- CNN Admits All Gaza Coverage Is Run Past Team Under Israeli Military Censor
CNN Admits All Gaza Coverage Is Run Past Team Under Israeli Military Censor
Authored by Julia Conley via Common Dreams,
CNN has long been criticized by media analysts and journalists for its deference to the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in its coverage of the occupied Palestinian territories, and the cable network admitted days ago that it follows a protocol that could give Israeli censors influence over its stories.
A spokesperson for the network confirmed to The Intercept that its news coverage about Israel and Palestine is run through and reviewed by the CNN Jerusalem bureau—which is subject to the IDF’s censor.
The censor restricts foreign news outlets from reporting on certain subjects of its choosing and outright censors articles or news segments if they don’t meet its guidelines.
Other news organizations often avoid the censor by reporting certain stories about the region through their news desks outside of Israel, The Intercept reported.
“The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years,” the spokesperson told the outlet. “It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible.”
The spokesperson added that CNN does not share news copy with the censor and called the network’s interactions with the IDF “minimal.” But James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, said the IDF’s approach to censoring media outlets is “Israel’s way of intimidating and controlling news.”
A CNN staffer who spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity confirmed that the network’s longtime relationship with the censor has ensured CNN’s coverage of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and attacks in the West Bank since October 7 favors Israel’s narratives.
“Every single Israel-Palestine-related line for reporting must seek approval from the [Jerusalem] bureau—or, when the bureau is not staffed, from a select few handpicked by the bureau and senior management—from which lines are most often edited with a very specific nuance,” the staffer said.
Jerusalem bureau chief Richard Greene announced it had expanded its review team to include editors outside of Israel, calling the new policy “Jerusalem SecondEyes.” The expanded review process was ostensibly put in place to bring “more expert eyes” to CNN’s reporting particularly when the Jerusalem news desk is not staffed.
In practice, the staff member told The Intercept, “‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words. Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.”
Meanwhile, reporters are under intensifying pressure to question anything they learn from Palestinian sources, including casualty statistics from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The Ministry of Health is run by Hamas, which controls Gaza’s government. The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said in October, as U.S. President Joe Biden was publicly questioning the accuracy of the ministry’s reporting on deaths and injuries, that its casualty statistics have “proven consistently credible in the past.”
Despite this, CNN’s senior director of news standards and practices, David Lindsey, told journalists in a November 2 memo that “Hamas representatives are engaging in inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda… We should be careful not to give it a platform.”
Another email sent in October suggested that the network aimed to present the Ministry of Health’s casualty figures as questionable, with the News Standards and Practices division telling staffers, “Hamas controls the government in Gaza and we should describe the Ministry of Health as ‘Hamas-controlled’ whenever we are referring to casualty statistics or other claims related to the present conflict.”
WHETHER REPORTING FROM the Middle East, the United States, or anywhere else across the globe, every CNN journalist covering Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the news organization’s bureau in Jerusalem prior to publication…
https://t.co/TmgnlXncK0— Alice Rothchild, MD (@AliceRothchild) January 8, 2024
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Newsroom employees were advised to “remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of Israeli civilians” on October 7.
At least 22,600 people have been confirmed killed in Gaza and 57,910 have been wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. Thousands more are feared dead under the rubble left behind by airstrikes. In Israel, the death toll from Hamas’ attack stands at 1,139.
Jim Naureckas, editor of the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, noted that the Israeli government is controlling journalists’ reporting on Gaza as it’s been “credibly accused of singling out journalists for violent attacks in order to suppress information.”
“To give that government a heightened role in deciding what is news and what isn’t news is really disturbing,” he told The Intercept. Meanwhile, pointed out author and academic Sunny Singh, even outside CNN, “every bit of reporting on Gaza in Western media outlets has been given unmerited weight which not granted to Palestinian reporters.”
“Western media—not just CNN—has been pushing Israeli propaganda all through” Israel’s attacks, said Singh.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 23:40 - Secretary Of Defense Lloyd Austin Must Resign
Secretary Of Defense Lloyd Austin Must Resign
Authored by Joe Buccino via RealClear Wire,
The news that the U.S. Department of Defense failed to inform the American public that its Secretary of Defense was hospitalized in Walter Reed for four days represents a stunning breach of transparency standards. It is also a measure of reputational damage from which Secretary Lloyd Austin will never recover. He must be forced to resign.
The original admission – dropped at the end of a Friday to minimize exposure – that the Secretary received multi-day treatment for an unidentified elective surgery introduced immediate and intense scrutiny from national security reporters. It drew a formal admonishment from the Pentagon press.
The issue may have died there, but the subterfuge further grew the story. Additional reporting revealed some critical details not released by the Pentagon in its Friday announcement: Austin was in in-patient intensive care, generally reserved for those in immediate danger. Meanwhile, his Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, was vacationing in Puerto Rico.
Many questions now must be answered: Who was adjudicating the Pentagon’s support for the war in Gaza? Who was coordinating with Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant on behalf of the U.S. military? Who approved the Jan. 4 strike into Baghdad that killed a militia leader believed responsible for attacks on American troops? Who coordinated that strike and its aftermath with defense officials in the Middle East? These are the kinds of actions that require leadership from inside the Pentagon. Why did the Deputy Secretary of Defense remain on vacation with the Secretary incapacitated?
Further, still – what is the health status of our Secretary of Defense? Only a severe condition would introduce multi-day hospitalization amidst multiple crises in the Middle East, a log-jammed war in Ukraine, and new Chinese threats against Taiwan. The statement Austin released late Saturday in an attempt to tamp down the controversy reveals he is “on the mend” – whatever that means – and looks forward to “returning to the Pentagon soon.” How long is he out? This seems much more serious than elective surgery – the line the Pentagon press officers are sticking with. What is his medical status at age 70?
More questions still: What did the Pentagon press officers know, and when did they know it? Surely, they are aware of the protocol for publicly announcing medical procedures for cabinet officials. Who was in on the deception? The Secretary of Defense travels with an entire operations center around him at all times: note-takers, communications experts, and intelligence analysts. These people all report to defense officials, who report to other defense officials. It’s hard to believe the Pentagon’s press office was unaware that the Big Boss was in the hospital. In fact, hiding the Secretary of Defense during a tumultuous work week for the American military surely involved the collusion of multiple senior officials.
The Pentagon could have avoided all these questions and all of this controversy with a press statement upon Austin’s entering the hospital and updates throughout. U.S. Air Force Major General Pat Ryder held two press briefings during Austin’s hospital stay – he could have provided updates on his boss’ condition from behind the podium. More importantly, he should have told us who was running the Pentagon. It’s unclear how the nation is to believe anything coming out of the Pentagon press office in the coming months.
The American Secretary of Defense walks the earth with the most essential information any of us can have. He renders decisions on behalf of this country that kill many people in other countries. Lloyd Austin represents American power to much of the world. He runs an enterprise that costs American taxpayers north of $840 billion and employs more than three million workers. We get to know where our Secretary of Defense is at all times. We get to know when he’s on vacation. We get to know when he’s in the hospital.
Lloyd Austin cannot recover from this breach of trust. In fact, he cannot be trusted any longer. If he wants to keep his hospital visits private, he should be allowed to do so – as a private citizen.
Joe Buccino is a retired U.S. Army Colonel public affairs officer and the former communications director of U.S. Central Command. He also served as the spokesman for Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 23:00 - 3-In-4 Asians Expect China To Keep Slowing, & An End To Japan's NIRP In 2024
3-In-4 Asians Expect China To Keep Slowing, & An End To Japan’s NIRP In 2024
A survey among Nikkei Asia readers shows what events respondents from the region find most likely to occur in 2024.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, in the eyes of three quarters of Asians, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is sure to extend his time in office in a year that observers have called one of the most important for elections ever.
But respondents were even more sure that the Japanese leadership would be forced to abandon its zero interest policy after almost a decade of negative rates. While in Europe and the U.S., the legacy of the global financial crisis of 2008 has been left behind, Japan has refused to follow suit despite the global inflation crisis. The country might be an outlier in terms of consumer price increases – due to businesses’ timid growth strategies and companies and consumers rejecting price increases alike – but 2024 might be the year the facade finally cracks.
Another three quarters of respondents to the Nikkei survey see China’s GDP growth continuing to stay behind former boom years.
Less popular but still intriguing predictions for Asia’s 2024 include North Korea’s first nuclear test since 2017 and China debuting a 5-nanometer chip after August’s reveal of the Chinese 7-nanometer chip caused a sensation. Both events are thought likely by 57 percent of respondents.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Around half of survey takers predict that Chinese electric car maker BYD will enter the U.S. market to challenge rival Tesla. In Q4 of 2023, the company shipped more EVs than Tesla for the first time – supporting the hunch of the respondents who answered the question in December before this information was revealed in early 2024.
Somewhat fewer – around 45 percent – of respondents expect 2024 to see more legalizations of same-sex marriage in Asia. Out of all that found this likely, half expect new laws to be passed in Thailand, while 20 percent thought they would be introduced in Japan.
Another prediction for outside of Asia was made on the re-election of former U.S. President Donald Trump in the super election year of 2024. More than 60 percent of Asian respondents believe Trump will prevail in November.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 22:40 - Did Loosening Gun Control Cause A Nationwide Drop In Homicides?
Did Loosening Gun Control Cause A Nationwide Drop In Homicides?
Submitted by Gun Owners of America,
According to a recent study, the homicide rate in the United States plummeted in 2023. The drop was so drastic in fact, the study’s author was quoted saying that this is likely one of the fastest declines in homicides ever recorded.
But is there a reason for the decline? We think so. It’s possible that the removal of gun control may have played a critical role in this decline.
In 2022, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in the case NYSRPA v. Bruen.
If you need to get more familiar with Bruen, the case focused on the petitioners’ struggle to obtain a concealed carry permit in New York. Obtaining a New York concealed carry permit was notoriously hard to achieve because of New York’s restrictive “may issue” system for permitting.
In the Bruen ruling, the Supreme Court removed the State’s power to refuse concealed firearm permits to law-abiding citizens. Following this ruling, there was a massive surge in concealed carry permit applications in states known for tight regulations, like Maryland, California, and New York.
With the increase in concealed carry permits, criminals no longer could have confidence that their victims would be unarmed. This may likely have contributed to the drop in homicides nationwide.
In addition, more states like Nebraska and Alabama adopted constitutional carry laws in 2023, while Florida passed a law allowing permitless carry. This all happened while the homicide rate nationwide drastically decreased.
Honestly, this goes to show how backwards gun control is in the first place. Violent crime fell even while gun control restrictions were being loosened!
In contrast, in areas with very strict gun control, like Washington, D.C., we’ve seen a different trend: the homicide rate went up by 36%. Perhaps it’s time for these places to rethink their laws and give citizens a better chance to defend themselves against criminals.
Meanwhile, California, the State that prides itself on being the most restrictive State for gun ownership in the country had the first mass shooting of 2024 according to the gun control group The Gun Violence Archive.
One of our cases, May v. Bonta, focuses on California’s efforts to further restrict concealed carry. The State argued that allowing concealed firearms endangers public safety. How could this be true with millions of Americans already armed and carrying every day?
Concealed Carry permit holders are some of the most law-abiding groups in the nation. The idea that those who have obtained government-issued permits to carry firearms would make the country less safe is not only misleading but lacks credibility.
🚨 HUGE WIN against California gun control ⤵️ https://t.co/a6ZtcXQoYe
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) January 7, 2024
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Either way, we’re dedicated to ensuring that your Second Amendment right is unimpeded by the tyrants in governments like California and New York with our fights in the Courts and Congress.
Watch: More Guns, Less Crime
* * *
We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 22:20 - IRS: Venmo, PayPal And CashApp Freelancers Face 2024 Reporting Requirements
IRS: Venmo, PayPal And CashApp Freelancers Face 2024 Reporting Requirements
After delaying for two years, the IRS is planning to finally start implementing its new 1099-K reporting requirement for anyone earning income via third-party payment apps such as PayPal, Venmo, Zelle or Cash App.
Tax forms from previous years are displayed at Latino Taxes in Oakland, Calif., on April 10, 2007. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) The rule, which was originally slated to take effect in 2022 and was delayed for 2023, means that a 1099-K form “could be sent to anyone” using those services who makes over $600 per year, according to the agency.
“We spent many months gathering feedback from third-party groups and others, and it became increasingly clear we need additional time to effectively implement the new reporting requirements,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel several weeks ago in delaying the rule again.
Prior to the rule, third-party apps only sent 1099-K forms to people who received $20,000 or more in commercial payments across more than 200 transactions.
The IRS has delayed this new reporting rule for two years in a row to give payment apps more time to prepare for the change. One sticking point: Distinguishing between taxable and nontaxable transactions through third-party apps isn’t always easy. For example, money your roommate sends you through Venmo for dinner is not taxable. Money received for graphic design work you tackled is. The IRS paused implementation to avoid confusion and incorrect earnings being reported. –CNET
The IRS will begin with a phased rollout, requiring payment apps to report income by freelancers and business owners with earnings over $5,000 vs. $600 in the hopes that raising the threshold will reduce ‘noise’ from inaccuracies, while eventually working towards the $600 minimum.
“Taking this phased-in approach is the right thing to do for the purposes of tax administration, and it prevents unnecessary confusion,” said Werfel. “It’s clear that an additional delay for tax year 2023 will avoid problems for taxpayers, tax professionals and others in this area.”
As the Epoch Times notes further; A provision in the American Rescue Plan requires users to report transactions through payment apps, including Venmo, Cash App and others, for goods and services meeting or exceeding $600 in a calendar year. Before that provision—and now for this year—the reporting requirement applied only to selling goods and services to taxpayers who received over $20,000 and had over 200 transactions.
“The Form 1099-K could be sent to anyone who’s using payment apps or online marketplaces to accept payments for selling goods or providing services. This includes people with side hustles, small businesses, crafters and other sole proprietors,” the IRS said. “However, it could also include casual sellers who sold personal stuff like clothing, furniture and other household items that they paid more than they sold it for.”
“Reporting requirements do not apply to personal transactions such as birthday or holiday gifts, sharing the cost of a car ride or meal, or paying a family member or another for a household bill. These payments are not taxable and should not be reported on Form 1099-K,” the agency added.
There has been confusion about what taxpayers should do if they sell an item at a loss. Those scenarios shouldn’t be taxed but may still generate forms to send to taxpayers.
“Selling items at a loss is not actually taxable income but would have generated many Forms 1099-K for many people with the $600 threshold. This complexity contributed to the IRS decision to delay the additional year to provide the agency time to update its operations to make it easier for taxpayers to report the amounts on their forms,” the agency said.
Starting this month, the IRS will plan a phased rollout of the plan and will require third-party payment apps and services to report business and freelancer earnings of more than $5,000 rather than $600, according to the IRS.
“This means that for 2023 and prior years, payment apps and online marketplaces are only required to send out Forms 1099-K to taxpayers who receive over $20,000 and have over 200 transactions. For tax year 2024, the IRS plans for a threshold of $5,000 to phase in reporting requirements,” said the agency.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 22:00 - Jim Bovard: Biden Says Vote For Me Or Hitler Wins
Jim Bovard: Biden Says Vote For Me Or Hitler Wins
“Endless hysteria will keep you free,” said none of the Founding Fathers. But President Joe Biden missed that message before his absurdly overheated speech last Friday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Biden draped himself in Revolutionary War virtue as he demanded that Americans quiver in fear at the prospect of his reign ending. Biden invoked the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol clash to effectively call for canceling the 2024 presidential election.
At a minimum, Biden wants to turn the November election into a referendum on Adolf Hitler. Biden boasted, “We are still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor.” A few minutes before that uplifting assertion, Biden accused Donald Trump of “echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.” CNN reported last week that Biden campaign aides plan to go “full Hitler” on Trump, making “a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump ‘parroted’ him.” A few weeks ago, the Biden campaign posted a graphic on Twitter comparing Trump and Hitler’s rhetoric.
Biden continually equated democracy with freedom. And whatever is good for democracy is “close enough for government work” to freedom. Biden declared, “Democracy means having the freedom to speak your mind.” Unless Team Biden disapproves of your thoughts, of course.
Biden neglected to explain why his vision of democracy justifies the near-total suppression of freedom of speech for his opponents. On July 4, Federal Judge Terry Doughty condemned the Biden administration for potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history,” and a federal appeals court condemned Team Biden for “suppressing millions of protected free-speech postings by American citizens”—mostly by conservatives and Republicans.
“If only Uncle Joe had known about that abuse,” right? Like hell. Biden’s Justice Department is fighting tooth and nail at the Supreme Court to preserve his power to secretly censor anyone the feds claim is spouting disinformation, perhaps including denying that Biden is God’s gift to America.
Another key to Biden’s vision of democracy is that the president is entitled to imprison peaceful protestors who opposed him. Biden proved the villainy of Trump supporters by touting case numbers from January 6: “Since that day more than 1,200 people have been charged for the assault on the capitol, and nearly 900 of them have been convicted and they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.”
Biden neglected to quote the bombshell Washington Post report today revealing that vast numbers of the January 6 charges have been crap cases. Federal judges have rejected Biden Justice Department sentencing demands in almost 90% of the January 6 cases—an astounding record. If those cases were not being tried by juries overstocked with federal employees and NPR devotees, the prosecutions would have crashed and burned long ago.
The Supreme Court may obliterate many of the cases. More than 320 of the convictions against J-6 protestors hinge on a bizarre contortion of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted after corporations destroyed documents sought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The average sentence for those convicted of obstructing an official proceeding has been 39 months,” the Post reported. Former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi warns that the Supreme Court taking that case is a “red flag and a loud gong” because that law was the “North Star” used by prosecutors. If the Supreme Court strikes down the Biden twist of the 2002 law, that will make the January 6 prosecutions look like one of the worst witch hunts in American history.
Yet, according to Team Biden, the real problem is that not enough lives have been ruined for sinful thoughts on January 6. Last Thursday, Matthew Graves, Biden’s chief prosecutor for the District of Columbia, issued a warning of potentially thousands of more January 6 indictments: “If a person knowingly entered a restricted area [near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021] without authorization, they already committed a federal crime. Make no mistake: Thousands of people occupied that area that they were not authorized to be present in in the first place.” Talking about hounding people who merely were in the general vicinity of the Capitol confirms that for Team Biden, “Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism.”
Actually, Biden’s FBI already classifies all the people arrested for January 6 Capitol clash offenses as domestic terrorists—even people busted for “parading without a permit.” The FBI presumes that any American suspected of supporting the January 6, 2021 protests forfeited his constitutional rights. An FBI whistleblower revealed in congressional testimony in May 2023 that FBI headquarters pressured FBI agents to treat anyone who attended the January 6 protests as a criminal suspect. Roughly 2,000 pro-Trump protestors (including an unknown number of undercover agents and informants) entered the Capitol that day. But an FBI analyst exploited the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to unjustifiably conduct warrantless searches on 23,132 Americans citizens suspected of January 6 offenses “to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence,” according to FISA Chief Judge Rudolph Contreras.
Biden assured the audience that “we still believe that no one, not even the president, is above the law.” Okay, but what if the president or the vice president uses the names Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware as email aliases to hustle business deals for a family member? Is it OK for them to slip the law then?
The only way to assume that Biden is not “above the law” is to assume that his decrees alone are the law. The Supreme Court struck down his COVID vaccine mandate, his moratorium for evicting deadbeat renters, his $500 billion federal student loan forgiveness scheme, and numerous other Biden policies.
Joe Biden is calling Trump a “dictator” while simultaneously supporting his chief political opponent getting kicked off the ballot pic.twitter.com/dER9htucqu
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 5, 2024
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Biden spent half an hour fearmongering and then closed by promising “freedom from fear.” This is the famous Biden two-step—demagoguing to his heart’s content and then closing with a few schmaltzy uplift lines, entitling the media to re-christen him as an idealist.
Biden castigated Trump as the “Election Denier in Chief,” a new offense not yet been codified in the statute book. Biden endlessly warned that Trump posed a deadly threat to both freedom and democracy. Biden campaign masterminds were clever enough to permit an unknown local politician to deliver the “takeaway” from the day’s events. Biden was preceded at the podium by Dauphin County commissioner candidate Justin Douglass, who proclaimed that “Donald Trump represents a clear and present danger” to democracy. Since Trump is the ultimate enemy of the Constitution, anything that Biden and his campaign does to banish Trump from the ballot will be pro-democracy.
Obviously, if Americans value democracy, then the presidential candidate favored by the most voters in recent polls must not be allowed on the ballot. Team Biden favors a version of “Guardian Democracy” where voters are only permitted to cast ballots for candidates that the ruling class approves. This is part and parcel with the Democratic Party’s plan to let all future elections be determined by ballot harvesting and tsunamis of unverified mail-in ballots.
Why should we believe that democracy dies unless Biden gets four more years to violate the Constitution, censor and jail his opponents, and domineer practically every aspect of Americans’ lives (“step away from that gas stove before we have to hurt you”)? As Thomas Jefferson declared long ago, “An elective despotism is not the government we fought for.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 21:40 - Family Of Ashli Babbitt Files $30 Million Wrongful-Death Action
Family Of Ashli Babbitt Files $30 Million Wrongful-Death Action
The long-awaited tort action from the family of Ashli Babbitt has now been filed in Southern California. Babbitt was shot and killed on Jan. 6th and her family is seeking $30 million in a wrongful death action.
Equally important, the lawsuit could force additional answers to why Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd shot and killed the unarmed protester as she attempted to climb through a window near the House Chamber.
I have previously raised concerns over the shooting as conflicting with governing standards on the use of lethal force.
I also noted contradictions in Byrd’s own statements and the government’s conclusion that this was a justified killing.
The complaint below adds some troubling facts to these prior concerns.
Babbitt, 35, was an Air Force veteran and Trump supporter who participated in the riot three years ago.
She was clearly committing criminal acts of trespass, property damage, and other offenses. However, the question is whether an officer is justified in shooting a protester when he admits that he did not see any weapon before discharging his weapon.
Just to recap what we previously discussed in the earlier column:
When protesters rushed to the House chamber, police barricaded the chamber’s doors; Capitol Police were on both sides, with officers standing directly behind Babbitt. Babbitt and others began to force their way through, and Babbitt started to climb through a broken window. That is when Byrd killed her.
At the time, some of us familiar with the rules governing police use of force raised concerns over the shooting. Those concerns were heightened by the DOJ’s bizarre review and report, which stated the governing standards but then seemed to brush them aside to clear Byrd.
The DOJ report did not read like any post-shooting review I have read as a criminal defense attorney or law professor. The DOJ statement notably does not say that the shooting was clearly justified. Instead, it stressed that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’” It seemed simply to shrug and say that the DOJ did not believe it could prove “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”
While the Supreme Court, in cases such as Graham v. Connor, has said that courts must consider “the facts and circumstances of each particular case,” it has emphasized that lethal force must be used only against someone who is “an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and … is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Particularly with armed assailants, the standard governing “imminent harm” recognizes that these decisions must often be made in the most chaotic and brief encounters.
Under these standards, police officers should not shoot unarmed suspects or rioters without a clear threat to themselves or fellow officers. That even applies to armed suspects who fail to obey orders. Indeed, Huntsville police officer William “Ben” Darby was convicted for killing a suicidal man holding a gun to his own head. Despite being cleared by a police review board, Darby was prosecuted, found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison, even though Darby said he feared for the safety of himself and fellow officers. Yet law professors and experts who have praised such prosecutions in the past have been conspicuously silent over the shooting of an unarmed woman who had officers in front of and behind her on Jan. 6.
Byrd went public soon after the Capitol Police declared “no further action will be taken” in the case. He proceeded to demolish the two official reviews that cleared him.
Byrd described how he was “trapped” with other officers as “the chants got louder” with what “sounded like hundreds of people outside of that door.” He said he yelled for all of the protesters to stop: “I tried to wait as long as I could. I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors. But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”
Byrd could just as well have hit the officers behind Babbitt, who was shot while struggling to squeeze through the window.
Of all of the lines from Byrd, this one stands out: “I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are.” So, Byrd admitted he did not see a weapon or an immediate threat from Babbitt beyond her trying to enter through the window. Nevertheless, Byrd boasted, “I know that day I saved countless lives.” He ignored that Babbitt was the one person killed during the riot. (Two protesters died of natural causes and a third from an amphetamine overdose; one police officer died the next day from natural causes, and four officers have committed suicide since then.) No other officers facing similar threats shot anyone in any other part of the Capitol, even those who were attacked by rioters armed with clubs or other objects.
The complaint below has some interesting additional facts. For example, it alleges that Babbitt’s hands were in plain sight and empty.
“Ashli could not have seen Lt. Byrd, who was positioned far to Ashli’s left and on the opposite side of the doors, near an opening to the Retiring Room, a distance of approximately 15 feet and an angle of approximately 160 degrees. Sgt. Timothy Lively, one of the armed officers guarding the lobby doors from the hallway, later told officials investigating the shooting, “I saw him . . . there was no way that woman would’ve seen that.” Lt. Byrd, who was not in uniform, did not identify himself as a police officer or otherwise make his presence known to Ashli. Lt. Byrd did not give Ashli any warnings or commands before shooting her dead.”
That is significant. There were officers in front, behind, and to the sides of Babbitt but she was given no warning and likely did not see Byrd pointing his weapon at her.
However, the most interesting allegation is this one:
“At 2:45 p.m., or within one minute after shooting Ashli, Lt. Byrd made the following radio call: 405B. We got shots fired in the lobby. We got shots shots fired in the lobby of the House chamber. Shots are being fired at us and we’re sh, uhh, prepared to fire back at them. We have guns drawn. Please don’t leave that end. Don’t leave that end. Approximately 35 seconds later, Lt. Byrd made another radio call, stating, “405B. We got an injured person. I believe that person was shot.” In fact, no shots were fired at Lt. Byrd or his fellow officers. The only shot fired was the single shot Lt. Byrd fired at Ashli. He heard the loud noise of the gunshot. He saw her fall backwards from the window frame.”
So Byrd allegedly gave a false report of shots being fired after he shot Babbitt.
Here are the seven counts (the second count on negligence is the most detailed and multifaceted):
COUNT I Assault and Battery (Intentional Shooting and Killing of Ashli by Lt. Byrd – ESTATE OF ASHLI BABBITT)
COUNT II Negligence (Lt. Byrd – ESTATE OF ASHLI BABBITT)
COUNT III Negligence (Timothy Lively, Kyle Yetter, Christopher Lanciano Steven Robbs, Don Smith, Brandon Sikes, Mike Brown Jason Gandolph – ESTATE OF ASHLI BABBITT)
COUNT IV Negligent Supervision, Discipline, and Retention of Lt. Byrd (Capitol Police, Capitol Police Board, et al. – ESTATE OF ASHLI BABBITT)
COUNT V Negligent Training (Capitol Police, Capitol Police Board, et al. – ESTATE OF ASHLI BABBITT)
COUNT VI Survival Action (Assault and Battery; Negligence; Negligent Supervision, Discipline, and Retention; Negligent Training – ESTATE OF ASHLI BABBITT)
COUNT VII Wrongful Death (Assault and Battery; Negligence; Negligent Supervision, Discipline, and Retention; Negligent Training – AARON BABBITT)
The complaint, in my view, raises credible allegations that warrant serious review. The Justice Department is likely to seek threshold grounds for dismissal, but the case could offer needed answers to a number of questions. Many of us were not satisfied with the review of the government of the shooting. Discovery would allow for a new review of the underlying record.
The family is being represented by Judicial Watch.
Here is the complaint: Babbitt v. United States
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 21:00 - Parks Service Seeks To Remove William Penn Statue To Make Philadelphia More "Welcome And Inclusive"
Parks Service Seeks To Remove William Penn Statue To Make Philadelphia More “Welcome And Inclusive”
New mayor, same woke insanity.
The National Park Service in Philadelphia is now looking for public comment on its plans to “rehabilitate” Welcome Park in the Old City section of Philadelphia by removing the park’s statue of William Penn. In other words, we’re back to tearing down statues again…
After all, why keep a racist, misogynistic, totally un-woke monument honoring the patriarchy of William Penn at……the park located at the site of of William Penn’s former home? It’s not like he founded the province of Pennsylvania or something…
The “Welcome Park” site was completed in its current form back in 1982, according to 6ABC, who says that park officials want to “reenvision the park and expand the interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia to make it more welcoming and inclusive for visitors.”
This initiative has involved consultation with representatives from various indigenous groups such as the Haudenosaunee, Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, Shawnee Tribe, and Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
The NPS is seeking public comment on the proposed plan here. “The reimagined Welcome Park maintains certain aspects of the original design such as the street grid, the rivers and the east wall while adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches,” their website says.
Most people just want to know when the insanity is going to stop…
hey new @PhillyMayor who i am giving a chance to, isn’t it time to stop this nonsense and focus on issues that matter, like crime?
— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) January 7, 2024
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…and why the National Park Service is spending and re-spending our tax money to build and then tear down statutes…
If @SpeakerJohnson had a backbone, rather than a collar connected to Schumer’s leash, he would have already called for defunding the @NatlParkService https://t.co/tnq48QmIkU
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 8, 2024
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Perhaps its another job for the Italians in South Philly who took mattes into their own hands defending the Christopher Columbus statue at Marconi Plaza some years back. As a refresher, here’s how they handled the complaints of the woke:
South Philly guys are defending the Christopher Columbus statue and just slashed the bike tires of an Antifa guy who was harassing them pic.twitter.com/wsm4ijYADl
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 14, 2020
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 20:40 - Shale Tycoon Harold Hamm Wants To Lure Gen Z To The Oil Industry
Shale Tycoon Harold Hamm Wants To Lure Gen Z To The Oil Industry
By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com
Shale tycoon Harold Hamm and U.S. and European supermajors are looking to support university courses in petroleum engineering and related disciplines in a bid to attract young talent to the industry that’s not viewed favorably by Millennials and Generation Z.
Harold Hamm, the U.S. shale pioneer who founded Continental Resources, has donated to establish the Hamm Institute for American Energy at Oklahoma State University. At the end of 2021, the Harold Hamm Foundation and Continental Resources announced a combined $50 million gift to create the Hamm Institute for American Energy.
“We believe in a world where every person has access to the reliable, affordable and sustainable energy they need to thrive,” says Hamm, who is chairman of the Hamm Institute for American Energy.
Speaking to the Financial Times last week, Hamm said that “We are going to be using oil for the next 50 years and ‘clean burning’ natural gas probably for the next 100 or 150 years.”
“We want to get the next generation of gamechangers involved,” Hamm told FT.
A shortage of skilled workers drove last year inflationary pressures on energy projects in the U.S. and in Texas, along with higher interest rates and higher costs of materials. Some major LNG projects in the Gulf area in Texas could struggle to find enough skilled workers to execute the projects on time and on budget.
“Labor availability is a big issue in blue-collar areas. It is hard to find employees, and wage rate requirements continue to increase,” one executive at an oil and gas support services firm said in comments in the Dallas Fed Energy Survey for the second quarter of 2023.
Another executive, at an exploration and production (E&P) firm, commented,
“Labor is hard to find. Dirty-fossil-fuels stigma drives younger talent away.”
Some of those who are not driven away by the “dirty business” stigma are being poached by technology firms, data centers, Tesla, SpaceX, and other jobs in computing and engineering.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 20:20 - These Are The Best US Cities For Entry-Levels Jobs
These Are The Best US Cities For Entry-Levels Jobs
The anxieties around a first-job are immense: fear of the unknown, performance pressure, and the need to navigate new professional environments.
But good pay can help manage these worries. Lots and more has been written on which careers are the highest-paid, but how does geography factor into the equation?
To find the best U.S. city and state for well-paid entry-level jobs, NeoMam Studios and Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao visualize data from Resume.io showing the percentage of local entry-level job listings that offer a salary above (and below) a city or state’s median hourly wages.
Ranked: 50 U.S. Cities By Entry-Level Job Pay
This dataset covers each U.S. state, as well as Washington, D.C. and 50 major cities. Median wage data is sourced from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the number of entry-level jobs and their pay rates from Indeed.com.
Bozeman, Montana (nicknamed “Boz Angeles” for its constant stream of celebrity visitors) and Iowa City both have nearly 88% of their entry-level jobs promising above their state’s median pay.
For an apples-to-apples comparison however, Iowa City’s median wage comes in slightly higher at $22.52/hour compared to Bozeman’s $20.71/hour.
Note: Toggle the embedded table between U.S. cities and states ranked by best entry-level jobs.
Another Midwestern urban center, Kansas City, ranked fourth, promises a high likelihood of above-media pay for first-job hunters (83.1%).
Generally, the more populous the city, the more jobs, and the higher the likelihood of beating median pay. However larger cities that are not the state capital also seem to do well on this metric: Fort Smith, Arkansas (ranked 5th), Lexington, Kentucky (6th), New Haven, Connecticut (7th), and Oakland, California (8th).
Ranked: U.S. States By Entry-Level Job Pay
Click to view this graphic in a higher-resolution.
In South Dakota, and Montana, ranked first and second in the state by best entry-level pay ranks, more than three-quarters of junior role listings offer pay above the state’s median wage.
This works out more than $19.17/hour ($39,900/year) for South Dakota and $20.29/hour ($42,200/year) for Montana for their entry-level jobs.
In fact the first nine states on the ranks, where nearly 70% of the entry-level job listings offer above-state-median pay, are from the Midwest or West.
Kentucky, ranked 10th, has 67% of their starter job openings stating above median pay ($40,200/year), the highest from the American South.
Predictably, states with higher median pay (California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, New York) have lower numbers of entry-level job openings which promise pay above that level.
However, exceptions occur. For example, Wyoming’s median pay comes in around the same as Maine ($21.80/hour) but 68% of its entry-level job listings offer median-beating pay, compared to Maine’s 57%.
Hawaii is the worst state for a decent starting salary, with two-thirds of the analyzed listings offering below the median pay of $48,600/year. Most of the state’s jobs are concentrated in the tourism industry, part of the service sector, known for long hours, seasonal work, and low pay.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 20:00 - Former NRA Executive Pleads Guilty To Fraud, Agrees to Testify In NY Civil Trial
Former NRA Executive Pleads Guilty To Fraud, Agrees to Testify In NY Civil Trial
Authored by Allan Zhong via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A settlement was reached on the same day as Wayne LaPierre, longtime NRA head, resigned.
National Rifle Association members listen to speakers during the NRA’s annual Meetings and Exhibits at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on May 4, 2013. (Johnny Hanson/Houston Chronicle via AP) Joshua Powell, former operations director of the National Rifle Association (NRA), has reached a settlement with the New York attorney general’s office over civil claims of fraud and abuse.
Mr. Powell was employed by the NRA between 2016 and January 2020.
The lawsuit brought by Letitia James, New York attorney general, alleged that Mr. Powell breached his fiduciary duties and failed to administer the charitable assets entrusted to his care by using his powers as an officer and senior executive of the NRA to covert charitable assets for the benefit of himself and his family members.
He admitted the alleged wrongdoing and agreed to pay $100,000 to the NRA, to not serve as an officer in a nonprofit or charitable organization, and to testify against the NRA at the demand of Ms. James’s office, according to the settlement.
Mr. Powell’s settlement was filed on the same day as the resignation of Wayne LaPierre, the longtime head of the NRA.
“Joshua Powell’s admission of wrongdoing and Wayne LaPierre’s resignation confirm what we have alleged for years: the NRA and its senior leaders are financially corrupt,” Ms. James said in a statement. “More than three years ago, my office sued the NRA and its senior management for financial abuse and mismanagement. These are important victories in our case, and we look forward to ensuring the NRA and the defendants face justice for their actions.”
NRA officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a press conference at the office of the attorney general in New York on Sept. 21, 2022. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) Ms. James sued Mr. LaPierre and three co-defendants—NRA general counsel John Frazer, retired finance chief Wilson Phillips, and Mr. Powell—in 2020, alleging that they cost the organization tens of millions of dollars from questionable expenditures that included lucrative consulting contracts for ex-employees and gifts for friends and vendors.
Mr. LaPierre is accused of setting himself up with a $17 million contract with the NRA if he were to exit the organization and spending NRA money on travel consultants, luxury car services, and private flights for himself and his family—including more than $500,000 on eight trips to the Bahamas over three years.
As punishment, Ms. James is asking that Mr. LaPierre and the other defendants be ordered to reimburse the NRA and that they be banned from serving in leadership positions of any charitable organizations conducting business in New York, which would bar them from any NRA involvement.
The trial is scheduled to start on Jan. 8.
LaPierre Resigns
Mr. LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president and CEO, announced on Jan. 5 that he’s resigning, just days before the start of the trial over allegations that he treated himself to millions of dollars in private jet flights, yacht trips, African safaris, and other extravagant perks at the powerful gun rights organization’s expense.
“With pride in all that we have accomplished, I am announcing my resignation from the NRA,” Mr. LaPierre said in a statement released by the organization, which he said he was exiting for health reasons. “I’ve been a card-carrying member of this organization for most of my adult life, and I will never stop supporting the NRA and its fight to defend Second Amendment freedom. My passion for our cause burns as deeply as ever.”
Andrew Arulanandam, a top NRA lieutenant who has served as Mr. LaPierre’s spokesperson, will take on his roles on an interim basis, according to the organization.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 19:40 - Here’s Where COVID Mask Mandates Are Coming Back Across The US
Here’s Where COVID Mask Mandates Are Coming Back Across The US
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Some hospitals and local governments have opted to reimpose mask mandates at health care facilities as officials have cited a rise in various respiratory illnesses such as the flu and COVID-19.
A health care worker in a file photo. (Mark Felix/AFP /AFP via Getty Images) The mandates have been imposed in the past week or so in New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington state, and more.
Pennsylvania
Over the past weekend, four hospital systems implemented masking requirements in and around the Philadelphia area. Visitors and staff at Cooper University Health Care facilities have to wear face coverings in examination rooms and patient rooms starting Jan. 5.
On Jan. 6, Jefferson Health said that it would temporarily require all staff members in certain locations to wear masks until Jan. 29, and the University of Pennsylvania Health System has said it will require masks during all patient care and patient-facing procedures.
“Patients who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 10 days or who have symptoms of COVID-19—cough, fever, sore throat, nasal congestion—must wear a mask,” the hospital said in a statement, according to CBS News. “Visitors who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 10 days or who have symptoms of COVID-19 are not allowed to enter any facility, even with a mask.”
Main Line Health also said it would start mandating masks starting Jan. 4, including for patients and visitors, it was reported.
California
Los Angeles County announced last week that it will require masking in certain hospital settings when the county hits a medium level for COVID-19 hospitalizations, which it and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines as 10 to 10.9 new hospital admissions for every 100,000 people over a seven-day period.
“Over the past week in Los Angeles County, there have been notable, yet not unexpected, increases in COVID-19 reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths,” the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a statement.
It added, “While recent increases are significant, they remain considerably below last winter’s peak and common-sense protections are strongly recommended to help curb transmission and severe illness as the new year begins.”
Also in California, several counties around the San Francisco Bay Area have implemented a mask mandate that started in early November because of an anticipated rise in respiratory illnesses over the winter season. That mandate will end in April, officials have said. Near Los Angeles, officials in San Luis Obispo County issued a similar mandate last year.
New York
New York City’s government implemented a mask mandate for all of its 11 public hospitals and various health care and long-term care centers across the five boroughs, according to an announcement several days ago.
“What we don’t want is staffing shortages, right?” the city’s health commissioner, Ashwin Vasan, told local media outlet WABC TV on Jan. 3. “When we saw the omicron wave in 2022, the biggest issues were not only people getting sick, but that we had a lot of front-line health workers, they were out with COVID.”
Last month and in the fall of 2023, several upstate and western New York hospitals reimplemented mask mandates during an earlier, smaller rise in COVID-19.
Illinois
Several hospital systems and companies also started requiring masks in recent days. And Cook County Health, which encompasses Chicago, and Endeavor Health in the Chicago area, is again requiring masks at its facilities. The requirement came after the Illinois Department of Public Health sent a letter to hospitals suggesting they reimpose masking.
Other States
Hospitals in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Delaware, and Washington state have imposed similar mask requirements, according to reports.
In North Carolina, Cape Fear Valley Health said it would require masks for all patients and visitors. Meanwhile, UNC Health, Duke Health, and WakeMed started restricting young visitors from some inpatient areas last week, local media reported.
Kaiser Permanente said last month that it would reimpose mask mandates at locations across Washington state. However, that rule affects only staff who work with patients.
In Delaware, TidalHealth announced on Dec. 28, 2023, that it’s mandating masks for all hospital visitors in patients’ rooms. That rule was initiated in “an effort to protect the most vulnerable of our population from close contact with persons that may be contagious but not yet have symptoms,” according to the hospital.
Several hospitals in Wisconsin also imposed face-covering requirements starting late last month.
While officials at the hospitals have said that COVID-19 cases are on the rise, the CDC’s historical data suggest that the number of cases is smaller than a year ago. For the week ending Dec. 30, 2023, hospitalizations stood at about 34,800; on Dec. 31, 2022, the number was more than 44,500.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 19:20 - Victor Davis Hanson: A Culture In Collapse
Victor Davis Hanson: A Culture In Collapse
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,
In the last six months, we have borne witness to many iconic moments evidencing the collapse of American culture.
The signs are everywhere and cover the gamut of politics, the economy, education, social life, popular culture, foreign policy, and the military. These symptoms of decay share common themes.
Our descent is self-induced; it is not a symptom of a foreign attack or subterfuge. Our erosion is not the result of poverty and want, but of leisure and excess. We are not suffering from existential crises of famine, plague, or the collapse of our grid and fuel sources. Prior, far poorer, and war-torn generations now seem far better off than what we are becoming.
What is happening to us is not due to an adherence to a too strict conservative tradition but is almost exclusively the wage of the progressive project.
In short, we are seeing fissures that America has not experienced in our cultural history since the Civil War. The radical Left apparently feels such chaos, anarchy, and nihilism are necessary to topple past norms and customs and thereby adhere to a socialist, equity agenda that no one in normal times would stomach.
Some of the decay is existential and fundamental; some anecdotal and illustrative. But either way, while decline came about gradually over decades, its sudden and abrupt chaos during the three years of Biden’s presidency has shocked Americans.
Financial Implosion
As long as interest rates were de facto zero, both parties ran up gargantuan debt. Now the national debt has hit $34 trillion. But two odd things have also happened under the Biden administration that are beginning to undermine the very existence of the U.S. financial system:
1) Interest rates have soared from de facto zero and are on a trajectory to 5.5%—meaning that the interest on the debt, in theory, in the not too distant future will require 20 percent of the annual budget, squeezing out both entitlements and defense.
2) Yet the upcoming rendezvous with economic Armageddon has not slowed a Biden administration intent on borrowing nearly $2 trillion in the current fiscal year.
The public is baffled: is the Left playing chicken with us? Is the strategy to “gorge the beast,” thereby demanding even higher federal taxes, which, combined with many state taxes, now exceed 50 percent of one’s income?
Is the goal massive “redistribution” by ensuring “equity” by gouging the middle class and rich? Or is the left’s goal more nihilistic: to force a remedy for insolvency by ensuring high inflation, renouncing government debt, or government appropriation of private capital?
Military Crises
Americans have lost deterrence abroad.
Confusion reigns among the public over why the Biden administration fled from Afghanistan, leaving behind billions of dollars of munitions and equipment in the hands of Taliban terrorists. Why did it allow a Chinese spy balloon to traverse the continental U.S. with impunity?
And why did Biden signal to Russia when preparing an invasion of Ukraine that our reaction would depend on the magnitude of Putin’s offensive? Why has military recruitment cratered, shorting the Pentagon of thousands of soldiers?
Why do Iranian proxies attack almost daily U.S. installations abroad and ships in the Red Sea, apparently without fear of reprisal? Why did Hamas slaughter Israelis on October 7? What explains our indifference or ennui?
Is the answer a deliberate effort to curb supposed American “arrogance” by once more leading from behind? Are we rebooting the Obama Administration’s bankrupt idea of empowering an Iranian crescent from Teheran to Damascus to Beirut to Gaza to ensure “creative tension” between Israel and the moderate Arabs and Persian-led theocratic Shiites?
Why do our officer classes rotate in and out of lucrative military consultantships, lobbying billets, and board membership on corporate defense contractors—as if their innate talents rather than their lifelong contacts with current serving procurement officers earned their exorbitant fees?
Why did our retired four stars with disdain violate the uniform code of military justice by serially and publicly trashing the commander in chief? Why has the Pentagon revolutionized the entire system of recruitment, promotions, and tenure in the armed forces by predicating them in large part on race, gender, and sexual orientation rather than merit or battlefield efficacy? Did we learn anything from the old Soviet commissariat system? Would we prefer to lose a war by promoting equity than win one by ensuring liberty?
Why did the top brass go after supposedly “insurrectionist” white males (who died at twice their demographics during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan) in the military, only to discover from their own internal investigations that no such cabal of “domestic terrorists” existed, and only to drive out thousands more of the maligned by stupidly requiring COVID vaccinations from those with naturally acquired immunity?
In sum, the U.S. will either undergo a post-Vietnam-like revolution in the military or, in late Roman imperial fashion, our armed forces will be unable to defend the interests or indeed, the very safety, of the U.S.
Race
Why, when so-called non-white ethnicities and races were achieving parity with or exceeding the majority population in per capita income and when racial intermarriage was commonplace, did we blow up the values of the civil rights movement and revert to precivilizational tribalism? Who were the sophists who convinced us that racially segregated dorms, safe spaces, and graduations, or using race as an arbiter of admissions and hiring, were not racist?
When did we lump together an entire cadre of diverse ancestries, ethnicities, religions, politics, classes, and values and dub them all “white,” and then smear them collectively in stereotypical fashion? When did we calibrate race as the chief determinative factor in our identities? Have we become premodern tribal people—feuding clans right out of the Norse sagas, ghosts of the Balkans nursing ancient grievances and hatreds? Since when in history has a nation’s “diversity” ever been preferable to its “unity”?
The Sexes
Did anyone in, say, 2004 believe that in just twenty years, the Left would try to mainstream the previously rare medical malady of gender dysphoria into a transgendered civil rights issue by insisting on three rather than two sexes?
Would anyone have believed that leftists, gays, and feminists would have done their best to destroy a half-century of female athletic achievement by allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports and thereby erase the record performances of three generations of women?
Would anyone have believed that a feminist and accomplished swimmer like Riley Gaines would be cornered, swarmed, threatened, and barricaded in at a university for the crime of daring to state the obvious: that transgendered women are still, in terms of their musculoskeletal physiques and frames, males and thereby have no business competing in women’s sports?
Would anyone have believed that a gay senate aide would have engaged in passive, unprotected sex in a public and hallowed Senate chamber, filmed in graphic detail his act of sodomy, had it circulated among friends and social media, and then, when outrage followed, claimed victimhood by accusing those offended of being homophobic toward him and his active homosexual partner?
Lawlessness
We are witnessing the steady erasure of jurisprudence, both civil and criminal. Does the law as we knew it a mere decade ago still exist? Massive looting with impunity is now largely exempt from justice in our major blue-state cities. In Compton, a van slams into a Mexican bakery as waiting crowds swarm, loot, and destroy the business. And for what? Some free pies and cakes? Or the nihilist delight in ruining the livelihood of a hardworking family business?
Such smash-and-grabs rob stores of billions of dollars in revenue each year. Can we even comprehend that employees and security guards are now ordered to stand down, as if the apprehension of such thieves might in some way seem illiberal or racist?
Does anyone even care that pro-Hamas protestors—many in America as guests on green cards and student visas—shouted support for the October 7 massacre of Jews, screamed for the destruction of Israel and the Jews in it, shut down the Manhattan and Golden Gate Bridges, defiled the Lincoln Memorial and White House gates, and disrupted Christmas celebrations in our major cities with complete exemption? Is storming the California legislature, and disrupting it in session, now a felony in the manner of those convicted after January 6, or do we have two sets of laws, dependent on ideology, race, and party affiliation?
In one of the most chilling videos in memory, Las Vegas Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus was recently violently attacked by an unshackled career felon defendant (with three prior violent felony convictions and facing additional new felony counts). The assailant, Deobra Redden, leaped over the justice’s bench with ease and began beating her and pulling her hair before two bailiffs, with great difficulty, managed to restrain him. Why was Redden out on parole given his violent record, and why was he not shackled given his toxic past? His self-admitted effort to kill the judge, his ability nearly to pull it off, and the record of past leniency accorded him are a commentary on a sick society.
But then again, in our major cities, George-Soros-subsidized prosecutors have all but destroyed civil society. They have been systematically releasing felons with violent criminal records on the same day they are arrested, freeing convicted felons early from prisons and jails, and sabotaging the law by arbitrary enforcement on the grounds that it is inherently either unfair or racist.
The post civilization civil bookend to that precivilizational subterfuge was a systematic legal effort, for the first time in American history, to remove in an election year the leading primary and general election candidate Donald Trump from various state ballots. The Soviet-like charge was that he was guilty of “insurrection,” a crime he has never been charged with, much less convicted of. Meanwhile, three state prosecutors and one special federal counsel—all leftists and some previously bragging in their own election campaigns of their intention to destroy Trump—have charged candidate Trump with an array of felonies. The vast majority of Americans agree Trump would never have been so charged had he just not sought to seek reelection—or had been a liberal Democrat.
Education
In ancient times, the President of the Harvard Corporation was a signature scholar and intellectual, befitting Harvard’s own self-regard as the world’s most preeminent university. No longer.
Now-resigned president Claudine Gay’s meteoric career was based on a flimsy record of a mere 11 articles—the majority of them plagiarized. Her entire career was fueled by the tired pretext that the privileged Gay was somehow deserving of special deference given her race and gender.
Confronted with such corruption, the Harvard Corporation, its legal team, and 700 faculty sought to downplay Gay’s intellectual theft. Indeed, they smeared her critics as racist—only then to deal with her new billet as a professor of Political Science with a long record of plagiarism that was exempt from the sort of punishments dealt out to students and faculty for less egregious defenses.
How did Ivy League degrees so quickly become mostly certifications of ideological and woke orthodoxy? Or is it worse than that? Does a Stanford history major or Yale literature graduate know anything, respectively, about the Civil War or Shakespeare’s plays? Do they even know that we, the public, know that they don’t know?
Was Elizabeth Warren really Harvard’s first law professor of color? Was Claudine Gay truly an impressive and respected scholar of political science? Are the governing members of the Harvard Corporation the nation’s best and brightest?
How in less than five years did our elite universities destroy meritocracy, abolish SAT requirements, require DEI oaths and pledges, and mirror the worst commissariat institutions of the old Warsaw Pact nations and Soviet Union? How and why these elite universities blew themselves up in a mere decade will baffle historians for decades to come.
The End of Sovereignty
The Biden administration has shattered federal immigration law, as some 10 million illegal entries will have crossed unlawfully and with impunity in the first Biden term—all by intent. The southern border is not merely porous; it no longer even exists.
Did the Left want new constituents? New entitlement recipients to grow government and raise taxes on the clingers and deplorables?
Did it want a larger DEI base to replace the steady exodus of non-whites from left-wing agendas? Does it shun sovereignty, preferring a global village without arbitrary borders? Do these utopians in Malibu and Martha’s Vineyard similarly feel their own yards and grounds need no walls, no barriers, and no boundaries to deny the underprivileged their rights to enjoy what the predatory classes possess?
In this new America of ours, Joe Biden is hale and savvy, while Hunter did nothing wrong.
Our heroes are Dylan Mulvaney, Gen. Rachel Levine, and the two Sams, Bankman-Fried and Brinton.
In today’s America, Karin Jean-Pierre is truthful, while Alejandro Mayorkas is honest. An innocent and saintly George Floyd was randomly murdered; his death proof of systemic police racism. And defunding the police brought calm and quiet, in the way our border is secure and the homeless are mere victims.
Dr. Jill is an impressive academic. Oprah and LeBron are the downtrodden and victimized. Gen. Mark Milley is a brave maverick, and so is Adam Schiff. The flight from Afghanistan marked a brilliantly organized retreat.
The Chinese balloon really did not take too many pictures of sensitive areas. January 6 was an armed insurrection, preplanned by fiery conspirators and revolutionaries. Ashli Babbitt deserved to be blasted in the neck for entering a broken window.
Kamala Harris is a wordsmith. Russian collusion really happened. So did Russian laptop disinformation. Christopher Steele’s dossier was mostly true, in the fashion of Claudine Gay’s dissertation and Barack Obama’s memoir. And 51 former intelligence authorities bravely came forward to offer their expertise in certifying that Hunter’s laptop was cooked up in Moscow.
With all this, what do we think the Iranians, Putin’s Russians, the communist Chinese, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas now think of the United States?
That we are the nation that won World War II or fled from Afghanistan? Did the eight million who broke our laws and simply walked across our border respect us, fear us, admire us, or come here to manipulate and use us? Did Hamas appreciate the hundreds of millions of dollars we gave them, in the same way Iran was friendlier after we lifted the sanctions?
In sum, American civilization has been turned upside down, and we have a rendezvous soon with the once unthinkable and unimaginable.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 19:00 - Massive Explosion At Fort Worth Hotel Leaves 11 Injured
Massive Explosion At Fort Worth Hotel Leaves 11 Injured
At least 11 people were injured after a suspected natural gas explosion that blew out at least two floors of a 20-story high-rise hotel in downtown Fort Worth on Monday afternoon.
🚨#UPDATE: The ATF says the explosion at the Sandman Signature Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas was caused by natural gas witnesses inside of the hotel said they smelt something like paint burning before the explosion occurred pic.twitter.com/Yyc9V919s0
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) January 8, 2024
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Nine people were hospitalized – with two of the injured in serious condition, and one in critical condition.
Authorities say witnesses smelled something like paint burning before the explosion occurred, which officials chalked up to a natural gas leak.
“There is a smell of gas here in downtown. We’re not sure if the smell of gas was caused from the explosion and the fire itself or if that’s what caused the explosion. But that’s what we’re looking at,” said Fort Worth Fire Department spox, Craig Trojacek.
MedStar said nine people were hospitalized. Four of those patients were sent to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth.
Fort Worth Fire said they have firefighters inside the building searching for survivors who may be trapped. Trojacek said they’ll assess the stability of the building after search and rescue is complete. One person reportedly remains unaccounted for.
From Texas Sky Ranger, glass and part of the building’s facade from at least the first two floors on multiple sides of the building were visible along 8th Street and in a parking lot on the building’s west side. –NBC DFW
One witness working at a nearby coffee shop told NBC 5 that he heard the explosion and saw debris and white smoke coming from the building. Another witness, a valet named Adam, said he was walking in the area when another valet told him to avoid 8th street.
🚨 BREAKING: Explosion at Fort Worth, Texas hotel with mass casualty incident declared pic.twitter.com/vMZaIZ3wA5
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 8, 2024
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“The whole first floor, the Sandman Hotel, right next to the garage where we park our cars … it’s like, everything is blown up. People coming out of the building … it was kinda scary. I don’t know what to think. I was 3 to 5 seconds from turning down the street. It could have been me. I seen [sic] a lady she was walking down that street as well and she got caught up in it. It’s very sad,” he said.
Explosion at Fort Worth hotel this afternoon, 11 injuries reported, one missing (🎥 IG/ curious.earthlings) pic.twitter.com/4uNtViheYF
— Dallas Texas TV (@DallasTexasTV) January 8, 2024
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Officials cordoned off a two-block area around the hotel, while Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare directed staff at downtown county buildings to close early for the day – with the exception of jails and law enforcement.
EXPLOSION in Fort Worth Texas at Sandman Hotel
At least 11 people are injured – local Fox news reportpic.twitter.com/BDyYzRj469— Brendan (@BrendanMcInnis) January 8, 2024
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 18:40 - The AARP Just Told Its 38 Million Members To Get An 8th (Yes, Eighth!!) Shot Of mRNA
The AARP Just Told Its 38 Million Members To Get An 8th (Yes, Eighth!!) Shot Of mRNA
Authored by Alex Berenson via ‘Unreported Truths’ substack,
AARP? Or AARPfizer?
The lobbying group for older Americans just told its nearly 38 million members to “hustle” for another Covid jab, even if they have already had five boosters.
See for yourself. The following question-and-answer column ran in the organization’s December “AARP Bulletin”:
AARP is open to anyone 50 or older.
The column does not specify a narrower or higher age range for its recommendation.
Thus it implies that even a 50-year-old who has not already had six “Covid boosters” needs to “catch up” with another immediately.
Keep in mind that someone who has had “five Covid boosters” has actually received seven mRNA jabs – the initial two-shot primary vaccination regimen, followed by five boosters.
Thus AARP is suggesting its members should be taking their eighth jab of mRNA in the last three years.
Yet scientists have essentially no safety data beyond a third shot, much less a fourth or more, and thus no way of knowing if the risks of repeated mRNA dosing rise with each shot.
AARP’s unbelievably bad advice doesn’t end there.
The column then goes on to tell members that “the most recent shot, which was released in September 2023, isn’t actually a booster. It’s a new vaccine that targets the latest variants.”
A what-now? A new vaccine?
Wow.
Guess it must have gone through the randomized trials that are required in the United States for any new drug or vaccine.
No?
Let’s just call it a new vaccine anyway, since our elderly readers have gotten kinda suspicious of the failure of the Covid shots they’ve already taken.
But the article ends on a happy note: Researchers are even working on a combined COVID-flu vaccine, so a few years from now, a single shot from your doctor or pharmacy may be all you need to protect yourself fully…
If the side effects from the 23 mRNA jabs you’ve taken by then don’t kill you first!
(No, you shouldn’t. REALLY.)
* * *
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 18:35 - Let The (Political) Games Begin
Let The (Political) Games Begin
Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
“To an authoritarian ruling elite insane narratives serve as both loyalty test and humiliation ritual.”
– Kit Knightly
The ordeal of the holidays, and the void of action that attends it, is over. Now, history resumes its awesome out-spooling. Will it be tyranny, collapse, war, civil war, renewal? Probably some wicked combo of all that.
The players are taking the field again. The great engine of the game comes back to life with a cough and a rumble.
Did you notice that “Joe Biden” ceremonially kicked off his “reelection campaign” with that speech at Valley Forge, blaring the “insurrection” klaxon? Is it not astounding that half the people in our country have no idea that the joke is on them? “Joe Biden” is marking time in the oval office until the moment he must use his unique legal prerogative to pardon himself and all the members of his family for their roles in the influence-peddling racket he fronted as veep. . . and then he’ll gallantly step aside.
The optimum play would be to hold off on that until just before the Democratic Party’s convention, where a claque of super-delegates can pick somebody else in a back room filled with estrogen vapors.
It kind of depends on whether a faction of corruption-resistant Republicans will ante up for that impeachment inquiry we keep hearing about. Despite the obvious bullshit on CNN about “no evidence,” there is actually a garbage barge of evidence steaming up the Potomac to prove that “Joe Biden” sold out his country. It simply needs to be laid out with brutal decorum in the proper setting.
The catch is that a House committee can report out a bill of impeachment – as we’ve seen before – but a trial in a Democrat-majority Senate would probably fail to bring a conviction. The additional catch is that even so, the whole country will have watched the sordid spectacle and seen enough proof of malfeasance to foul the waters for the Party of Chaos in the November election, no matter who heads the ticket.
It must also be obvious that the party is running out of lawfare tricks for shackling Mr. Trump. Jack Smith’s J-6 case is a dog’s breakfast of erroneous supposition, misprision, and persecutorial misconduct, soon to be wrecked by the Supreme Court; the Mar-a-Lago raid case is a patent fraud; the Fulton County, GA, RICO case is a Fani Willis masturbation fantasy, and the two New York raps under DA Alvin Bragg and AG Letitia James will be laughed out of appeals courts. Anyway, Mr. Trump seems to thrive on the noxious vapors thrown off by these rancid actions. If all these genius moves fail, how else can they stop the Golden Golem of Greatness. . . and his promise of keen retribution for the serial hoaxes run on him and all the fiendish trips laid on the nation since 2016?
They can try to kill him. Can you put it past our “intel community”? It is exactly that nucleus of the DC blob that has the most to fear from a second Trump term. Dozens of them will be charged with sedition and even treason, a hanging crime. And if they succeed in whacking Mr. Trump, that would only leave a huge opening for Bobby Kennedy, who has an even bigger axe to grind against the agency that rubbed-out his father and his uncle.
We held a meet-up here this weekend in my little upstate New York town to make plans for the petition drive in April-May to get RFKJr on the New York ballot. I told the group that much as I would relish seeing Donald Trump mop up the floor with the people who perverted the rule of law and just about spatchcocked our country, I believe Bobby Kennedy would be a better choice to lead us through the dark defile of history that circumstance has jammed us in. He is just as determined to expunge the horrific blob corruption, but without Mr. Trump’s exasperating artifice and grandiosity. If anything, RFKJr appears unpretentiously authentic, respectful, resolute, and reverent about history’s tragic arc. You can imagine him persuading that deranged half of the country that the blob is not on their side, either.
So far, this scenario has left out several of the other dispiriting plays that could get our country into even deeper trouble than mere domestic politics offer. The “Joe Biden” regime, its NeoCon fellow travelers, and its mysterious globalist taskmasters, appear avid to start a big war, most likely by going after Iran — only to suck in Russia, Turkey, and a host of miscellaneous Islamic maniacs against us, and not in a way that radiates a great outcome.
The invasion of stateless mutts across the Mexican border looks like an accessory to that play, since it includes countless thousands of potential saboteurs who can wreak havoc in the homeland while our obsolete aircraft carrier groups get blown up in the Mediterranean. Even registered Democrats might finally notice that the open border is a problem.
And, black swans aside — because they are aside and unknowable by definition — there’s the excellent prospect of a financial fiasco in the works that would wipe the smiles off the smug faces of all the remaining elite Wokesters, blob handmaidens, and news media myrmidons who depend on Wall Street to pay their mortgages. The national debt is zooming at a trillion dollars every month or so now. You know that can’t go on, don’t you? If all else fails in this era of mass formation mind-fuckery, the disappearance of a whole lot of money might finally get people’s attention.
* * *
Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 18:20 - Israel Begins To Scale Back Gaza War, But Still Expects Fighting To Continue All Year
Israel Begins To Scale Back Gaza War, But Still Expects Fighting To Continue All Year
Israel is again welcoming US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for an official visit, but this time with a key announcement indicating its forces have “shifted” to a new, scaled-back phase of the war, in line with the Biden administration’s wishes. Blinken is in the region with a message to ‘limit’ the spread of war.
“The war shifted a stage,” IDF spokemsan Admiral Hagari told The New York Times, describing a planned reduction in both ground troops and airstrikes. “But the transition will be with no ceremony,” he said. “It’s not about dramatic announcements.”
Massive bombardment of the Strip in opening days of operation, via Reuters. Gaza’s Health Ministry has lately said the death toll after months of the Israeli military’s operation in response to Oct.7 has surpassed 23,000 – mostly civilian deaths. International outrage, particularly among Global South countries, has been steady. The White House has for weeks behind the scenes pressed Israeli officials to scale-back the mass killing, and to launch a more targeted campaign.
A big part of the pressure comes from the genocide case brought against Israel by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. To review of hearings which are set to be held Jan.11 and 12:
- South Africa alleges Israel’s actions in Gaza “are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part” of the Palestinian population in the enclave.
- Israel immediately rejected the case as “baseless,” but — unlike in previous cases at international tribunals — it decided to appear in front of the court because it’s a signatory to the Genocide Convention. Israel will be represented at the ICJ by the British barrister Malcolm Shaw.
Hagari said that operations in the northern half of the Strip have already begun to ebb, and that troop and reserve force reductions from the battlefield would continue. He also vowed the allowance of more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt.
But amid the mass Palestinian suffering, he emphasized, “We were the ones who were butchered,” on Oct.7 – in reference to the about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, slaughtered by Hamas.
Meanwhile, controversy has abounded after more videos from the battlefield have been leaked, such as the following:
Israel’s military releases footage of its soldiers detaining men from Gaza after stripping them off and forcing them to insult Hamas. pic.twitter.com/zLwHKznftm
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) January 8, 2024
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Israeli media describes:
Channel 12 airs a video ostensibly leaked by an IDF source showing a group of Palestinians stripped and bound after being detained by the Israeli military in northern Gaza.
One of the detainees is heard telling the troops, “For 17 years, we’ve lived under tyranny,” ostensibly referring to Hamas.
“When you arrived, we remained in our homes because we live in peace and love peace. If we were guilty of something, we would have left our homes and fled, but we live in our homes in peace,” he says.
And on the other side, Palestinian Islamic Jihad has released a new hostage ‘proof of life’ video, which Israeli officials say is part of their ongoing psychological warfare efforts…
🔴Palestinian Islamic Jihad releases proof of life video of Israeli hostage, Elad Katzir, as part of its psychological warfare pic.twitter.com/ye4M2h1NmV
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) January 8, 2024
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On Sunday, the head of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said he foresees a fight in Gaza that will continue through the entire year.
“The year 2024 will be challenging. We will be at war in Gaza,” IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said. “I don’t know if it will be all year long. We will be fighting in Gaza all year, that’s for sure, and this will also hold the other arenas, certainly in [the West Bank], to a certain state of alertness,” he added.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 18:00 - What Is Happening To College Sports?
What Is Happening To College Sports?
Authored by William Anderson via The Mises Institute,
On Monday night, January 8, the University of Michigan and the University of Washington football teams will vie for the collegiate national championship.
While championships always bring excitement to fans and participants alike, this year’s game brings attention to major changes that have occurred in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I in the past few years involving both monetary payments and mobility for athletes.
While there is excitement for the game, we are seeing undercurrents that some claim will “destroy college football” as we have known it. The major changes involve athletes being able to gain product endorsements or make money off their likeness (Name, Image, and Likeness, or NIL) as well as being able to transfer one time via the NCAA Transfer Portal with no restrictions and no waiting for a year. Lou Holtz, a Hall-of-Fame college football coach, voiced his own concerns:
The NIL and the transfer portal are both terrible for college athletics…I think that you go to school to get an education and to have that school be part of your diploma. … Why do we have athletics as part of college? Because you learn more lessons on a football field than you ever learn in a college classroom. You learn perseverance, you learn teamwork, you learn to wait your turn, you learn improvement. When you transfer, all you do is change the address of your problems. The problem’s with you.
Before going further, I will explain how previous rules affected collegiate athletes, having been a scholarship D-I athlete a half-century ago (track, University of Tennessee). For the most part, the rules that governed us have remained in place with some small changes here and there.
When I signed my athletic scholarship papers in 1971, I also signed the National Letter of Intent which bound me to the UT track program as long as I was enrolled there, much like the old Reserve Clause bound major league baseball players to their teams “in perpetuity” until they either were traded or released by their teams. If I had wanted to transfer to another program elsewhere, my coach would have to release me from my letter of intent before I could leave. Furthermore, if I went elsewhere, I’d not be able to compete in collegiate track until I had waited a year. (If I wanted to go to another program in the Southeastern Conference, I would have to sit out two years.)
While athletes did transfer even under those rules, it imposed high costs on those that left their university for another team and the terms made transferring unappealing. There was the loss of a scholarship as well as the problem of having to sit out of intercollegiate competition for a year, which for a competitive athlete is an eternity.
There were other major controls as well, which mirrored the kinds of restrictions that one might see in a regulated industry, and especially in the kind regulation that effectively turned industries into cartels. Until about the early 1980s, for example, the NCAA permitted only one collegiate football game to be broadcast each week, quite the contrast to today in which numerous games can be seen on television. Certainly, a true championship game like what college football fans can see Monday night would not have been remotely possible in an earlier era.
But, as Holtz and others have claimed, are the transfer portal (which essentially makes collegiate athletes one-time free agents) and the ability of athletes to now make money via endorsements or through social media threats to college sport? They certainly have not diminished interest in college football, which enjoys more television viewership today than it did a decade ago despite the fact that overall live TV viewership is down.
Certainly, the presence of both NIL and the Transfer Portal have changed the responsibilities of the coach, at least when it comes to retaining scholarship athletes. It is not just malcontents that might want to switch programs; there are times when another program may be a better fit for an athlete’s skill set.
Take Michael Penix, Jr., the quarterback of the University of Washington’s football team, for example. Penix played three seasons for Indiana University, much of it in futility for a lower-tier program. At Washington, he is the leader of a team playing for a national championship. The Transfer Portal made this transition possible.
If one sees the Transfer Portal as an open market for labor, it is easier to see how it would benefit both athletes and coaches. Michael Penix is not the only success story of the Portal. For every J.T. Daniels, the quarterback who used the Portal three times trying to find a good fit, there is a Hendon Hooker, who transferred to Tennessee after languishing at Virginia Tech and was named the Southeastern Conference’s Offensive Player of the Year in 2022.
While it is true that the Portal takes away some leverage that coaches might have over their athletes, it also helps level the recruiting playing field. Historically, teams have had to depend solely on their recruiting classes. Unlike professional sports in which championship teams get the last picks in the draft, championship collegiate teams generally get the best recruits year after year, the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia, two perennial powers, rake in top recruiting classes.
Lane Kiffin, football coach at the University of Mississippi, knows he cannot recruit at the level that Alabama’s Nick Saban and Georgia’s Kirby Smart, but he has brought in the top-rated transfer class that likely will make Ole Miss a contended in 2024. Far from “destroying” college football, the Portal is making it more competitive and more balanced.
In women’s sports, LSU won last year’s NCAA basketball tournament thanks in large part to transfer Angel Reese (from the University of Maryland). Since then, Reese has been able to parlay her fame into NIL deals and even appeared in the famous Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.
The NIL world might be more controversial, given the huge differences in money paid to athletes. Tennessee’s freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava is rumored to be tied to an $8 million NIL deal while most athletes at Tennessee probably will receive little to nothing. The University of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, considered the best collegiate basketball player this year, has close to a million dollars in endorsement, but most players are not going to be anywhere close to that category.
Not surprisingly, the main objections to NIL are that they
-
Will “create an uneven playing field” that will benefit some programs more than others.
-
Some athletes will place a higher priority on their NIL deals than their academic studies and loyalty to their teams.
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It will “blur the line” between amateur and professional sports.
These are many of the issues brought up when I was wearing my college team’s jersey and most likely these issues were at the fore when Knute Rockne stalked the sidelines at the University of Notre Dame a century ago. But as we have seen in recent years, college sports have not undermined the mission of American higher education. Instead, the leftist capture of US colleges and universities driven by identity politics has inflicted infinitely more damage than all of the college sports scandals combined.
Instead, we should see the opening of the Transfer Portal and the establishment of NIL as the redirection of resources and factors of production that in the long run will make college sports more interesting and more enjoyable. Contra Lou Holtz and others, the trappings of a free market will not “ruin” college sports.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 17:40 -
- United Finds "Loose Bolts" On 737 Max Doors After Emergency Inspection
United Finds “Loose Bolts” On 737 Max Doors After Emergency Inspection
Update (1722ET):
Sources tell the aviation blog The Air Current that “loose bolts and other parts on 737 Max 9 plug doors” have been found after inspections following the Alaska Airlines mid-air mishap when a door ripped off the plane over Portland on Friday.
BREAKING: United has found loose bolts and other parts on 737 Max 9 plug doors as it inspects its fleet of Boeing jets following the rapid depressurization aboard an Alaska jet, according to three people familiar with the findings. https://t.co/pcPx9I8Z0l (via @theaircurrent)
— Jon Ostrower (@jonostrower) January 8, 2024
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“The discrepant bolts and other parts on the plug doors have been found on at least five aircraft,” the source said.
Following @jonostrower‘s scoop on United finding 737-9s with loose door plug screws, a source sent this image of one of the door plug’s lower hinge bracket with a note that 2 screws are not screwed all the way in. https://t.co/sz1d997PdL pic.twitter.com/d6hgHAEb2u
— Edward Russell (@ByERussell) January 8, 2024
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The Air Current noted, “The findings aboard the five United aircraft will likely significantly widen the fall-out from the grounding, intensifying the focus on Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems. The pair together is responsible for the assembly, installation and quality checks of the aircraft structure.”
A United spokesperson confirmed the findings:
“Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug – for example, bolts that needed additional tightening.
“These findings will be remedied by our Tech Ops team to safely return the aircraft to service.”
There are 215 737 Max 9s in service across 11 major airlines.
Source: Bloomberg “Not sure that can be attributable to just one line. Might have to ground all Boeing aircraft delivered in a given window of time?” one X user said.
* * *
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy said cockpit recording data on the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet, which lost a fuselage panel that triggered a sudden decompression event near Portland on Friday, won’t be retrieved because the data was erased.
On Sunday, Homendy told reporters that after Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport – the ground crew did not pull the circuit breaker on the cockpit voice recorder, or black box, to preserve the audio, which only holds two hours or data, as required by federal law.
“There was a lot going on, on the flight deck and on the plane. It’s a very chaotic event. The circuit breaker for the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) was not pulled. The maintenance team went out to get it, but it was right at about the two-hour mark,” Homendy said.
She continued: “The cockpit voice recorder was completely overwritten. There was nothing on the cockpit voice recorder.”
Reuters noted US cockpit recorders only need to log two hours of data versus 25 hours in Europe for aircraft made after 2021.
The NTSB head said the audio could have shed more light on the moments leading up to the aircraft’s door ripping off the fuselage at 16,000 feet.
Boeing & Spirit AeroSystems Shares Plunge After Max 737-9 Max Door Blowout Incident https://t.co/8DD60MxY2I
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 8, 2024
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Homendy called on the “FAA to change the rulemaking” on cockpit recorders, extending the recording time from 2 to 25 hours for all aircraft.
“If that communication is not recorded, that is unfortunately a loss for us and a loss for the FAA and a loss for safety because that information is key not just for our investigation but for improving aviation safety,” she said.
During the decompression event, a new-generation Apple iPhone was sucked out of the plane and landed near a road in Portland. An X user named “Seanathan Bates” discovered the device, which did not appear to be damaged.
Found an iPhone on the side of the road… Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly in tact!
When I called it in, Zoe at @NTSB said it was the SECOND phone to be found. No door yet😅 pic.twitter.com/CObMikpuFd
— Seanathan Bates (@SeanSafyre) January 7, 2024
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In a separate report, Bloomberg Intelligence’s George Ferguson and Melissa Balzano believe the in-flight mishap “probably stems from a manufacturing oversight, a sign of deficiency at Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing’s key supplier.”
Diagram of a Boeing 737-9 mid-cabin door plug and components (Source: Boeing) pic.twitter.com/7qPF5MGAOX
— NTSB Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) January 8, 2024
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Don’t forget the Max program is a flying disaster.
As a reminder, the 737 Max was “designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys”.https://t.co/Z5rt2LoI3e
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 6, 2024
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The FAA has previously rejected the NTSB’s call to upgrade aircraft with new cockpit voice recorders. That should be reversed since Max jets “designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys’ continue to fly around.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/08/2024 – 17:22
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