BREAKING: Deal Done to Pass Big Beautiful Bill? UPDATE: Vance Breaks Tie, Reconciliation Passes 51-50

BREAKING: Deal Done to Pass Big Beautiful Bill? UPDATE: Vance Breaks Tie, Reconciliation Passes 51-50 1

This post was originally published on this site

BREAKING: Deal Done to Pass Big Beautiful Bill? UPDATE: Vance Breaks Tie, Reconciliation Passes 51-50 2

So says Punchbowl News’s Samantha Handler, who hears it from John Thune, who hears it from the holdouts in the GOP caucus. The reconciliation bill only needs 51 votes to pass, and Thune has 53 in his caucus, but wrangling them turned into a nightmare that will have consequences when the bill returns to the House.

Advertisement

At this point, though, the focus is still on the Senate, where it looked grim for Donald Trump’s first major legislative project in this term. Thune apparently sees light at the end of the tunnel:

At one point in the last couple of days, it looked as though Thune only had 43 firm votes for passage. So who’s flipping among the other ten Senate Republicans? According to Politico, one in particular seems surprising:

After hours of tense negotiations, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska suggested she has moved closer to yes on the GOP megabill.

Asked if her demands were in the hands of the parliamentarian, she told reporters, “It’s in the hands of the people that operate the copy machine.”

The parliamentarian has meddled plenty with the GOP efforts, so much so that some of the sweeteners for the House Freedom Caucus had to be abandoned. Republicans did get a win last night from Elizabeth MacDonough, however:

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough advised Monday that language that would block Planned Parenthood from Medicaid funding eligibility would be permissible for inclusion in the sweeping budget reconciliation bill, a major blow for the nation’s largest provider of reproductive services.

Advertisement

One good sign that a deal for passage has finally been reached: Thune is calling members back to the floor for a vote in the next few minutes. That suggests that the negotiations have concluded favorably for GOP leadership:

In a sign the Republican-led Senate could be making progress toward ending its marathon session on President Donald Trump’s priority bill, senators have been asked to come to the floor and be in their seats in 15 minutes. The notice went out from the office of Senate GOP Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) at 10:12 a.m. Eastern.

Even if the Senate passes the package, what happens when it gets to the House? Republican leadership insists that they have been working closely to ensure a smooth ride in the lower chamber:

… what is palatable, what isn’t palatable, what our redlines, it really has been a coordinated, interactive process, which is very different than I’ve seen before. And people are really trying to work together, which I think is rather refreshing for a change.

Advertisement

Well, yes, that would be a change. 

Stay tuned for updates as the situation develops …

Update: On to the House … barely:

Now we’ll see just how much wrangling that Mike Johnson needs to do … and Donald Trump, of course. In the meantime, it’s still a win for Trump and the GOP leadership, but only for now. 

Posted in Republican News

Mom and Dad Are Fighting Again

Mom and Dad Are Fighting Again 3

This post was originally published on this site

Mom and Dad Are Fighting Again 4

The Big Beautiful Bill is getting close to passage–maybe–and Elon Musk is very unhappy. 

And when Elon is unhappy, everybody knows it, including Donald Trump, who, in turn, is unhappy with Elon. 

Advertisement

And when these guys are unhappy, everybody else knows it immediately. 

Elon famously hates the Big Beautiful Bill because it blows up the deficit, although there is a lot of legitimate dispute about the extent to which that really is true. After all, the vast majority of that increase in the deficit is an accounting trick caused by extending the Trump tax cuts from his first term–tax cuts that, at least for the most part, nobody expected to expire. 

In other words, unless the bill passes, there will be a multi-trillion-dollar tax increase, and nobody wants that other than the farthest left. 

Throw in a few other things, like no tax on tips, and you could argue that the deficit is marginally increased. Still, there are some spending cuts there as well–assuming any of those survive the butchering by the Senate Parliamentarian. The problem with the bill is that it doesn’t cut spending enough, not that it increases spending substantially. 

Advertisement

Elon is right to be angry that Washington politicians are not running around with their hair on fire about the national debt, but unless something radical changes in the next few days, the alternative to the Big Beautiful Bill is much worse–the same amount of spending and a massive tax increase on top of that, strangling economic growth. 

Of course, those are “details” that are too in the weeds for most people to follow. The headline issue is the debt ceiling increase, which is massive–on the order of $5 trillion. Soon enough, our national debt will blow past $40 trillion, and Elon is right to be enraged that we have gotten to this point. 

Of course, we ARE at this point, and have gotten there the old-fashioned way–decades of fiscal incontinence. 

Musk’s fury and threats have awakened the never-sleeping giant, who is tossing off accusations and threats as he is wont to do. 

Advertisement

The accusation that Musk is just angry that his Tesla subsidies will go away has the virtue of sounding plausible, and the vice of being entirely wrong. Musk has, of course, taken advantage of the subsidies, just as Trump utilizes every advantage he can get; however, he has always been OK with eliminating EV subsidies and mandates. 

And SpaceX? It’s insane to claim it survives on subsidies–without SpaceX, the feds would be spending tens or hundreds of billions more for access to space. 

Musk is wrong that Trump couldn’t have won without him–he probably would have. Trump is wrong that Elon lives off the government tit or is a sore winner. 

The fight is stupid. Each man has a good point–Musk, that the BBB is a travesty, and Trump, that every alternative is much worse. 

Advertisement

This feud is bringing out the worst in both of these great men. Like the Greek gods of old, their egos are driving them to self-destructive behavior, and they have the potential to destroy the very thing they are fighting over. 

Posted in Republican News

Too Fun to Check: The Ayatollah’s Secret Revenge Weapon Is … An Adult-Film Star

Too Fun to Check: The Ayatollah's Secret Revenge Weapon Is ... An Adult-Film Star 5

This post was originally published on this site

Too Fun to Check: The Ayatollah's Secret Revenge Weapon Is ... An Adult-Film Star 6

Get ready for the Ayatollah’s revenge for the loss of his nuclear-weapons program! No, I’m not referring to the alleged Iranian sleeper cells that the Joe Biden Regency allowed into the US, and which Tom Homan is presently rounding up. The Iranians have an even bigger bombshell to drop on Donald Trump … Stormy Daniels.

Advertisement

No, really. Hackers working for Ali Khamenei’s regime have decided to release private e-mails and other data they gleaned from their 2024 intrusion into the Trump campaign. They claim to have a 100-gigabyte trove and plan to use it to embarrass Trump and undermine his administration:

An Iran-linked cyberattack group that hacked President Trump’s 2024 campaign is threatening to release another trove of emails it has stolen from his associates, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Roger Stone.

The big picture: Reuters first reported the threat on Monday that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on X called a “calculated smear campaign” — which came the same day as the Trump administration released a report warning that “Iranian Cyber Actors” may target U.S. firms and “operators of critical infrastructure.” …

Hackers who gave themselves the pseudonym “Robert” told Reuters in online conversations on Sunday and Monday they had around 100 gigabytes of emails involving Wiles, Stone, Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan and adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and others.

Er … can anyone see the glaring errors in this strategy? First off, Stormy Daniels is played out as a scandal. The 2024 election proved it; Trump won despite a cooked-up felony conviction over payments for an NDA, and perhaps even because of it. The only people who care about Stormy Daniels besides the porn star herself are Michael Avenatti, Alvin Bragg, and a sweaty ayatollah hiding in a bunker in Tehran. As bombshells go, Daniels is a dud, at least politically speaking.

Advertisement

Second, the Iranians are late to the party. Democrats spent the last three years trying to embarrass and humiliate Trump into retreating. How well did that work out? For that matter, the Iranians spent most of 2024 trying these same tactics to no avail, including this same hacker group. As Axios notes, they tried to leak material to kneecap Trump’s campaign, only to discover that they would have saved a lot of time and effort by just advising Democrats to dump both Biden and Kamala Harris. 

And third, what purpose does this serve now? Trump already won the election. He’ll be president until 2029 no matter what. (No one’s going to impeach Trump over hacked emails sourced by the IRGC. Well … no one but Al Green and Jasmine Crockett, anyway.) Trump is not eligible for another term in office. 

Finally, the entire strategy is predicated on the idea that Trump will get intimidated by scandal. Has Iranian intelligence even heard of Donald Trump? The man thrives on scandal and gossip, courts controversy, and generally embodies the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Trump is running a much tighter ship in this term than in his first, but don’t let anyone think that Trump will get deflected over a second round of cheap IRGC smear tactics. 

Heck, Trump might repackage it, sell it as NFTs in the digital-media market, and make a small fortune. 

The IRGC should be embarrassed by this idea. Consider just how lame this response is. Trump destroyed their supposedly inviolable nuclear-development redoubt, helped destroy the rest of that program’s infrastructure, and made clear that he’d strike again if the Iranian regime resumed enrichment activities. Is making a bid for some headlines at the National Enquirer or the equally august and relevant New York Times even close to an equivalent? This is a demonstration of impotence, not even a threat so much as a cry for help. The Protection Racket Media will likely eat it up, because they’re as desperate and sweaty as Khamenei. They spent most of the last year hiding behind Daniels’ skirt too, so they’re used to that position. 

Advertisement

Ask Trump if he’d trade Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan for another round of silly scandal-making. The author of The Art of the Deal will take that trade every day … and the Iranians will likely come to discover that the hard way if they choose to keep playing around. 

Posted in Republican News

Iranian Women Take to Streets to Offer Babies Up for Martyrdom

Iranian Women Take to Streets to Offer Babies Up for Martyrdom 7

This post was originally published on this site

Iranian Women Take to Streets to Offer Babies Up for Martyrdom 8

There is nothing unique, unfortunately, about people offering the lives of their children to the gods. 

The Abrahamic religions were born out of the revelation from God that He does not demand such sacrifices–in fact, that they are wrong. 

Advertisement

Unfortunately, one of those religions–Islam, or at least the radical Islamist version of Islam–has reverted to the ancient idea that human sacrifice is a necessary precondition to gaining God’s approval. 

We are always just a hair’s breadth away from barbarism, I guess. 

It’s impossible to know how many Iranian women are genuinely interested in having their children sacrificed to make Allah happy–Allah’s happiness being defined as Muslims murdering all the infidels–but at the very least, quite a few of them are willing to make a show of it. 

In Gaza, children are trained to celebrate and even desire martyrdom–and not the martyrdom of the saints, who rose to that status by bearing the suffering imposed by people who abhorred Christianity. This martyrdom is much more active–of the suicide vest variety. 

Advertisement

Americans struggle to comprehend such depravity. We believe it isn’t normal, because among civilized people, it isn’t. 

But again, civilization is less normal than we would like to think. The modern idea that people are born good and only corrupt societies make them evil is precisely backwards. The opposite is true. As cute as we find children, we must remember that we struggle for much of their childhood to teach them how to repress their uncivilized impulses. 

Left to our own devices, human beings are selfish and often cruel. 

Offering up one’s children for sacrifice may seem to contradict the first, until you realize that the sacrifice is made to please forces that one believes demand it. Here–take him, not me. I can make more. 

Persians are not inherently uncivilized–it’s just that the powers that be have inverted the childhood education process. Rather than teaching kids to channel their less civilized impulses into more productive ways of behaving, the Islamists teach them to embrace their darkest impulses to destroy others outside their tribe. 

Culture matters, which is why the foundational principle of multiculturalism is deeply flawed. It is not true that importing different cultures just brings exciting new foods, as well as interesting music, fashion, and art. Sometimes we are importing useful new ways of thinking and approaching the world, but sometimes we are importing barbarians inside the gates. 

Advertisement

The liberal impulse to welcome other cultures has brought many good things–cross-pollination can be a very good thing. But we shouldn’t mistake openness to differences with a necessity to welcome all comers. Different civilizations can teach each other many things–but barbarians are the enemies of all of us. 

From Beege:  

We would LOVE to invite you to join our VIP Membership program! Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content and rumble with me in the comments, VIP Gold to extend your access to all our terrific Townhall Media platforms, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code FIGHT to join or to upgrade your existing membership level today, and get 60% off with promo code FIGHT!

Ed, David, John, Mitch, and I can’t thank you enough for being with us here, fighting the good FIGHT, and having such a swell time along the way. 

Thanks bunches, y’all, for keeping us going.

Posted in Republican News

Monday’s Final Word

Monday's Final Word 9

This post was originally published on this site

Monday's Final Word 10

Closing the tabs …

Advertisement

Ed: I’d like that even better than their visa cancellations. I’ll take what I can get, though. 

===

The episode points to two trends happening at the same time: The rise in antisemitism since the start of the Gaza war, and growing pro-Palestinian support in Europe as the war continues, especially among the young. 

Support for Israel is evaporating quickly in Europe, reaching its lowest level in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, according to YouGov, a pollster that has tracked the data since 2016. Surveys by YouGov found 63-70% of people in those countries holding an unfavorable view of Israel.

A new report by the Counter Extremism Group, a London think tank, said the war in Gaza had instilled a “disturbing” level of hatred against Jews in the U.K. 

Ed: Don’t buy that for a second. The Jew-hatred has always existed in the UK and in Europe. The war — started by Hamas’ atrocities on October 7 — only gave them an opening to express it. They’re angry that the Jews fought back against those who intend to annihilate them, and that annihilation is what these people actually want. 

===

Advertisement

Ed: Hey, isn’t socialism just “stuff we do together”? That’s what Governor JazzHands McSnitchLine told me, anyway. And charity isn’t setting confiscatory and redistributive policies involving other people’s money, either. The word proceeds from ‘caritas,’ the Latin term for self-sacrificing love of others. With heavy emphasis on “self.”

===

This, naturally is great news for the Times‘s readers — who will now have confirmation of what they had suspected all along: That when Democratic presidents try to spend half a trillion dollars without legislative approval, or decree changes to immigration law that they had previously insisted that they were unable to make, or illegally order vaccine mandates and eviction moratoria in defiance of statute, or use the EPA to achieve aims that they could not get through Congress, or go into Libya without permission, that’s different, and it should under no circumstances be considered as part of a problematic structural change that was created by both parties, in pursuit of all manner of ideological aims, and that has been cheered on by legislators whose politics span the political spectrum.

Ed: Presidents and Congresses of both parties have created an imperial presidency. The New York Times only notices it during Republican administrations, however, and it’s true of all the Protection Racket Media. The worst two presidents in establishing the imperial presidency were both Democrats: Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Although Barack Obama at least deserves an honorable mention for the federal power grab known as ObamaCare.

Advertisement

===

Ed: Beege covered this earlier. As for why CNN would be promoting this app, well … it’s yet another reason to support independent voices and platforms such as ours to make sure we can avoid their narrative laboratories by joining our VIP Membership program! Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code FIGHT to join or to upgrade your existing membership level today, and get 60% off!

===

The Supreme Court on Monday took up a new challenge to campaign finance restrictions in a case brought by Republicans seeking to overturn limits on party committees spending money in coordination with individual candidates. …

The challenge was brought by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the campaigns of two candidates in the 2022 elections: now-Vice President JD Vance, who was running as a Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio, and former Rep. Steve Chabot, a Republican congressman from the same state who lost his re-election bid.

Advertisement

The Federal Election Commission, under the direction of the Trump administration, has sided with the challengers, saying it agrees the restrictions violate the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Ed: As NBC News notes, the Supreme Court actually upheld this restriction in 2001. However, it’s bad law and Congress should void it. I suspect that the court took this up because they recognize that it really does infringe on speech and political action, and perhaps recognizing that the limits have forced money into much more shadowy organizations to get around these restrictions. At least political parties have some electoral accountability, which the various tax-exempt orgs now involved do not have. 

===

Ed: Not to mention “seizing the means of production,” which Mamdani and the media are now trying to redefine as something other than the explicitly Marxist/communist ambition that it is. 

===

Everything Mr. Mamdani is suggesting was already done by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Both nationalized their food-distribution systems in the name of “equity” and “access.” What followed was poverty, rationing and hunger. Grocery-store shelves were stripped bare. Citizens stood in lines for hours to get a loaf of bread or a bag of rice—if there was any food left at all.

Advertisement

Mr. Mamdani wants to replace supermarkets with state-run food stores. That’s not progressive, it’s oppressive. He wants bureaucrats to decide what you eat, when you eat, and where you get it. He wants to rip away the livelihoods of hardworking grocers—many of them immigrants, like my parents.

Supermarkets operate on thin margins, complex logistics and decades of supply-chain expertise. We coordinate daily with hundreds of vendors, farmers, manufacturers and local producers to bring fresh, affordable food to millions. Mr. Mamdani would disrupt that infrastructure, destroying small businesses and jobs. And who’s going to manage these public grocery stores? The same government that can’t fix the subways or public housing?

Ed: When governments can successfully manage the monopolies they already have, then maybe we can discuss adding more. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the disaster that is public education, in NYC and pretty much everywhere else. 

===

===

Advertisement

Ed: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t …

Posted in Republican News

Gen-Z Office Workers Are a Special Breed

Gen-Z Office Workers Are a Special Breed 11

This post was originally published on this site

Gen-Z Office Workers Are a Special Breed 12

I came across this story today and thought it was pretty funny. Then I looked around and discovered it was part of a trend. There have been quite a few stories in the last few weeks about Gen-Z office workers and how truly special they are. In San Francisco, some managers have decided to hire equity coaches rather than confront the problems themselves.

Advertisement

They want to be promoted after only a few months, treat the office like their bedroom, show up in sweats or skimpy office-siren fits, FaceTime friends from their desks, and ghost their managers. 

This is the gist of employer complaints about Gen Z workers, who seem to be  having a uniquely hard time getting along in the office — much worse, managers say, than the generations before them. In a December 2024 survey of 1,000 employers by Intelligent.com, 12.5% said a Gen Z candidate had brought Mom or Dad to a job interview. The bosses are fed up…

Rosalinda Randall, a Marin-based etiquette coach, said inquiries have risen 50% over the last two months…

She tailors her presentations toward clients’ biggest complaints. One Bay Area tech firm asked her to address personal hygiene, because two new hires did not shower or change their shirts for weeks. “They didn’t want to deal with it, so they hired me,” said Randall. She made her presentation to all new hires and added slides to hammer home the hygiene point.

The story included a couple of Instagram posts including this one from a creator who makes clips highlighting how different generations behave at work:

That’s exaggerated obviously but there really is a bumper crop of stories about this. Business Insider has one about Gen-Z and oversharing.

Advertisement

When reporting for this story, I heard from one woman who had to explain to an intern that it wasn’t OK to take her bra off in the office, and another whose manager told her some pretty extensive details about her birth, including her mother’s episiotomy. Another person described their coworker as an “emotional vampire” who often delves into details about her ex’s alcoholism and her sexual relationship with her current partner and overtakes meetings with her personal and professional problems, sucking energy and space from everyone else. A friend of mine — a new manager — has spent the past several months navigating a direct report’s on-again, off-again relationship with their partner.

Almost all of us have had the experience of watching a certain coworker approach our desks or pop up on a video call and thought to ourselves, “Oh, boy, what’s the story going to be today?” Random gossip is fun! Sharing is a way to bond! But also, maybe the guy from IT doesn’t need to know about your grandmother’s illness and your subway run-in with your ex…

Constance Noonan Hadley, an organizational psychologist who founded the Institute for Life at Work, says there’s lots of anecdotal evidence that “people don’t know how to behave in what we consider traditionally professional ways” at work. People scroll on their phones during meetings, or dress in office attire that’s more fitting for a night on the town. Or, they get anxious about small talk and swing too far in the Big Talk direction. “I think perhaps people have misunderstood that whole idea of just full, unfettered self-expression,” Noonan Hadley says.

Advertisement

The oversharing isn’t limited to talking. There was an “office siren” trend on TikTok last year which is exactly what it sounds like, i.e. young women dressing provocatively because…why not? The discussion on TikTok was about what might or might not get them a reprimand from HR and/or sent home.

Even Slate jumped on the trend about Gen-Z in the office. They pulled this long quote from a manager who posted some of their struggles online.

They are chronically disgruntled. I work hard to be fair, compassionate, and supportive while also maintaining the high standard of performance common to our company. But members of this group always seem to be grumbling about how they are treated unfairly. I have been accused of “humiliating” someone by asking a routine follow-up question to a report they gave to a meeting. They have a group chat where they complain about myself and my higher-ups being cruel and inhumane because we ask them to arrive at the office by 8 a.m. (a standard expectation in our field), correct their mistakes, and suggest that they take on new challenges. I’m “mean” because I ask them to redo work that is below par. They talk constantly of quitting.

Sometimes they complain to management, but more often they complain to each other, and the venting turns into an echo chamber of toxicity that drags morale. We are paid very well for our industry, but they frequently complain they aren’t being paid enough. Because I have no power to give them money, I often ask what else I can do to make their jobs more fulfilling and help them to do their jobs well. They don’t know.

Advertisement

Of course every generation that comes along seems to get this treatment. The Millennials certainly did. What’s different about Gen Z is that most of them had their schooling interrupted by the pandemic and they also never knew a world without cell phones and social media. So they are a bit different. Maybe they’ll fall in line as they get older. Probably they will. But for now, a lot of them are struggling with workplace expectations.

Posted in Republican News

I’m Too Sexy for My Car…Well, To Sell It, Anyway

I'm Too Sexy for My Car...Well, To Sell It, Anyway 13

This post was originally published on this site

I'm Too Sexy for My Car...Well, To Sell It, Anyway 14

On the last day of what used to be Pride Month – you know, before most everyone regained both their intestinal fortitude and their sanity – I thought this little tidbit would be kind of an ironic way to sign the fading rainbow days away.

Advertisement

Bid a less-than-fond adieu to the weary woke, as it were.

To appreciate it, we have to look back at the fanfare with which a staid but incredibly sexy iconic automotive brand announced it was ‘rebranding.’

No more British green, no quiet growl of barely leashed power concealed under supple, menacing bodies looking as if they were sculpted to flow effortlessly through a gale force wind…or a time warp complete with throaty roar at each gear shift.

Jaguar wanted no more of this.

GAH-RROOWLLLLL

Give me a minute…

Okay. I’m better.

Tata Motors, which has owned the venerated British car company since 2008, thought  – or got told – it was time to spruce the old sex symbol up. Too dated, too British, too something.

After all, even Beckham had grey hair now.

So Jaguar got itself a hot new advertising firm and launched its edgy, in-your-face, fabulous redo.

And the world got this.

COPY NOTHING

And immediately went, ‘WTF is THAT?’

We weren’t being insensitive to their artistry, either. It was pretty much the general reaction worldwide.

‘Biggest downgrade in history’: Jaguar’s ad revealing rebranded logo sparks backlash, Elon Musk asks, ‘Do you sell cars?’

Jaguar, the iconic British luxury carmaker, unveiled its redesigned logo with an unconventional video advertisement, possibly aimed at stressing its shift towards an all-electric future. However, the ad has faced widespread criticism, with both social media users and industry professionals questioning its execution.

Advertisement

Go figure, huh?

Say…who IS Jaguar’s ‘target’ audience? Did anyone think to double-check?

The company woke up pretty quickly that this was perhaps not the approach they needed, and, last month, after almost half a year of being the butt of industry jokes, they dumped the quirky jerks who had come up with this catastrophic, gut busting ad campaign.

After Jaguar launched a disastrous complete rebranding campaign last year, it has finally dumped the ad agency behind it. We’re honestly surprised this didn’t happen sooner after the storied British luxury brand was mercilessly mocked for what many found to be a bizarre, “woke” ad campaign.

Two reports, one from Daily Mail, another from The Telegraph, claim Jaguar is in fact getting ready to dump its current ad agency despite a contract lasting into next year.

In case you don’t recall, the original rebranding was initially unveiled in November 2024 ahead of the new concept Jaguar being revealed in December. The initial shock of the marketing materials put out by the automaker was quickly followed by open mockery as the company encouraged people to “delete ordinary” and “live vivid.”

There’s one thing wanting to be cutting edge. But it’s a whole ‘nuther bag of worms when you cut your own throat doing so, and it seems that schmaybe Jaguar should have been a lot quicker cutting the cord on the purple and pink people.

Advertisement

Or thrown them off a figurative cliff before they could drive Jaguar sales off a literal one.

OOPS

Too late.

Honestly, I’ve never heard of anything tanking this badly this fast in my life, and that includes woke old Target and maybe even Bud Light.

…One of Britain’s most storied luxury brands is barely selling cars.

Jaguar recorded only 49 new vehicle registrations across Europe in April 2025, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).

Compared to the 1,961 cars sold during the same month the previous year, this 97.5% plunge marked one of the steepest declines for a premium carmaker in recent history.

This marks one of the steepest year-over-year (YoY) sales collapses ever recorded for a premium automaker.

Woke flag’s looking a little tattered, eh?

If you ‘copy nothing’ else in your life, this would be the lesson to take from this latest episode of Business 101.

Woke ruins everything.

Posted in Republican News

Pride Founder Who Repeatedly Attacked J.K. Rowling Online Gets 30 Years in Prison

Pride Founder Who Repeatedly Attacked J.K. Rowling Online Gets 30 Years in Prison 15

This post was originally published on this site

Pride Founder Who Repeatedly Attacked J.K. Rowling Online Gets 30 Years in Prison 16

Stephen Ireland was the co-founder a Surrey Pride, a pro LGBT group launched in 2018. He used that position to repeatedly attack J.K. Rowling as a hateful “TERF” over several years. Today, Ireland was convicted of raping a child and sentenced to 30 years in prison. His then-boyfriend was also convicted.

Advertisement

A man has been jailed for 24 years for raping an “extremely vulnerable” 12-year-old boy after the pair met on a dating app.

Stephen Ireland, 41, who co-founded Pride in Surrey in 2018, raped the child at the flat he shared with his then-partner and co-defendant David Sutton, 27, in Addlestone on 19 April 2024 after messaging on Grindr.

Ireland was also sentenced to a further six years on extended licence, while Sutton was jailed for four-and-a-half years for making indecent photographs of children and possession of an extreme pornographic image…

The court heard the boy had initially told Ireland he was aged 17 – but when he later claimed to be aged 13, Ireland replied: “OK – we just have to keep it a secret.”

This was not the only time the pair had targeted teenage boys. In fact, they discussed “kidnapping” young teens outside a school using fake identities to appeal to them.

In WhatsApp messages from 2022, Mr Sutton and Mr Ireland spoke of “snatching” or “kidnapping” a schoolchild, the court heard on Thursday.

Prosecutor Isabel Delamere said the conversations were beyond fantasy. Jurors were told the pair discussed targeting children outside school gates while pretending to be a talent coach or music manager, as well as how to avoid CCTV cameras.

In one message, Mr Ireland allegedly said “All I’m thinking of is making out with a 13”, while in another he wrote to Mr Sutton “Every day passes and I wanna do something terrible with you,” the court heard.

Jurors were also told that Mr Sutton and Mr Ireland described themselves as “pedos” in messages and that they discussed kidnapping and raping someone in the changing rooms of a swimming pool.

Advertisement

Both defendants denied everything and said the texts were just fantasies but obviously a jury didn’t buy it. J.K. Rowling highlighted the conviction today, pointing out that Ireland had repeatedly gone after her online over several years.

Someone else posted some of Ireland’s other tweets aimed at Rowling:

These aren’t nearly as bad as some of what Rowling frequently receives. Still, it must be nice to have one less critic using their position with a Pride group to attack you as a hater. It will probably be a long time before Ireland is tweeting again.

Advertisement

Posted in Republican News

Bernie Sanders: Comedian

Bernie Sanders: Comedian 17

This post was originally published on this site

Bernie Sanders: Comedian 18

Some jokes write themselves. 

Advertisement

Coming from a political party that redefines words, airbrushes history, employs groups like Antifa to bully people, uses the security services to censor people, and works mightily to jail its political opponents, Sanders is employing some mighty powers of projection when he calls Republicans “Stalinists.”

To be fair, most Democrats are not exactly Stalinists. They are more Maoist than Stalinist, and most are more into the Xi variety of communism, where a social credit system rather than gulags or reeducation camps is the preferred mechanism of social control. 

In any case, Bernie’s party is definitely communist-adjacent in a way it’s hard to argue MAGA is. 

I can see–to the slightest extent–how some MAGA folks could be characterized as being caught up in a cult of personality, although to have somebody from a party that thought Obama was black Jesus, it’s rich to make that charge. And no Republican I know bases his opinions about what celebrities say, while the Democrats trot out every Hollywood icon they can to move the vote. 

Democrats want the government to become a substitute for God. All knowing, all seeing, all powerful. 

Advertisement

For the most part, MAGA is driven by a desire to have the government play less of a role in our lives; collectivism is the left’s guiding star. We didn’t talk openly about taking children away from parents or building concentration camps during COVID, and keep trying to constrain the government. 

Bernie thinks that authoritarianism is characterized by limiting the power of technocrats–only an authoritarian would stand in his way as he tries to mold every tiny detail of our lives. 

Free speech, freedom of religion, self-reliance, entrepreneurialism, and family life are Stalinist? 

Projection, thy name is Bernie. 

Posted in Republican News

A Drug Cartel Civil War Leads to a Surprising Alliance

A Drug Cartel Civil War Leads to a Surprising Alliance 19

This post was originally published on this site

A Drug Cartel Civil War Leads to a Surprising Alliance 20

There is civil war taking place within the Sinaloa drug cartel and the body count is piling up. This story was published today.

Twenty bodies, several of them decapitated, were found on a highway bridge in a part of Mexico where factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel are fighting each other, authorities said Monday.

Four headless corpses were found by the roadside while 16 bodies were discovered inside an abandoned vehicle, the Sinaloa state prosecutor’s office said.

Five human heads were found inside a bag at the scene.

Advertisement

The killers left a note identifying themselves as one of the factions in the ongoing war but authorities didn’t say which side it was. The fighting has been going on for about a year, even since one of El Chapo’s sons betrayed a co-founder of the cartel last July.

Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada is one of the most notorious names in drug war history, synonymous with the fearsome power and corrosive influence of the most important drug cartel in the world.

The last of an original generation of drug cartel leaders, he created the Sinaloa Cartel alongside Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman from the remnants of the Guadalajara Cartel after it collapsed in 1989…

He was lured to the US as part of an elaborate sting operation, masterminded by the son of his former partner, El Chapo. Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of the heirs to El Chapo’s operation, was arrested alongside Zambada having led him to believe he was travelling to northern Mexico to look at prospective properties for clandestine airstrips.

El Chapo is serving a life sentence in a US prison. One of his sons tricked his old partner, ‘El Mayo’ into getting on a plane which landed in El Paso. They were both arrested but this set off a divide between those loyal to El Chapo’s sons and those loyal to El Mayo. One side or the other is responsible for all the bodies found this week.

Advertisement

But keeping a civil war going is expensive and the cartel hasn’t been making as much money thanks to a crack down by the Trump administration and the Mexican authorities. That has led the sons of El Chapo to reach out to their former rivals in another cartel for help.

…a faction of the cartel led by sons of the drug lord known as El Chapo have allied with an old and powerful adversary, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, according to four people familiar with the matter. The risky move by El Chapo’s sons could ultimately turn the Jalisco cartel into the world’s biggest drug trafficker — a shift that could potentially redraw alliances and power structures across international drug markets, analysts say….

The alliance, described by two high-level operatives of the Sinaloa Cartel and two people in the United States with knowledge of the matter, is itself a sea change. The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels had waged a bloody, yearslong turf war across Mexico, terrorizing millions of people in the process…

One high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel said Los Chapitos were in desperate need of funds, reeling from financial losses caused by the disruption to fentanyl production and staggering deaths within their ranks.

“Los Chapitos were gasping for air, they couldn’t take the pressure anymore,” he said. “Imagine how many millions you burn through in a war every day: the fighters, the weapons, the vehicles. The pressure mounted little by little.”

Advertisement

It’s too early to tell what the outcome of this will be but one possibility is that the Sinaloa cartel eventually disappears.

Regardless of which faction comes out on top, she added, the war is likely to mean the end of the Sinaloa Cartel as we know it.

“The question is whether there will be anything left of the cartel, or of the Mayo faction, or will it be defeated, fragmented and shattered by C.J.N.G.,” she said.

So the Trump administration is having a big impact on the cartels. No doubt they will eventually reorganize and push back once the ongoing internal war is settled.

Posted in Republican News