🚨 It's finally over: The WGA reaches a deal with the AMPTP to end their strike

 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/writers-guild-deal-reached-studios-end-of-strike-1235403981/

After several long consecutive days of negotiations, the Writers Guild of America and the labor group representing studios and streamers have reached a tentative deal on a new contract in a major development that could precipitate the end of a historic, 146-day writers’ strike. The Writers Guild of America emailed strike captains the news on Sunday night.

The parties came to terms on a provisional three-year agreement, which will need to be ratified by WGA members to take effect, on Sunday after studios responded to last-minute union asks that day. Specifics of the deal affecting around 11,500 WGA members weren’t available as of press time, though they will undoubtedly emerge in the next few days as the union seeks to sell its members on the pact.

During the final weekend of negotiations, lawyers huddled before the studios presented their alleged “best and final” offer on Saturday night. Later that same night, the AMPTP and the WGA issued a joint statement that they would be meeting again on Sunday. And indeed, despite the supposed finality of the studios’ previous proposal, the union returned to their bargaining counterparts on Sunday afternoon with some additional asks before the sides ultimately wrapped up the negotiations.

The mood among writers on Friday’s packed picket lines was one of cautious optimism, as union members anticipated that the end of the historic work stoppage might be night. “The fact that they’ve been talking for three days straight is terrific,” showrunner Marc Guggenheim (Legends of Tomorrow) told The Hollywood Reporter at Disney. Studio-side sources familiar with the progress in the room also projected positivity over the past several days as management made moves on issues including A.I., TV staffing and residual compensation tied to streaming show performance. That buoyant mood dipped on Thursday night, when studio sources claimed the WGA came back late in the night with new asks on items that management believed to be already closed; but returned on Friday as the sides nailed down compromises.

The momentum in talks over the course of the past week was a welcome change in pace from the month-long standstill in negotiations that occurred after a meeting between WGA leaders and several CEOs plus AMPTP president Carol Lombardini in late August, which ended in mutual recrimination. The AMPTP released its Aug. 11 offer publicly, and the WGA slammed the meetup, saying its leaders were met with a “lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was.” The pause in talks was lifted on Sept. 14, when the AMPTP announced that the WGA had reached out to resume negotiations and both sides were working on scheduling in the following week.

At day 146 of the ongoing WGA strike, the work stoppage was closing in on being the longest in the union’s history. The current record was set in 1988, when the WGA struck Hollywood companies for 154 days.

Though still tentative in nature, the agreement is a momentous development for an industry that has been hobbled by the double WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the first time both have occurred at once in over 60 years. The WGA strike had an immediate impact: Filming in Los Angeles declined 29 percent between April and June 2023 compared with the same period last year as the writers’ work stoppage began May 2, local office FilmLA reported on April 19. A wide array of major projects were halted in their tracks and/or postponed, including Netflix’s Stranger Things, Apple TV+’s Loot, Marvel’s Blade 2 and Thunderbolts and others. When SAG-AFTRA joined the stoppage, a number of additional projects including Venom 3, Gladiator 2 and Deadpool 3 followed.

A tentative agreement does not eradicate the potential for the strike to continue, as WGA members could still reject the deal in an upcoming ratification vote. The stakes and expectations are high, given how long the work stoppage has gone on so far. However, in the coming days the WGA leadership will undoubtedly work hard to persuade their members of the deal’s merits.

Negotiations for the agreement began on March 20 and broke off the night of May 1, resulting in a strike the next day. The two parties reunited again on August 11, reached a standstill in late August but resumed on Sept. 20, and concluded their negotiations on Sept. 23. The writers had been advocating for great compensation in the streaming era, through higher wage floors, regulation of mini-rooms and residuals tied to the performance of their shows. Meanwhile, studios and streamers — who have been feeling pressure to cut costs after Wall Street turned on unprofitable streaming operations in 2022 and amid an uncertain economic climate — were seeking to rein in their spending on labor. It remains to be seen how both sides managed to reach a compromise that could satisfy their constituents.

The writers were led in their negotiations by WGA West assistant executive director Ellen Stutzman, who stepped up to the plate after the western branch of the union’s executive director David Young went on medical leave prior to the start of talks. Carol Lombardini, the AMPTP’s chief negotiator since 2009, led the talks for producers.

Now, it’s up to the WGA’s members to determine whether the deal satisfies the workplace issues that their peers have been raising for months. All eyes are on the union’s ratification vote for the deal, whose date has not yet been announced.

----------------

Let's make it clear here: I'm happy this is over because it means the NCIS franchise can finally start working on their new Seasons (and hopefully work towards bringing Hetty home!), and that future rom coms for next year on GAF and UP TV are safe. Other then that, I don't feel any happiness for this union.

They could've prevented all this months ago if their ego centric leadership hadn't been so greedy, instead their actions of the past 4 months have not only delayed the new TV Season, but have also put a lot of workers out of their homes or on the brink of homelessness. Not to mention, there was all the terrible bullying over ANY dissenting opinion on the strike from any member. I am still horrified that anyone would ever approve of such tactics ever being used to keep people from trying to save their jobs. No business has any right to act in such a manner.

They were never going to win against the studios, because the studios have had them by the balls since this started. Same with SAG AFTRA as well. This was poorly planned from the start, and all it took was a few daytime talk show hosts threatening to go back to work to make them realize how boxed in they were.

I hope this union eventually goes bankrupt and dissolves, because mob rule and mob mentality is no way to run a union, that's nothing but tyranny, same with SAG as well.

Did Hunter Biden Lie to His Own Memoir?

There's more spin than truth-telling regarding Joe’s role in Hunter's foreign business dealings

posted by Paul Sperry at American Greatness

In a raft of glowing reviews, Hunter Biden’s 2019 memoir “Beautiful Things” was celebrated as an “unflinchingly honest” (Entertainment Weekly), “confession and an act of contrition” (Guardian), that was “candid” and “doesn’t hold back details” (New York Times) of his substance abuse and broken relationships.

While describing the book as an “unvarnished confessional,” the Washington Post exalted it as a “harrowing, relentless and a determined exercise in trying to seize his own narrative from the clutches of the Republicans and the press.

In the years since, testimony from a former business partner, Devon Archer, and newly disclosed emails indicate that the president’s son’s memoir was an exercise in spin rather than truth-telling, especially concerning his father’s role in his foreign business dealings, which are now the subject of a House impeachment inquiry. That evidence shows how the Bidens used the memoir to create a politically charged narrative – one largely embraced by the mainstream media – that distorted the truth to protect the family.

On page 118, for example, Hunter writes that after accompanying then-Vice President Joe Biden to China on Air Force Two in 2013, he merely introduced his father to a well-connected Chinese investor. It was a quick greeting that lasted just long enough for a handshake. “While we were in Beijing, Dad met one of Devon’s Chinese partners, Jonathan Li, in the lobby of the American delegation’s hotel, just long enough to say hello and shake hands,” Hunter wrote. “Li and I then headed off for a cup of coffee.”

The account seems to comport with now-President Biden’s repeated denials that he discussed business with his son or had any substantive involvement with his partners.

However, Archer told a different story to U.S. lawmakers during a deposition earlier this year. “Jonathan Li and [Vice] President Biden had coffee,” Archer said, according to a recently released transcript of his interview with the House Oversight Committee. “They had coffee in Beijing,” he recalled, suggesting there may have been talk about their business relationship.

Li would later offer Hunter a 10% stake worth potentially millions in a Chinese investment fund controlled by the state Bank of China. The fund, BHR Partners, is based in Beijing.

Archer’s testimony included other details ignored or distorted in the memoir. He said the vice president called Hunter while he was meeting with Li in Paris, and Hunter put his father on speakerphone so he could join their conversation. And in early January 2017, while Biden was still in the White House, Hunter arranged for his father to write letters of recommendation for Li’s son and daughter to Ivy League colleges.

Before committee lawyers began questioning Archer during the July 31 closed-door hearing, they warned him that providing false testimony could subject him to criminal prosecution for perjury. Hunter, in contrast, was under no such legal peril while writing his manuscript.

The same Oversight panel that quizzed Archer will now lead a formal impeachment inquiry, announced this month by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to investigate whether Biden used his office to enrich his family. Investigators are weighing subpoenaing Hunter Biden, which makes examining his claims in his memoir highly instructive as to his and his father’s credibility. They’re also tracing millions of dollars wired from China into a maze of accounts that ended up in the hands of Hunter and several other Biden family members, belying claims by the president that Hunter received no money from China.

Hunter also raked in millions from Ukraine while his father was “point man” for Ukraine policy as vice president.

Hunter addresses the controversy in the sixth chapter of “Beautiful Things,” describing the allegation that he traded on his father’s influence in Ukraine to land an unusually lucrative five-year stint on the board of the corrupt Ukraine energy giant Burisma Holdings as “the decade’s biggest political fable.”

He insisted neither he nor his father, who as vice president husbanded Ukraine’s new regime, did anything criminal or corrupt. “There is, in short, no there here,” Biden wrote.

Hunter then explained how he came to serve on the Burisma board, raking in $83,000 a month despite having no experience in the energy sector. Biden claimed that Archer, his international consultancy partner, brought Burisma into their business orbit after first meeting Burisma’s founder in Kyiv.

“During one such trip to Kyiv, he met Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner and president of Burisma,” Biden said. “After returning from Kyiv, Devon told me about his talk with Zlochevsky.”

But Archer, who served on the Burisma board alongside Biden, relayed a different account to Congress, testifying he first met the Russian-tied Ukrainian oligarch in Moscow, not Kyiv.

In fact, Archer said he sat down with Zlochevsky in the Russian capital on the same day that Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. “It was just me meeting [with him],” Archer added. Within days, Burisma asked him to join the board. And Hunter Biden came aboard shortly thereafter.

Archer’s disclosure that their relationship with Burisma was hatched in Moscow is at odds with the political narrative President Biden has carefully crafted, demonizing Russia as Enemy No. 1 of America and NATO. Hunter’s telling of the genesis, with the initial meeting with Zlochevsky taking place in Ukraine’s capital, is far more palatable.

Hunter wrote that he only agreed to accept Zlochevsky’s offer in order to enable Ukraine to strengthen its energy independence from Russia. He said the prospect of helping build a “bulwark” against Russian oil and gas imports assuaged “whatever dissonance I might have felt between idealism and generous compensation.” He said he was more interested in “fighting” for the Ukrainian people against an aggressive neighbor, which aligns his employment with Burisma with his father’s pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia stance.

“Having a Biden on Burisma’s board was a loud and unmistakable fuck-you to Putin,” Hunter maintained.

But according to Archer’s testimony, Burisma hired them in part to help expand its energy operations outside of Ukraine – particularly in the U.S., where the energy industry is heavily regulated by the federal government, and having such politically connected Americans on the board was valuable to the oil and gas conglomerate. Plus, he and Hunter were motivated by the windfall Burisma was paying them: “It was a million dollars per year [apiece] on the board contracts,” Archer confirmed.

Hunter further contends in his memoir that his father didn’t know about his joining the Burisma board until he read about it in the Wall Street Journal on May 13, 2014. But White House emails show the vice president’s staff was coordinating damage control weeks earlier when the news first broke in the foreign press.

And Archer testified that a month earlier, he had met with Vice President Biden in his White House office with Hunter, who had arranged the meeting. Their high-level pow-wow took place on April 16, the day after records show Archer received his first payment from Burisma.

It’s not clear what the trio discussed in Biden’s office, but Hunter had emailed Archer a Burisma strategy memo just three days earlier. Also on April 13, Hunter had emailed Joe Biden’s best friend Ted Kaufman and the vice president’s then-deputy counsel Alex Mackler to discuss Ukrainian politics. On April 21, Biden visited Ukraine to offer energy and economic aid.

But that’s not the biggest whopper Hunter apparently told about Burisma in his book. On page 127, he claimed: “No one at Burisma had even hinted at wanting me to influence the [Obama-Biden] administration.”

Several Burisma emails to Hunter, along with Archer’s congressional testimony, put the lie to this claim.

On May 12, 2014, for instance, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi sent an “urgent” email to Hunter – who by then was officially on Burisma’s payroll – demanding to know “how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions.” At the time, Ukrainian prosecutors were aggressively investigating Burisma for corruption.

Several months later, in the spring of 2015, Pozharskyi emailed Hunter to thank him for giving him the “opportunity to meet with your father and spent [sic] some time together.” Archer confirmed that the then-vice president sat down for dinner with the Burisma official and others at the Cafe Milano in D.C. the previous evening. The meeting, long denied by Biden officials, was held in a private room in the back of the restaurant.

In late 2015, after Viktor Shokin took over the prosecutor general’s office in Ukraine and turned the screws on Burisma, Pozharskyi again turned to Hunter Biden for assistance.

Archer testified that Hunter called his father to help deal with Shokin’s investigation at both Pozharskyi’s and Zlochevsky’s request following a Burisma board meeting at the Four Seasons in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015.

“They were getting pressure and they requested Hunter, you know, help them with some of that pressure,” Archer said, explaining the pressure was coming “from Ukrainian government investigations into Mykola [Zlochevsky].”

Archer suggested their benefactors wanted Hunter to use his influence with the vice president to get Kyiv to take “the heat” off Burisma. He testified he did not overhear Hunter’s phone call, but noted “he called his dad.”

At the time, Hunter Biden was not registered as a foreign agent as required by federal law when lobbying the U.S. government on behalf of a foreign entity. Federal prosecutors revealed at a recent court hearing that Hunter is actively under investigation for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that was used to prosecute several Trump advisers.

Two days after the Dubai phone call, Biden flew to Kyiv and warned the Ukrainian president that he had to fire Shokin or he wouldn’t get a promised $1 billion in aid. Three months later, after withering pressure from Biden, Shokin was removed from office.

“[Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko fired me at the insistence of the then-Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma,” Shokin said in a recent Fox News interview.

In his memoir, Hunter maintained that his father had Shokin ousted because he wasn’t doing enough to tackle corruption, which matches the current spin of the White House.

“A priority for my dad was the ouster of the country’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, for his failure to adequately investigate corruption,” he wrote. “Among the high-profile companies that Shokin was criticized for not pursuing: Burisma.”

In effect, Hunter implied he relished more criminal scrutiny for his own employer, an odd position to take particularly given the millions he was getting paid. But as Archer testified, it’s simply not true.

Democratic counsel for the Oversight Committee tried to get Archer to agree with the White House spin that Shokin’s firing was “bad for Burisma … because they had Shokin under their control.”

“No,” Archer said. “Burisma never informed me of that.”

Quite the opposite, he said, Burisma viewed Shokin as a threat after the prosecutor seized its founder Zlochevsky’s assets, including his house and cars.

If Shokin was not in fact soft on Burisma and Joe Biden did not press for his ouster to better fight corruption, it would seem to leave just one possible reason for his ham-fisted demand: to protect Burisma for the sake of his son – and the millions he was hauling in.

House impeachment investigators want to know whether Biden engaged in a quid pro quo: shaking down Ukraine’s former president for a political favor that would benefit his son by threatening to withhold a U.S.-backed aid package from the country. According to one Republican staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, they also want to know if Joe Biden or his staff helped Hunter draft the chapter of his book, titled “Burisma,” or had a hand in editing it.

“Beautiful Things” was published by an imprint of Simon & Schuster, which had no comment. Hunter’s attorney Abbe Lowell did not reply to requests to speak about the discrepancies in his client’s book.

X22, And we Know, and more- Sept 24

I've had a really emotional day. Combination of: Writers strike hopefully ending soon anxiety, Fear that I might never see Hetty or Linda again, Missing Hetty and wishing that NCIS LA had ended a bit differently, Wishing that I could hear of what Linda is doing and that she's actually okay.

Basically, a lot of what I've been feeling since May coming undone.

Radical Chic & The DIE Cult: They Don’t Wanna Face It

Contempt of the United States is en vogue again among elites

by Thaddeus G. McCotter for American Greatness

During the late 1960’s and early 1970’s “radical chic” was all the rage among the upper middle class. In today’s parlance, it was a cultural appropriation in the service of virtue signaling by the upper middle class, especially their children, to show solidarity with the hardships faced by America’s lower socio-economic and minority communities. Contempt of the United States – and in many instances, the embrace of our communist Cold War adversaries, the Soviet Union and Mao’s China – was en vogue. This was not surprising, as much of the accepted critiques of the United States, in particular, and the “decadent West,” in general, were based and abetted by Soviet propaganda, which was aimed at exacerbating existing economic and class tensions to divide and weaken our country and allies.

Not that the radical chic elitists were going to do anything constructive to ameliorate the divisions and inequality in our country. That was the point of their virtue signaling: to look as if they were in “solidarity” with the oppressed without really having to do anything about – certainly not to give up all their cushy, credentialed power and perks to consort with the objects of their abstract adoration. As a former practitioner of radical chic, John Lennon, later satirized it in his song, “I Don’t Wanna Face It”:

Say you’re looking for some peace and love

Leader of a big old band

You want to save humanity

But it’s people that you just can’t stand

Recognizing class warfare would never spur the revolt of Americans, especially the middle-class, into a transformational socialist revolution, the Left began to emphasize race as the fault line for shaking the foundations of American society. Sadly, this cynical strategy has proven wildly successful in shaking the foundations of American society. Throughout the ensuing decades, radical chic has metastasized throughout American institutions, including the government, academia, and multinational corporations, into the DIE cult* of “diversity, inclusion, and equity.”

Further, in a cruel slap in the face, much of the DIE cult’s spread has been underwritten by hardworking Americans’ tax dollars, who are subject to “cancellation” for dissenting from the practitioners of this virulent and spreading strain of radical chic. For, ultimately, the root concept of the DIE cult and radical chic remains a deep-seated loathing of America and its foundational principles.

Recently, I had the occasion to discuss the causes of and correctives for radical chic with the Hon. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (M.C., Ret.), a champion of human freedom and dignity, who as a youth was chased with his family under the threat of death from Castro’s Cuba. On the question of the DIE cult’s proselytization of anti-Americanism, Lincoln posed the question succinctly: “The one question that should be pondered in context and asked of all students is, if you were in a Nazi death camp or other totalitarian dungeon, what country’s army would you wish would come to liberate you?”

Sadly, too many of our fellow citizens don’t realize Lincoln is asking a rhetorical question.  Nor would such individuals likely engage in the brutal self-introspection of Lennon:

Well, now you’re looking for a world of truth

Trying to find a better way

The time has come to see yourself

You always look the other way

While Lennon didn’t wanna face it, he had the courage to do so. Will the radical chic poseurs and the DIE cult?

Yes, it’s another pesky rhetorical question.

[*Note: the acronym should be DIE, because that is the chronological order in which the Left unilaterally foisted these abjectly partisan, weaponized political concepts upon society.  Of course, one can see why the Left chose DEI, instead; and, by the way, “Dei” is Latin for “of God.”  Who says the Left doesn’t have a sense of humor – albeit a perverse one?]

Leadership – Staying in the Eye of the Storm

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

From real life requested conversations in the last few days, some of the discussion is worth sharing.

Knowing who you are, I mean really knowing what your core center of values and purpose is about, is very important as the storms of constructed chaos swirl around us.

Like a national hurricane, everything swirling around us seems chaotic and mad right now. The chaos is purposeful and comes from a multitude of directions almost simultaneously. However, also like a national hurricane it is possible to stay calm in the eye of the storm; but only if you are truly centered to the guiding elements of life that create the core purpose.

Faith in a loving and purposeful God grounds the soul to the truest of true things. Do not diminish this importance.

Those who use the skills of division to achieve their chaotic purpose, well understand that isolation -the dark imagining- first begins with a rejection of God. Therefore, put God into everything; spend time with Him, and not just at the prescheduled times of worship. Put God into your life, keep Him there, and take purposeful action in every moment to ensure the armor plate He provides is with you. No weapon formed against you shall prosper.

Once you have that anchor solidly in place, then resolve to maintain your core values. “Resolve” is a misunderstood word; it is not a static sensibility. Resolve is an action-oriented word that takes thought, practice and internal reminding mechanisms. The core values are not only what you believe, but also who you are, who you present yourself to be to those around you.

Standing steadfast with your guiding principles and values in place, then establishes your ability to withstand chaos and remain on mission. Your family, friends, allies and supporters will navigate the crisis as long as you are resolute. This doesn’t mean you are not flexible, flexibility to the dynamics of the moment is necessary. However, holding that true compass heading will keep your purpose well defined.

You will be tested, sometimes brutally, and you will be tempted to get pulled away from the core purpose of your effort and into the surrounding foray, but this is where the active decision to remain resolute comes into play.

You must actively be the lighthouse in order for those who need you to navigate toward it. The lighthouse doesn’t reach out or change location to make itself more directionally visible for those in need. You cannot control their view; the lighthouse remains consistent and steadfast, and those who need the waypoint will find a way to get it back into sight.

We are living in an era of purposeful crisis. The situations we discuss are chaotic and mad, because they have been purposefully created to be that way. The counter-effort to combat this seemingly perpetual crisis is to refuse to be destabilized by what they manufacturer.  Stay on mission.

This advice flows purposefully toward many.  In this context it is about leadership, and the massive efforts underway by those with bad intent to target the leadership of groups and organizations whose purpose is to combat the chaos.  However, the same advice is personal and can be attributed to those who are in a position to protect their family, their community or their civic assembly.

Our nation needs strong leaders, and I’m not talking about politicians.  We need strong mules who will plow into fields that have never been attempted before.  Train yourself mentally to withstand the turmoil and lead your family, friends, group, tribe or community with a fierce and unrelenting resolve.

Despite the chaos they create, our national adversaries are weak people devoid of pure character.  Their arguments are shallow, filled with hypocrisy and they rely upon you to pretend their creation is real or holds merit; it is not, and it doesn’t.

Do not give value to the shallow constructs of evil intent and use brutal honesty in a very public way to expose them.

No flinching!

That is all.

From The World's Most Deliberative Body to Animal House

Is it any wonder Americans have no respect 

for our so-called "sacred" institutions?

posted by Dianny at SweetMercifulZeus

As most of you probably know, this past week, Chuck Schumer relaxed the Senate dress code so that slovenly bum John Fetterman can enter the Senate chamber in his “trademark” shorts, sneakers, and sweatshirt.

Didn't these guys spend the last two and a half years banging on about how the US Capitol is a sacred monument to our "democracy," deserving of the utmost reverence and respect?

How quickly they forget.

Chuck Schumer transformed the World's Most Deliberative Body into a Frat House with the stroke of a pen.

Then again, at the end of the movie "Animal House," we learn that the slovenly John Blutarsky became a US Senator. Perhaps with John Fetterman, America is finally living through "Animal House: The Later Years."

Is it too much to expect a United States Senator to wear a suit and tie?

I realize that Bluto Fetterman is trying to go with that "Working Class Hero" look. But he isn't a working-class anything. He's the son of a wealthy family who has lived off of his parents for more than fifty years.

Now he's living off of us.

Fetterman isn't some inconsequential drone working an anonymous job. He is one of 100 people responsible for confirming presidential appointments, ratifying treaties, and ensuring that state governments have a voice in Washington. It isn’t too much to expect him to show a modicum of deference and respect for the office he holds.

If the guy delivering packages for UPS can wear a specific uniform at work, then John Fetterman can show up at the US Capitol in slacks, a button-down shirt, a jacket, and a tie.

If that is too much for him, he can always resign his seat and get a job holding the "SLOW" sign at road construction sites. Unless wearing a reflective vest upsets his sensibilities, in which case, he can always go back to living off his parents.

I cannot get over the fact that Chuck Schumer got rid of the dress code just to accommodate an oversized baby who laughingly wants us to believe that the only way he can avoid depression is to dress like a slovenly frat boy rolling out of bed at three in the afternoon after an all-night bender.

Is it any wonder Americans have no respect for our so-called "sacred" institutions?

The beating heart of America's Constitutional Republic is overrun by a culture of corruption and self-gratification, filled with crooks, liars, slobs, dummies, and attention-seeking lightweights.

And this culture of corruption and self-gratification is a bipartisan affair.

Republican showboaters like Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are just as clownish and absurd as Democrat showboaters like Bluto Fetterman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Cory Bush.

All of them are so focused on doing what pleases them that they can't be bothered to do the job for which they were elected.

They are social media influencers disguised as legislators, and America's future is in the hands of these unserious, worthless fools. Permitting them to have power over our lives is about as sensible as handing a loaded Uzi to a drunken chimpanzee.

Is it any wonder we're drowning in debt while the country goes off the rails?

Our tax dollars are funding a Frat House.

At this rate, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if our elected “leaders" showed up at the next State of the Union Address wearing togas and doing Jello shots.

I hate them all.

Meet ‘Ad Fontes Media,’ The Left’s Latest Tool for Annihilating Conservative Voices Like The Federalist

‘Ad Fontes is complicit in the defunding of real journalism and turbocharging the revenue stream for legacy media propaganda.’

Evita Duffy-Alfonso reporting for The Federalist

In in-depth investigation into Ad Fontes Media, a “media literacy” organization, found that the for-profit company is making money by actively encouraging Big Tech platforms, advertisers, and educators to deplatform, boycott, and exclude conservative commentators and media organizations, including The Federalist.

“Masquerading as a ‘media literacy’ organization, Ad Fontes Media is the left’s newest weapon to erase conservative speech while bolstering legacy media,” wrote the investigators at Media Research Center (MRC) Free Speech America.

Ad Fontes, founded in 2018, claims to be impartial. According to its website, it is continuously updating its “Media Bias Chart,” which includes over 3,000 media sources graded on their own “bias” and “reliability” metrics. The organization insists it is objective because its evaluations stem from the consensus of anonymous analysts who are supposedly politically diverse. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Ad Fontes analysts evaluate individual news articles and other forms of media content in groups of three. Even though the three analysts are supposed to include one individual on the left, one on the right, and another in the center, Ad Fontes’ founder and CEO Vanessa Otero brags that “99% of the time,” the three allegedly diverse analysts arrive at a single score.

Promoting False, Leftist Narratives

Purportedly “Impartial” Ad Fontes promotes indisputably false left-wing narratives, such as the claim that the highly credible Wuhan lab leak theory is a “baseless” and “fringe theory.” Indeed, Ad Fontes gave the infamous 2020 Washington Post article “debunk[ing]” the lab leak theory its highest reliability rating.

Ad Fontes also gave a “reliable” rating to an article from The Root, which claims that Stacey Abrams won the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, which she did not. It gave another “reliable” score to a story from The New York Times that said, “There’s no evidence of a wiretap” at Trump Tower. Trump Tower was indeed wiretapped.

Ad Fontes gave a perfectly “balanced” rating to an article by the CCP propaganda publication, China Daily, which lobbied for a reduction in trade restrictions between the United States and China. Ad Fontes also gave a perfectly balanced score to a New York Times puff piece on former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki headlined “The Most Measured Person in Tech.”

“By the time the article was published, Wojcicki—now infamous for her far–reaching censorship policies—had already been caught targeting pro-life groups, demonetizing journalists critical of the left, and systematically removing Republican campaign ads,” reported the MRC. 

Misleading Its Clients

MRC found that Ad Fontes’ executives “rigged” a cherry-picked and condensed version of its “Media Bias Chart” to fool clients into thinking the organization is unbiased. The colorful chart makes it appear like Ad Fontes is critical of just as many left-wing sources as it is critical of right-wing sources.

MRC’s analysis, however, “shows a completely different story.” The majority (64 percent) of media Ad Fontes labeled “left” was deemed fully “reliable.” These “reliable” sources include CNN, The New York Times, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Only one-third of media labeled “right” was deemed “reliable.”

“Ad Fontes is 10 times more likely to give its lowest rating of ‘unreliable’ to media on the right as it is to give this badge of shame to media on the left,” reported the MRC. According to the MRC, “only 2.9 percent of media it considered on the left as ‘unreliable,’ while it rated 29 percent of media it labeled on the right as ‘unreliable.’”

For instance, Ad Fontes describes The Federalist as “Unreliable, Problematic,” whereas CNN is “Reliable, Analysis/Fact Reporting.”

Ad Fontes’ cherry-picked “Media Bias Chart” is described by the MRC’s Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider as “a veneer of objectivity.” It draws advertisers in and then persuades them to spend their money on left-wing, predominantly legacy media organizations.

Radical Left-Wing Leadership 

“Both Otero and her top lieutenant Brad Berens are documented left-wing political activists,” reported the MRC. Both admit to being political ideologues and have consistently contributed to leftist political candidates.

Berens has referred to Tucker Carlson as “a sexist pig” and called President Trump a “white supremacist” and “the worst president in the history of this great country.”

He even wrote an open letter imploring Big Tech platforms to permanently ban then-President Trump, saying in the letter that he has “a persistent fantasy of seeing Donald Trump’s favorite color on a jumpsuit he is forced to wear.”

Berens’ political views on Trump appear to be shared by Ad Fontes as a whole. After Trump was indicted in Georgia, Ad Fuentes sent out a gleeful email that read, “The wheels of justice, however slow, had turned in the general direction that they are supposed to turn.”

Media filters

Ad Fontes has recently added a Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) “media filter.” This new feature “allow[s] advertisers to segregate media by race and sexual orientation of both ownership and audience,” reported the MRC.

To benefit from the DEI filters, sources have to “identify the racial composition of its ownership, hosts or target audience, and then champion it so as to ensure Ad Fontes’s diversity scorers could spot it.”

Since emphasizing people’s immutable qualities rather than their merits is generally considered immoral by conservatives, the filter acts as just another way to penalize conservatives’ voices while elevating leftist ones.

The MRC notes that the DEI filter is also in contradiction to “Ad Fontes’s pledge to focus on analysis of ‘content,’ rather than preconceptions and prejudices about the media’s speaker or viewer.”

Ad Fontes is present in public schools, has contracted with major advertisers, and partners with tech giants like Meta and Microsoft. “Tragically,” concludes the MRC, “every firm bamboozled into outsourcing its advertising decisions to Ad Fontes is complicit in the defunding of real journalism and turbocharging the revenue stream for legacy media propaganda.”