CBS knew what it was doing by replacing “The Late Show” with “Comics Unleashed.”

“The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert was reportedly losing CBS $40 million a year, while Byron Allen’s stand-up showcase offered a more positive revenue stream.

The math wasn’t mathing, and the Tiffany Network had had enough. What would you do in that situation?

And, for a while, the ratings drop proved painful. “Comics Unleashed” drew far fewer viewers than Colbert’s “Late Show” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” – not to mention “The Tonight Show.”

That’s the price CBS was willing to pay to stop hemorrhaging cash.

A funny thing happened earlier this week. Monday’s “Comics Unleashed” episode topped “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in the 18-49 demographic, according to LateNighter.com.

a rerun of Comics Unleashed averaged 161,000 viewers in the coveted 18-49 demo. In comparison, an original episode of Kimmel, guest-hosted by Jelly Roll, drew 158,000 demo viewers in its first half hour, while a Tonight Show rerun drew 154,000.

A rerun, mind you, against fresh material.

For context, advertisers generally crave that demographic for establishing brand loyalty and access to disposable income.

“Comics Unleashed” lost the overall ratings battle to both Kimmel and “The Tonight Show” on NBC, but the 18-49 demographic told other stories, too. The show increased by nearly 85 percent in that demo over the prior week.

Allen’s show, coupled with “Funny You Should Ask,” appears to be growing in the ratings battles overall. That may change after Labor Day when Kimmel returns to his far-Left perch, but for now the Allen one-two punch may be more formidable than many originally thought.

Or, audiences are exhausted by the monologues brimming with stale, predictable anti-Trump barbs. It’s hard to blame them.

Roll’s monologues this week relentlessly targeted President Donald Trump while ignoring Democrats, per the Kimmel playbook. The blowback for the country crooner was so strong he responded on-air, suggesting Trump fans who didn’t like his barbs should stop listening to his music.

Good thing for him? A smaller than expected crowd heard his plea in real time.

The post Colbert’s Replacement Beats Jelly Roll-led ‘Kimmel’ in Key Demo appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

Speaking of tariff refunds, here’s an official statement from Senator Elizabeth Warren from a few weeks ago:

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to Target, Apple, Amazon, Nike, Motorola, Walmart, and Energizer pushing these companies — each of which have or are expected to receive massive rebates from the Trump Administration for tariffs paid last year — to provide refunds to customers.

“I urge you to pass along any refund you may receive to the consumers who paid higher prices for your products while the tariffs were in place,” wrote Senator Warren.

On Twitter/X, she posted:

NEW: Apple reportedly got $2.2 BILLION back in tariff refunds. Amazon got $600 MILLION.

What’s their plan to give YOU your money back?

Warren published the letters she sent to the CEOs, including Tim Cook:

Reports indicate that Apple has applied for a refund of the roughly $3.3 billion in tariffs you paid in 2025, and as of July 30th, that you have received nearly $2.2 billion in refunds. This amounts to a multi-billion dollar windfall, which could still grow if more of your refund petitions are granted. You have claimed that you “plan to reinvest any amount we receive back into U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing,” but this vague statement offers no clarity as to where this money will go: indeed, it implies that you will not be returning it to the millions of consumers who purchased Apple products last year and paid higher prices. [...]

You have received an astronomical cash infusion in the form of a tariff refund, and Apple customers who paid increased prices for your products, ostensibly due to tariffs, deserve to know how that money will be spent. Your vague statements about “reinvesting” the refund leave hardworking Americans who paid hundreds of dollars more to buy Apple products in the dark about why they paid those increased prices and where their money will go. To better understand the disposition of any tariff refund you might receive, I request that you respond to the following questions by August 21, 2026.

Amongst the 11 questions she asks, the only one that seems pertinent is #5:

(5) How much did Apple increase prices on products in 2025?
(a) For what products did Apple increase prices, and how many of these products were directly impacted by tariffs?

Unless I’m missing something, the answers are “$0” and “none”. Apple increased none of its prices on any of its products in response to tariffs in 2025. The iPhone 17 lineup, in fact, surprised many observers and made news by holding prices steady.

In May 2025, Warren co-signed a letter to the FTC encouraging them to discourage large profitable companies from raising prices due to tariffs. Apple — a large profitable company — didn’t raise prices at all, which seemingly was what Warren thought they should do. But now she’s expressing outrage that Apple got a refund for the tariffs whose costs the company covered, and her followers are left to believe that Apple did raise prices and is keeping the money.

... Etiquette, Vaccination, and More

Twice yesterday, I encountered two of my favorite commentators urging a more self-interested discussion of two things America would do much better with more of: etiquette and vaccination.

Both were a breath of fresh air, but I'll start with the one that mildly surprised me, although it really shouldn't have.

Miss Manners takes a question from someone who by chance observed an acquaintance being extremely rude in a store.

The questioner looked away, but may not have escaped detection, and so wondered if a greeting was in order.

Unlike so many who would have probably said something about sparing the acquaintance embarrassment, Miss Manners advises sparing oneself:

As you were not the one who misbehaved, there is no etiquette rule preventing you from greeting your friend with a cheerful smile. But Miss Manners does feel that your solution is both more tactful and less exhausting, as you were then spared the explanation that would no doubt have followed about why she thought her rude behavior was justified by the part you did not see.

Yes!

That would be tiresome, on top of being awkward and unpleasant. While it does comport with my typical inclinations, it's nice to have that underscored with an explicit connection to the real value of etiquette: That it helps us lead our own lives more smoothly.

Less surprising, but wonderful to see coming from a highly visible and respected national figure is a recent comment by epidemiologist Amesh Adalja about how people discuss the subject of vaccination.

Around the 16:30 mark of his podcast,in Adalja starts by criticizing a pro-vaccination op-ed that relied on the idea that we are all our brothers' keepers, backing himself with research concerning what motivates people to get vaccinated. Older adults found arguments based on preserving their own independence more persuasive, for example. Adalja's own framing is in part:

"Vaccines are a technology that lets an individual live in a world full of infectious disease threats. They free you from worry... [T]hey make that risk much more manageable. ... They're increasing your freedom of action...

I completely agree with him that the brother's keeper argument is missing a highly persuasive reason to get jabbed.

Sane people -- who are the only ones worth reaching out to, anyway -- want to improve their own lives. That sounds like a much brighter and less frustrating starting point for any discussion than anything else to me.

-- CAV

The Amazon founder’s innovations save customers 22 hours a year on average, giving them the gift of time.

In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Robertas Bakula and Onkar Ghate discuss the political platform, moral goals, and philosophical motivations driving the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Topics include:

• Radical goals of the DSA

• DSA versus past communism

• Lack of intellectual argument

• Miseducation versus willful ignorance

• Fantasy world of socialism

• Ayn Rand on producer hatred

• Hypocrisy or true goals

• Foreign policy and authoritarian regimes

Resources:

• Ayn Rand’s title essay in For the New Intellectual

This episode was recorded on August 25, 2026.

One of the strangest arguments against capitalism is that it inevitably produces plutocracy, oligarchy and cronyism—and therefore the solution is to give politicians even more control over the economy.

That is like diagnosing a fire and prescribing gasoline.

The basic mistake is confusing economic success with political power.

Under capitalism, private property places limits on what other people can do to you. A billionaire may own an enormous company, but his wealth does not give him the legal authority to tax you, confiscate your house, prohibit you from starting a competing business, force you to work for him, or compel you to buy his products.

For those things, he needs political power.

And that distinction matters.

Where Cronyism Actually Comes From

Cronyism becomes possible when government has favors worth buying.

Give politicians the authority to distribute subsidies, bailouts, tariffs, licenses, government contracts, regulatory exemptions and other privileges, and people will inevitably compete to influence the politicians controlling them.

The greater the prize, the more intense the competition to capture it.

This is why blaming capitalism for cronyism gets the relationship backward. Cronyism grows as economic decisions stop being private decisions and become political ones.

If government cannot legally grant Company A special protection from Company B, there is considerably less reason for Company A to spend fortunes lobbying for that protection.

The problem isn't that businesses have somehow accumulated too much capitalism. The problem is that politicians have accumulated powers worth purchasing.

Socialism Magnifies the Problem

Now consider the proposed socialist solution.

If politicians having the power to distribute favors creates dangerous relationships between wealth and political authority, how exactly does giving political authorities more control over property, investment, production, employment and distribution solve the problem?

It doesn't.

It dramatically increases the value of controlling political power.

Under capitalism, property rights create countless independent centers of economic decision-making. You don't need permission from one central authority to decide what everyone should produce, consume or invest in.

The more those decisions are transferred to the state, the more important membership in—or connections to—the political class become.

You haven't abolished powerful elites.

You've made political elites more powerful.

Meet the New Cronies

This is the great bait-and-switch behind the claim that socialism will rescue society from oligarchy.

Perhaps it succeeds in destroying the fortunes or privileges of some existing wealthy people. But that doesn't eliminate concentrated power. It merely changes who possesses it.

Yesterday's businessman can be replaced by tomorrow's party official, bureaucrat, administrator or politically connected insider.

And the replacement may possess something considerably more dangerous than private wealth: coercive authority over everyone else's wealth.

A businessman who wants your money generally has to persuade you to give it to him.

A political authority empowered to redistribute property doesn't.

That's not the abolition of oligarchy. It's an excellent recipe for creating one.

“Late-Stage Capitalism” Gets It Backward

This is also why the fashionable phrase “late-stage capitalism” explains so little.

When an economy becomes increasingly dominated by subsidies, bailouts, protectionism, regulatory favoritism, political allocation of resources and government-business partnerships, we're told this proves capitalism eventually degenerates into cronyism.

But those policies are departures from the principles supposedly being indicted: private property, voluntary exchange, competition and equality before the law.

You cannot continually weaken capitalism and then point to the consequences as evidence that capitalism became too capitalist.

At best, replacing capitalism with socialism might replace the existing cronies.

The new cronies simply inherit a system with fewer restrictions on political power and considerably more wealth under their control.

If oligarchy is what you fear, concentrating economic and political power in the same hands is an extraordinarily strange cure.