April 8, 2026

THIS KIND OF DEATH WISH IS HOW YOU GET “DEATH WISH”:

Posted at 5:11 pm by Stephen Green

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Can Judd Apatow ‘Comeback’ from Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Judd Apatow made better comedies than just about everyone for a good, long while.

Here’s just a sampling of films and TV shows he either wrote, directed or produced over the past 20-plus years.

“Anchorman”
“The 40-Year-Old Virgin”
“Knocked Up”
“Freaks & Geeks”
“Crashing”
“Bridesmaids”
“This Is 40”
“Step Brothers”
“Get Him to the Greek”

Now, that’s a legacy. And, for the past few years, said legacy has been stuck in neutral. His 2022 Netflix original, “The Bubble,” got hammered by critics. His attempt to make Pete Davidson a movie star, “The King of Staten Island,” got stung by COVID-19 and a lack of big laughs.

His last mainstream comedy hit? The 2013 Amy Schumer vehicle “Trainwreck.”

I bet you can guess what happened next.

Posted at 4:52 pm by Stephen Green

UNEXPECTEDLY! California’s $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers led to ‘negative outcomes,’ researchers say.

Researchers found that California’s minimum wage hike for fast-food workers led to “negative outcomes” such as automation and reduced work hours.

The researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz suggested in a report published in March that the policy could produce unintended consequences such as an increase in menu prices, a loss of overtime and benefits, reductions in employee working hours, and an implementation of automation that replaces workers.

The minimum wage for workers was $16 before the $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers became law in April 2024. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in September 2023 the increase would help workers earn more as the cost-of-living rises.

“The results indicate a plethora of negative outcomes such as higher menu prices for consumers, reductions in employee working hours, widespread elimination of overtime and loss of benefits for employees,” said Stephen Owen, an economics lecturer, University of California, Santa Cruz.

“Further decreases in employee opportunities are being driven by automation and the adoption of labor replacement technologies is accelerating.”

The real minimum wage is always zero.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

M-SNOW: Hitler Was Better Than Trump, America Committed Suicide.

Fresh off of cheering on Iran for how they “humiliated” President Trump by trying to kill American airmen, MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell kicked off Tuesday night’s show by suggesting Adolf Hitler wasn’t as bad a leader as Trump. He went even further and suggested that America committed suicide as a civilization when voters elected Trump a second time.

As O’Donnell was coming on the air, his first words were a jab a trump and praise for Hitler. “’A whole civilization will die tonight.’ Hitler never said that,” he declared for the man who wanted to exterminate the Jews and wrote an entire book about it.

According to O’Donnell, no villain in the history of the world was as bad as Trump. “No head of state in the history of the world ever said that. Civilization had to wait literally thousands of years until today, April 7th, 2026 at 8:06 A.M. for a head of state to say and threaten ‘A whole civilization will die tonight,’” he asserted.

Adding: “No cruel king ever threatened that, no mass murdering tyrant anywhere in the world ever said that, or even thought it was possible.”

Since NewsBusters already established that O’Donnell either didn’t know history or was obfuscating it from his audience, he might want to chat with the Jews and Gypsies Hitler tried to eradicate, the Ukrainians who survived Joesph Stalin’s Holodomor, anyone living through any of the ongoing genocides in Africa, or anyone who survived any communist regime anywhere.

“And with that statement, it could not be more tragically clear now that a whole civilization has already died,” O’Donnell sneered as he proceeded to rant about how American voters killed the American civilization.

Back in 2010, O’Donnell famously said, “Liberals amuse me. I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals.”

Like Tucker and Darryl Cooper in 2024, O’Donnell appears to be narrowing down the form of socialism he prefers.

Related: Jim Treacher notes that “Fascism in America Sure Is Taking a While.”

It’s a bit more of a sitzkrieg than a blitzkrieg these days.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

COUNTER-INTUITIVE SHOCKER: Institute for Energy Research (IER) dug deep into the data on the impact of the AI-driven explosion in demand for electricity to power new data centers to see if there is a connection of that phenomena with increases in electricity rates, as claimed by lots of folks on the Left and some on the Right as well. Verdict here and it’s likely not what you expect.

Posted at 4:00 pm by Mark Tapscott

NOVEMBER PREVIEW: The Republicans Announce Their 2026 Senate Targets. “The MSM has been endlessly hyping Democrat chances to win control of the Senate. But the central problem for them is that only two Republican seats – Maine and North Carolina – are in competitive states. The other 20 GOP seats are in states where the Republicans have a big edge, with Donald Trump winning them by double digits. That almost never happens in Senate elections, let alone twice. In the 2025 Virginia elections, the Democrats won a landslide, but they still didn’t carry a single district where Trump won with that margin.”

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green

WHOSE STUFF IS IT, ANYWAY?

I miss the buttons, too — they were just the thing for reading lying on your side.

Posted at 3:34 pm by Stephen Green

THE WORK IS THERE FOR ANYONE WILLING TO TAKE IT:

Posted at 3:03 pm by Stephen Green

FRAUD ALL THE WAY DOWN: The most connected hospice doctor in California.

A CBS News Investigation found one Los Angeles County hospice physician’s name, Dr. Rajiv Bhuva, on Medicare claims for nearly 2,800 patients across 126 California hospices in 2024, according to the last full year of available data.

There are roughly 1,800 licensed hospices in Los Angeles County. Federal and state data show 742 of them — about 42% — have multiple indicators of fraud, as defined by the state of California.

No doctor in California is connected to more hospices than Dr. Rajiv Bhuva. In 2024, his name appeared on Medicare claims across 126 hospice companies in California — 115 of them in Los Angeles County alone.

Much more at the link.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

HEH:

Now figure out something for Indian hackers.

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Gavin Newsom’s $30 Billion Fraud Magnet.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is embroiled in a national fraud scandal. Thus far, much of the coverage has focused on alleged schemes related to unemployment insurance, hospice care, and food stamps. In this exclusive investigation, we shine a light on one of California’s largest initiatives: the In-Home Supportive Services Program, or IHSS, which pays family members and other individuals to provide home-based care for the elderly and disabled—at a cost of nearly $30 billion per year.

On the surface, IHSS presents itself as an instrument of compassion, directing billions to caregivers who help with cooking, personal care, laundry, and other daily needs inside recipients’ homes. But a growing number of experts and critics argue that the program is rife with fraud, losing roughly an estimated $6 billion to $12 billion yearly to scammers. Meantime, the state’s powerful home-care unions collect more than $149 million in membership dues, funneling money into the political network supporting Newsom and California Democrats.

This is the story of a government that has allowed compassion to become a mask for fraud, creating a self-reinforcing system that keeps the Democratic establishment in power.

It sounds bad. No wonder Newsom thinks that simply throwing more money into a bonfire will make it all go away: Gavin Newsom to spend $19M in taxpayer funds on New York PR firm to polish California’s image.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

BRIDGET PHETASY: I Don’t Care If Gen Z Likes Me.

I recently caught a couple of clips from Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes—originally published last October. And something odd struck me: the body language. Here was a man who once commanded an audience of five million adults on the biggest show in cable news, sitting across from a 20-something shock-jock, channeling the energy of a guy trying to impress his son’s friends. See how cool I am? See how I’m not afraid to go there?

For example, an hour and a half into the conversation, Carlson paused to justify why he’d agreed to do it at all: “Everyone’s going to be like, you’re a Nazi just like Fuentes. . . . But I don’t think Fuentes is going away. . . he’s bigger than ever.” He also told Fuentes he was “more talented than I am, for sure, as a talker.”

Earlier, when Fuentes explained that he became “radicalized on race” by listening to Fox News host Mark Levin, Tucker responded, “Amazing.” When Fuentes mentioned he admires Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Carlson told him they would circle back. He never did.

Culture commentator Jon Gabriel put it well on X at the time: “Jon Stewart embracing Zohran, Tucker embracing Nick. Two aging hosts desperate to impress the young and scared of being left behind.”

Tucker morphed into Carsenio so slowly, I hardly even noticed:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (MINNEAPOLIS EDITION REDUX):

Posted at 2:02 pm by Stephen Green