April 26, 2025

UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY, COMRADE! Liberal Media Ditching “Food Deserts” Term For Far More Inflammatory-Sounding “Food Apartheid.”

Having worn out the use of ‘Hitler’ over the last decade, the liberal media is searching for its next sensationalist descriptor for an otherwise innocuous “injustice” deserving of unlimited taxpayer dollars.

This go-round, the media is replacing their loaded “food desert” term with “food apartheid”. Because, hey, when there isn’t a World War II or full blown civil rights style crisis on the media’s hands to all them to argue their ideologies…why not just invent one?

“The Associated Press periodically tweaks its style guide—often to make its left‑wing activism more subtle. Progressive activists do the same, inventing controversies out of thin air. Where we once spoke of “food deserts,” the Radical Left now insists on “food apartheid”—and expects us to pretend this contrived concept is happening in Seattle,” Jason Rantz of 770 KTTH argues.

Rantz points out in an article out this morning that Seattle Times columnist Naomi Ishisaka pushes the idea that racism is behind the lack of quality grocery stores in areas like south Seattle compared to whiter neighborhoods.

“While ‘food desert’ might lead people to think there’s something inevitable… ‘food apartheid’ argues that these inequities are the result of intentional choices, and can be changed,” she writes.

To be fair, she’s got a point on that one, albeit possibly not the one she thinks she’s making: Defund The Police + Decriminalize Shoplifting = “Food Deserts.”  And “pharmacy deserts” as well. And where the drugstore is still open in an urban area, everything behind locked shelving, encased in plastic anti-theft containers, or both:

UPDATE: Speaking of blue state theft and everything being locked in plastic:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 150

VIRGINIA GIUFFRE’S DEATH SPARKS OUTRAGE… AND DOUBT.

It didn’t take long for speculation to explode online, with many suggesting Virginia Giuffre’s death was no accident at all. Given her role in exposing powerful figures tied to Jeffrey Epstein, plenty of users floated the idea that she was silenced to protect the elites. Some posts went even further, bluntly calling it a “planned murder” and blasting authorities for what they described as a “state-sanctioned” cover-up.

The sad reality is, her death leaves behind more questions than answers—and a legacy that won’t be easily scrubbed away. Whether you believe the official story or see something darker at work, one thing is clear: Giuffre had the courage to stand up against some of the most powerful and protected people on Earth. And if the forces she fought against think her death buries the truth, they’re sorely mistaken. The fight she helped spark is still raging—and the reckoning isn’t over yet.

Earlier: Virginia Giuffre, Prince Andrew Accuser, Dies By Suicide Aged 41.

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 12

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: How Soon They Forget: Arresting State Judges. With the left, history always began three weeks ago. “What is described above happened under President Obama and under President Lincoln. Judges are not above the law; judges cannot interpose their courthouse and personal rules and policies against federal officers. And when state judges violate the law, they must be arrested . . . like you and me and anyone else. We all know that—or, at least, we should.”

No one is above the law, as everyone was saying until, well, yesterday.

Posted at 8:42 am by Glenn Reynolds 193

SELF-MARGINALIZATION: The Ivy League Is Being Hoist on Its Own Petard. “Trump’s ‘trump card’ against these institutions is not their use of federal dollars to preach and teach hatred against America, and especially conservatives, but rather their open violation of federal law in promoting ‘social justice.'”

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 31

DID THE LEFT’S CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY FAIL? Depends on the numbers and the strategic assumptions you make, as I demonstrate on PJ Media this morning. If success is defined as eliminating poverty, the answer clearly is no. But even more clear is that Cloward-Piven has been a roaring success if it’s real purpose was moving America toward a substantially socialist model.

Posted at 7:29 am by Mark Tapscott 51

April 25, 2025

VIRGINIA GIUFFRE, PRINCE ANDREW ACCUSER, DIES BY SUICIDE AGED 41:

Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most high-profile victims who accused Prince Andrew of sexually assaulting her as a teenager, has died by suicide, NBC has reported.

Ms Giuffre, 41, died in Neergabby, Australia, where she lived.

In a statement, her family told NBC News: “It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia,

“She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.

“Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors.

“In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.”

Ms Giuffre spent decades speaking out about the abuse she suffered from Epstein.

In 2021, she filed a lawsuit accusing the Duke of York of raping her when she was 17 after Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, his accomplice, trafficked her to London.

Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking in 2021.

A year later, Ms Giuffre agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Prince Andrew, understood to be worth millions of pounds. The joint statement contained no admission of liability.

Prince Andrew denies any wrongdoing.

* * * * * * * *

Earlier this month she posted pictures of herself on Instagram with bruises on her face claiming she had days to live.

“I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live,” she wrote.

Her spokesperson said she was in a “serious condition” after her car was hit by a school bus.

Ms Giuffre was accused of breaching a family violence restraining order 10 days before the alleged crash.

Say, whatever did happen to that Epstein client list?

UPDATE: How a picture came to symbolize the Prince Andrew sexual abuse case. “It was a simple photograph, taken late in the evening on 10 March 2001, that came to symbolize Virginia Giuffre’s case against Prince Andrew. The one with the duke’s arm around the 17-year-old’s waist, with Ghislaine Maxwell beaming to one side, and the man behind the camera clicking the shutter but hidden by the flash’s reflection in the window being Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced late financier and sex trafficker.”

Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell, London, 2001. SDNY image, via AP.
Posted at 10:20 pm by Ed Driscoll 345

OPEN THREAD: Because I love you and want you to be happy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 1776

FASTER, PLEASE:

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 112

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: ‘Gone Off The Rails’: Colorado Dems Stir Up Hornet’s Nest After Passing One Of America’s Most Extreme Anti-Gun Laws.

The law, SB25-003, bans the sale, transfer and manufacture of most semiautomatic firearms unless prospective gun owners obey a range of new requirements, including training mandates, tests and sheriff-issued eligibility cards. Republicans, like state Rep. Ty Winter, say it’s a deliberate effort to choke off lawful gun ownership through bureaucracy and paperwork — a view increasingly shared by Second Amendment organizations now mobilizing to fight the law in court. (RELATED: Two Blue States Launch ‘Tip Lines’ To Snitch On Gun Owners)

“This bill is putting a paywall in front of a God-given, unalienable right — and that’s the right to self-defense and the right to keep a free nation,” Winter, assistant minority leader in the Colorado House, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Gun rights aren’t a red or blue issue. Gun rights are an American issue. We forget what the Constitution is for — it’s not to go hunting. It’s not to go target shooting. It’s to keep a nation free. It’s to keep a government in check. And I think that’s the first thing our colleagues across the aisle don’t realize.”

Oh, they realize it.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Stephen Green 174

I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS: Andor Creator Explains That Shocking Assault Scene: “We’re All the Product of Rape.”

Disney+’s acclaimed Andor has stretched the creative boundaries of Star Wars in countless ways, bringing a grown-up sensibility to a galaxy far, far away.

Yet even by Andor standards, a scene from the second season is leaving fans shocked: An Imperial officer tries to violently rape a Rebel fugitive, Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), who is hiding out in a farming settlement while Imperial troops are rounding up “undocumented” citizens (read some sample reactions below).

The sequence plays out over the course of the show’s third episode (the first three episodes were released all at once on Tuesday) with the officer’s flirtation with Bix turning growing increasingly persistent and eventually cumulating with a brutal life-and-death struggle. Bix eventually gets the upper hand and the officer is killed. But Andorboldly leaves zero ambiguity as to what viewers just witnessed as Bix screams, “He tried to rape me!”

Star Wars is a franchise that has never — in film form — shown even consensual sex. During its first season, Andor pushed the envelope with scenes that suggested sex was about to take place, or just had (much like old Hollywood films during the Hays Code censorship era).

When asked about the Bix scene, Andor creator Tony Gilroy explained to The Hollywood Reporter that when telling a story about a war, shying away from sexual assault didn’t feel truthful.

“I get one shot to tell everything I know — or can discover, or that I’ve learned — about revolution, about battles, with as many incidents and as many colors as I can get in there, without having [the story] tip over,” says Gilroy. “I mean, let’s be honest, man: The history of civilization, there’s a huge arterial component of it that’s rape. All of us who are here — we are all the product of rape. I mean armies and power throughout history [have committed rape]. So to not touch on it, in some way … It just was organic and it felt right, coming about as a power trip for this guy. I was really trying to make a path for Bix that would ultimately lead to clarity — but a difficult path to get back to clarity.”

We’ve come a long way (baby) from 1977, when George Lucas was promoting his then-new film called Star Wars and telling interviewers:

“When I did [American] Graffiti, I discovered that making a positive film is exhilarating,” he said. “I thought, Maybe I should make a film like this for even younger kids. Graffiti was for sixteen-year-olds; this [Star Wars] is for ten- and twelve-year-olds, who have lost something even more significant than the teenager. I saw that kids today don’t have any fantasy life the way we had—they don’t have Westerns, they don’t have pirate movies…. the real Errol Flynn, John Wayne kind of adventures. Disney had abdicated its reign over the children’s market, and nothing had replaced it.”

If Lucas had thought that “Disney had abdicated its reign over the children’s market,” he had no idea what they would do to his franchise after acquiring the rights to it:

UPDATE: The Critical Drinker on Andor Season 2: A Rough Start.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 337