'We are in dangerous territory'

'Needs to be addressed soon'

Biden Campaign Reportedly Testing Kamala-Trump Matchup Behind Closed Doors

News Spartacus: House of Ashur Spinoff Series Spartacus: House of Ashur Expands Its Cast, Including Outlander Alum Suddenly the pop cultural landscape is teems with gladiators By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on July 11, 2024 Credit: Garance Dore Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Garance Dore The latest series in Starz’s Spartacus franchise, Spartacus: House of Ashur, has begun filming in New Zealand. To celebrate the occasion, the network revealed during its panel at TCA’s Summer Press Tour that several actors in the show’s expanded cast will join Nick Tarabay (The Expanse), who is reprising his role as Ashur in the series. If you watched 2012’s Spartacus: Vengeance, you might be confused about how there’s a series now centered on Ashur. The show’s official synopsis explains things: Spartacus: House of Ashur will be a history-bending, erotic, thrilling, roller-coaster experience that builds on everything that made the original series a colossal hit. The series poses the question: what if Ashur, played by fan favorite Nick Tarabay, hadn’t died on Mount Vesuvius at the end of Spartacus: Vengeance? And what if he had been gifted the gladiator school once owned by Batiatus in return for aiding the Romans in killing Spartacus and putting an end to the slave rebellion? Joining Tarabay on-screen is Graham McTavish (pictured above, whose previous credits include Outlander and The Witcher). McTavish is playing “Korris,” a former gladiator who won his freedom in the arena and is now Ashur’s Doctore, training the gladiators in Ashur’s Ludus. Other actors joining the cast include Tenika Davis as “Achillia,” a female gladiator driven to surpass her male counterparts; Jamaica Vaughan as “Hilara,” a young, elevated house slave, deeply in love with Ashur; Ivana Baquero (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shannara Chronicles), as “Messia,” a house slave in love with Hilara; Jordi Webber as “Tarchon,” a brash and headstrong gladiator; Claudia Black (The Nevers, Ahsoka) as “Cossutia,” a politician determined to keep Ashur in his place and constantly plotting his downfall; India Shaw-Smith (Supernatural) as “Viridia,” Cossutia’s daughter; and Leigh Gill as “Satyrus,” the leader of the Brothers Ferox, gladiators from a rival Ludus. So many characters are deeply in love with other characters! That’s no surprise given the shows before it. In 2010, Starz debuted Spartacus: Blood and Sand, which was soon followed in 2011 by the prequel Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, in 2012 by Spartacus: Vengeance, and in 2013 with Spartacus: War of the Damned. House of Ashur sees Starz returning to the franchise after a decade. Spartacus creator Steven S. DeKnight (Daredevil) serves as showrunner and executive producer. No news yet on when House of Ashur will premiere on Starz. [end-mark] The post Spinoff Series <i>Spartacus: House of Ashur</i> Expands Its Cast, Including <i>Outlander</i> Alum appeared first on Reactor.

Fort Liberty, We Have a Problem

Dems, Media Begin Captain Louis Renault Award Contest Over Declinin' Biden

As President Biden’s blunders flood the news, CNN Newsroom host Jim Acosta tried to switch the conversation back to Donald Trump on Thursday. As the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has been used to fearmonger in the past few weeks, Scott Jennings, political commentator for the network, took to the air to defend Trump, calling out Acosta’s agenda and the left in one fell swoop. Following a “detailed” look at Project 2025, Acosta questioned Jennings on the number of conservatives who are part of the project: You've got dozens of former Trump officials involved in this project. Let's look at the organization behind the project, which is sponsoring the RNC, has banners up at the Milwaukee airport welcoming convention goers. What's going on – why is Trump – why are his advisors trying to distance themselves from the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025?     Jennings, calling out the simpleminded argument of Acosta, stated plainly, “They're not the president, they're not running for president. Heritage Foundation doesn't appear on the ballot. The people working on this don't appear on the ballot.” It is not surprising that conservatives, being of a common mind, would be in similar circles. Yet, they aren’t synonymous, a point Acosta does not understand, so it fell to Jennings to educate him: The only person who decides what policies they're going to pursue is the person on the ballot or the person in the Oval Office, at least that used to be the case today, With Joe Biden, I'm not so sure given the reporting about how he's out to lunch or whatever. But in this case, Donald Trump will ultimately decide what his agenda is. And that's why the RNC put out a platform.  With nothing better to cover, and the issue of Biden’s clear and prevalent inadequacies taking too much time from the usual conservative critiques, the liberal media has resorted to mediocre stories. Jennings also pointed out the hypocrisy of Acosta’s point: If the Democrats want to play this game, though, I think they should be prepared to own every single policy proposal ever issued by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the rest of The Squad, Bernie Sanders, socialist organizations in America that support that group. If you want to play this game, then you're going to have to own everything, starting with Defund the Police. So, what I'm going to assume, Jim, is that Democrats want to own for Joe Biden, Defund the Police. If they want him to own Project 2025, then they can own Defund the Police and we'll see how the American people sort it out. Acosta had no response to Jennings, shifting back to his liberal colleague for another question.   The transcript is below, click “expand” to read: CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta 7/11/2024 10:09:36 AM -10:11:10 AM EST   (…)   [NEWS HEADLINE ~ Trump Claims Not To Know Anyone Behind Project 2025; CNN Finds 140+ People Worked For Him Are Involved]   JIM ACOSTA: Scott, let's talk about Project 2025 as Steve Contorno was saying a few moments ago, you've got dozens of former Trump officials involved in this project. Let's look at the organization behind the project, which is sponsoring the RNC, has banners up at the Milwaukee airport welcoming convention goers. What's going on – why is Trump – why are his advisors trying to distance themselves from the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. I mean, it sounds like you know, that they are very much like-minded on a lot of these things   SCOTT JENNINGS: Because they're not the president, they're not running for president. Heritage Foundation doesn't appear on the ballot. The people working on this don't appear on the ballot. The only person who decides what policies they're going to pursue is the person on the ballot or the person in the Oval Office. At least that used to be the case today, with Joe Biden, I'm not so sure given the reporting about how he's out to lunch or whatever. But in this case Donald Trump will ultimately decide what his agenda is. And that's why the RNC put out a platform.   If the Democrats want to play this game though, I think they should be prepared to own every single policy proposal ever issued by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the rest of the squad, Bernie Sanders, socialist organizations in America that support that group. If you want to play this game, then you're going to have to own everything starting with Defund the Police.   So what I'm going to assume, Jim, is that Democrats want to own for Joe Biden Defund the Police. If they want him to own Project 2025, then they can own Defund the Police and we'll see how the American people sort it out.   (…)  

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports the left-wing media company Civic Media, which airs the Earl Ingram radio show that secured a softball interview with President Biden on July 4, was not happy with how its team accepted White House requests to edit out potentially embarrassing Biden answers in the interview. "On Monday, July 8th, it was reported to Civic Media management that immediately after the phone interview was recorded, the Biden campaign called and asked for two edits to the recording before it aired. Civic Media management immediately undertook an investigation and determined that the production team at the time viewed the edits as non-substantive and broadcast and published the interview with two short segments removed," the station said in a statement released on Thursday. The station said it would make the full, unedited interview available online. The two edits were the removal of Biden’s wild exaggeration that “I have more Blacks in my administration than any other president, all other presidents combined, and in major positions, cabinet positions.” How Trumpian does that sound? "I'm far better on the blacks than Barack Obama"?  And later, in reference to Donald Trump’s call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, accused of raping a female jogger, they took out Biden bumbling: “I don’t know if they even call for their hanging or not, but he–but they said [...] convicted of murder.” Philadelphia radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders resigned her position after admitting on CNN that she “accepted” four questions from the Biden White House for her interview with the president. Earl Ingram later told ABC News, "Yes, I was given some questions for Biden." He said he was given five questions and asked four of them Ingram told ABC he didn’t have any objections to pre-scripted questions. "To think that I was gonna get an opportunity to ask any question to the President of the United States, I think, is a bit more than anybody should expect," he said. "Certainly the fact that they gave me this opportunity ... meant a lot to me." Team Biden can be very demanding in trying to edit out Biden’s bumbles. On Sunday, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote about how Biden spokesman T.J. Ducklo energetically tried to get them to remove Biden saying "goodest" in his ABC interview.  After my column posted Saturday morning, T.J. Ducklo, a Biden campaign spokesman, emailed me to “flag” that ABC News had updated its transcript to read: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” Ducklo asked if I could “tweak” the column and change the word “goodest” to make my piece “consistent with the corrected transcript,” even though the revised version was also gobbledygook. When I said we would tell our editor what he thought, Ducklo wrote back: “Yeah again, it’s not what I think. It’s what ABC News, who conducted the interview, thinks. I think it would be quite unusual if the Times asserted the president said something that the news organization who conducted the interview says he didn’t say. All of this presumes that "friendly" media outlets will be "friendly" to a fault. So the Times did make the change! This note was added to the Saturday piece:  Times Opinion revised Mr. Biden’s quote in this column about how he would feel if he loses the election after White House officials and several news organizations contacted ABC on Friday about whether Mr. Biden had said “goodest” or “good as.” ABC’s standards team listened again to the audio and made the change. Mr. Biden’s actual words at that point in the interview were difficult to make out and open to interpretation.

It’s hard to believe someone with the name Becky Pringle could deliver the terrifying tirade you’re about to hear. Ms. Pringle is the president of the National Education Association, the largest teacher’s union in the United States, and she has a gusto that’s going down in the history books after her address to the union last week. In the speech, Pringle quite literally screamed about winning “all the things,” as she gasped for breath between sentences and slammed the podium with her fists. National Teachers Union President's TERRIFYING RANT! youtu.be It’s a rant so outrageous that many people are making fun of it — some even comparing the speech to a Dwight Schrute scene from “The Office.” “Becky Pringle pulled a Dwight Schrute. She is off-the-rails and desperate to maintain control over the minds of other people’s children,” said Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom adjunct scholar and school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis. Sara Gonzales is so horrified by Pringle’s spectacle, all she can say is, “That’s why I’m homeschooling my children.” “The NEA, let's be clear, has never educated a single human being ever in the history of their existence,” adds Chad Prather. On top of having a totally unhinged president, the members of the NEA “are not in it for the children.” “They are all in it for themselves. They want to talk about equity; they want to talk about trans rights; they want to talk about racial justice,” says Sara. To see one of the most outrageous speeches in history, watch the clip above.

Report About How Stage-Managed Biden Is 'Sounds Like a Story From an Authoritarian Country'