As
predicted, WICKED did past the $400 million mark. It's now the third
biggest film of the year and has sold $424 million in tickets in North
America. (Worldwide it's at $634 million.) MOANA 2 is at $394 million
and stands a good chance of crossing the $40 million mark this weekend.
If it could do six million today and tomorrow, it would hit that
before the end of the year. SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3, is at $113 million
and it's the only film released in December that's any good. A COMPLETE
UKNOWN crashed and burned with only $11 million over the weekend --
it's opening weekend and it came in at number six. I believe that's
about all Timothee Chalamee's fan club of 50 year old men and pre-teen
girls can scare up. It's really time to send him packing. He can't
deliver an audience. When he's in a hit film, it's a hit despite him.
He's too prissy for most audiences to relate to. He's not manly and
he's not boyish and, at 29, he's really too ridiculous for words. Maybe
John Waters can cast him in something? Maybe put him in make up and a
dress and let him be the new Divine?
In
the meantime, any major studio that casts him in a film? Their should
be a shake up in studio management because audiences do not like the
little fop.
GLADIATOR II
limped to $163 million over the weekend. Sexism had the press acting
like it and WICKED were on the same level -- calling it GLICKED. Just
like it had them pretending that BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER were going to be
equally popular films. The lying press called it BARBENHEIMER.
Christopher
Nolan's piece of garbage film topped out at $976 million in ticket
sales world wide. BARBIE? $1.446 billion worldwide. No, it is not the
same. And then Nolan's garbage was treated as Oscar worthy while
BARBIE was largely ignored. And, isn't it funny, Tom Hanks plays a
simpleton and we rush to kiss his feet but Margot plays Barbie and pulls
it off and we all pretend she didn't deliver a great performance. I'm
sick of the sexism. As for GLICKED nonsense, $163 million in nowhere
near $424 million. Let's hope the Oscars remember that when it's time
to nominate worthy films.
Elon Musk on Sunday asked for "more positive" content to be posted to
the social media network he owns, resulting in some reminders about his
own negative attitude at times.
Musk, the richest man in the world and an appointee of President-elect Donald Trump, took to X to say, "Please post a bit more positive, beautiful or informative content on this platform."
Elon Musk admitted
that the H1-B visas are “broken” and floated a potential fix as he
sought to cool a raging civil war within the MAGA base over the
immigration program for highly skilled foreign workers.
Just
a day after vowing to “go to war on this issue” and telling detractors
to “F— yourself,” Musk, the world’s richest man, acknowledged some of
the criticisms of the program getting abused and argued that the US
should make it more costly to hire foreigners.
“Easily
fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly
cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to
hire from overseas than domestically,” Musk wrote on X late Saturday in
response to a thread claiming H1-B visas were being used to hire
low-wage programmers and developers.
If
you rested over the weekend and avoided the news, this may be new to
you. Here's some commentary that took place on the topic.
Did you notice? We are still over 24 days or so before Convicted
Felon Donald Chump is sworn in and reoccupies the White House and he is
floundering, staggering around like a dying corpse. Chump's betrothed
Elon Musk and maid of honor Vivek Ramaswamy have been in the news for
their insulting attacks on American workers and insisting that
immigrants need to be brought into this country because American workers
do not have the skills (Mr. Musk) and they watch the wrong T.V.
programs (Miss Ramaswamy). They are now being savaged by many MAGA
voters. Brad Reed (RAW STORY) reports:
MAGA influencer Laura Loomer appeared on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast on Friday to warn President-elect Donald Trump against letting X owner Elon Musk into his administration.
In
an interview with Bannon, Loomer charged that Musk had major conflicts
of interest and said that it could turn into a major scandal if Trump
keeps him in his inner circle.
"I am simply trying to warn the Trump administration about something
that is going to blow up in their face," she said. "And it actually has
the risked of getting President Trump impeached in his second term if
the Democrats take back the House and are able to spin and create a
narrative that... they are enriching themselves in the Trump
administration. I'm trying to warn them about a serious issue on the
horizon."
In a stream of posts on the alt-tech social platform Gettr, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon warned that billionaire Elon Musk's "true colors" are showing with the ongoing debate about the H-1B visa program.
"True
Colors Shining Through," Bannon captioned a post that included an Axios
article about how a "MAGA Civil War" has broken out "over race,
immigration and billionaires versus the working class."
[. . .]
Bannon has previously called Musk a "stone-cold liar" and said "his paymasters" are from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), referencing the billionaire's extensive business ties to the East Asian nation.
Bannon had also said that Tesla was Musk's only thing "of real value,"
adding that Musk "uses it for margin loans." Those criticisms came in
2023 before Musk was publicly a leading Trump supporter.
Former U.S. House Representative Joe Walsh has weighed in, "And you are right -- Musk & Ramaswamy are being eaten right now by
an intolerant, nationalistic mob that they played a large role in
helping to create. They both deserve to be eaten by their mob." So that is a non-MAGA Republican take.
Musk
exploded and raged on Twitter. Then someone emerged on Twitter to
defend him -- someone most believe was Musk himself trying to pretend to
be someone else. Most who believe that it was really Elon includes
Elon's daughter Vivian Wilson.
What makes someone trash? Maybe insulting their own country. Take this:
Entrepreneur
Vivek Ramaswamy, a close Donald Trump ally tasked with helping to
dismantle the federal government, is facing scorn from both sides of the
aisle for saying America has a culture problem —
it focuses on prom queens and sports over math and science — and that's
why tech companies hire more people from India and China.
Don't
remember hearing that kind of talk from him when he was trying to get
the Republican Party's presidential nomination. He lost. Now he's
going to let the country know what he really thinks of it.
He's upset, it turns out, because in the 90s America watched Saved By The Bell. Huh?
No,
it doesn't make sense but what also doesn't make sense is that I never
watched Saved By The Bell and I'm not the only one who didn't watch. It
was probably a popular show but it did not grip me.
He's
angry because -- look at him -- he can't do a single push up but
America, he insists, glorifies cheerleaders and football players.
Poor little nerd. Someone gave him an atomic wedgie and it traumatized him for life.
Vivek
Ramaswamy's stupidity saves him to a degree. It's hard to rage against
a hate merchant when they're also offering bad pop cultural references
that don't mean -- even on the most basic level -- what they claim. Or
does no one get that Ross was the Urkel of FRIENDS and Ross got Rachel
and well as good paying jobs?
Elon
Musk admitted that the H1-B visas are “broken” and floated a potential
fix as he sought to cool a raging civil war within the MAGA base over
the immigration program for highly skilled foreign workers.
Just
a day after vowing to “go to war on this issue” and telling detractors
to “F— yourself,” Musk, the world’s richest man, acknowledged some of
the criticisms of the program getting abused and argued that the US
should make it more costly to hire foreigners.
“Easily
fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly
cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to
hire from overseas than domestically,” Musk wrote on X late Saturday in
response to a thread claiming H1-B visas were being used to hire
low-wage programmers and developers.
Elon
has created a nightmare for Donald Chump. It's harming the brand, the
message and the cohesion. It's even left the professional liars at FOX
"NEWS" scrambling.Corbin Bolies (THE DAILY BEAST) notes:
The Fox & Friends Weekend hosts
tried their best on Sunday to make sense of the MAGA mess over H-1B
visas last week, but even they admitted Donald Trump’s flip-flop on the
program “left a lot of people confused.”
Hosts
Rachel Campos-Duffy, Charlie Hurt, and Will Cain reflected on the
online meltdown over the visas, which are backed by close Trump allies
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The issues, they said, were in abuses of
the system that prioritized cheaper labor over Musk-type prodigies.
Even
they couldn't make sense of him. But who could? The man who brought
hate merchants back to Twitter and allowed Tweets endorsing the lynching
of Black people and Tweets calling for the murder of gay people and
Tweets where Maga's proclaimed that they were going to go into Target
and shoot it up, this man or 'man' couldn't then handle when he was on
the receiving end of what he'd done to others. And did you notice? His
pep squad -- Matt Taibi, Glenneth Greenwald and the others -- didn't
object. It was censorship, they insisted, pre-Musk when Twitter banned
people for hate speech. Over the weekend as Musk banned people for
being critical, the fake asses said nothing. Not one word.
At a time when Donald Trump's inner circle
should be working on getting his Cabinet nominees primed for getting
Senate approval, now time is being spent tamping down on a foreign
worker controversy that has riled the president-elect's base forcing him to have to weigh in.
At
the center of the controversy are comments made by Trump advisors Vivek
Ramaswamy and Elon Musk about America needing more H-1B foreign
specialty workers which has erupted into a war with Trump's MAGA base
that had been promised "America First" policies.
He's not even sworn in and already Chump has to address one brewing scandal after the other. Let's wind down with this from Michael Albert (ZNET):
Donald, the idiot, the madman, the consummate cowardly thug is
preparing to unleash shock and awe to paint his agenda onto the American
and the world stage such as we have never seen before. Day one, two,
three…infinity. He will attempt to unleash the hounds of horror. Why?
To impose his horrendous agenda—of course. But what’s his rush? To
embrace MAGA ever more intimately and to draw those who inhabit its
fringes to its center. To instill well beyond MAGA’s fringes futility so
debilitating that we either shut up and hunker down to protect
ourselves or we kiss up and hope for a few goodies while others suffer.
You doubt this prognosis? Okay, suppose we get oil madness, high waters
rising, storms beyond measure, deportations beyond counting, gilded
billionaire enrichment, intensified austerity, gutted regulations,
fascist retooling of government, international mayhem, and vengeful
repressive violence not by shock and awe but by slow boiling in a
monstrous kettle. How different is that in the end?
What’s the alternative? Resistance. And what is that? It is saying no
by every effective means one can employ. It is no longer laughing and
winking. No longer denying what this thug is all about. No longer
shrugging it off. It is telling the truth to all in range, so all souls
can hear it, openly, loudly, no sugar coating—and trying to act on it.
When someone with the steering wheel of a gargantuan tank revs the
motor and hollers I am going to drive this wonderful magnificent machine
upside your head, does it make sense to assume that he doesn’t mean it?
That he is just joking? Is it sensible to predict that he won’t be able
to aim it? Is it wise to say that someone else, something else, is
going to stop him? Or to suppose he is just going to run over a
neighbor. For those reasons should we not read the news today and
instead return to dressing this morning, and tomorrow morning, and the
next and the next, preparing each day for familiar life and familiar
life only as if there is no tank? There is no emergency? Does it make
sense, even, to list reasons why others won’t resist and then proclaim
that because they’re not going to resist you won’t either? Maybe it does
make some limited kind of sense, but will it stop the tank?
The
"Wicked" movie is set to hit streaming platforms, including Amazon
Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home (formerly Vudu), Comcast
Xfinity, Cox and Microsoft Movies & TV, on Tuesday, Dec. 31. The
movie will also debut on on 4K UHD, Blu-ray™ and DVD on February 4,
2025.
What
do you think? I said Monday that WICKED should cross the $400 million mark by this weekend. By Christmas Day, it was three million shy.
That's domestic gross. Once it goes to streaming, it will probably drop
out of the top ten -- that is the pattern but it could break that since
the studios have released nothing but garbage for two months now
(WICKED, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 and MOANA 2 being the exceptions). But it won't be pulling in
big numbers like it has been. So they may think this is the way to go.
And they may be right or they may be "leaving money on the table" as
they were repeatedly accused of -- UNIVERSAL -- for the last few years.
It's
going to be the third biggest film in North American ticket sales.
There's no way for it to catch up with number two (DEADPOOL &
WOLVERINE) or number one (INSIDE OUT 2) so maybe it's smart to cash in
with streaming when everyone wants to see it? But right now, it's only
been in theaters for 35 days.
Other streaming note. Remember the sexist nonsense of GLICKED?
GLADIATOR II is streaming now. You can rent or purchase it on AMAZON. In North America, this heavily hyped film that came out the same day as WICKED? It's only sold $158 million in ticket sales. That's as of Thursday. When I started writing this post, THENUMBERS.COM did not have Thursday's numbers posted. They're posted now. WICKED is now at $404 million. That was the hit not GLADIATOR II.
Friday, December 26, 2024. The Water Cooler Set declares the death of
non-FOX "NEWS" cable channels while not understanding the changing media
landscape, lived reality is about to hit MAGA hard, and much more.
In the face of Vice President Kamala Harris losing the presidential election to Donald Trump,
the punditry's focus has been almost exclusively on asking how the
Democrats couldn't beat a relentless liar with 34 felony convictions and
a previous attempted coup under his belt. Everyone has a different
theory about Harris' "messaging," with every critic inevitably arguing
that if she had just talked more about their pet issue, she would have
won.
Another option, however, is to listen to what swing voters who backed
Trump said about their decision. That would seem the wisest choice, but
to be fair to people who don't want to go there, hearing these people
out is a truly miserable experience. What quickly becomes evident about
the median voters in an American focus group is how profoundly opposed
they are to even the most basic factual information. On the contrary,
it's a community with a pathological aversion to reality, where people
compulsively react to anything truth-shaped with hostility, running as
hard as they can toward disinformation. They are addicted to BS. Of
course they voted for Trump, the country's most reliable dealer of their
favorite drug.
This may sound ungenerous to these voters, but only if you've been
sparing yourself the torture of engaging their actual opinions. If you
hold your nose and dive in, it's startling how much the typical swing
voter is allergic to facts. It's not just ignorance, but overt hostility
to anything that smacks of veracity. Such as the Trump voter who insisted
to the New York Times that Democrats are "lying about pregnancies," by
conveying factual information about abortion bans. Or the one who
falsely believed "so many people just walk right across the border and
get free housing, free food." Or the one who was
excited that "Trump brings a Robert Kennedy Jr. or a Tulsi Gabbard and
Elon Musk." Or the one who said the "Democratic Party [is] going after
average people who disagreed on Covid, who disagreed on school boards,
who disagreed on boys playing in women’s sports," which is just a way to
complain about liberals who criticize him on social media for saying
things that aren't true.
Sarah Longwell's "Focus Group" podcast ended the
year by interviewing Joe Rogan fans who voted for Trump for the first
time this election. It was a smart choice, and not just because Rogan's
endorsement likely pushed Trump over the top in a shockingly close
election. Rogan's audience perfectly illustrates the way the firehose of
disinformation online — his conspiracy theory-hyping podcast has over 16 million followers
— has pickled the brains of so many otherwise normal people. Most of
the people Longwell interviewed couldn't go two minutes without coughing
up a conspiracy theory. Everything is a shadowy plot, from the COVID-19
pandemic to the guy who shot Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. The
straightforward details of the shooting of UnitedHealth CEO Brian
Thompson came out after the arrest of Luigi Mangione, and yet these
voters refused to believe the banal facts. Some are wallowing in
theories that Mangione is a patsy, or that the shooting is a psyop. The
truer any information was, the more they rejected it.
MAGA
is stupid. There's no reason to pretend otherwise. When we'd get a
MAGA uber drive in whatever state we were campaigning in last fall,
their ignorance regarding how a tariff works wasn't the only thing that
came up. There was so much more stupidity.
We
noted on recently and a lot of people e-mailed asking what was I
talking about. Roseanne Barr gave a big speech that people on the
YOUTUBE left and 'left' mocked -- it did deserve that -- but didn't
really seem to understand.
Roseanne, in her
speech, was talking about Donald Chump as a savior to children -- I'm
blocking the speech -- in my mind -- because it's so painful to watch
someone who should know better fall into lies.
And
I know Roseanne so I know how she fell in. Things didn't make sense to
her, she smokes way too much pot, her sleep is always erratic meaning
she's often up all night reading conspiracies on the internet and taking
them as truth and praising God that he's seen fit to enlighten her and
now it's her job to enlighten others.
While he
was in office from 2017 through 2021, she honest believes -- because of
lies on the internet -- that governments -- including the US -- are part
of some world sex slavery system for children and that Chump fought
that. He was the savior of children.
These people have been taken out of the real world and plopped into crazy land.
And
if you speak to them -- and we spoke to several nut jobs especially
when we were campaigning in South Carolina -- you'll find that they base
this on internet liars and on the corporate media system.
Internet liars should be obvious, they're spreading it.
Why did the nut jobs also point to the corporate media.
In
their minds, the corporate media proved that this lie was true. How
so? We would be told that back in 2016 when Hillary Clinton and others
were accused of running a children's slave trade out a pizza place in
DC, the media was all over that and calling it a lie and blah blah
blah.
But, we would be told, notice how they don't say a word about the slave trade Trump is fighting!!!!!
That's proof that it's real!!!!
The media doesn't have the time to respond to every nut job on RUMBLE. But they need to start responding.
It's
no fun. I get that. In the last four years, I think we've noted four
liars on RUMBLE. They're disgusting people and life is frankly too
short for me. But the media needs to be covering it regularly. When
they do not call it out, it leads already deluded people to become even
more irrational and more delusional.
I spoke
about this in a post-election analysis and one person noted that if
outlets have time to assign journalists to the Taylor Swift beat and the
Beyonce beat, they certainly have time -- and money -- to cover the
underbelly of the internet that spreads one lie after another and never
gets challenged.
I'm not in the mood to sugar
coat. MAGA lives pathetic lives. There's the economy, yes. But it's
so much more than that. They are pathetic. And they need to whine and
scapegoat. So they target women and people of color who are not their
enemies but whom they see as getting ahead while they're sinking. And
the resentment builds and they need some unifying theory to explain why
this is going on. So they latch on to conspiracy theories while looking
for a con artist to rescue them.
"He's a
convicted felon!" doesn't matter to them when they're embracing the lie
that governments -- including our own -- are participants in global sex
trafficking of children and only Donald Chump can save us!!!
They
delude themselves and if the lies aren't being addressed by the
corporate media, they read that as an admission that the lies are true.
We're
probably all doomed, to be honest. Even MSNBC is bringing on crack
pots to normalize Chump. We almost posted an MSNBC segment -- I don't
know who the host was, some woman -- due to the title but I paused and
thought, stream it first. I did. I then deleted it -- I do the evening
and overnight posts here at least four hours in advance. I studied
poli sci -- undergraduate and graduate. I am well aware of the
hypothesis that a madman can bring security to a multi-polar system in
some ways. Their Republican guest was trying to make that argument but
didn't know that argument.
Instead of doing what they should be doing -- exposing lies and taking on crackpot notions -- they are bending to him.
And it's stupid for democracy but it's also stupid for business.
The ratings are in free fall!
This is what those pushing changes at CNN and MNSBC insist.
Historically,
this is the month when ratings go into free fall. Why? Few care about
politics in the holiday season. Interest tapers off following a
general election.
There is a lesson to learn
and that was provided by MORNING JOE which, post-election, began fawning
over Chump and saw their ratings drop significantly. The smartest
thing MSNBC could do would be ditch that program. The fawning broke the
trust the viewers had for the hosts and then the hosts screaming and
yelling at viewers about how people are too stupid to understand what
they -- Joe and Mika -- were doing and all that other garbage. It's
really the most harmful program the network has.
Ratings
keep being mentioned. Ratings aren't everything or the only thing.
MORNING JOE is also down on streaming -- which, let's remember, is where
everything's headed. Like it or not, that's where it's headed and it's
how news and public affairs programs are increasingly consumed.
Take
out THE FIVE and FOX "NEWS" is not doing well in streaming. MSNBC is
doing much better and has many segments that go over 70,000 views --
some well over that. Take out THE FIVE and you're not seeing a lot of
hit clips on YOUTUBE for FOX when it comes to streaming in the last 24
hours. You're dealing with a lot of 14 thousand and 40 thousands.
Their biggest streamer in the last 24 hours is 135K for the story about
how Russia might have shot down a plane. MSNBC has three videos on that
topic and the one with the largest streams is at 221K. CNN covered
that as well and their YOUTUBE clip is at 459K.
FOX
"NEWS" will from this day forward most likely always have higher
viewers because their viewers are older and are youngsters who hit old
age early (there's a reason it's called conservativism). But, so sorry
all you idiots who keep insisting that these are the worst times for
cable 'news' that's not FOX, that is not accurate.
The
landscape changed some time ago -- long enough for MODERN FAMILY to
have done a joke about it and have Hayley explain that her generation
gets their news watching a video at the gas pump -- and all the media
observers this month and last acting as though FOX "NEWS" is the big
success and the business model of the future? That's just not true.
That should have been in Ava and my piece. In "Raison d'être (Ava and C.I.),"
we noted the liars. We didn't note the lazy. Lazy people do no
research and run with conventional wisdom and that harms us all.
And
while this nonsense has gone on, no one's really challenged it. The
Water Cooler Set is what Ava and I have long called these lazy idiots.
Many have print experience. You're seeing the impact the internet is
having on broadcast and cable and not one of these conventional wisdom
idiots can think back to how the internet changed the figures for
newspapers? How the audience shifted to outlets websites and not
printed page. The consumers want to consume when they want to. They
don't want to be dictated to or tied to a schedule they didn't make.
But
instead of talking about how consumers are taking in public affairs
programs and news stories, we're getting garbage that among the oldy
crowd (elderly and those born old), FOX "NEWS" is a success!!! When in
fact the streaming on YOUTUBE says otherwise. And you pull segments
from THE FIVE out of the mix and FOX "NEWS" is an embarrassment in terms
of streams.
By the way, here's the CNN video on Russia that beat MSNBC and FOX "NEWS."
Donald Trump has promised to cut energy costs, but an expert said some of his policies might end up hurting his own supporters.
The
price of natural gas looks likely to jump despite record-high
production, which could undermine the president-elect's campaign pledge,
and political analyst Leah Wright Rigueur told CNN that energy costs
are largely outside the government's control.
"I think, you know, the secretary of the interior, I think the secretary
of energy both understand that or the newly appointed, the nominated
secretaries understand that," said Rigueur, an assistant professor of
public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. "What is more
interesting, I think right now is the fact that under [president Joe]
Biden, these kind of energy policies,
particularly under the Inflation Reduction Act, have actually been
deeply beneficial to red states and blue states, but in particular red
states, in some cases rescuing manufacturing, rescuing energy
production, rescuing all kinds of industry, and so there is a push
amongst Republicans, particularly Republican congressmen, to keep those
acts and to keep those things in place."
As
much as the press actually doing their job could help educate voters,
the reality is that lived experience is about to educate a lot of people
over the next four years.
Adding to alarm over U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's immigration plans, his "border czar" toldThe Washington Post in an interview published Thursday that the administration plans to return to detaining migrant families with children.
Tom
Homan, who served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement during Trump's first term, said that ICE "will look to hold
parents with children in 'soft-sided' tent structures similar to those
used by U.S. border officials to handle immigration surges," the Post
summarized. "The government will not hesitate to deport parents who are
in the country illegally, even if they have young U.S.-born children,
he added, leaving it to those families to decide whether to exit
together or be split up."
Since Trump beat Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris last month, migrant rights advocates have reiterated concerns about the Republican's first-term policies—such as forced separation of families—and his 2024 campaign pledges, from mass deportations to attempting to end birthright citizenship, despite the guarantees of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Homan—who
oversaw the so-called "zero tolerance" policy that separated thousands
of migrant kids from their parents—said: "Here's the issue... You knew
you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put
your family in that position."
And then there's Elon and other idiots.
Their
statements are outraging even MAGA. Educating MAGA now in the way that
the media failed to do in the lead up to the election. Charlie Nash (MEDIAITE) notes:
Former
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy received heavy
backlash on Thursday after he suggested that Americans were not being
hired because they were mediocre.
After Ramaswamy and billionaire Elon Musk
came under fire from prominent Trump supporters on X, formerly Twitter,
for supporting H-1B visas over the training and hiring of American
workers, Ramaswamy defended his position in a post which accused the United States of suffering from a culture of “mediocrity.”
No one wanted A COMPLETE UNKNOWN and no one needed it. We went to see it at the last minute yesterday. We weren't keen on Timothee Chalamat -- is anyone other than pudgy pre-teen girls and pudgy-50 year old gay men?
But we thought it was an adult film. Not porno, a film for adults.
It's not. No one's life could have been that dull and boring. It's a series of flash cards pretending to be about Bob Dylan.
I hate to break it to movie studios but Bob's never been all that. He wrote some strong songs -- even great ones -- early in his career. And when he got with Joan Baez they were briefly a media couple. Not in the superstar way of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton but about the same level as Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom.
And his life just isn't that interesting. Which is why it's stupid to make a film about Bruce Springsteen -- though that is coming.
The worst thing is Timothee Chalamet who never looks like Bob, never comes across as Bob and never is believable.
The film's bombed. It came in number four for Christmas Day. It debuted that day and the interest in it wasn't even big enough to propel it into the top three.
Hint: If you're making a movie about a Beatle, you make a film about John Lennon. There were four Beatles. Only one is interesting as a film. Doesn't mean Paul's not talented or that Ringo or George don't have their place in history. It's just that most of our lives -- whether we're rich or poor -- are not cinematic. Check out Rebecca's "'a complete unknown'" -- she really lets this bad film have it.
Thursday, December 26, 2024. We can't afford fakery which means we can't afford Marianne Williamson.
Yesterday, at THIRD, "Raison d'être (Ava and C.I.)"
went up. I want to talk about it for a moment to explain the point of
this site as well and maybe also explain why certain things bother me --
and so we cover them -- and certain things do not bother me.
Truth and lies.
In
most cases, personal lies don't bother me. I've known far too many
survivors -- often burdened by survivors guilt -- to try to play lie
detector on your personal lives. I am friends with a very well known
couple who are marketed as the perfect couple. As marketed, they are.
Reality, he's asexual and she's got a very strong sex drive. They do
not have sex together. They never have. He really doesn't have sex at
all (other than with himself). But they do love each other and, very
early in their courtship, they figured out that they wanted to marry and
what their marriage would be. It's unconventional for some, but it's a
loving marriage and they support one another 100%. When one of them is
doing publicity for a project, I don't hear them speak and think,
"Liar!"
They do love each other and are committed to
one another. The fact that they don't -- and have never -- slept
together is not a detail that they make public for the press. Nor
should they have to. And when one of them speaks to the press and a
remark might portray their relationship different than it is, I'm not
bothered.
It's nobody's business.
I
also don't do dog piles. Except on politicians. They're public
servants so they need to be held to a higher standard. But I don't do
pile ons. When Britney Spears was being mocked by everyone in the '00s,
Ava and I didn't mock her. When she was suing to be responsible for
her own actions, an e-mail came into THIRD lumping us in with all the
people who had called her crazy and worse. Ty told us ab out the e-mail
and we said it never happened. Because it didn't. We considered a
comment of some kind only once, when she guest starred on a sitcom and
we chose to instead ignore the appearance. In the '00s, it was pile on
and attack young women.
We did write about that --
the pile ons and how they piled onto young women. We did note Lindsay
Lohan being attacked or this woman attacked or that.
And
you had a lot of outlets attacking. I'm not referring to TMZ or
whatever garbage outlet. I'm talking about THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, for
example. Young men and early middle aged men at TAP and other left
outlets attacked various female celebrities over and over. And largely
got away with it. But while Ana Kasparian was eager to be one of the
boys -- always -- and doing the same thing at TYT, some of us had
standards and didn't play that game.
And some of us
were actually interested in equality. When you see some media s**t
storm, the smartest thing you can ever do is take a step back and look
at the person involved. Did they bring it on themselves? Sometimes
people do -- you go to a prestigious industry function and you run up on
stage and punch (or in Will's case, slap, because that's the kind of
'man' he is), then you've brought it on yourself. You've done something
cowardly and embarrassing and no one's ever done that at the Academy
Awards before so you brought it on yourself.
But there
are more often media s**t storms show that if you take a step back and
look at it, you'll find that the person isn't doing anything that's very
important to the world and, most often, is being held to a different
standard. So a woman, for example, gets slammed for something that a
man would never be slammed for. Or a person of color gets slammed for
something that a White person gets a pass on.
Media
s**t storms often -- but not always -- are rooted in racism and sexism.
So I try to give people a pass and avoid pile ons. Again, I'm
referring to when the target is an average citizen, an entertainer, that
sort of thing. Not to a politician.
Mel Brooks lies about about
his relationship with Anne Bancroft and has for years. I'm not going to
go into that but I'm not going to pretend that I don't know reality.
I don't talk about it and I don't write about it.
Ava and my "Raison d'être (Ava and C.I.)"
has bothered a few people. Too damn bad. If you're a Mel Brooks fan,
you've already got some problems that I can't help you with. He is a
nasty person and if that's news to you, what world have you lived in?
He
was held accountable by Ava and myself and he should have been. He's a
nonstop liar and glory hog. So if you're putting him on camera -- as
the idiot who made the 'documentary' did -- you're responsible for what
you put on screen.
Ava and I focused on only two lies
in that short 'documentary' (I believe it was 38 minutes). He made a
big to do about SILENT MOVIE and how it was hard for him to sell it to
the studios. No, it wasn't. We didn't go into that lie but easily
could have. He pretends, on camera, that he sold the film on himself
and Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise and since most people never saw the
movie -- then or since -- he gets away with that lie. That's not what
got the film made.
Liza Minelli agreed to be in the
movie. This was a big news. She was coming off her Academy Award win
and the success of CABARET. Yes, LUCKY LADY bombed. That film was
released December 25, 1975. After SILENT MOVIE had been filmed (SILENT
MOVIE was released in June of 1976). He also had Paul Newman do a
part. That helped get the movie made. But what got the move made was
Burt Reynolds. He and Anne invited Burt to their home to beg him to
appear in the film and, not only that, to do a shower scene in the
film. Now, we'll be kind, and we won't note what was done to Burt in
that scene -- unless Mel Brooks wants to be known as the new Harvey
Weinstein. But that's what got the movie made. Burt was one of the
biggest box office stars at the time, his COSMO spread (nude but
privates covered) had been huge and all of his movies since involved
ways to get him shirtless and, when possible, in his jockey shorts
because he was considered to be sex on a stick.
For
reasons Mel Brooks should go into himself, Mel doesn't want to tell that
story. Instead, he decided to lie. Again, on camera. And a s**ty
'director' allowed it to go onscreen.
So you get Mel
telling this hugely convoluted story claiming that STAR WARS was a huge
success and because of that the studio had money to spend and because of
STAR WARS huge success Wall Street was suddenly interested in films and
buying up studios and SILENT MOVIE worked in commentary on that.
The only truth in the paragraph above? STAR WARS was a huge success.
We
detail, Ava and I, how he is wrong about the buyouts he's claiming took
place after STAR WARS success -- for example, GULF & WESTERN bought
PARAMOUNT around the same time they bought RKO from Lucille Ball back
in the sixties. And Wall Street was always involved in the film
business and is, in fact, the reason Louis B Mayer got fired from MGM in
the 50s -- despite Mel's lie that Mayer got to do whatever he wanted.
(Prior to Mayer being fired, Wall Street had imposed Dore Schary on him
in 1948 as vice president of production. We left Dore out of our piece
because that's a whole long story.)
But the biggest lie of all out of Mel's mouth was STAR WARS.
I've
never seen STAR WARS. At this point, I never will. It's such a shock
to some people I meet that I feel like I need to continue to not see
it. I wanted to see it and I planned to see it when it first came out.
But a family emergency meant I missed it at the last minute and I
honestly never got around to it.
But a lot of people
did see STAR WARS. Above, I noted Liza and how LUCKY LADY came out at
the end of 1975 while SILENT MOVIE came out six months later in June
1976. Liza was still a huge star when she was cast in SILENT MOVIE.
But
do those dates not make a point for you? STAR WARS came out in May
1977. Mel Brooks went on camera -- and dumb ass fool put it on the
screen -- and told a long, long story about how his crappy SILENT MOVIE
only got made because of the success of STAR WARS when, in fact, STAR
WARS was released 11 months after SILENT MOVIE opened.
He's
a damn liar. (And he also lied about inventing the term "high
anxiety," but read the piece, I didn't mean to go on this long about it
here.)
And now the lies are out there, on film, because idiots didn't think truth mattered.
There's
a YOUTUBER who started as a blogger and keeps his nose down and tries
to focus on serious matters. I like him. I like his work. But only
because he tries to focus on serious matters did I not rip him apart
when he repeated one lie after another about William Friedken. If
Sherry dies before this site goes dark, I'll be much more vocal about
that piece of crap person. But the YOUTUBER who researches everything
before writing or doing a video didn't research a damn thing on
Friedkin. Instead, he went with lies that Freidken had told and that
idiots -- Ben Mankowitz, I'm looking at you -- signed off on. (See Ava
and my "TV: Lies and more lies from The Water Cooler Set" from 2017.)
And
I love Sherry to death but we still called Friedken out. And I get so
damn tired of having to call out lies while others online just do
whatever they want to stay in a circle jerk. There is an actor who
hates me to this day for panning his show. We knew each other. He was
in a lousy show. We praised him -- because he was good in it -- and we
praised the female star because she was great in it. But he is
convinced that we got his show cancelled and his career destroyed. By
the same token, a friend praises us for getting his ABC show moved to a
different night when it was going to be cancelled instead. We do the
best we can to make real calls and not be part of some stupid circle
jerk. (That remark will make more sense when we get to a video later in
the snapshot.)
Another thing that ticks me off is when I do the work required and people want to argue in e-mails.
Thanksgiving
Day of 2008, Bully Boy Bush and Nouri al-Maliki pushed through the
SOFA. I read the entire damn thing and composed an analysis of it -- a
legal analysis. And what I got for at least two years was being
trashed. Because some people didn't want to believe it. Did they read
the SOFA? Obviously not. But they wanted to attack me for my analysis
and the only that finally stopped that was the actual events
demonstrated I had analyzed it correctly. But too many wanted to
worship Barack Obama and refuse to believe he would allow this to
happen.
Hysterical since both he and Joe Biden
campaigned on the 'fact' that they would not abide by any SOFA Bully Boy
Bush negotiated -- and they had senators like Dick Durbin saying the
same thing in the late summer and early fall of 2008.
So
right there, there rush to rescue Barack and insist I was lying about
what the SOFA said? They should have read that thing, that's first, and
second they should have noticed that Barack was allowing it to go
through and that, in fact, his campaign website immediately pulled the
promise that they would abide by no agreement Bully Boy Bush tried to
push through.
More recently, I've been attacked over "My Labor Day Weekend"
-- actually attacked twice. First, I got attacked by some when it went
up in 2022. I have to turn out a lot of copy to post daily, every
day. And I try to find new ways to discuss something. I have no idea
what I was trying to draw attention to news wise that day. But I had an
interesting personal story that I thought might result in more eyeballs
for whatever the issue was that day. A spoonful of sugar to get the
news down.
So I wrote about an actor who was in the
closet. I wrote about how I was asked to speak with him -- I barely
knew him -- and how I did. (Some attacked me for my comments about the
valley. I'm not driving in the valley, people, I have had serious eye
issues for the last few years.) I wrote about it and about him and
tried to give a sense of who he was. I noted the type of films he made,
an award, etc. Since he didn't want to come out, I didn't put his name
in it.
And got accused of making it up. And on and on it went for almost two years.
Then what happened? Stan wrote "Earl Holliman"
and the attacks began all over. I'm not calling out Stan or griping
about Stan. Earl Holliman passed away and suddenly the world knew he
was gay. And as Stan noted, I'd written about it two years prior. Now a
new group of whiners showed up to attack me for not naming him back in
2022. I thought I went way too close with what I wrote in 2022. I went
over some of this in this "Iraq snapshot"
last month. But while the ones who'd called me a liar in 2022 were
suddenly silent, a new group showed up to trash me for not naming Earl.
It wasn't my place to name him. He was sickly, he thought he was going
to die (he thought he only had a few months but ended up having two
years). We had met at a party many years prior and probably nodded to
one another a few times after that. It was not my place to speak for
him or to out him.
And it ticks me off because I do
real things in my writing. I offend friends, I tick people off. I
don't play favorites. And the other side of that is the circle jerk -- a
bunch of people getting together offline and coming up with the lie
that they're going to sell you while pretending their truth tellers and
brave YOUTUBERS and listen to them because they make the hard calls,
really, really they do!
I'd planned to write about Jill Stein this morning. Instead, the video below necessitated the above.
Out
of respect for people's religious beliefs, I do not use a religious
figure's name in vain. That's been the policy since this site started.
Were it not for that policy, this is where I would be using Ann
Romano's catch phrase from ONE DAY AT A TIME.
There are many things this country needs., Marianne Williamson is not one of them.
I
know Marianne. I've tried to be fair to her here and I've tried to be
honest. The honest side? Long before POLITICO and others discovered
that she was a nightmare to work for, I'd noted that here. Because she
is. I never had a problem because I didn't work for her. But I did see
people reduced to tears in a manner that, honestly, I've only ever seen
from people who worked for MT.
Marianne doesn't just attack them, she destroys them.
In
2020, I just covered the ones running and tried to stay out of it --
didn't endorse anyone -- and let them make their own mistakes. Marianne
made more than enough.
After even Marianne grasped her
campaign was a loser and over, she appeared on RISING with whispers
about how Krystal and her idiot co-host had no idea what really went
down. Do tell, Marianne. Well, she wouldn't. Not right now, she
insisted, but she'd be back on, after the election, to dish.
She
never did. And she was never held accountable. You want to imply that
all these awful things took place that would horrify voters? Then
talk.
Despite having run the third worst 2020
campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination -- yes,
there were two worse than her but remember there were nearly 30
candidates so there were a lot who did much better -- Marianne decides
she wants to run again.
There's no demand for this. People aren't asking for it.
Enter the Circle Jerk.
Marianne can't get supporters and can't get big media so she courts YOUTUBERS and goes to Kyle and Krystal's wedding.
Ignore the circle jerk, right?
It has no impact at all and certainly Krystal didn't recruit everyone she knew on YOUTUBE to then start pimping Marianne.
That
would be pretty questionable. And the only thing that would make it
worse is if she did a video with her gal pals and started screaming at
people -- viewers -- that they had to get on board with Marianne, that
Marianne was the only answer!
Oh, wait.
That did happen.
And
that's why we're ditching Jill Stein and every other topic to focus on
the hard truths and those who tell them as opposed to those in the
Circle Jerk who regularly lie to you and have their own motives that
they never reveal or acknowledge.
When Krystal was
pimping Marianne, she wasn't even being honest about how she knew
Marianne or that Marianne had just attended her wedding to Kyle.
You didn't 'deserve' to know that, in her mind. Which is why it took other people online to expose it.
That's a detail, a disclosure, that a journalist is supposed to make all on their own.
Instead, Krystal lied and got her gal pals Katie Halper and Bri-Bri and Jugs Needs A Bra, to lie to you as well.
And they continued to lie in the lead up to the primaries and after the primaries started.
And
they don't want to acknowledge it but some of these liars then went on
to promote Jill Stein -- as late as June and July, some of the whores on
YOUTUBE who pretend they're so honest were pimping Jill Stein. They
pray to God that you've forgotten.
The Democratic Party has many, many problems.
None of them will be fixed by Marianne.
She
has no leadership skills -- leadership is not leaving people in tears
running to cry in a bathroom. She has no
let's-get-in-touch-with-religion skills. She's a New Age charlatan
along the lines of Aimee Semple McPherson, And if you think the DNC
seems out of touch now, wait until a crackpot like Marianne gets
installed.
She's held no public office -- another Jill Stein -- and she runs lousy campaigns.
She was a joke in 2020.
She was an embarrassment in 2024.
I
said here in 2023 that I'd vote for the Democratic Party nominee for
president regardless of who it was because of the very clear threat that
Donald Trump represented to this country.
It was
obvious that Joe needed to step aside. Marianne crashed and burned
early. Then she decided she'd get back into the race. And please note
that she still floundered and that Uncommitted regularly got more votes
in the primaries Marianne ran in.
No one wants her.
She's a raving loon. She gets crazier with each year.
No one wanted her and she dropped out.
Then
Joe stepped aside and suddenly the dumb ____ is trying to demand the
nomination. No one ever wanted her. But there she was trashing Kamala
Harris, trashing the party , insisting we needed a primary!!!! Joe
announces he won't run for re-election on July 21st.
There is no time for a primary.
Idiot
YOUTUBERS never know history and just yack yack yack about the 'old
days' of 2016. You don't know history, you don't know a damn thing.
Primaries
wrap up by June for a reason. People are vested in their candidate.
They are angry if their candidate doesn't get the nomination. It takes
months for the party to then pull together.
The election is at the start of November and Joe announces at the end of July that he's stepping down.
There's
no time for primaries because that's not just about voting -- a vote
could have been done in a week -- it's also about people coming together
around the nominee. A vote could be done in a week but all the voters
whose nominee didn't win would be upset for several weeks.
And
then we had the issue of Marianne and her whining and her attacking the
DNC and stirring up s**t when the quack should have just shut her damn
mouth because no one wanted her.
Kamala was the natural
choice. She was on the ticket with Joe Biden. Joe was the nominee.
Joe was the president. Had Joe passed away in July, Kamala would have
become the president. By the same token, Joe stepping aside 29 days
before the start of the convention made his running mate Kamala the
obvious choice to be the nominee.
But there was
Marianne simpering on camera in that hideous voice of hers and attacking
Democrats and attacking the party and whining that she wasn't the
nominee. STFU.
This had never happened before. The
party got a chance at a do over. And we should have all rallied (many
of us did). Instead, you had nut jobs like Marianne Williamson working
to temper enthusiasm with their stupidity and her non-stop whines about
some long ago sleight where she was done wrong years ago. Non-stop
whines, please remember, that she took to FOX "NEWS" repeatedly.
Anything to be on camera, no matter how much it hurt the Democratic
Party, right, Marianne?
She hurt the nominee. She's part of the reason Chump's headed back to the White House.
That's reason one not to support her as chair of the DNC.
Reason
two, her constant 2020 attacks, after she dropped out of the race, on
the DNC and her whisper campaign against them. If she'd come out with
whatever big thing she just knew we were going to be shocked by, that
would be one thing. Instead she chose to tease and tease.
Reason three, she has no skills to head an organization.
Reason
four, she ran a sleuth campaign (poorly) for the nomination where she
and others concealed backroom deals and arrangements that resulted in
Krystal and others pimping her for 2024. That was deceitful and
dishonest.
Reason five, she's done nothing with her
life. She's over 70 and all she's got is some quack books that she
tried to pass off, in the 90s, as cures for AIDS and suffering from
AIDS.
Reason six, she's over 70 and supposedly we want new blood, fresh blood in the party.
Reason
seven, she's not a fighter. She dropped out of the 2020 race before it
ended. She dropped out of the 2024 race not once but twice. She
couldn't even stand up to Bill Maher when he trashed transgender
people.
For all these reasons and so many more, Marianne Williamson should not be even be running for the DNC char position.
Again,
that's not what I planned to cover today. We were going to talk about
Jill Stein and some court developments. But the Democratic Party cannot
afford Marianne or her nonsense or her cheerleaders like Krystal Ball.
We can't afford the dishonesty.
We'll wind down with this press release from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Merger of Big Drug Wholesaler,
Gastroenterology Service Provider Threatens Competition, Cost Increases,
and Health Risks to Patients
By allowing wholesalers to control
physician practices, wholesalers could pressure doctors to prescribe
medicine that is most profitable for them, even if it’s not in the best
interest of their patients
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.) wrote to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan,
urging the agency to closely scrutinize pharmaceutical wholesaler
Cardinal Health’s $3.9 billion proposed acquisition of a majority stake
in GI Alliance, the country’s largest gastroenterology management
services organization.
“This deal threatens to limit competition by expanding Cardinal
Health’s control of physician practices, while giving Cardinal an
incentive to restrict those practices from contracting with Cardinal’s
rival wholesalers,” wrote Senator Warren.
Cardinal Health has a long history of leveraging its dominant market
power in a way that negatively impacts patients and health care
providers. The company controls 28% of the prescription drug wholesale
market, making it one of the three biggest wholesalers in the country.
Along the way, Cardinal has pursued an aggressive vertical acquisition
strategy, buying up companies to solidify its dominance in the
wholesaler market , including acquiring a Group Purchasing Organization
(GPO), a data analytics firm, medical device lines, specialty
pharmacies, and physician practices. These acquisitions are part of a
broader trend of health care conglomerates operating as both seller and
buyer of prescription drug services.
“Cardinal has consistently locked its customers into restrictive
contracts, blocked out rival wholesalers, and squeezed generic drug
manufacturers, leading to more frequent drug shortages, higher drug
costs, and poorer health outcomes,” wrote Senator Warren.
In October, Senator Warren sounded the alarm about
another one of Cardinal’s proposed acquisitions: Cardinal’s acquisition
of Integrated Oncology Network (ION), an MSO that oversees over 50
physician practices spanning 10 states. With this acquisition, Cardinal
would be able to force its affiliated practices to enter into
sole-source or prime vendor agreements, locking them in and effectively
blocking competing wholesalers from offering their services — while
introducing conflicts of interest that could raise drug costs. The FTC
did not act, and the acquisition was completed earlier this month. The
new Cardinal-GI Alliance deal is even larger in scope, posing a bigger
threat.
“In addition to the concerns I outlined in my October letter, the
acquisition of GI alliance introduces further opportunities for
self-dealing, as Cardinal serves as the primary supplier of
pharmaceutical products for Gastrologix GPO — the only
gastroenterology-focused GPO in the nation,” wrote Senator Warren. “Accordingly,
I urge FTC to closely scrutinize this deal, including under Section 7
of the Clayton Act, which prohibits any acquisition that may
substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.”
Senator Warren has long highlighted the negative consequences of
vertical integration in the health care industry on patients, providers,
and taxpayers. Senator Warren recently introduced her Patients Before Monopolies Act (PBM Act),
bipartisan and bicameral legislation to prohibit joint ownership of
PBMs and pharmacies, a gross conflict of interest that enables these
companies to enrich themselves at the expense of patients and
independent pharmacies.
Senator Warren has led efforts to use every tool available to the
government to lower drug prices and fight anticompetitive business
practices in the health care industry:
In October 2024, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) urged the FTC to closely scrutinize the Novo Nordisk-Catalent merger and to block it if it violated antitrust law.
In September 2024, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) wrote to
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra
asking him to lower the cost of vital weight-loss drugs by using the
agency’s existing legal authority to issue generic licenses for
semaglutide, a prescription drug sold under the names Ozempic and
Wegovy.
In August 2024, Senators Warren and King and Representative Doggett wrote to
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and
Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo reiterating their
agencies’ clear legal authority to use “march-in” rights under the
Bayh-Dole Act to lower drug prices for Americans.
In June 2024, Senator Warren and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) sent letters to
eight pharmaceutical companies urging them to voluntarily de-list over
100 patents that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has determined may
be improperly or inaccurately listed in the Food and Drug
Administration’s (FDA’s) Orange Book, which would open opportunity for
more competition and lower drug prices for Americans.
In May 2024, Senator Warren and Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) sent a
letter to Secretary of the Department of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, and
Under Secretary Laurie Locascio, highlighting the lawmakers’ new review
of public comments on the agency’s Draft Interagency Guidance Framework
for Considering the Exercise of March-In Rights and urged them to
strengthen and finalize the guidance.
In May 2024, Senators Warren, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) wrote to
the Chamber of Commerce expressing concern and demanding an explanation
for the organization’s opposition to the Biden administration’s
proposal to boost competition and lower drug prices for American
families and businesses by allowing agencies to consider price when
deciding to exercise their “march-in rights” under the Bayh-Dole Act.
In April 2024, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a
letter to the leadership of Novo Nordisk (Novo), slamming the company
for its decision to discontinue production of Levemir (detemir) insulin,
one of only three long-acting insulins on the market, and asked the
company to commit to continue producing Levemir until a biosimilar is
made available.
In March 2024, Senator Warren sent a
letter in response to GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) discontinuing the
brand-name version of Flovent HFA, the go-to inhaler for children,
blasting the company for its price-gouging strategy that may cause
millions of children to lose access to one of the few drugs that is
appropriate to treat their asthma and allergies.
In February 2024, Senators Warren and Angus King (I-Maine) and U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) led 75 lawmakers in
sending a letter to the Biden administration in support of
strengthening and finalizing its draft guidance to protect taxpayers and
reduce prescription drug prices. The lawmakers submitted a public
comment supporting the “Interagency Guidance Framework for Considering
the Exercise of March-In Rights” and calling for changes to ensure
increased transparency, oversight, and accessibility of medical products
invented through taxpayer-funded research and development.
In February 2024, Senator Warren and Representative Jayapal announced that
three drug manufacturers pulled their sham patents after warnings, and
urged the FDA to continue fighting against Big Pharma’s patent abuse.
In December 2023, Senator Warren published an op-ed in
Newsweek commending the Biden administration’s announcement that price
can be considered in the government’s decision to march-in on a drug,
effectively lowering drug costs, and calling on Americans to fight back
against an industry that has been taking advantage of them for decades.
In December 2023, Senator Warren issued a statement after
the Biden administration announced it would issue guidance to federal
agencies that would allow the government to seize patents of certain
expensive drugs developed with taxpayer support to create more
competition and lower prices.
In December 2023, Senator Warren and Representative Jayapal sent letters to
the CEOs of 8 pharmaceutical companies urging them to voluntarily
remove sham patent claims improperly included in the FDA’s Orange Book
and end their unlawful practices that delay competition and drive up
costs for patients and taxpayers.
In December 2023, Senator Warren and Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) reintroduced the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act, legislation that would radically reduce drug prices through public manufacturing of prescription drugs.
In September 2023, Senator Warren and Representative Jayapal sent a
letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan urging the FTC to issue a policy
statement about the improper listing of drug-related patents in the
FDA’s Orange Book.
In August 2023, Senator Warren and Representative Jayapal sent a letter to
FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf, urging him to close loopholes
that pharmaceutical companies have exploited to block generics from
entering the market, keeping drug prices high and maximizing profits.
