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The Den Theatre will welcome back comedian Greg Fitzsimmons for an evening of stand-up on Saturday, October 15 at 9:30 pm on The Heath Mainstage, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. Tickets ($18 - $38) are currently available at thedentheatre.com or by calling (773) 697-3830.

Mixing an incisive wit with scathing sarcasm, Greg Fitzsimmons has achieved success as a stand-up, Emmy Award-winning writer and host on both radio and TV. Greg is host of The Greg Fitzsimmons Show, on SiriusXM's "Howard 101" and twice a week puts out the hugely popular FitzDog Radio podcast. A regular on @Midnight, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, and The Tonight Show, Greg has made more than 50 visits to The Howard Stern Show.

Greg has a new one-hour standup special on Comedy Central, stars in season 2 of How to be a Grown Up (TRU TV) and appeared on Louie (FX) this past season. He is a frequent guest on The Adam Carolla Show and The Joe Rogan Experience and will appear later this year in both Comedy Bang Bang (IFC) and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Adult Swim).

A frequent panelist for five years on Chelsea Lately, Greg also spent five years on VH1's Best Week Ever, hosted Pumped (The Speed Channel) and he starred in two half-hour stand-up specials on Comedy Central. Greg's 2011 book, "Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons," climbed the best-seller charts and garnered outstanding reviews from NPR and Vanity Fair.

Writing credits include HBO's Lucky Louie, Cedric the Entertainer Presents, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, The Man Show and many others. On his mantle beside the four Daytime Emmys he won as a writer and producer on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, sit "The Jury Award for Best Comedian" from The HBO Comedy Arts Festival and a Cable Ace Award for the MTV game show he hosted called Idiot Savants.

Tickets: $25 regular seating ($18 obstructed view); $38 front row VIP table seating; $32 VIP table seating; $28 mezzanine table seating. All ticket prices include cocktail service with a two-drink minimum.

COVID guidelines: In the interest of keeping patrons and staff safe, and in accordance with the League of Chicago Theatres, The Den will continue to require proof of vaccination to attend any event for the indefinite future. While masking is no longer required, The Den strongly encourages patrons to continue wearing a mask when not eating or drinking. For the most current information on The Den's COVID guidelines, visit thedentheatre.com/covid19-policy.

Artistic Director Ryan Martin opened The Den in 2010 in the Wicker Park neighborhood with a single theatre space. Now celebrating its twelfth year, The Den is a multi-level live entertainment venue that boasts five intimate and unique theaters ranging from 50 - 300 seats. The first floor houses The Den Bar & Lounge - a full-service bar where audiences gather before and after performances to share a drink and community with like-minded culture-hounds. Currently, The Den is home to four resident theatre companies including Broken Nose Theatre, First Floor Theater, Haven and The New Coordinates (formerly The New Colony). Hundreds of other companies and artists from Chicago and beyond have called The Den home - from national names to local stars, The Den consistently plays host to a lineup of exciting and diverse talent. As a building created for interdisciplinary arts, The Den has accommodated a wide variety of programming, including plays, musicals, film screenings, dance, improv and stand-up comedy, seminars and speaking engagements. For additional information, visit http://www.thedentheatre.com.

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Comedian Greg Fitzsimmons to Perform at The Den Theatre in October - Broadway World

If Fox breaks its ties to Trump, the network would be likely to seek out another candidate as the conservative standard-bearer with DeSantis a front-runner, although the competition for the Fox imprimatur would be intense.

Trump is the subject of a wide array of lawsuits and of a host of criminal and civil investigations. The Washington Post reported on July 30:

Trump is facing historic legal and legislative scrutiny for a former president, under investigation by U.S. lawmakers, local district attorneys, a state attorney general and the Justice Department. Authorities are looking into Trump and his family business for a medley of possible wrongdoing, including his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and how he valued his various assets for loan and tax purposes.

The filing of formal criminal charges against Trump, much less a conviction, would have a major impact on his prospects as a candidate.

At the same time, it would be a fundamental mistake to underestimate Trumps prospects. In a Wall Street Journal column last week, Karl Rove described the amount of money awaiting Trump should he decide to run for a second term:

The former president controls four political-action committees Save America; Make America Great Again, Again! Inc.; Trump Make America Great Again PAC; and Make America Great Again Action. The PACs cash on hand as of June 30 came, respectively, to $103.1 million, $10.3 million, $7.3 million and $700,000, giving Mr. Trump more than $121 million at his disposal.

Fred Wertheimer, founder and president of Democracy 21, a campaign-finance reform advocacy group, wrote in an email responding to my inquiry that Trump cannot directly transfer this money into a Trump for President 2024 committee:

But he can arrange the money in a way that the money will be spent only on his campaign. Trump can consolidate all his PAC funds into one super PAC, which is informally known as a single-candidate super PAC. The super PAC must make expenditures independent of the candidate it supports and it makes all of its campaign expenditures to support one candidate, in this case Trump. But everyone gets around the independence requirement by having close political associates control the single-candidate super PAC. Its a wink and a nod situation.

In addition to the political action committees cited above, the network of fund-raising organizations and tax-exempt advocacy groups at Trumps disposal include the America First Policy Institute, The Conservative Partnership Institute, America First Legal, American Moment, the Center for Renewing America and the Claremont Institute, Save America JFC joint fund-raising committee, Save America leadership PAC, Trump Victory, and Make America Great Again Policies Inc.

Tracking the flow of money to and from these organizations is exceptionally difficult because the organizations continuously transfer money among themselves. For example, in the 2019-20 election cycle, America First Action, a super PAC, reported contributions of just over $20 million from America First Policies, Inc., a nonprofit charitable organization categorized as a 501(c)(4) under I.R.S. rules, according to the Federal Election Commission. During the same period, America First Action gave America First Policies $2.04 million to cover the cost of in-kind payroll/offices expenses.

Trump has a vast array of 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit tax-exempt advocacy groups that serve several purposes. They perform what Peter Singer, a senior fellow at New America, describes as a shadow government function, filled with people who either have been or want to be in government or both, a way station for prospective political appointees. These advocacy groups, Singer continued, can set a political partys agenda, giving a 2025 Trump administration a jump-start.

I asked several political scholars about Trumps 2025 agenda. Some were less alarmed than others at the threat posed by the former president.

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Opinion | Trump Has Big Plans for 2025, and He Doesnt Care Whether You Think Hell Win - The New York Times

On Wednesday, the NYU researchers launched a searchable database of Facebook digital political ads theyve managed to pull together despite the ban, putting them right back in the companys crosshairs.

Im scared of getting sued. But what Im more scared of is another Jan. 6, said Laura Edelson, one of the academics behind the project and co-lead at NYUs Cybersecurity for Democracy project.

Meta, Facebooks parent company, stripped Edelson and two NYU colleagues of their access to its own database of political ads just weeks before Joe Bidens presidential victory two years ago. The company accused them of breaking its terms of service on privacy by creating a browser extension that enabled users to provide the researchers with granular information on the types of ads appearing in their news feed. Meta also threatened to sue the researchers, who argued their work didnt violate the companys policies.

We are still getting that fundamental data [from Meta] through other channels, Edelson said when asked how NYU was still collecting the companys political ad database almost two years after getting banned from directly accessing that data. She declined to say what those other channels were.

Meta, which opened up more of its Facebook political ad data to vetted outside researchers in May and subsequently provided greater transparency to the wider public over how they were targeted with paid-for messages on the platform, said the NYU researchers work still broke the companys terms of service.

The company declined to comment specifically on whether the academics new ad database was similarly in violation of its policies.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Georgetown University in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019.|Nick Wass/AP Photo

The conflict highlights how little has been resolved over how online political ads should be tracked and how outside groups can be allowed to keep tabs on digital advertising spend that is estimated to hit $1.3 billion during the midterm election cycle. Thats playing out in the build-up to Novembers election an early warning sign ahead of the flood of digital campaigning already starting ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

With Congress failing to move forward on any rules for how social media companies monitor politically divisive content or falsehoods, the companies have been left to fend for themselves. Theyve rolled out online platforms to promote get-out-the-vote campaigns, worked with outside fact-checkers to dampen the spread of incorrect information and reduced how political groups can target would-be voters via digital ads.

Yet outside researchers like those at NYU believe social media companies still are not doing enough to police how political messages and misinformation spread widely on these platforms.

And as digital political tactics quickly evolve ahead of the tech companies existing efforts including the use of paid social media influencers to promote partisan messages lawmakers and former employees also question how successful, and even willing, these firms are at policing their online platforms between now and the November election.

Its very frustrating, said Katie Harbath, Facebooks former public policy director for global elections and a former Republican Congressional staffer. Its been very hard to get a sense of what is happening. There are a lot of new vectors that are popping up that are going to remain really tricky for the platforms to deal with.

Outsiders who track political ads also argue that Facebook is failing to solve one of the easier problems providing user-friendly access to detailed data on political ad spending. Other issues like determining when politically divisive content falls afoul of its terms of service have proven tougher to combat as the amount of polarizing content on the worlds largest social network has skyrocketed.

My frustration about [Metas] ad library is that theres a sense of oh, look what you can do. But actually, unless you actually try to use it, you dont realize what a poor tool it is, said Claire Wardle, a professor at Brown Universitys Information Futures Lab and co-founder of FirstDraft, a nonprofit organization that tracked election-relation misinformation.

Edelson has become the public face of the pressure campaign for Facebook to improve its tools. The former Palantir computer scientist testified to lawmakers in the wake of the 2020 presidential election about the need for better data access to understand what is happening on social media. She won friends within Congress like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who wrote to Metas chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, questioning his companys ban imposed on the NYU academics.

Facebook has not fixed the fundamental security vulnerabilities in both their ad networks and their platform more broadly, Edelson said in an interview. I dont think Facebook is doing a good enough job of providing functional transparency.

Rules for broadcast television require disclosures on political spending from politicians and outside groups. But there is no similar requirement for major websites and almost all spending on them remains a black box especially on connected TV services like those of DirecTV and Comcast.

Edelsons team collects reams of publicly available political ad information directly from Meta, including demographic and regional breakdowns for such paid messaging. They then analyze it for patterns about who is spending the most on these ads and which groups are not abiding by the companys rules that require political players to publicly outline they are spending to reach voters nationwide.

Ahead of Novembers election, Facebook spending on political ads has so far focused on wedge issues like the recent Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court, as well as what limits, if any, should be placed on Second Amendment rights, according to POLITICOs analysis of the NYU database.

Since late May, for instance, almost $13.5 million has been earmarked for abortion-related ads, with a signficant spike in purchasing in the wake of the decision in late June to overturn Roe rulingg. Planned Parenthood, the abortion-rights group, represented more than one-third of that spending with ads that targeted states like Texas, where a local court ruling outlawed abortion.

Edelson argued the database provides a much-needed resource to track spending both by campaigns and lobbying groups that were funneling money into swing state elections.

Maybe this cycle is when Facebook really nails it, that they provide transparency tools that will put us out of business, she said. But if they dont, then I think were going to need to do this all over again in 2024.

Zach Montellaro contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misspelled Katie Harbaths name.

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Fight over online political ads heats up ahead of midterms - POLITICO

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The mind just keeps on boggling | Contributed Columns | wyomingnews.com - Wyoming Tribune

In a bad new epidemic of hypocrisy and wokedom that Simon Lincoln Reader calls an outbreak of California Blue, involving examples of cosplay disguised as activism such as Prince Harrys mouthing off about climate change having just landed at Van Nuys in a Gulf Stream, Reader says hed rather have the old-fashioned corruption of Faith Muthambi any day of the week. He imagines Faith and her friends cackling in the back of a Hummer limousine, bursting with polony and Fanta Pine, speeding wildly in front of plumes from extremely leaded petrol en route to a party at an abattoir, compared with UKs fey Rishi Sunak gazing soulfully out at the ocean with a look of *deep concern* over sea levels. And he argues theres rising intolerance of California Blue and its symptoms everywhere, from Holland to Sri Lanka to the US. Readbelow for some straight-talking, politically incorrect opinions. Sandra Laurence

By Simon Lincoln Reader*

Tom Bower is possibly Britains most popular biographer but his new book on the fracturing of the Royal Family (Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors) could easily have been called The Descent of Man. More than gossip, a dramatic portrait emerges of a young man contaminated by a condition known as California Blue. This disease is more dangerous than Monkeypox or whatever next the WHO has in mind for us: it took a young (by all accounts, excellent) soldier with a fondness for smoking and naked billiards into the despair of cosplay disguised as activism, where everything is racist. Through Harry a great tragedy is confirmed: Western Man the species defined by the brilliance of life in his late grandfather is dead, and the imposter who replaced him mouths off about climate change having just landed at Van Nuys in a Gulf Stream.

Im afraid that one of the contenders for leadership of Britains Conservative party and subsequently, the role of Prime Minister, is himself infected with California Blue. Prior to coof little was known of Rishi Sunak besides his marriage to the daughter of one of Indias richest men (founder of Infosys), who he met in Silicon Valley. That changed in a cabinet re-shuffle in 2020; just as things were hotting up courtesy of Wuhan, Boris Johnson appointed Rishi Goldman Sachs alum as Chancellor. As these kinds of detached people terrified of tough decisions so often do, Rishi bounced from one stinker to the next, kicking the can further down the road until the opportunity to stab Boris Johnson appeared.

Rishi is a Californian politician, but in Britain. Even before he was announced a finalist, he was replying to questions with non-answers perhaps the most alarming was an attempt to answer the question: What is a woman? Instead of adult human female, he mumbled his way through a erm-um-uh-I support-the-Prime-Ministers-declaration-ah-um response, which is how the problems in Los Angeles County started decades ago. As one of the two finalists for Number 10 Downing Street, he declared, I flew back from the US in 2021 to stop the government plunging the UK into another lockdown! That statement has since been described as categorically false by government sources and reporters. In contrast, his opponent Liz Truss (Foreign Secretary) answered No when asked whether she would consider a lockdown in the event of another leak from Wuhan.

Dont be fooled by his Brexit credentials; the Harry, or Californian Blue, is strong in him in other ways. He wants a central bank digital currency to obliterate Bitcoin. Hes a massive fan of Britains ailing, sclerotic (but the diversity) NHS. Worse and very Californian is his defiance of historys documented lessons, specifically the history of finance, which shows that if you increase the circulation of cash without a corresponding increase in real supply, the end result is ten times out ten something called inflation.

So if it came down to Faith Muthambi vs Rishi, my cross would be next to the old girl. At least with her youll get exactly what you expect: old-fashioned corruption with increasing reluctance toward discretion. Whilst Rishi is splashed across newspapers standing next to Dr Jill Biden staring out at the ocean with a look of *deep concern* (sea levels), Faith and her friends will be cackling in the back of a Hummer limousine, bursting with polony and Fanta Pine, speeding wildly in front of plumes from extremely leaded petrol en route to a party at an abattoir. Every June, the civil service will ensnare Rishi with a Pride flag forcing him to send a tweet photo to Brett Herron, GOODs failed mayoral candidate, expressing sympathy (solidarity) that Cape Towns City Council refuses to use pronouns. Try to do that with Faith see what happens to you. You wont find her at any event hosted by unelected creepy organisations determined to instruct elected officials or you will, but only to procure those small bottles of Scotch from the hotel bar fridge, to pair with other small bottles she took from the airline getting there. In addition, Rishi has a fondness for skinny ties and no man should ever wear a slim Jim.

Because 95% of the worlds prestige media journalists are infected with it, this might not be readily apparent but theres rising intolerance of California Blue and its symptoms everywhere, from Holland to Sri Lanka to the USA. And if you dont believe me that elected infected officials who invested in the narrative are untrustworthy and beyond mad, just look at what California Blues patient zero, Nancy Pelosi, got up to this past week.

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SLR: Give me old-fashioned South African corruption any time! - BizNews

The Wolf (Bad Bunny) and Ladybug (Brad Pitt) square off in Bullet Train.Photo: Sony Pictures

A constant social media refrain asks if certain older movies could still be made today based on elements like cost, logistics, politically incorrect content, or a filmmakers formula-defying creative process. Bullet Train begs the question of whether movies inspired by those filmmakers should even be attempted today, unless theyre being done by the original directors themselves.

Bullet Train filmmaker David Leitch may fancy himself a spiritual descendant of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, who established their distinctive styles decades before Ktar Isakas acclaimednovel of the same name was published in 2010. But Leitchs talky, violent hit man movie, with Brad Pitt at the center of an over-cranked ensemble cast, reminds us why Hollywood has all but abandoned attempts to copy the successes of Tarantino and Ritchie. This film is not just bloated, tedious, dim-witted, and glib, its also redundant.

Sandra Bullock

Maria Beetle

Trained killer Ladybug wants to give up the life but is pulled back in by his handler Maria Beetle in order to collect a briefcase on a bullet train heading from Tokyo to Morioka. On board are fellow assasins Kimura, the Prince, Tangerine, and Lemon. Once on board the five assasins discover that their objectives are all connected.

Pitt plays Ladybug, a former hitman hired by his longtime handler Maria (Sandra Bullock, returning a favor after Pitts appearance in The Lost City) to steal a briefcase full of cash from active hitmen Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry). Despite Marias assurances about the simplicity of the job, Ladybug quickly encounters opposition not only from Tangerine and the Thomas The Tank Engine-obsessed Lemon, but also The Prince (Joey King), a conniving Brit posing as a schoolgirl; Yuichi Kimura (Andrew Koji), an anguished Japanese father seeking vengeance after his son was pushed off of a roof; Hornet (Zazie Beetz), an assassin with her own designs on the briefcase, and other targets to execute; and The Wolf (Benito A Martinez Ocasio aka Bad Bunny), a Mexican cartel member who came to Japan after the death of his wife, for which he blames the luckless Ladybug.

Ladybug must not only defeat these foes, but figure out what events put all of them in his path. This leads to a variety of flashbacks, subplots, surprises, and secret motives, which Leitch and screenwriter Zak Olkewicz (Fear Street: Part Two1978) shuffle with little regard for pacing or the basic logistics of the films setting: how long exactly does it take for a high-speed train to travel from Tokyo to Kyoto (it was Morioka in Isakas novel)? A quick Google search indicates that the trip lasts about two hours and 15 minutes, but for some reason, this train runs all nightmaking Ladybugs escalating gauntlet feel more like a meandering travelogue through the characters one-dimensional personalities.

The muscular, charming energy that Leitch brought to set pieces and fight sequences in Hobbs & Shaw extends past the tipping point of improbability here, with a train thats full of passengers at times and empty others, without any real explanation. There are stabbings, poisonings, gunshots, snake attacks, hand-broken windshields, explosions, derailings, and more, and the only person who seems to notice is a little old lady who wishes Ladybug and Lemon would be quieter while they beat each other senseless.

As a conflict-averse assassin, Ladybugs efforts to resolve each new confrontation runs out of gas, especially since Pitt has played some version of a capable dope with more words than brains since at least The Mexican. Watching the actor have fun on screen should actually be fun, but here it feels like hes dragging the train along, instead of effortlessly riding it. Meanwhile as Lemon, Henrys obsession with Thomas & Friends is like a remnant of the era in which Tarantino spiced up Crimson Tide with monologues about the Silver Surfer. And the result here is just as obnoxious as it was watching Tarantino rant about Top Gun when he appeared in Sleep With Me. And even though Taylor-Johnson tapped into a surprisingly appealing persona when he adopted a working-class Cockney accent for a supporting role in Christopher Nolans Tenet, he repeats himself here and reduces his charm to sub-Guy Ritchie levels.

The less said about the rest of the cast the better, although Koji and the always stellar Hiroyuki Sanada desperately fight to inject dignity into the story of their familys multi-generational betrayals and misjudgments. But Leitch and Olkewicz feebly draw out those themes across the myriad conflicts and saddle these performers with those topics in an act of misjudged authenticity. Controversies over a mostly English-language adaptation of a Japanese novel notwithstandingwhich Isaka himself has largely dismissedwhat proves to be more offensive is the films unskilled attempt to inject seriousness into what should have been a cheeky summer distraction. Its fine for a movie about a bunch of competing killers to itself place no value on human life, and even to joyfully indulge in that kind of nihilism, but the way the filmmakers inject a sense of pathos feels about as earnest and meaningful as an airport gift shop souvenir before the flight home from some far-flung foreign country.

That said, whether or not Isaka started with an adequate level of originality on the page, this kind of story occupies a place thats simply too well-defined on screen. Especially when its anchored by an equally familiar performance by Pitt, whose movie stardom has been amplified by the talents of filmmakers like Tarantino and Ritchie, but doesnt always generate enough wattage to juice up a lackluster project on its own.

Ultimately, Bullet Train aims to be slick when it needs to be smart, and predictable when it should be provocativeeffectively making all of the wrong stops at exactly the wrong time. The problem isnt that Leitch doesnt have the talent to pull off a film like this, but that he doesnt have the personality. Rather, he possesses the proficiency to be a contemporary studio journeymanas long as he chooses the right journey.

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Bullet Train takes Brad Pitt for a ride before it goes off the rails - The A.V. Club