Under a program created by the Biden-Harris administration, tens of millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent telling Central and South American migrants how to enter the U.S. without passing through the Southern Border. A report released Friday by the Republican-controlled Judiciary subcommittee on immigration integrity, security, and enforcement found that Americans have spent more than $80 million on a program that helps foreign nationals enter the U.S., whether through refugee status or other means. The program in question is the 2023 Biden-Harris Safe Mobility Initiative, which works with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to help migrants bypass the southern border. “Under President Biden and Vice President Harris, in June 2023 the State Department announced its Safe Mobility Initiative, which allows aliens to sidestep the southwest border and, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), ‘avoid the risks associated with onward movement,’” congressional Republicans wrote in the executive summary of their report. “In other words, this new Biden-Harris program fast-tracks aliens into the United States out of sight of the American people and without the politically damaging optics at the border.” “The initiative’s Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) allow aliens outside the United States to consult with foreign national employees from UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), who then provide the aliens with several options to resettle in the United States, including through family reunification parole, labor pathways, and additional expansions of the Biden-Harris Administration’s illegal abuses of humanitarian parole,” the report continued. “The U.S. taxpayer-funded SMOs are located in 13 cities across Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador.” MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ Since last year, congressional Republicans have sought to oversee the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous handling of America’s southern border and say this oversight led to the discovery of an “open-borders alliance with United Nations bureaucrats to ensure that additional aliens are fast-tracked into the United States on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime.” The subcommittee found that more than 18,000 immigrants from Central and South America departed to resettle in the U.S. through the initiative, and nearly 67,000 were referred to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for potential resettlement in the U.S. Another 7,000 were identified by IOM as potentially eligible to enter the U.S. in other ways. “For aliens who are not eligible to resettle in the United States through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program because they could not establish that they are refugees, IOM staffers at SMOs counsel the aliens on alternative avenues to enter the country,” the report found. “Only 14 percent of IOM employees devoted to the Safe Mobility Initiative are U.S. citizens, however, meaning that the Biden-Harris Administration uses U.S. taxpayer dollars to pay foreign national employees of the United Nations to counsel other foreign nationals on the best ways to enter the United States.”  

Some people give wedding gifts from a registry, and others give wedding gifts the couple would never expect. Legendary director Tim Burton gave Beetlejuice Star Catherine O’Hara a one-of-a-kind wedding gift when she and Bo Welch married in 1992. Catherine told Julia Loui-Dreyfus during an episode of Julia Gets Wise that Tim sent her and Bo on a trip. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tim Burton (@timburton) Tim Burton Wanted To Do Something Special For Catherine O’Hara Catherine explained she and Bo loved it. “Tim gave us an amazing wedding gift, which was a private tour at the Vatican,” Catherine told Julia who replied, “Yeah, only Tim Burton would give a present like that.” Tim received the same gift himself, which inspired him. “Somebody had given him the gift, and he’d been blown away, so he passed it on, which is really wonderful and generous,” Catherine told Julia. “So this lovely priest or cardinal took us all around the Vatican, and he was wild.” Catherine explained that she and Bo had a chance to see everything in the Vatican. This included special hallways traveled by Pope John Paul II and even his closet. Catherine O’Hara shared that Tim Burton encouraged her husband to ask her out. The pair met on the set of Beetlejuice in 1988. “Tim Burton basically made him ask me out. Because I was grousing to Tim that this guy was talking to me every day, and never asking me out,” Catherine shared. “So Tim said, ‘Let me see what I can do.’ He did talk to him, and Bo begrudgingly asked me out. And now we’re still married, thank goodness.” The pair share two sons after more than 32 years of marriage. Thanks to Tim Burton’s wedding gift, Catherine O’Hara and Bo Welch have an incredible story to share. This story’s featured image is by Featureflash Photo Agency via Shutterstock. The post Tim Burton Got “Beetlejuice” Star Catherine O’Hara A Wedding Gift That “Only Tim Burton Would Give” appeared first on InspireMore.

A video shared on Instagram claims 2024 Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris responded to an interview question about a cognitive test with a blank stare.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by ACT for America (@act4america) Verdict: False The claim is false. An article published on CBS News’ website […]

Vice President Kamala Harris shared a video on social media that purportedly shows former President Donald Trump discussing abortion. “Whether the women like it or not” pic.twitter.com/lFbx5rbWrd — Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 31, 2024 Verdict: Misleading Trump was speaking about protecting women from migrants. Fact Check: In the final moments of campaigning, Trump will be visiting Pennsylvania, North […]

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In the same way that artificial coral reefs can jumpstart marine ecosystems, solar farms, if they’re constructed properly, can create more biodiversity than agricultural fields. That’s the key point a coalition of Australian planners and researchers are trying to get across to land developers in the state of New South Wales (NSW), where a flat, […] The post Experts Demonstrate How Solar Farms Can Become Hubs for ‘Biodiversity Enhancement’ at Every Level appeared first on Good News Network.

Movies & TV The Penguin “Get me an army!” — The Penguin’s “Top Hat” The Penguin and Sofia move towards their final showdown… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on November 4, 2024 Credit: Macall Polay/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Macall Polay/HBO Salvatore Maroni first appeared in the comics in 1942’s Detective Comics #66 by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, & George Roussos as “Boss Moroni,” a gangster who was on trial for killing Bookie Benson. The prosecutor was “Harvey Kent,” and Batman testified on the stand to Moroni’s guilt. Kent produced a two-headed coin found at the scene with Moroni’s fingerprints on it. Angered, Moroni threw acid at Kent, which scarred half his face and one of his hands, which eventually led him to becoming one of Batman’s most enduring foes, Two-Face. Over the years, Moroni became Maroni and Kent became Dent, but Maroni’s status as the guy who, in essence, created Two-Face remained, both through various retcons and additions to the lore in the comics, as well as in many (though not all) of the screen adaptations. The 1996 miniseries Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale established Maroni as a rival crime boss to the Falcone family that was established in the “Batman: Year One” story by Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli, which has been one of the major influences on the Matt Reeves version of the Bat-mythos seen in The Batman and The Penguin. Alas, if Two-Face shows up in one of the “Reeves-verse” productions, it won’t be Maroni who “creates” him, as this version of ol’ Sal doesn’t make it out alive. Clancy Brown, as usual, gives a magnificent performance. The alliance between the Maroni family and the Gigante family is entirely built on the mutual hatred Sofia and Maroni both hold for the Penguin, and that loathing is etched in Brown’s every pore. Last week ended with Sofia discovering that Penguin’s mother is still alive, despite the best efforts of Penguin to convince everyone that she died years ago. Credit: Macall Polay/HBO The present-day portion of the latest episode of The Penguin opens with Penguin coming home to find a broken door, Vic with a head wound, and no sign of Francis Cobb. Penguin gets Vic the hell out of the apartment first, telling him to get in touch with everyone working for them and gather them. He needs an army. Then Maroni arrives, having been waiting for Penguin to show up. Maroni starts by beating Penguin up with his own golf club that he took from his apartment, then forces Penguin to bring him to his operation. I love Maroni’s reaction to the Bliss setup Penguin has in the abandoned trolley tunnels. Is he impressed with the scale of the operation? The fact that he has access to the whole city? Nope, he just sees a guy in a filthy stinky underground sewer, a fitting place for a rat like him. It continues the theme of the “Reeves-verse”: the differences in class. Penguin is working-class poor. Maroni is a gangster from a family of gangsters, who married into another family of gangsters—he was, as Penguin so perfectly and succinctly put it way back in “After Hours,” “born full.” He’s used to big mansions and nice things, not dank, dreary underground lairs. (Penguin predicted this last week, saying that the Maronis’ and Gigantes’ noses are so far up they’ll never look down.) There’s one more important difference, which we’ve also seen from jump in this series: Penguin has earned the loyalty of those underneath him. He’s completely confident that Vic can get him an army, and when he brings Maroni down to the abandoned trolley tunnels, he’s able to turn the tide because his people will fight for him, not just roll over for Maroni. That’s part of why Penguin is able to win. The other reason is that Maroni has a heart attack in the middle of the rather lengthy fistfight between him and Penguin. It’s not a surprise, really. Your wife and kid being immolated doesn’t do much for your blood pressure, and given that he’s a fugitive, it’s not entirely clear that he’s been under a doctor’s care in any case. Colin Farrell beautifully plays Penguin’s disappointment that it ended that quickly. “The fuck?” he cries, and then tries to taunt Maroni with his victory, but Maroni himself is no longer in a position to respond. And then for good measure, and probably because he’s familiar with the tropes of the comics this series is based on, he shoots Maroni several times to make sure he stays dead. Credit: Macall Polay/HBO I said the “present-day” portion of the episode started with Penguin discovering that his mother’s been kidnapped, because we open with an extended flashback, showing us how Oz Cobb’s brothers Jack and Benny died. While we’ve heard plenty of stories about the brothers’ death, we’ve never gotten the specifics of how it happened. First of all, the casting department hit it out of the park here, as Emily Meade and Ryder Allen do an absolutely letter-perfect job of playing the younger versions of Francis and Oz, respectively. (It’s worth mentioning that Allen is interviewed for the after-show, “The Penguin: Inside Gotham,” and the kid is very smart and thoughtful. He’s got quite the career ahead of him…) We see Oz’s jealousy of the attention that Francis gives to his brothers, and we also see how smart he is, and how the wheels even then were always turning. (Points to the set designers, also, for re-creating 1988: we’ve got older cars on the street, older types of currency changing hands, a big PC with a CRT monitor on top of a CPU with 5¼” disk drives, an old-fashioned adding machine, and so on.) Francis apparently was doing bookkeeping—or book-cooking—for a local gangster named Rex, and we see Oz, Jack, and Benny deliver a ledger to Rex, for which the gangster gives them $50. It starts raining, so they go to the very same abandoned trolley tunnels that Oz will use as a headquarters decades hence to play hide-and-seek. Oz is “it” first, and Benny and Jack hide in a tunnel that is only accessible via a ladder. With his messed-up foot, Oz can’t climb down the ladder, and he’s pissed at his brothers for doing that. Even as Jack apologizes in a manner that sounds sincere, Oz closes the big metal door to the tunnel and leaves. The tunnel is flooding, however, and eventually the brothers drown. Oz goes home and tells Francis that his brothers went to the movies (he says they saw Beetlejuice, an amusing in-joke, as that was a pre-Batman collaboration between director Tim Burton and actor Michael Keaton, plus its sequel is now in theatres…). Oz tells Francis that he didn’t go with them because he wanted to be home with his mother, which just solidifies his bond with Francis—what he wanted all along. The two of them then sit down to watch a videotape of Oz’s favorite movie, the 1935 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical, Top Hat. In particular, Oz loves the scene where Astaire is performing “Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails” while dressed in the titular outfit (very similar to the sartorial choices favored by the Penguin in the comics), and uses his cane as a fake gun to shoot down his backup dancers. Oz really likes that bit, and unsubtle but effective bit of characterization… The next part of the flashback, interestingly enough, isn’t seen directly, but rather in the present day, during a conversation between Francis and Sofia, specifically when Sofia brings Jack and Benny up. Penguin told Sofia a story about his brothers and his mother back in “Inside Man.” Since he lied about Francis being dead in that conversation, Sofia questions whether or not Francis’ other two sons are dead also. This leads the dementia-suffering Francis to have a flashback to the day after Oz abandoned his brothers, yelling at someone (probably a cop) to look for them and try to find them, they didn’t have an umbrella, they aren’t anywhere they should be, and just generally being hysterical with worry over her missing sons. The scene between Sofia and Francis is another tour de force. Cristin Milioti and Deirdre O’Connell are stellar, as Francis is supremely confident in her son’s ability to think two steps ahead and get the better of his opponents, because everyone always underestimates him. She also has some words of derision for Sofia, for thinking that she’s doing anything different by changing her name to Gigante—she’s just another gangster doing gangster things. Credit: Macall Polay/HBO This proves cathartic to Sofia, who then goes to visit Gia in the children’s hospital, as Sofia’s little cousin—the only remaining survivor of Sofia’s massacre of her family in “Cent’Anni”—has been making noises about talking to the police, and also has been self-harming. While Sofia lies to Gia and says that the gassing really was an accident, that Sofia wasn’t responsible (Gia remembers seeing a gas mask in Sofia’s bag), she also tells Gia an important truth: the people who died were bad people who deserved it. And then Sofia changes tracks. She sends a car to the tunnels to do an exchange with Penguin: Francis for his Bliss operation. Penguin has no intention of honoring his end of the deal, but neither does Sofia. The car has what looks like a dead body under a blanket, so Penguin hesitates to uncover it—which proves disastrous, as it’s really a bomb. In an amusing touch, Penguin is saved from the blast by going into the very same tunnel that he trapped his brothers in. When he climbs back up to the surface, he’s discovered by Detective Wise (Craig Walker), established back in “Inside Man” as a corrupt cop working for Sofia, who plans to bring him to Sofia… Before that confrontation with Wise, however, we have one more flashback. The story Penguin told Sofia in “Inside Man” was about how his mother grieved for Jack and Benny. After weeks of her lying in bed and barely speaking or eating, she suddenly emerged from the bedroom all dressed up, and took Oz to Monroe’s, where they danced to the live music. We see that play out exactly as Penguin described to Sofia, but we also see an important conversation between Francis and Oz: Francis needs Oz to take care of her. She needs a better life than what they have, and he has to do it for them. Oz promises to do that very thing for her. Which pretty much gets him started on the road to where he is now. Oh, and we also see Sofia and her people take Francis to Monroe’s, which is apparently where the final confrontation between Penguin and Sofia will take place in next week’s season finale. Penguin’s Bliss operation appears to be toast, and a big chunk of his army is now dead or injured. One thing we don’t know is where Vic is—he didn’t appear in the episode after Penguin sent him to get an army. You gotta figure that he will play a role in the final battle as well….[end-mark] The post “Get me an army!” — <i>The Penguin</i>’s “Top Hat” appeared first on Reactor.