As indicated in the Twitter Files, access to Twitter’s bureaucratic censors, de-boosters and outright platform banners was equal opportunity — Republicans could make a call just as easily as Democrats. But what is also made clear is that the Democratic Party loyalties of Twitter employees are close to 100 percent.

So who was being censored? Anyone who challenged Democrats. Which goes a long way towards explaining why those 11,000 people who questioned Covid lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates and vaccine effectiveness were given the boot.

“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State,” to coin a phrase.

Related: Several more bonkers moments from 2020 rounded up here, under an otherwise innocuous headline: Greater Exercise Activity is Tied to Less Severe Covid-19 Outcomes, a Study Shows.

Evergreen:

Posted at 1:43 am by Ed Driscoll

April 2, 2026

THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED:

Posted at 10:55 pm by Glenn Reynolds

IT’S AN EASY QUESTION:

Posted at 10:13 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Well, here we are.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

UNBURDENED BY WHAT HAS BEEN: White House Humorously Skewers Remarks Kamala Harris Decided to Put Out Before Trump’s Iran Speech.

She spoke in the video about the action against Iran, but she didn’t talk about how the Biden-Harris administration has helped to prop up the terrorist regime by relaxing enforcement on sanctions, and even released billions of dollars to Iran in frozen assets at the same time as a prisoner exchange.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly just flattened her, using Harris’ own comments about coconut trees to do her in.

“Kamala Harris oversaw the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and ushered in an invasion of migrant criminals into our homeland. She should listen to the overwhelming majority of Americans who want her to crawl under a coconut tree and go away.”

Thirteen service members were killed directly because of the Biden-Harris failures.

This is what it looked like under Biden-Harris. We do well never to forget how out of control it was, from the border to the rampant high prices/inflation.

To be fair, I can understand why a cabinet member from Obama’s third term would be angry about how Trump is cleaning up Barry’s messes. It’s a far cry from giving the mullahs $400 million in cash, and the Taliban seven (cue the Dr. Evil voice) billion dollars worth of American weapons, vehicles, and aircraft:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

MY MONEY IS ON THE FORMER:

But in regards to Graham’s questions, while it’s obvious that as a fellow lefty Brinkley is a fan, his biography raised a number of questions about just how biased was Mr. “And that’s the way it is,” particularly in an era when his competition consisted of three other prime time anchors (two on commercial networks, eventually, one on PBS) with exactly the same Democrat Party talking points.

Still though, it could be fun for audiences to discover that Democrat Party operatives with a lavalier were smearing Republican presidential candidates as crypto-Nazis decades before Trump.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll