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Friday’s Final Word – HotAir

Raiding the tabs





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Daily WireThe puppeteer behind the radical prosecutors who have enabled carnage in America’s major cities is no longer in her job after her own staff and the prosecutors she trained accused the white woman of being racist and authoritarian.

Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, resigned on September 20, 2024, apparently as a result of a story in The Daily Wire that same day. The resignation has not been previously reported. …

The story reported that in April 2024, Sherry Boston, the elected district attorney of DeKalb County, Georgia, accused Krinsky of racism for excluding her from a New York City event, adding that the group had “failed miserably” when it came to diversity. Krinsky replied by disparaging Boston and saying she was excluded from events because of merit, not race. Krinsky appeared to suggest that Boston, a black Democrat, had failed to advance “racial justice” by prosecuting too many crimes.

That led to an uproar from Krinsky’s own staff and others, who began a campaign to oust her, only to face what they said was retaliation. 

Ed: This is a couple of days old, but it’s still a feel-good story on which to end the week. I wonder whether FJP will take Third Way’s advice to heart on the 45 words …

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Ed: I’m fine with criticizing this, but is that what the logo change is about? Or did Cracker Barrel just want to simplify the logo? I’m not a big fan of their restaurants, where food quality has dropped significantly over the decades, but I don’t think that the logo change either helps or hurts them. On the other hand …

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CBS News: Cracker Barrel shed almost $100 million in market value after its stock plunged Thursday following the release of a new logo. The new design eliminates a longstanding drawing of an overall-clad man leaning against a barrel, in favor of a cleaner logo featuring just the chain’s name.

Shares of Cracker Barrel fell $4.22, or 7.2%, to $54.80 in Thursday trading, shedding $94 million in market value. The stock had dipped to a low of $50.27 earlier in the day, representing a loss of almost $200 billion in its capitalization.

The slide appeared to be halted on Friday, with Cracker Barrel’s shares rising slightly in pre-market trading. 

Ed: Yeah, it dropped pretty dramatically on Thursday, but shares had traded at a YTD high earlier in the week. By 2 ET today, the share price was almost exactly what it was at the start of the year, and well above where it traded between mid-February and the end of April. I’d bet that the logo controversy prompted some profit-taking, followed by some adept buying. The controversy over woke/DEI policies might come at a very sensitive time to shareholders, though, and Starbuck may well be striking while the iron is hot. 





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Ed: Yet another entry in the Everything I Don’t Like Is Fascism annals … *sigh*.

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Victor Davis Hanson via RCP: Under the Biden administration, over 10 million illegal aliens flooded the country, sometimes 10,000 a day at the southern border. More than half a million criminals swarmed in.

Yet now there is essentially zero illegal immigration and over 100,000 criminal aliens deported. A million who entered illegally have voluntarily gone home.

Yet the left has fought the enforcement of immigration law tooth and nail.

Do they believe that it is lawful and moral to break immigration law but immoral and illegal to enforce it?

Ed: Yes, yes, they do. They want open borders and an end to national identity in America. They believe that we have no legitimacy as a country because of colonialism, slavery, environmental sins, whatever. That is the true north of their moral compass. Jasmine Crockett thinks that the only legit use of immigration enforcement is transportation services, an absurd yet utterly revealing comment

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Ed: The grift emerges …

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Puck: Alas, the summer movie season, which is finally in the rearview, was defined by mostly underwhelming reboots and sequels (Smurfs, 28 Years Later), way-too-tired I.P. (The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Ballerina), and barely released awards bait (Highest 2 Lowest). There was some original material that found its intended audience, like F1 and Weapons, but those were the two notable exceptions. Unsurprisingly, the season will drastically underperform the #Barbenheimer summer of 2023. …

The deeper you look, in fact, the more fraught the picture becomes. In terms of overall North American earnings for films specifically released between May 2 and August 15, the cume is currently $3.14 billion. That’s down 12 percent from last year and 19 percent from 2023. Discounting inflation, and omitting the compromised Covid summers of 2020 and 2021, the 2025 new releases have so far earned the least of any summer slate since 2000, which had reached $2.87 billion by this point on the calendar.

Ed: When you churn out the same old crap, don’t expect exciting new results. Frankly, I’m not feeling compelled to go to the cinema for anything these days, although I did go this week to see ‘Nobody 2’ and loved it. It’s the first film I’ve seen in the theater for months. 

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Hollywood in Toto: The film, which gathered dust before Amazon decided to release it on an unsuspecting planet on July 30, boasted a zero percent “rotten” rating before it shot all the way up to 3 percent.





“… I refuse to believe actual human beings were involved in most of this nonsense.” – RogerEbert.com

(General audiences have been more kind, courtesy of a 21 percent score – out of 100)

Ho-hum. Another straight-to-streaming dud filled with recognizable faces (including Eva Longoria and Clark Gregg).

That doesn’t explain the curious love being shown to the film from YouTube personalities.

Ed: Yeah, it’s not just the films in the cinemas that fail to compel attendance. This looks soooooo bad, and I’m someone who can enjoy bad cinema. I still maintain that Battlefield Earth is the greatest unintentional comedy of the 1990s. “LEVERAGE!”

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Variety: Much has been written about the narrowing audience for superhero movies. The performance of Marvel’s latest release, “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which aimed to launch yet another superhero franchise led by Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, failed to meet expectations. That’s despite good reviews, a promising opening weekend and the full attention of Marvel czar Kevin Feige. “Star Wars” has not produced a film in seven years (a big-screen adaptation of Disney+ hit “The Mandalorian” is coming next year).

One top film executive at a Disney rival says every studio should be looking for originals, as sequels and reboots continue to exhaust the culture – even if they’re packing in moviegoers in the short term.

“I never thought I’d say it,” the exec muses about the Magic Kingdom’s boy troubles despite its gem box of iconic IP, “but it looks like Disney is going to have to start trying.”





Ed: They have been trying, indeed … very trying. The real problem goes beyond alienation of boys, though. It’s the expense of these IPs, which should already be male-oriented, on top of the wokery imposed by Disney on Marvel and Star Wars. That’s the point of Critical Drinker’s NSFW rant below and he’s correct, but one has to wonder if lower-budget entries in these IPs wouldn’t at least break even or do a bit better on the bottom line. 

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