'You wouldn't know'

A post shared on Facebook claims the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps purportedly executed Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Deanne Criswell. Verdict: False The claim is false and originally stems from a Dec. 9 article published on the satire site, “Real Raw News.” A spokesperson for Navy JAG denied the claim’s validity […]

A post shared on social media purports President-elect Donald Trump posted on social media that his wife and son attended a Bruce Springsteen concert. Wow! Did the model conman dad really misspell his son’s name, or am I seeing things? How can you make that mistake? That’s hilarious! Classic…? pic.twitter.com/gYKOtDwcsz — Popular Liberal ?? (@PopularLiberal) December 9, […]

Conceded the restoration

'I need the money, frankly'

The Bee Gees, a trio of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb, formed one of the most enduring and influential acts in music history. Originally from the Isle of Man, the Gibbs spent their early years in Manchester, England, before relocating to Australia in 1958. It was in Australia that they began their professional music career, achieving early success with hits like “Spicks and Specks.” In 1967, the brothers returned to the United Kingdom, marking the beginning of their international breakthrough. Known for their rich harmonies and emotionally resonant lyrics, the Bee Gees quickly became icons of the late 1960s The post Complete List Of The Bee Gees Songs From A to Z appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Movies & TV Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Makes a Circumspect New Friend in “Very Interesting, as an Astrogation Problem” It’s Jude Law, you knew he was going to be a problem. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on December 11, 2024 Image: Lucasfilm Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Lucasfilm Have the kids finally found a competent adult, or someone very good at pretending to be one? Let’s find out. Recap Image: Lucasfilm The parents of all the vanished kids have all gathered and are approached by one of the Security Droids. It has been sent by “the Supervisor,” who has instructed the parents that their children have exited the Barrier and that there is nothing more that can be done. The parents are furious, but they are warned that they may not exit the Barrier. Back in the brig, the kids begin their escape with their new companion who introduces himself as Jod Na Nawood. They sneak out of the port and head back to their ship, arguing the whole way over whether or not he’s a Jedi. Jod wants to head to an old friend of his, but the kids insist on retrieving SM-33 before they go. When he balks, they say they’ll go without him. He agrees to retrieve the droid. Jod finds SM-33 in a room full of deactivated droids. A member of his old crew, Benjar Pranic (Alfred Molina), recognizes him. He is happy to see “Silvo,” but wonders why Brutus would have let him out right before his trial. Jod tells Pranic that he let himself out; Pranic suggests that he should probably report this to Brutus. Back on the ship, the kids are arguing over whether Jod is really a Jedi who can use the Force. Jod makes it back to the ship with SM-33, but he’s being followed; they have to jump to hyperspace in a hurry. Brutus tells his people to put a bounty on Jod’s head. Jod makes a meal and questions SM-33 about whether the kids are truly from At Attin. 33 has no answers for him, but is suspicious. Jod tells the kids to get some sleep, but KB can’t sleep—she’s calculated the odds and knows it’s unlikely Jod is a Jedi. He tells her that not everything can be calculated by odds and that they’ll be at his friend’s moon in a few hours. They arrive and walk to the base on the moon—Fern realizes that Jod is trying to hide the ship. He admits that he’s not 100% sure he can trust this friend, and that she might betray them. There are two women on the station who discuss calling for reinforcements at the sight of Jod. When the group approaches approaches, they meet Kh’ymm (Alia Shawkat), who calls Jod “Crimson Jack,” and has maps to everywhere in the galaxy. When she hears that the kids are from At Attin, she tells them that there are no maps to At Attin; it was one of the worlds known as the “Jewels of the Old Republic,” planets holding incredible treasures. All of them are destroyed, or so they thought. Kh’ymm uses the knowledge the children have of their homeworld to try and narrow down a location. They figure out that the barrier is probably nebulous gasses, which narrows their search to 10,000 planets. Then Kh’ymm notices the “head of the class” badge Fern has, which are Palmarish numerals—something she’s never seen in proto-Republic artifacts. Kh’ymm keeps narrowing down the planet range; Jod expects she’s stalling. He turns on her radio and finds out that New Republic has sent X-Wings at her request to help; she tells the kids that he’s a scoundrel and they shouldn’t trust him. Jod and Kh’ymm fight; he steals the possible coordinates and destroys her computers. Kh’ymm tells KB not to listen to her gut, but use her head to find the truth, and that they can call on her if they ever need help. As they make it back to the ship, KB and Fern insist that Jod tells them the truth. He admits that he’s just like them, lost and alone… and that he’s not really a Jedi. X-Wings show up and they have to leave, but KB says Jod can only come along if he works for them. He agrees. There’s a short battle where Jod has the kids man the gun turrets and help pilot the ship in order to escape. They manage to get into hyperspace. One of the X-Wings lands and Kh’ymm berates him for letting them get away. The pilot (Andy Powers) points out that fighting was too risky with the kids on the ship, and asks where they’re headed. Kh’ymm says he’d never believe her.  Commentary Image: Lucasfilm I do appreciate that we get some small sense that Fern’s mom maybe used to be like her kid: She suggests that she and her friends tried to run away sometimes, but were always caught by the Safety Droids. So this place really does wring all the interest out of its populace by blocking all attempts at non-conformity and exploration. The parents don’t seem to have any idea that they’re being controlled either, which is horrifying in the extreme. And the Supervisor definitely isn’t some Wizard-of-Oz computer matrix that runs the planet. Certainly not. The thing I’m most pleased about is that we’ve dispensed with the Jedi stuff quickly. Now we can find out what Jod’s actual deal is, which I’m far more interested in. Also, I appreciate that half the kids were canny enough to question him from go. Fern and KB have nice healthy amounts of suspicion, which is likely uncommon on their planet, given… everything. Another thing I appreciate: We stopped to eat again! It so rarely happens, and it always bugs me when it’s absent. It’s even more egregious when your main characters are kids because kids need to eat more often. I get that we can’t spend all our time on the minutiae of living, but show food. For my suspension of disbelief and also because it’s fun! Show food. They do a great job with Jod’s dialogue giving him away in terms of being a fraud. All that “the Force provides” and answering “practice” when asked how he distracted guards during their escape. And Law has always been particularly adept at finding that perfect intersection between charming and smarmy. (Wonder what happened to poor Pranic?) As a fun sidenote, Crimson Jack was a character in Star Wars comics who stole Han’s reward money from the Rebel Alliance? So giving that name to Jod as one of his aliases is incredibly funny.  Kh’ymm is fun and also a new species for Star Wars, although she has a bit in common with the gozzos, which we saw on Star Wars Resistance. Most of the lore she’s delivering in terms of “Lost Jewels” and “Palmarish numerals” are new pieces, as far as I can tell. The question now becomes what these lost jewel planets were in charge of in terms of production and/or resources. It seems likely that At Attin is where they made Republic credits? Question being, is this a mint/banking situation, or were Old Republic credits made of a rare material only found on this world? Spanners and Sabers Image: Lucasfilm KB’s moms say they’ve lost the signal to her “life monitor,” which is likely meant to invoke those sadistic bracelets that Cindel and her family had in the Ewok Adventures. No joke, these bracelets have lights on them that indicate the status of family members, and when they go out… that means they’re dead. A great thing to have your child keep on their person! Wonder what KB’s “urgent medical needs” are? And if they tie to her cybernetics… Fern’s point that you could make things look like they were floating with the Force by using string could be called a very deep cut inside joke: Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) helped production on the first film when they got stuck on the issue of getting R2 to jack into Imperial computers because they couldn’t get the mechanism to align correctly in order to plug in. Daniels suggested they use string, an idea that was initially laughed off… and later used.  You can see Hondo Onaka’s ship at the port. Which… gosh, he must be ancient by now. I’d love to see him, but just knowing he’s around brings me some measure of comfort. Why does the moon get theremin music? More theremin is never a bad thing, I just feel like it’s intending to create an atmosphere here that it isn’t quite achieving. Next week we’ll see where the hyperspace jump takes us…[end-mark] The post <i>Star Wars: Skeleton Crew</i> Makes a Circumspect New Friend in “Very Interesting, as an Astrogation Problem” appeared first on Reactor.

Column Reading the Weird Disaster Response, Hard Mode: The Mist Even in a paranormal disaster, are humans the real monsters? By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on December 11, 2024 Credit: MGM Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: MGM Studios Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we celebrate our 500th post with Frank Darabont’s 2007 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist. Spoilers ahead! Content warning for harm to children, blood and guts, giant insects, fundamentalist Christians, and child death. Artist David Drayton lives near Bridgton, Maine, with wife Stephanie and eight-year-old son Billy. Their lakeside house has been in the family for generations and seen bad weather, but nothing like the thunderstorm that hits one hot summer. Trees crash through David’s studio window and the boathouse. The boathouse-wrecker is a dead pine David’s been asking his neighbor, NYC lawyer Brent Norton, to remove. The Draytons have previously taken Brent to court over property disputes. They won, and bad blood persists. Finding Brent in mourning for a treasured car also pine-wrecked, David takes him to Bridgton for supplies along with Billy. As they drive, a strange mist spills across the lake. A convoy of Army trucks heads toward the nearby base, home to the tightly-guarded Project Arrowhead. Like the rest of the area, Bridgton has lost electrical and phone service. The supermarket is crowded. As David, Billy and Brent wait in a long checkout line, a local man (Dan Miller) rushes in, shouting about things that pulled another man into the mist. Sirens start wailing. Mist envelopes the store. An earthquake shakes it. Only one woman, who’s left her children at home, dares to leave. The rest, including three base soldiers, hunker down. David goes into the storage area and finds a generator spewing toxic smoke. He turns it off, then hears something slithering outside the loading dock. Though incredulous about the slithering, two workmen (Jim and Myron) and assistant manager Ollie check out the generator. A bagger (Norm), urged on by the workmen, agrees to clear the exhaust vent. As he exits, huge tentacles snake in and grab him. Jim and Myron are shocked useless. David and Ollie try to free Norm, but he’s dragged into the mist. Enraged by Jim and Myron’s cowardice, David punches Jim. The dock doors are holding, but the storefront’s all plate-glass. David approaches Brent for help rallying the shoppers. Brent thinks the attack witnesses are pranking him because he’s an out-of-towner. Even after seeing a severed tentacle, he remains skeptical. Shoppers help build a window-barricade. Brent, however, gathers followers. Another faction forms around Mrs. Carmody, who claims the mist is God’s judgment on sinners. David and Billy connect with schoolteachers Irene Reppler and Amanda Dunfrey; with Ollie and Dan, they oppose Carmody’s ranting and Brent’s denialism. Amanda entrusts her self-defense revolver to competitive target-shooter Ollie. With nightfall, yard-long fly-scorpions swarm the windows, along with pterodactyl-things that break through the glass. It’s pandemonium as shoppers battle the monsters. Oil-soaked mop-torches set a pterodactyl on fire, killing it, but one man’s severely burned. Checkout clerk Sally dies from a venomous “fly” sting. Having “miraculously” survived, Carmody broadens her congregation. She begins calling for atonement through blood sacrifice. Next morning, Brent’s group leaves to look for help. They’re swiftly killed. David leads a group to the pharmacy next door for medical supplies. Everyone there, including a military policeman, are hung like flies in webs. The M.P. babbles that he’s sorry before bursting open and releasing monster-spiderlings. Adult “spiders” attack, shooting corrosive webbing. Two men die; the survivors flee to the market. David’s crew decide to question the soldiers. Two have hanged themselves in the storage room. The third, Jessup, admits that Project Arrowhead was investigating extradimensional space and may have opened a door. Carmody incites her followers to stab Jessup and throw him outside, where a mantis-creature devours him. With Carmody ascendant, David’s crew plans an escape to his four-wheel drive. Carmody’s followers cut them off and demand that Billy be the next sacrifice. As the “sinners” fight the mob, Ollie shoots Carmody dead. Leaderless, the remaining shoppers let David’s party leave. Five survive to reach David’s vehicle: David, Amanda, Billy, Irene, and Dan. Ollie’s seized by a monster, but drops Amanda’s revolver onto the hood. David risks leaning out to get it.    At the Drayton house, they discover Stephanie dead in a spiderweb. They drive on through a mist-shrouded landscape alive with monster calls. Wreckage and corpses block highways, but they inch slowly south. A cyclopean walker crosses their path. At last, running out of gas, they’re stranded on the roadside. David checks the revolver and counts four remaining bullets. The adults watch, then quietly agree to suicide. Earlier, Billy made David promise he wouldn’t let the monsters get him. David shoots his companions, even Billy. He lurches outside and shouts for the monsters to come get him. Instead the mist dissipates to reveal a long parade of Army vehicles packed with civilians. Realizing he’s killed his son and friends minutes before rescue, David screams in despair. What’s Cyclopean: “Welcome to Sesame Street. Today’s word is expiation.” The Degenerate Dutch: It’s unclear if Norton suffers more from being Black or being not-from-around-here-are-ya. Though the grocery denizens do tend to lash out at everyone they think might be patronizing them, whether because of education or New York snobbery. Weirdbuilding: The first monsters have tentacles. That’s how you know they’re not-from-around-here. Madness Takes Its Toll: “As a species we’re fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we start dreaming up sides.” Anne’s Commentary Unlike other menaced kids in King’s oeuvre, Billy has no psi sensitivities or superpowers to help him survive. He must rely on well-meaning adults. Sadly, not all adults are well-meaning. Some parents tell children that, if lost, they should approach women for help rather than men. What if the woman approached is Mrs. Carmody? On good days, she might suffer the little children to come unto her without scorching their ears with dire prophecies. On bad days, well. It’s okay to throw sinners who’ve pissed you off onto the sacrificial barbecue, but innocent lambs will best please the Divine Palate. As a competitive sharp-shooter, Ollie comes closest to an adult superhero. But out of ammo, he too will be reduced to flaming mops, broom handles, a fire axe or two, and bug spray (preferably set alight.) As for supervillains, King’s Carmody comes closest by wearing a pantsuit so glaringly yellow it could blind any superhero who’d left their super sunglasses off the utility belt that day. Darabont’s Carmody dresses churchladyish but doesn’t otherwise stand out. Nor, as scripted by Darabont and played by Marcia Gay Harden, is she absolutely unsympathetic. Every manifestation of the mist-fauna terrifies her off her pulpit into fellowship with the other shoppers. She even has a Gethsemane scene in the women’s restroom, tearfully sharing with God her doubts about the whole End Times thing. Ordinarily, Bridgtoners get along well enough, politely (or politically) suppressing dislikes, resentments, prejudices. The storms creates extraordinary circumstances that exert negative pressure on tempers, patience, and finances, but initially camaraderie prevails. Even Brent and David manage to cooperate. Inside the market, employees get harried and shoppers get antsy as supplies dwindle and checkout lines lengthen, but the pressure level in this “cooker” remains tolerable. Thunderstorms, however severe, are natural. Even unprecedented mist banks must have a natural explanation, to be revealed during the News at Six. But—what about mist banks that eat people? We sitting comfortably in front of our screens can argue that if thing-hosting mist banks exist, they must be natural, Nature being the sum total of existence. What seems supernatural is just a phenomenon we haven’t written into our philosophy yet, no need to panic. Huh. If those smug screen-sitters were in the market when Dan came screaming in and the mist whited out a trembling world, they’d panic along with everyone else. The seeds of panic being sown, they could only try to bury them beyond germination, probably insisting that Dan was freaking out, and writing Carmody off as the town’s crazy-conspiracy lady. But would they walk home with the lady worried about her kids? Nobody else did, even before giant tentacles whisked Norm away. Before the nocturnal “flies” and “pterodactyl-birds” appeared. The “flies” and “pterodactyl-birds” seen and barely fought off, Brent’s companions in denying the existence of things that should not be switch to denying the futility of going in search of rescuers. Rejecting reality under the self-delusion of being the reasonable ones doesn’t get Brent’s faction out of the parking lot. Coping strategies still in play are copious alcohol consumption, catatonic withdrawal, and suicide. David’s faction clings to the hope of a rational path to safety. They’re increasingly outnumbered by Carmody’s “congregation.” Observers of the current sociopolitical scene will readily believe that the loudest mouth in the room, the doomsayer claiming to be the voice of God, can capitalize on fear and uncertainty to win support. Even though Carmody preaches the end of the world, at least that will divide the sinners from the righteous, the prideful from the ones they’ve long disparaged. It does look like the end of the world out there in the parking lot. Jessup’s confession confirms that science opened Hell’s gates: the godless science of a godless government. As sole survivor of Project Arrowhead, Jessup becomes the first sacrifice. Now David’s group must risk a dash to his car. The guilty having paid, innocence (aka Billy) must be offered up. However, thanks to Ollie’s marksmanship, Carmody becomes the not-so-snowy-fleeced lamb. Her cult collapses. Slack-armed, former congregants watch as David’s group departs. Until now, Darabont follows King’s story closely, aside from cutting a desperation-sex scene between David and Amanda. Good call. I’ve always felt their adulterous pairing was out-of-character and distracted from the bonding of their larger coalition. Post-escape, King’s David drives homewards. Trees block the road, and he never learns Stephanie’s fate. Darabont’s David reaches the house, where mist-spiders have webbed Stephanie’s corpse to the eaves. It’s the first last blow to David’s resilience. Then the party’s drive south passes universal destruction, and they spot a creature more massive than any dinosaur. Finally, they run out of gas far from filling stations. Foot-travel’s no option: The mist remains thick, reverberant with mist-fauna vocalizations. As Carmody insisted, death is out there. Death’s also in the car. Provisions run low. As David counts their four remaining bullets, the camera dwells in torturous silence on the adults considering their choices: starvation, suicide, or death by monster. Billy too seems to take in the situation. He makes no protest—the last promise he extracted from David was not to let the monsters get him. Darabont doesn’t show David’s point-blank shots, though we hear them. We glimpse Irene and Dan’s corpses, only blurs of Amanda and Billy. You know the rest from the summary. Darabont’s saved his most horrifying sequence and most killing irony for last. King allows his survivors to survive. More critically, he allows hope to survive, via a short-wave radio. David gets nothing but static until, near the end of dial-twiddling, he makes out the single word Hartford. It’s this word, along with hope itself, he’ll whisper in Billy’s ear. I can take either ending. For Darabont’s, though, I have to feel like getting my heart ripped out and handed back to me dripping, emotional practice for the End Times. Ruthanna’s Commentary After you read this column, and before the next apocalypse, I strongly recommend you all read Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell. It’s a good antidote to assuming that, should you ever find yourself stranded with random neighbors during a crisis, you’re two hard days away from fistfights and human sacrifice. And avoiding that assumption is a good way for everyone to get more safely through said crisis. Thank you for listening to my PSA about a Good Book. Prior to Solnit’s 2009 book, the general lay assumption was that crisis always brings out the worst in humans. This makes for great stories, not to mention a lot of not-so-great-but-exciting stories full of cannibalistic biker gangs, but also leads to stupid decisions, and the sort of newspaper reporting that captions our friend David Drayton as “retrieving emergency supplies from a pharmacy” while the Black characters get described as “looting.” No one’s having much good luck in The Mist, but at least the poor visibility undermines any such photographic bias documentation. But I digress. In my teens I adored King’s “The Mist” novella. I loved scary weather, apocalypses, half-seen monsters, and crises that close the world down to a microcosm of intense drama—but especially scary weather. Anything could come out of the fog, or at least you can imagine that anything could. Anything could change. Sound is muffled along with vision, and everything holds its breath—something the movie captures beautifully with the cutting of the soundtrack during most outdoor scenes. Looking at the story summary now, I’d forgotten much of the actual detail beyond the vivid image of giant walker legs going by, monstrous head hidden in the fog. The movie hews close to the original, save for a harsher and less ambiguous ending. In the novella, only a stray radio broadcast offers hope of survival—but everyone in the car is still alive and still has the gas to chase that hope. In the movie, the military is coming through to save the day, and the mist even starts to clear—less than five minutes after David fulfills his promise to not let the monsters get his kid. Given that I spent five minutes beforehand typing “He’s gonna shoot him, isn’t he. Oh god, please don’t do that, please don’t, please, please don’t oh god please,” into my live notes, this ending was extremely effective and I kind of wish I hadn’t watched it. But everyone was traumatized enough that this extremely stupid decision made sense in character. But: If you are stuck in a safe-ish place and can’t get out, please just wait for a while. Maybe sing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. Because something might change and frequently disaster response is actually working to respond to the disaster. And you can always shoot everyone when an actual monster shows up. The cast is great—I particularly loved the cynical older teacher with flamethrower chops, and tougher-than-he-looks Ollie the Grocer. He makes a great contrast with David’s leading man muscles, and I just love that this guy has been quietly running an indie grocery store for years and is suddenly stepping up for the monster brigade. And then there’s Mrs. Carmody. She’s a bit of a caricature, so I really appreciated the early scenes with her praying to make a difference—and yet refusing any real offer of personal connection in favor of preaching herself up a cult. It’s a good bit of detail before she goes full villain and the rest of us start praying for her to get eaten sooner rather than later. Thank you, Ollie. Are humans the real monsters? Contra Ollie’s cynicism, I would have to say: some of us. Sometimes. The cult-leader types are real, and eager to take advantage of any opportunity. But humans are also the real heroes, and the real crying kids and the real crying manly men and the real ordinary sandbag-stackers. I think it helps to realize that terrifyingly wide range of possibility—and to consider ahead of time which of those things we want to be. Next week, we celebrate with a little holiday tale—join us for E. Catherine Tobler’s “To Drive the Cold Winter Away.”[end-mark] The post Disaster Response, Hard Mode: <i>The Mist</i> appeared first on Reactor.

The Trump-loathing media hate the notion of mass deportations. They are upset that voters support it. After the election, a CBS News poll found 57% of Americans are ready to put the brakes on illegal immigration. On Sunday, ABC’s “This Week” moderator Martha Raddatz pressed conservative Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., on the cost: “A recent analysis found it would cost about $315 billion and take at least 10 years to deport everyone in the U.S. without legal status. You often talk about the need to cut government spending. So, how is this mass deportation going to be paid for?” Naturally, Raddatz didn’t elaborate that her estimate came from a leftist lobbying group called the American Immigration Council, which fervently advocates against deportation. This is the same Sunday-show sheriff that interrupted JD Vance as he criticized Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado: “I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes.” Vance memorably said, “Do you hear yourself?” Now try to find any interview in which Raddatz or any other “mainstream” TV interviewer asked a Biden official about the costs of mass importation. How will we pay for it? First, the journalists would suggest that mass importation just happened. It wasn’t a policy. This is just as flagrantly dishonest as letting Team Biden claim “there is no border crisis.” President Joe Biden wiped away all of President Donald Trump’s border controls, and his administration flew in planeloads of Cubans, Haitians, and Venezuelans and granted them blanket amnesty. It wasn’t unintentional. In 2022, Raddatz was blaming mass illegal immigration on … Republican governors. “You talk about the border wall, you talk about open borders. I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say, ‘We have an open border, come on over,’” Raddatz said to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “But the people I have heard say it are you, former President Trump, [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis. That message reverberates in Mexico and beyond. So, they do get the message that it is an open border and smugglers use all those kinds of statements.” Journalists have never cared about the costs of these programs because they support them, so why ask skeptical questions about it? They’re not opponents of aggressively increasing government spending. But they demonstrate an intense need to question Republicans and point out how they might be hypocrites when they try to reverse the Biden policies. Donalds replied with the Republican analysis from the House Budget Committee: “The cost of massive illegal immigration to the federal government, to state governments, and to local governments is more than $150 billion per year.” Voters often resent their tax dollars being used to house illegal aliens in hotels and set them up with debit cards and free meals. Journalists don’t. Donalds added: “So, if you’re going to say that it cost us $300 billion over a decade to repatriate illegal aliens to their home country versus the American taxpayer having to pay more than a trillion dollars over the same decade to keep those illegal aliens in the United States, that is a savings to the American people.” Let’s guess that journalists don’t really see this issue as a matter of spending or savings. That’s a “gotcha” question. They see themselves as supporting the “diversity” and “inclusion” that illegal immigrants bring with them across the border, and opposing the odor of “white nationalists” who object to their presence. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Legacy Media Pretend There’s No Cost to Biden’s Mass Importation of Illegal Immigrants appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—House Democrats are attacking the Republican Party’s move to stop the military from paying for child sex change treatments in the National Defense Authorization Act. House Republicans negotiating the most recent iteration of the National Defense Authorization Act managed to include language that expressly prohibits the military from paying for “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for children under the age of 18. Democratic Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, slammed the provision as one intended to appease “the most extreme elements” of the Republican Party. “House Armed Services Democrats were successful in blocking many harmful provisions that attacked DEI programs, the LGBTQ community, and women’s access to reproductive health care. It also included provisions that required bipartisan compromise. And had it remained as such, it would easily pass both chambers in a bipartisan vote,” Smith said in a statement. “However, the final text includes a provision prohibiting medical treatment for military dependents under the age of 18 who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria … This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills. Speaker Johnson is pandering to the most extreme elements of his party to ensure that he retains his speakership.” “I urge the Speaker to abandon this current effort and let the House bring forward a bill—reflective of the traditional bipartisan process—that supports our troops and their families, invests in innovation and modernization, and doesn’t attack the transgender community,” Smith concluded. Lawmakers released the draft text of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025 on Saturday, and the House intends to vote on it on Thursday, according to Breaking Defense. While proponents of sex change treatments for minors argue that cross sex hormone therapy and various other procedures are effective treatments to counter gender dysphoria, opponents have argued that there is no durable scientific basis for that claim and that medical professionals are effectively mutilating minors for life with medical treatments like puberty blockers. Notably, a four-year review of transgender medical studies published in April found that there is “weak evidence” supporting the use of puberty blockers by transgender-identifying children. Moreover, Dr. Susan Bradley—a Canadian psychiatrist and pioneer in child gender dysphoria treatment—told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a 2023 interview that puberty blockers are “not as reversible as we always thought, and they have longer term effects on kids’ growth and development, including making them sterile and quite a number of things affecting their bone growth,” adding that she and her team were “wrong” to have suggested otherwise. President-elect Donald Trump and his pick to run the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, have pledged to cut “wokeness” out of the military and return its exclusive focus to fighting and winning wars upon taking office next month. For their part, Democrats have argued that diversity and equity in the military make it a more effective fighting force. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The post House Dems Bemoan GOP Effort to Block Military Funding for Child ‘Sex Changes’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.