The Blaze

The walls are closing in!

Celebrities are turning up the rhetorical heat on President Donald Trump, proving once more that they didn’t learn their lesson from the last election.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s film oozes Oscar-season buzz. It’s a celebration of political violence and a mash note to anti-ICE attacks.

“Hacks” star Jean Smart just gave a shout-out to the latest No Kings rally, suggesting that President Trump is a dictator in waiting, or Hitler or, well, fill in the blank.

The current resident of the White House thinks that he has everybody fooled, but he has made it abundantly clear that he admires dictators and wishes to be one. And ironically this country was founded on a rebellion against having a king. So it’s ironic. The most patriotic thing that you can do is say, “No Kings.” A king does not belong in the United States of America. So please, find a peaceful No Kings protest near you.

Peaceful? Now, that’s funnier than any “Hacks” subplot.

Not to be outdone, former D-list doyenne Kathy Griffin joined the conspiracy mob in alleging that Donald Trump didn’t win the 2024 election fair and square. Her proof? Hey, who needs proof?

Griffin used Trump’s former bestie, Elon Musk, to explain the theft.

Anyway, he’s a, but he’s a professional Nazi in my humble opinion, and he’s good friends with Trump, and at one point, I don’t know if you remember, but he was giving out million-dollar checks to people if they would vote for Trump. That’s illegal. It’s unconstitutional and illegal, so that was happening, and the fact that Trump won all seven swing states, which has never happened in the history of the U.S., makes it all very suspicious to me.

It’s Fake News with a heaping helping of hysteria. At least no heads were severed along the way.

And then there’s singer/actress Renee Rapp. The “Mean Girls 2.0” star shouted “F**k ICE” and “F**k Trump” at a recent concert.

Gosh, Trump better resign before it’s too late …

Squander lust

A million dollars here, a million dollars there, and all of a sudden, you’re talking about real money.

That’s Hollywood accounting, and it explains why Warner Bros. won’t sweat losing a cool $100 million on “One Battle After Another.” That’s despite endless fawning media coverage and a star-studded cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s film oozes Oscar-season buzz. It’s a celebration of political violence and a mash note to anti-ICE attacks.

Liberal film critics love it, of course, but the inconvenient truth is that the movie will lose a fortune at the box office. The budget is just too big, and normie moviegoers would rather watch “Black Phone 2.” At least that film understands that the franchise’s child-killer, played by Ethan Hawke once more, is the bad guy and we’re meant to root against him.

For most companies, a loss like that would be catastrophic, but movie studios are perfectly fine with that kind of a fiscal gut punch. Why? The film is going to earn endless Oscar nominations and countless awards-season hosannas, and it’s the perfect Resistance storytelling.

Remember, it’s show “business,” with an asterisk …

RELATED: Hollywood goes full antifa with ‘One Battle After Another’

Warner Bros. Pictures

Hamas helpers

Who knew there were adults in the room within the Hollywood community? Paramount recently punched back against nearly 4,000 stars blacklisting Israel-linked projects. Now, it’s Warner Bros.’ turn:

Our policies prohibit discrimination of any kind, including discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, or ancestry. We believe a boycott of Israeli film institutions violates our policies. While we respect the rights of individuals and groups to express their views and advocate for causes, we will continue to align our business practices with the requirements of our policies and the law.

It’s no accident that the announcement came after the Trump administration’s historic peace agreement in the Middle East. Still, we’ll applaud any baby steps toward a steel spine in La-La Land …

West wingnut

Bradley Whitford isn’t a big name like Griffin or Rob Reiner, but his TDS can stand toe to toe with the best of the worst. The “West Wing” alum raged against ICE and the GOP in toto this week, out-hyperbolizing even “The View” crew.

“I am living in a world where we have internment camps. … And the thing that’s very upsetting to me right now, and we’re giving these internment camps funny names. Like, they’re some fun to be had in the inhumanity of it all. It’s a very strange time for me.”

Maybe he’s mad because he thought of “Alligator Alcatraz” first but didn’t copyright it?

NBC News has released several identity-based news teams that cover sexuality- and race-focused stories.

Not only were dozens of employees laid off, but the cuts seemingly came as a surprise.

‘Not their first gay rodeo.’

NBC News reportedly made the announcement early on Wednesday, and according to insiders, the bomb was dropped by Executive Vice President of Editorial Catherine Kim. At around 10 a.m., about 150 NBC News staffers were told they were no longer employed during a brief meeting that was described by one source as a “difficult day for a lot of us.”

LGB-free

The Wrap reported that the cuts completely eliminated teams who superficially covered news for black, Asian, Latino, and various gay identities. This includes NBC BLK, NBC Asian America, NBC Latino, and NBC OUT.

NBC OUT, for example, describes itself as content driven toward “the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community.”

Recent coverage included, “Queer art faces widespread museum censorship,” and “Not their first gay rodeo: Celebrating 50 years of queer cowfolks.”

NBC BLK recently published a piece on how a “new exhibit highlights LGBTQ legacy of Harlem Renaissance.”

The bizarre content will still live on, but in a less dedicated format.

RELATED: No MAGA ‘Magic’ allowed? Champion card gamer faces bans for Trump support

Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Wrap noted that the specific pages will still have stories published regarding the identity groups, but the content will come from a group of just five news team members who will contribute to the pages across the board. Another alleged inside source said the cuts were not meant to target the diversity teams, but rather were driven by budget concerns and a desire to “streamline its editorial efforts.”

Ruffled feathers

The shift in personnel comes after Comcast announced a realignment of its networks in August. As reported by Reuters, USA Network, CNBC, and MSNBC will branch off into a new company called Versant. MSNBC will also change its name to “MS NOW” and lose its peacock logo.

The new name is an acronym for “My Source News Opinion World.”

MSNBC was launched in 1996 and represented a partnership between Microsoft and the National Broadcasting Company. Microsoft left the venture in 2012, however.

CNBC will keep the same name, which stands for Consumer News and Business Channel.

RELATED: God doesn’t make anyone gay: The case against banning ‘conversion therapy’

Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Divesting diversity

NBC News’ total reductions make up about 7% of its 2,000 staffers. The move comes as several companies shift away from their divisive verticals, which haven’t always been amicable departures.

In April, Paramount agreed to terminate its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which included racial quotas for staff and writers, after it was sued by a white writer who said he was discriminated against.

Then-president and CEO of CBS George Cheeks had said publicly that he set a goal for CBS writing rooms to have 40% non-white staff members, with 17 of 21 networks allegedly meeting or exceeding that target.

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Kansas lawmakers are debating whether to expand health care providers’ access to the federal 340B drug pricing program. If passed, Senate Bill 284 would hand even more power to large hospital chains while shrinking consumer choice. It would also deepen the program’s existing problems — lack of accountability, rising costs, and market consolidation — all without helping the patients it was supposed to serve.

The 340B program, created in 1992, was meant to help safety-net providers serving uninsured and low-income patients by requiring drug manufacturers to sell medications at steep discounts. Today, it has ballooned into the second-largest prescription drug purchasing program in the United States, behind only Medicare Part D, costing $66.3 billion in 2023.

The 340B program no longer fulfills its stated purpose. It fuels industry consolidation, drives up costs, and reduces access to care — especially in rural communities.

SB 284 would make that worse. The bill would block drugmakers from denying access to certain drugs, reduce transparency, and discourage innovation. It would do nothing to stop hospitals from exploiting the program. Instead, it would encourage them to expand the same practices that drive up costs for Kansans, small businesses, and rural health care providers.

The 340B shell game

The myth behind 340B is that big health systems use their windfalls to support rural hospitals. The reality is the opposite. As 340B has expanded, rural hospitals have closed by the dozens. The law’s original purpose — to subsidize drug purchases for clinics that serve the needy — has been lost.

What began as a narrow, temporary safety net for vulnerable populations has evolved into a profit engine for massive hospital systems. Many 340B participants today are large urban hospitals, cancer centers, and wealthy institutions that do little charity care. Once a hospital buys an outpatient clinic, it can immediately declare that clinic 340B-eligible, regardless of the patients it serves. Those discounted drugs can then be billed at full price to insurers or government programs, and the hospital keeps the difference.

Federal watchdogs, including the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Inspector General, have repeatedly documented the program’s lack of oversight. Hospitals aren’t required to report how they use 340B revenue or whether they pass savings on to patients.

The rich get richer

Hospitals buy drugs cheap, bill high, and pocket the profits. Those profits fund expansion — not lower costs for patients. The lure of easy money drives hospital consolidation across the country. Smaller, independent clinics — often more efficient and affordable — can’t compete with heavily subsidized giants and are forced to sell out.

This pattern has repeated hundreds of times nationwide, inflating 340B spending and diverting subsidies far from the low-income patients the program was meant to help. Since 2014, when 340B abuse accelerated alongside the Affordable Care Act, nonprofit hospitals have gone on a buying spree, snapping up local clinics, raising prices, and squeezing out independent providers.

Each participating hospital can also contract with hundreds of retail pharmacies, creating sprawling networks that capture 340B discounts far removed from any needy patient. The result is “mission creep” on a massive scale — a program once justified by compassion now serves as a revenue stream for billion-dollar systems.

Instead of cutting costs, 340B creates a hidden subsidy that enriches institutions while obscuring the real price of care. Worse, some hospitals use their freed-up funds to expand abortion and gender-transition services, sidestepping Hyde Amendment restrictions on federal money for those procedures.

RELATED: Dr. Oz exposes the nonprofit lie at the heart of US health care

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

A program beyond saving

The 340B program no longer fulfills its stated purpose. It fuels industry consolidation, drives up costs, and reduces access to care — especially in rural communities. Expanding it in Kansas would cement a broken system, trapping the state in a cycle that benefits hospitals and harms taxpayers.

Congress and the Trump administration are working to reform 340B and Medicare to curb waste and corruption. Kansas lawmakers should follow that lead. Instead of handing big hospital chains another windfall, they should restore accountability, competition, and transparency — so that health care serves patients, not institutions.

Is there anything more off-putting than a tech founder who concern-trolls himself — warning with deep seriousness that the things he’s doing are actually quite troubling and we all need to get serious about passing laws that will mitigate their consequences before disaster strikes?

I don’t know — I don’t want to know! — but one related instance currently going viral highlights why it’s worse than a mere turnoff. In a heartfelt cry for help, Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic, one of the leading AI companies, posted a long warning about how dangerous his frontier technology really is and how it’s our responsibility to take action to remedy that.

“Make no mistake: what we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine,” he writes.

“In fact, some people are even spending tremendous amounts of money to convince you of this — that’s not an artificial intelligence about to go into a hard takeoff, it’s just a tool. … It’s just a machine, and machines are things we master.” To the contrary, he insists that “what we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine,” one that, despite his optimism about AI’s benefits, leaves him “deeply afraid.”

There’s only one thing that can justify human existence over and above that of the most powerful tools we can build.

Now, it is notable that Anthropic has a certain reputation. David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto chief, posted in response that the company “is running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering. It is principally responsible for the state regulatory frenzy that is damaging the startup ecosystem.”

In fact, as the New York Post recently reported, Anthropic is on a “collision” course with the Trump administration due to its deep, elite connections with the left-wing political machine, ranging from previous administrations to the Ford Foundation, one of the so-called “nongovernmental organizations” the White House has blamed in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination for fomenting and funding political violence.

But worse, in a sense, are Anthropic’s links to effective altruism, a cultlike Silicon Valley movement whose brushes with large-scale fraud (in the FTX scandal starring Sam Bankman-Fried) and polyamory have led even eccentric and controversial figures like Sam Altman to raise red flags. As former FTC chief technologist and Abundance Institute AI policy head Neil Chilson has explained, today EA figures are best known for pushing extraordinary crackdowns on AI development, ranging from “authoritarian” policy responses to literally calling in the airstrikes on AI data centers, an approach driven by their insistence that runaway AI is an apocalyptic development sure to wipe out humanity unless we collectively act first.

To be clear, Anthropic’s founders have distanced themselves from EA in public remarks, and Clark’s recommendations do not include anything like nuking AI from orbit just to be sure. In fact, he should be commended for his call to listen more to “labor groups, social groups, and religious leaders” on the subject of our future relationship with our most powerful technologies.

But there is no escaping the fact that the ultimate goal behind the alarm raised by Anthropic’s leadership and the EA network sharing its orbit is to take coordinated global legal action to pervasively restrict and dictate the course of technological development from the very highest level on down. This is something many Americans instinctively reject, whatever their fears or concerns about AI might be. It is easy to see how such an approach would disregard the Constitution right out of the box. But the appeal being made is to higher-scale principles and powers than the Constitution’s or the American people’s. And ultimately, in this context, weaving in the “voices” of “stakeholders” across various “communities” is merely a means to that end, a diversitarian stamp of moral legitimacy that, as a core part of DEI’s use as an algorithm to create a new global governance regime, has already worn out its welcome.

So what do we do?

I would hardly characterize myself as a “religious leader,” but the fact is that very few Christians have spent recent years working seriously across the interrelated fields of tech theory and practice, and in that capacity I do want to offer a perspective that can prove useful to cutting through the increasingly intractable and fruitless debates between “nones” who love (or even worship) AI and “nones” who hate (or even want to destroy) it.

The overarching problem posed by the Anthropic controversy is that people who do not believe that our given human being is sacred really can’t be trusted with legal control over the technology they think is going to obliterate our humanity — because they fail to understand that no law can ever save us from destroying ourselves regardless of how much technology has advanced in any particular direction, and they fail to grasp that we will continuously destroy ourselves in ever more feverish ways the more we reject God’s own message that He created us in an act of love so great that our relationship to Him is familial, calling us to reciprocate that love and act toward one another accordingly.

RELATED: Against the Butlerian Jihad!

Photo by Tobias Schwarz/Getty Images

There’s only one thing that can justify human existence over and above that of the most powerful tools we can build. Only one thing that can justify our authority and control over those tools. Nature, reason, philosophy, myth, story, legend, ethics, ideology, rights, might … none of these suffice any more.

The only thing that will do is faithful belief in the truth of the Christian anthropology: that our given human form, including its visible and invisible parts, is sacred in the highest — for we were given that form, as the consummation and microcosm of all creation, because of how unfathomably the immeasurably supreme God loved and loves us, individually and together, even unto the degree that we can and must call Him not just Lord or Master, but Father, so that we can freely return His complete and total love with our own.

Nothing else will hold the line against occultism, obscurantism, destitution, servitude, profanation, disenchantment, and despair in the realm of AI or any other technology capable, if pushed, of simulating the human person and the human soul to the point of complete deception and delusion.

It just so happens that “we” have pushed technology to a degree that this uncomfortable truth about what justifies our existence (as it always has) is coming ever more starkly and inarguably out into the open.

Of course, a lot of people really don’t want this to be true, for all the endless reasons and rationales we are all extremely familiar with. You would think that the revelation of “this one weird trick” would cause waves of relief to spread joyously across the world, but no. The most prominent reactions are from those who would rather flee into the underground catacombs or dive into the black hole of the Borg.

These foolish attempts at a hasty solution will not just fail you as a person; they will fail the many, many millions desperately thirsting to be trustably, authoritatively led into the more strenuous and tension-filled but more peaceful and beautiful middle way between the two great negational temptations.

Abandoning the people and the devil take the hindmost 300 million-plus is a poor way of loving one’s fellow creatures so beloved by God that in them He commands us to see His very self. Obey the commandments (Matthew 22:37-40) with discernment, patience, discipline, humility, loving-kindness, and long-suffering, and we can have “nice things” like technological advancement and flourishing communities and so forth. Seek ye first the kingdom, and the rest will follow.

Seek ye other stuff — such as a simulation so powerful that there, all experience and memory of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are obliterated, and the rest will follow from that.

Start in your heart

This is emphatically NOT about attacking or debunking or destroying other faiths, doctrines, ideologies, wishes, passions, agendas, or anything else. The time has come to deny pride of place to blaming the other instead of the self, to fixating on what the other says or does instead of what lurks within and issues forth from one’s own heart (Matthew 15:18-20).

This is about the urgency of taking up the calm and quiet invitation to pursue an active, affirmative path that unlocks the kind of future so many thirst for and even say they want. It’s so simple. It doesn’t require anything of us that can’t be done by just about any person, regardless of place or time. I like to “joke” that “Interstellar” is a movie about how men will literally shoot themselves into a black hole instead of going to church. It’s not a joke, of course. That temptation, right to the very limit of sanity and imagination, is always there somewhere, lurking in our hearts, ever since the Fall.

Drawing near to your fellow man, drawing near to God, is often painful, scary, “destabilizing,” unpredictable, laborious, costly, and hard to explain or even understand in hindsight. Yet it is essential — it is of the very essence of who we are.

No attempt to escape or replace this experience, no matter how grandiose, all-consuming, or incomprehensible, can lead us to any solution to our deeply human problems, especially in a golden age, where some such problems not only persist but grow acute: monstrous, menacing, overwhelming, to the point where we must realize, as we must realize now, that where we are going there are no solutions, only salvation — not by any merely human creation, but by our all-good, holy, and life-giving Creator.

The three major candidates for New York City’s mayor’s office debated each other on Thursday in a heated exchange that lasted two hours and covered many of the most important issues plaguing the Big Apple.

Former Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, hammered away at Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdami as an extremist who is unprepared and inexperienced, while Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa came at both from the right and tried to claw away more time and attention.

‘I try to avoid yellow cabs; as you know, I was shot in the back of a yellow cab in 1992 by the Gottis and Gambinos. But I find my way around. If I have to, I Uber.’

President Donald Trump became a pivotal figure in the debate that differentiated the positions of the three candidates. When asked how they would deal with the president’s threats to pull funding from the city, Sliwa said he would negotiate with Trump, while Cuomo said he would oppose Trump and Mamdani accused him of not fighting enough.

Sliwa, who gained fame as the head of the Guardian Angels, ripped into both of his opponents for going easy on crime and had one anecdote that stunned debate-watchers. When the candidates were asked which form of transportation they chose apart from the subway, Mamdani said a bicycle, Cuomo responded that he called a taxi, and Sliwa said he was shot by the mafia.

“I try to avoid yellow cabs; as you know, I was shot in the back of a yellow cab in 1992 by the Gottis and Gambinos,” he said. “But I find my way around. If I have to, I Uber, if i can’t get there by mass transit.”

Mamdani advocated for free bus fare on the basis that it would reduce attacks on bus drivers.

Crime was a big issue in the debate, and Sliwa made it clear that he was endorsing pro-law-enforcement policies, in contrast to Cuomo and Mamdani. Cuomo accused Mamdani of endorsing police-defunding policies and calling cops “racist,” while Mamdani distanced himself from his old statements and instead took a shot at Cuomo, claiming he sent “seniors to their death in nursing homes” as governor in 2020.

Mamdani advocated for mental health workers to respond to mental illness calls rather than police, to which Sliwa objected vehemently.

RELATED: Zohran Mamdani casually says he would support the abolition of property in resurfaced video

Photo by Angelina Katsanis-Pool/Getty Images

Mamdani tried to position himself as a solution to the broken system in New York City politics.

“I have the experience of having served in the New York State Assembly for five years and watching a broken political system,” he said, “the experience of seeing a governor in Andrew Cuomo who would rather have served his billionaire donors than the working-class New Yorkers who voted for him.”

Cuomo accused Mamdani of wanting to legalize prostitution, which Mamdani denied, after which Sliwa accused both of trying to decriminalize prostitution.

Sliwa was clearly frustrated that the moderators were far more interested in giving time to Mamdani and Cuomo, and he interrupted to get more time in the limelight.

He also proposed the cessation of taxes for older Americans under a certain income level as a part of his “improve, not move” policy solutions.

On immigration, Sliwa took a moderate position that claimed that America needs hard workers while also saying that illegal aliens need to be deported. Mamdani was predictably angry about federal immigration operations and said he would oppose them.

When the question came to the economy, Cuomo hammered away at Mamdani’s socialist policies and tried to make himself appear as friendly to capitalism as possible. Sliwa said that toothpaste shouldn’t be locked up, but that criminals should be locked up.

Ultimately, each candidate was disciplined enough to do what he needed to do — Cuomo attacked Mamdani’s extremism, Mamdani tried to appear as reasonable as possible, and Sliwa tried to get as much attention as possible.

RELATED: Rolling Stone is getting crushed online for trying to whitewash controversies around Zohran Mamdani

Photo by Angelina Katsanis-Pool/Getty Images

The entire debate can be viewed on the YouTube channel of WNBC-TV.

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani posted his endorsement after the debate on social media.

“Curtis Sliwa is a New Yorker through and through. He knows this city — and its neighborhoods — better than almost anyone alive. If New Yorkers pay attention and wake up, they’ll elect this good man as their next mayor. He has my total and complete endorsement,” he wrote.

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We have a crisis of trashy public “art,” and sculpture is one of the main offenders. More on this below; I have to buffer your reading experience with a reminder of actual beauty before we dive to the bottom of the aesthetic dumpster.

When I was 8 years old, my grandmother gave me a small hardback book of Greek mythology. I can’t remember the title. It was written in the 1940s and probably used as a textbook or primer for college-level courses.

They say that some children have a face only a mother can love, but not even the father of that piece could look at it and see anything but a gargoyle at hell’s check-in kiosk.

It smelled exactly as you’re imagining right now: that scent of a 20th-century quality-bound book from the library stacks. Though only about seven inches by four inches, it had onionskin pages like a Bible, and there must have been 900 of them.

Pictures from History/Getty Images

Set in stone

The book always fell open to the same page because I always looked at that one. There was a black-and-white photograph of Bernini’s bust of Medusa. It fascinated me, and only later did I realize that the figure of Medusa drew me so powerfully, in part, because my mother was a gorgon.

But it wasn’t just that. The detail and life Bernini infused into stone took my breath away. How could a piece of marble be made so like a human face that we try to divine the emotion in the carved eyes?

Photo: Shhewitt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Have you seen the statuary of veiled figures? They offer the most incredible illusion of the Virgin behind a gossamer veil of the thinnest translucent silk. To look at a statue like this is to feel a glimmer of the divine. And this example, the Veiled Virgin, was carved in the 19th century. This means that until fairly recently, there were still skilled sculptors who have earned the title “artist.”

So what the hell is this?

Adam Moss via Flickr/Creative Commons

Brucille

I can tell you what it is not: Lucille Ball. It appears to be a bronze casting of Brucille Lall, Lucy’s evil trans-identifying cousin. Who could believe that the figure is offering Vitameatavegamin, when it’s obviously liquid arsenic? “Just like candy” indeed.

The sculptor behind the piece (the late David Poulin), which was installed in the comedy legend’s hometown in 2015 to honor her, gave up his craft after the negative public reaction. He complained to local media that he was tired of being razzed for a statue that was “not one of my best works.”

Well? They say that some children have a face only a mother can love, but not even the father of that piece could look at it and see anything but a gargoyle at hell’s check-in kiosk.

You have to ask: What possessed the city government in Celoron, New York, to pretend that this is normal? Is it the sunk-cost fallacy? Is it embarrassment at wasting money on a figure that has sent local children to long-term therapy?

Hug it out

Whatever motivates this behavior was probably also at work in Boston when it commissioned and placed this atrocity downtown. Called the Embrace, this bronze oversized … whatever … allegedly depicts a hug between Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King.

Boston Globe/Getty Images

Take it in. If it helps, you can let Boston Mayor Michelle Wu explain to you how this piece “differs from the singular, heroic form of many memorials to Dr. King and others, instead emphasizing the power of collective action, the role of women as leaders, and the forging of new bonds of solidarity out of mutual empathy and vulnerability.”

Or, like one local Reddit commenter, you can just trust your own eyes: “Could have been something amazing but instead we get a somewhat pornographic bronze turd.”

This turd, the work of a successful black artist named Hank Willis Thomas, beat out 125 other designs. Thomas says he didn’t want to “oversimplify” MLK’s legacy by proposing something that actually looked like him.

Sure. Or maybe he figured his best chance to win was to submit something so bizarre and off-putting that the judges would have no choice but to mistake it for brilliance. And why not? Liberal white people (like the billionaire entrepreneur who spearheaded the project) love to demonstrate their sophistication by praising provocatively ugly and incompetent art — especially if it allows them to take credit for supporting “diversity.”

Less impressed by the Embrace was a cousin of Coretta Scott King, who simply called it “an atrocity.”

Monumental entitlement

Dismembering your subjects so that only a grotesque pair of floating limbs remains is one way to make a name for yourself as a public artist. Another way is to dispense with the tired notion that only people who have accomplished something should get a statue.

That’s the approach of black British sculptor Thomas J. Price, who specializes in oversized monuments to mean-looking, fat black women who appear to be waiting to speak to the manager.

Here’s Grounded in the Stars, the 12-foot bronze sculpture Price installed in Times Square last spring.

Timothy A. Clary/Getty Images

You see, what Price is doing here is “challeng[ing] historical notions of representation in NYC’s most iconic public space.” Oh. Someone better tell the many black women who find the statue “humiliating” and “insulting.”

Another recent piece by Price is a 13-foot statue of a surly-looking young black woman holding her cell phone out in classic I’m-going-to-treat-this-crowded-bus-like-my-living-room-and-have-this-annoyingly-loud-conversation-on-speaker posture. (Credit where it’s due — that does indeed capture the entitlement of many women today.)

Shutterstock

But is putting it in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria alongside classical and Renaissance sculpture really “a significant conversation with the canons and aesthetic models that have defined the history of Western art for centuries”? Or is it just another big, resentful middle finger to “whiteness” and its oppressive standards of beauty?

Simply the worst

But wait — there’s more! The latest insult to black womanhood is a grotesque tribute to the legendary Tina Turner, who died in 2023. It must be seen to be believed.

Shutterstock

You know this is the work of a black artist because any white person creating such a monstrosity would immediately be charged with a hate crime. Fred Ajanogha (“also known as ‘Ajano’”) is an Atlanta-based “master sculptor” who works in the storied “Benin Bronze” tradition of his native Nigeria.

Making a sculpture with this ancient wax-casting technique does indeed require a certain mastery. What it doesn’t require, apparently, is any sort of reference photo of Ms. Turner.

Do admit — it looks like he gave the legendary singer Down syndrome, as well as hair lifted directly from the McDonaldland Fry Guys.

This Trisomy Tina now graces Turner’s small Tennessee hometown. Fan’s of Turner’s song “Nutbush City Limits” know it as a pleasant community full of proud locals intent on keeping it that way. They make sure it’s clean. They don’t allow motorcycles or liquor.

Most of all, they don’t tolerate any out-of-towners disrupting things with their dumb, big-city ideas. “You have to watch what you’re puttin’ down.” Unfortunately, it looks like times have changed, even in old Nutbush.

A Texas man was mauled to death by his own dogs despite the help of a neighbor who tried to stab at the dogs with a machete, police said.

The horrific incident unfolded at the home of Jose “Eddie” Padron Castillo on Louisiana Avenue in Bacliff, an unincorporated area near Galveston, according to his neighbor.

‘He was crying, pleading, pleading and crying. … That dog was not letting go.’

Jesus Excontitta told KHOU-TV that he rushed to help the 45-year-old and hacked away at the dogs, but they would not let go of their owner, who was pleading for help.

“It was just a horrific experience, for sure. I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Excontitta said.

“He was crying, pleading, pleading and crying, and I’m just, ‘Sorry, Eddie,’ and stabbing the dog and poking and poking and poking, slicing him, slicing him and poking him, poking him,” Excontitta said. “That dog was not letting go.”

The KHOU report described the dogs as pit bulls.

Neighbors said that Castillo was trying to keep his dogs from attacking passersby on a golf cart when they turned on him in his driveway. Excontitta ran over with a machete to help him but said that the machete broke during the incident. He had to run back and grab a butcher knife.

The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said the attack did not stop until a deputy responded and shot one of the dogs.

Castillo was rushed to a hospital in Clear Lake but was later pronounced dead.

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The two dogs were euthanized. Other police arrived at the home apparently to try to find a third dog.

“The dogs grew up with him, you know what I mean?” Excontitta added. “They’ve always been fed, fed good, and I don’t know why something like this would happen.”

Neighbors in the area told KHOU that they avoided going near Castillo’s residence because of his dogs.

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If the show “The View” isn’t paid for by advertising from pharmaceutical companies, you’d never know, because they defend vaccines with a tenacity that can only be rivaled by the manufacturers themselves.

And in a recent interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, the panel could not have fought harder in favor of those pharmaceutical companies — never once grazing the truth despite minutes of speaking over Hines.

“You know, Cheryl, it’s not fair to really put you on the spot about him because you’re his wife. I know that. But when you say that they are pro-vaccine, it seems as though Bobby and Trump are casting doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine, which makes Americans very nervous,” co-host Joy Behar said.

“So, that’s the problem that we’re having,” she added.

“It’s interesting because I don’t know if you saw ‘60 Minutes’ just did a piece about the vaccine injury compensation program. So, people that have had vaccine injuries can be compensated if they can prove it. And they have paid out $5.4 billion for vaccine injuries,” Hines replied.

“So, my question is, can we do better?” she asked.

“Is it all vaccines or just the COVID vaccine?” Whoopi Goldberg interjected, to which Hines replied, “It’s all vaccines.”

“So, the question is — yes to vaccines. Yes, they are important, and they are an important part of our health care. Can we do better? Can we make them safer? Can we listen to parents who say, ‘My child got the vaccine and changed and stopped hitting markers, stopped developing the way they were developing.’ Can we listen to people when they say that instead of saying, ‘You’re crazy?’” Hines continued.

But that wasn’t all the ladies of ‘The View’ went after Hines for.

Sunny Hostin called RFK the “least qualified Department of Health and Human Services head that we’ve had in history,” lamenting that this is “very dangerous.”

Having previously pointed out that Obama’s head of HHS was an economist, Hines responded, “Why is he less qualified than an economist?”

“He has spent his career studying toxins, studying people’s health, fighting for one guy who was using Roundup for his job,” Hines continued.

“He has also spread a lot of misinformation, a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion. And I think it’s just a very dangerous thing,” Hostin continued, adding, “and I say it with the utmost respect.”

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales isn’t shocked by what she’s hearing from the women on ‘The View,’ but she is disgusted.

“‘The utmost respect,’” she mocks. “Like, it’s just so tacky. ‘With all due respect, I actually think your husband is a terrible … person.’ Like, you can’t just say stuff like that. And it’s just so laughable.”

Gonzales points out that Joe Biden’s HHS secretary was Xavier Becerra, who had zero medical background.

“He was also a former politician and a lawyer. And the closest thing that he came to anything health-related was bringing felony charges against the Center for Medical Progress activists who exposed Planned Parenthood for allegedly selling fetal tissue,” Gonzales explains.

Not only that, but Biden’s assistant secretary for health was “Rachel” Levine — a transgender woman.

“That just tells you all you need to know about all of these recent Health and Human Services secretaries who haven’t given a s**t that we have become more sick,” Gonzales says, “We have become sicker than ever before.”

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On October 14, President Donald Trump posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor in the United States — to Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The star-studded ceremony took place in the White House Rose Garden and coincided with what would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday.

Declaring the day a “National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk,” President Trump praised the conservative trailblazer as a “fearless warrior for liberty,” a “beloved leader who galvanized the next generation,” and a “a martyr for truth and freedom.”

Glenn Beck, who attended the ceremony, says he “learned a lot” in the span of a few hours. On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” he shared five things he learned from attending Charlie’s honorary ceremony.

1. President Trump is a force unlike any other.

Even though he was in the Middle East celebrating the peace deal he miraculously facilitated between Israel and Hamas, President Trump cut his trip short in order to be back in time for the Medal of Freedom ceremony, which he insisted happen on Charlie’s birthday.

This required him to go “36 hours” with no sleep, Glenn says, and still he handled it with his usual vigor and showmanship.

“I don’t know how this guy does it. … Nothing non-natural goes into this guy’s body,” he says, alluding to Trump’s commitment to total abstinence from alcohol, drugs, and all forms of stimulants.

2. Marco Rubio is “killing it.”

While Glenn was a fan of Marco Rubio long before he became the Secretary of State, he has noticed an incredible “change” in him since his confirmation.

“He’s killing it,” Glenn says, referencing Rubio’s diplomatic triumphs, hawkish stance on China, and tireless advocacy for American interests abroad.

When he asked Rubio at Charlie’s ceremony what has been the catalyst for his transformation into a total powerhouse, he humbly pointed to President Trump.

3. Erica Kirk is “gaining her voice.”

Even though the widow, mother of two, and new TPUSA CEO is still wrestling with the grief of losing her beloved husband, Erika Kirk is “really gaining her voice,” Glenn says.

During the ceremony, Erika accepted the award on behalf of her late husband and delivered an emotional speech, during which she shared personal anecdotes about Charlie’s faith, relayed a birthday message from their daughter, and pledged to continue his legacy at Turning Point USA.

She closed with: “To live free is the greatest gift, but to die free is the greatest victory.”

“She was very good,” Glenn says.

4. The White House is more secure than ever.

“The security perimeter of the White House is astounding. It’s at least doubled,” Glenn says, adding that he’s heard the plan is to “[move] the security perimeter at least a block around [the White House], all the way around.”

This uptick in security has allowed President Trump to breathe a bit easier. “It was the first time I’ve seen the president in many months outside without bulletproof glass between us,” Glenn says.

Glenn’s biggest takeaway from the ceremony was that President Donald Trump, despite the incessant efforts by political opponents and the mainstream media to smear him, is a remarkable human being.

“The president was so gracious yesterday with everybody. I mean, he is really an amazing man,” he says.

To hear Glenn’s full recount of his time at the White House for Charlie Kirk’s Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony, including a humorous anecdote showing how intensely strategic President Trump is, watch the video above.

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A military veteran attending a championship baseball game recorded a woman threatening to call immigration officials on him and sent her to the unemployment line.

Ricardo Fosado said the exchange between him and several Milwaukee Brewers fans began as a friendly rivalry at Game 2 of the National League Championship Series at American Family Field.

‘Call ICE, call ICE. I’m a U.S. citizen, war veteran. … ICE is not gonna do nothing to me, good luck!’

Fosado said it got heated after the Los Angeles Dodgers got a lead late in the game, and he began recording and cheering while mocking Brewers fans. A woman got into his face and called him a “p***y” for drinking a cocktail instead of a beer.

She then joked to a man in front of her, “You know what, let’s call ICE.”

“Call ICE, call ICE. I’m a U.S. citizen, war veteran, baby girl! … ICE is not gonna do nothing to me, good luck!” Fosado responded while laughing.

The woman takes a swipe at his phone, to which he responds with an expletive.

Video of the interaction was posted online, where it went viral.

The woman was identified as Shannon Kobylarczyk, who then resigned as a board member of the Make-A-Wish foundation in Milwaukee. She also lost her job as an attorney at Manpower Group.

“As soon as we became aware of this video, the individual was placed on immediate leave, and we began an investigation,” the company said. “As a result of this process, the employee is no longer with the organization.”

RELATED: LA Dodgers say they blocked ICE agents at stadium after campaign to pressure team to condemn deportations

Fosado, however, also faced some consequences for his behavior at the game.

On Thursday, the Brewers released a statement saying that Fosado had been ejected from the game over the behavior he exhibited in the video, including “disorderly conduct and public intoxication.”

The statement said that both he and Kobylarczyk were notified that they were banned from the park. Kobylarczyk was banned because she “became physical” in her interaction with Fosado.

“The Brewers expect all persons attending games to be respectful of each other, and we do not condone in any way offensive statements fans make to each other about race, gender, or national origin. Our priority is to ensure that all in attendance have a safe and enjoyable experience at the ballpark,” continued the statement from the team.

WISN-TV reported that Kobylarczyk declined to comment on the story.

The Dodgers went on to win the game and go up two games on the Brewers. Whoever wins the series will go to the World Series.

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