ADP: The Nation Lost a Full 100,000 Manufacturing Jobs In November

—Ace

It picked up some jobs in leisure and hospitality, which this account points out usually represents people picking up 2nd jobs moonlighting as bartenders or the like.

Frog Capital @FrogNews

The ADP jobs report came in below expectations. I read it as really bad. We lost 100k manufacturing jobs. The only increase was leisure and hospitality. This often means people picking up 2nd jobs..

Beege Wellborn writes:

Another batch of information the Fed takes into account when determining rate increases is the unemployment rate and the ratio of job openings to job seekers, which, to their minds, has been too high (running about 2-1). Their target rate is 1.2 job openings for every job seeker. A report that also dropped this morning -- the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey or JOLTS -- provides that snapshot for them. The JOLTS came in on a downward slide, as well, and has people raising warning flags about the Fed being overly aggressive. Job openings sank by 353,000 and "quits" (people who leave their job for a better opportunity) hit lows not seen in the past year, even as hiring dries up.

More at the link.

Posted by Ace at 05:20 PM Comments

Is This Something?

—Ace

The Kathleen Kennedy version of an "Indiana Jones" film.

Rumor is -- if you can believe a masked alien who schemes to rule the earth -- they've tested several endings, and audiences hate them all.

The latest test screening was another big miss.

This should be another Future is Female disaster.

I think this was greenlit by Bob Iger too, but I'm not sure. Must have been-- they've been filming this for years. Production shut down during covid. So it's an Iger disaster.

In the 60s, Toho Studios was playing with the idea of making a King Kong vs. Frankenstein movie. They didn't do that, because they wound up pairing King Kong with an even bigger dance partner, Godzilla.

A Toho employee liked the idea of the abandoned King Kong vs. Frankenstein movie enough to start shooting his own The Legendary Wolfman vs. Godzilla movie, using the real Toho Godzilla suit. But he did not have the real Toho Godzilla rights.

Those are just details to be worked out later.

Inspired by classic Godzilla films and Hammer's Curse of the Werewolf, the plot involves a radioactive werewolf that grows to enormous size and rampages across the Japanese countryside where he meets a revived Godzilla, who had escaped after being trapped at the North Pole. In the classic tradition, the pair then battle it out with Godzilla being the 'good guy' -- or at least the monster who is going to cause the least amount of death and destruction. Inspired by the 1960s Showa era of Godzilla movies, the film was an authentic-looking pastiche and something that most fans of Japanese monster movies would enjoy.

Unfortunately for Nakajima and monster movie fans everywhere, he had not secured permission from Toho to use their most famous character. This was, perhaps, a mistake given that Toho is a notoriously litigious company. They got wind of the new project where it was still being edited -- perhaps because several of their former and current employees were working on it -- and issued a cease-and-desist. Although -- according to Nakajima at least -- some ten hours of footage had been shot, the film was never completely edited and quickly became a lost project.

Bits of the lost film have leaked out.

Although they never did King Kong vs. Frankenstein, they did make a movie about Frankenstein versus another giant kaiju, Baragon.

A YouTuber took clips from Godzilla vs. King Kong and married them up with clips from Frankenstein vs. Baragon to simulate what King Kong vs. Frankenstein might have looked like.

That's quality.

There were just a lot of bad Vs. movies.

Speaking of monstrous kaiju created by man's tampering with potent substances beyond his ken:

Close it up

The Democrat Establishment Turns on Sam Bankman-Fried... While Protecting the Democrat Establishment From any Blowback, Of Course

—Ace

George Stephanopolous pretends that this guy wasn't part of the Democrat Financial Complex and actually treats him like the criminal he is.

I really recommend the interview, if you like watching psychopathic leftwing liars squirm.

Skip to 2:15 in the interview, at which point Stephanopolous ask SBF if he knew that money from FTX's depositors was being funneled to his other company, Alemda, for investing. (Or: "investing.")

Stick with it -- SBF offers an evasive answer talking about general market malaise, but Stephanopolous pulls him back and says, correctly, "You didn't answer my question," and ask the question again: Did you know that money that people had on deposit was being taken to gamble in the markets? Did you authorize that?

SBF then attempts to claim that there are different circumstances in which this is allowed, but Stephanopolous objects: "But not here," he says, pointing out that FTX's contractual terms of service with depositors guarantees that their money will not be lent out for any purpose. He continues evading answering these questions.

But it's clear he's lying. Of course he knew, and of course he personally authorized the illegal transfers, which is a nice way of saying "theft of money from depositors for his own benefit."

When finally confronted with the testimony of his weird-looking 30-year-old-preemie f***-buddy Carolyn Ellison that Bankman-Fried knew all about the illegal transfers, he drops the claim that he didn't know about the transfers at all, and narrows his denial to, "I didn't know about any illegal transfers," implying that the transfers he knew about were legal.

Apparently Bankman-Fried is going to be relying on this "I didn't knowingly know what I doingly did" Hillary Clinton style defense. Because he offered up a version of it at a New York Times event in which people were permitted to submit their own questions.

Andrew Ross Sorkin -- the journalist hosting the summit -- shared the email "from a gentleman who said he lost his life savings." It had the subject line: "Sam Bankman-Fried stole $2 million from me."

The user wrote: "Andrew, can you please ask SBF why he decided to steal my life savings and the $10 billion more from customers to give to his hedge fund, Alameda?"

"Please ask him if he thinks what happened was fraud."

Sorkin added that he had gotten several similar letters, before asking Bankman-Fried: "What do you tell this man?"

"I am deeply sorry about what happened," he replied.

Bankman-Fried added that the FTX.US platform was still "fully funded" and he believed withdrawals "could be opened up today."

He then went on a long explanation of Alameda's risky trade positions, before blaming an "all-out PR assault, which led to a total market collapse in a pretty short period of time."

But Sorkin then raised the question of money being mixed between Alameda and FTX.

On November 11, The Wall Street Journal reported that FTX lent $10 billion of customer assets to Alameda for its high-risk bets.

The customer had also referenced the FTX terms of service in his email, which said: "None of the digital assets in your account are the property of, or shall or may be loaned to, FTX Trading."

Under further questioning from Sorkin about the close-ties between his companies, Bankman-Fried eventually said: "I didn't knowingly commingle funds."

He also denies intent when he claims "I didn't want to commit fraud."

"I didn't ever want to commit fraud on anyone. I was shocked at what happened this month," Bankman-Fried said Wednesday during a video interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at a conference put on by The New York Times.

He was shocked when the scheme all fell to pieces, of course. But anyone who misappropriates other people's money is shocked when that happens. A lawyer or stockbroker who steals a client's money, temporarily, to invest in the stock market, making a short-term play, hopes and expects he'll win his gamble, and then be able to pocket his profit and return the money to the accounts he "borrowed" it from without anyone being the wiser.

This is, of course, still theft, whether the money is returned or not. A stolen car is still stolen even if the owner gets it back.

And of course everyone doing this is "surprised" when their can't-miss stock market bet goes disastrously wrong and they lose their clients' money and have no way to pay it back.

But they still intended to commit the embezzlement and/or fraud and/or theft (as the case may be).

Note that for all of these charges, some guilty mental state -- mens rea -- is required, such as intent. (Intent to deceive, intent to misappropriate funds, intent to steal, intent to defraud.) Bankman-Fried isn't denying he took the actions that resulted in the theft and fraud; he's just denying he had the culpable mental state when he did these things that would wind him up in prison.

He may have committed "theft" -- but if he did, he was innocent in spirit and pure of heart in committing it.

Where did Sam Bankman-Fried get his psychopath-level evasion of responsibility for his crimes from?

From the radical wing of the Democrat Party's "intellectual" set, by which I mean, from his own mother, radical "Poverty & Inequality" professor Barbara H. Fried:

Barbara H. Fried's scholarly interests lie at the intersection of law, economics, and philosophy. She has written extensively on questions of distributive justice, in the areas of tax policy, property theory and political theory.

She wrote in 2013 that we must stop assigning criminal responsibility based on the antiquated notions of guilt and blame.

The mother of Sam Bankman-Fried, the beleaguered founder and former CEO of the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, is a Stanford Law professor who penned a 2013 essay arguing that it is time for Americans to ditch the "philosophy of personal responsibility."

Barbara Fried, who just resigned from the Democratic super PAC Mind the Gap as the board of directors chairperson, penned a 2013 essay in the Boston Review titled, "Beyond Blame," which argued in favor of harm-reduction policies like rehabilitation over incarceration.

"The philosophy of personal responsibility has ruined criminal justice and economic policy," Fried wrote at the time. "It's time to move past blame."

"Public reactions to wrongdoing have been studied most extensively in the context of crime," she wrote. "Researchers have found that peoples' evaluations of serious wrongfulness vary significantly across social conditions and individuals. Tellingly, the more information people have about the context of the crime, the person who committed it, and the circumstances he or she came from, the more nuanced are their views of moral responsibility."

...

Fried concluded that "we have gotten nothing from our 40-year blame fest except the guilty pleasure of reproaching others for acts that, but for the grace of God, or luck, or social or biological forces, we might well have committed ourselves."

Might as well be a confession.

Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD

Nine years ago, when crypto-fraudster @SBF_FTX was 19, his mother, a Stanford professor, wrote a very long article making the case that free will is a myth and that we should not blame people for committing crimes.

I guess her son took that lesson to heart.

Barbara Fried is a big time hustler for big-time money for the Democrat Party, of course, getting Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires to donate to her electioneering operation, "Mind the Gap."

Mind the Gap Type: Democratic Super PAC

Mind the Gap (MTG) is a left-wing super PAC dedicated to helping Democratic political candidates win elections. The PAC earns millions of dollars in donations primarily from Silicon Valley executives "who are keen on quietly funneling massive political donations into the Democratic Party"[1][2]. The mission of MTG is to "empower private political donors to strengthen our democracy by providing them with evidence-based guidance on the electoral strategies, tactics, and programs that are likely to achieve the greatest impact in a given election". [3]

In 2018, the PAC created a statistical model which attempted to score the impact each dollar donated would have on Democrats winning back control of the House of Representatives. The group ultimately raised more than 20 million dollars in its successful attempt to win back control of the House for Democrats.

MTG is known for its secretive operations where it attempts to quickly gather and coordinate donations over a short time to prevent Republicans from mobilizing donors in response. The PAC was founded in 2018 by Stanford Law professors Barbara Fried, Paul Brest, and researcher Graham Gottlieb. Of the three, only Gottlieb has political experience, having served former President Barack Obama as a staffer during his 2012 re-election campaign and in the White House. [4]

Leaked Memo

In a leaked 2019 memo, Mind the Gap refers to themselves as a collection of "pro bono donor advisors" but the group and their donors are much more powerful and influential than they let on. [5] according to the memo MTG won 10 of the 20 of races that they picked in 2018, despite most races initially being predicted as "lean" or "likely R".

Brest, Fried, and Gottlieb established their donor network and started receiving donations leading up to the midterm elections in 2018. The PAC created a statistical model which attempted to score the marginal impact each dollar donated would have on Democrats winning back control of the House of Representatives. According to the memo, MTG was able to construct a "donor network of over 800 individuals..., [raising] a total of $20 million... [for] 20 undervalued and underfunded House races... and... [for] get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts in the 100 most competitive House races". Their attempt to win back control of the House for Democrats was successful, they argue, due to their fundraising efforts.

And it just so happens that her son scammed money in a tech field, and gave $40 million (that we know about) to Democrats and Democrat groups.

Although there will be more clip from the interview released, I think Ed Morrissey is on solid ground with this speculation:

For now, though, it looks as if Stephanopoulos never asked about SBF's political connections, mainly to Democrats, and his efforts to work those for his own political benefits. Axios reported last month that SBF poured $37 million into Democrats' campaigns this election cycle alone...

Sure, why would you ask about a silly little thing like that? It's not as if you tied Bernie Maddoff, a man who had given millions and millions to Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as connected inextricably to Republicans and Republicans only.

But with Sam Bankman-Fried, the question of which party benefited from political bribery is just like so déclassée, man.

We need a new headline type: Leftwing Media Fails to Pounce...

Racist Monster Who Viciously Beat an Elderly Woman While Screaming "Asian B*tch" At Her Gets 17 1/2 Years

—Ace

The left-leaning prosecutors let him walk away with a deal that took attempted murder off the list of charges, even though he was plainly attempting to kill her, given his strength and her frailty.

The attacker was, as you've come to expect, a white supremacist MAGA enthusiast provoked to commit the beating this past March by Trump's meeting with Kanye West this last weekend.

LOL: CNN Fires Hyperpartisan Useless Gasbag Soy-Titted Thumb Chris Cillizza
Plus: Kanye West Has Got a Fever, and the Only Cure Is Rehabilitating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis

—Ace

He's a low-IQ "political blogger" with nothing to say except the most trivial neoliberal-left bromides -- which is precisely why CNN hired him. CNN is a dumb person's idea of what "Smart People TV" would look like.

That's why CNN+ was going to feature a book club... hosted by Jake Tapper.

You can review Daily Caller for some of Cillizza's work. They've got their own subject tag for this Thumb.

Artist's conception
via Yudhishthira's Dice

He's basically Brian Stelter without all the toxic levels of testosterone and all the "genius" baggage.

And now, he'll have to Learn2Coal.

Unrelated, but I don't want to write a whole post about it. Alex Jones interviews Kanye West.

Alex Jones throws a life preserver to "Ye" -- "You're not Hitler, you're not a Nazi" -- expecting "Ye" to agree.

But Ye... Ye's an interesting guy. He doesn't go for the cheap points of attacking Hitler. That would be pandering.

Money Quote (though it's hard to pick just one): "Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table... Especially Hitler."

Martha McCallum Grills John Kirby: Why Is the White House "Keeping an Eye on Twitter" While Not Even Saying a Word in Private to Apple About Actively Assisting China in Repressing Its Own People?

—Ace

In case you missed it, Apple bowed to the demands of their Chinese Communist Partners and secretly deleted a key feature in Apple phones which protesters and dissidents had previously used to communicate discretely.

Apple's updates are usually very thorough about telling you exactly what they will change. But not this time -- the update, intended only for the Chinese market, omitted any mention that the "AirDrop" feature, long relied on by protesters and dissidents, would be greatly limited.

AirDrop eludes censorship/monitoring systems because, if I understand this right, AirDropped transmissions go phone-to-phone, like walkie-talkies, without having to first go to through a cell tower or the internet.

Users had no idea they'd be crippling one of the few tools they had to communicate without state monitoring when they accepted the update.

Which is the way Apple wanted it, because that's the way their Chinese Communist partners and paymasters wanted it.

A Nov. 9 software update included an additional AirDrop feature applying only to iPhones sold in mainland China.

AirDrop, which allows users to share content between Apple devices, has become an important tool in demonstrators' efforts to circumvent authoritarian censorship.

The feature relies on wireless connections between phones, rather than internet connectivity, placing it beyond the scope of internet content moderators.

Protests in China have attracted international attention as the greatest challenge of President Xi Jinping's premiership and a major knock to the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) longstanding authority.

But their spread within China was partially hobbled by a key change in Apple
's AirDrop feature, launched just weeks before the unrest.

AirDrop, which allows users to share content between Apple devices, has become an important tool in protestors' efforts to circumvent authoritarian censorship regimes over recent years.

That is because it relies on wireless connections between phones, rather than internet connectivity, placing it beyond the scope of internet content moderators. It uses Bluetooth to form a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi network between two devices.

The tool was used widely during Hong Kong's 2019 pro-democracy protests, when demonstrators would share messages and protest literature with passers by and visitors from mainland China through AirDrop's open network.

More recently, in mid-October, AirDrop was reportedly used to disseminate messages based on banners produced by a Beijing demonstrator known as "Bridge man."

China-only software update

However, it was limited earlier this month, when a Nov. 9 update to Apple's global operating system, iOS 16.1.1, included an additional AirDrop feature applying only to iPhones sold in mainland China.

Under the update, iPhones can now only set their AirDrop to receive messages from "everyone" for 10 minutes before switching off. The other settings allow for file-sharing between "contacts only" or "receiving off."

Apple did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment. In an online statement, the company said the software update includes "bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all users."

NSC spokesman John Kirby appeared on Martha MacCallum. She wanted to know why the Biden White House -- and Biden himself, in fact -- had all but declared Elon Musk a National Security Threat and ordered a Deep State probe of him because he wasn't imposing the left's totalitarian censorship regime, but had offered absolutely no criticism or government scrutiny of Apple, despite it now being officially part of the Communist China Secret Police apparatus.

He says, "Because Apple is a private company."

She responds, "Twitter is a private company, too."

He then says, "These are completely different situations," having failed in his first attempt to mark them as different situations.

He then say that Twitter must be subjected to a Deep State probe because it might have foreign investors. Note that Twitter also had foreign investors when it was imposing the left's censorship regime, and the left had no problem with foreign investment then.

Also note that Apple has a lot of foreign investors.

Martha MacCallum points out that Apple is taking orders from a foreign government here, which seems to be the very situation that this bullshit concern over "foreign investors" is aimed at preventing. That is, grumbling about foreign investors is ultimately about trying to keep a major company from being perverted by foreign powers to work their will.

But Apple is already working China's will, to help it crush an organic protest movement.

And Kirby says "But it's different!"

Because Apple is helping Biden crush his own despised internal dissident movement, of course.

Not only will he not scold Apple publicly, but he admits the White House has not even reached out to Apple privately, behind the scenes, to ask them why they are now a partner organization with the Chinese Secret Security Police.

From Twitchy.

The Morning Rant
An Election Like No Other
Dave in Fla

—Open Blogger

Before I get into the numbers, I have a message to anyone reading this who is involved in a GOP State Party.

Go talk to the State Parties in Florida and California. Find out what they are doing and copy it. If you want to win in the future, those two states are your template.

The 2022 Midterms are behind us now, and as we look back on what happened, there are historical anomalies that must be understood if the Republicans want to win elections in the future [narrator: clearly, in many cases, they don't want to win elections]

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Nattlig marin med brinnande fartyg
Marcus Larson

The Morning Report — 12/1/22

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning, kids. Thursday and I give you the bitter irony of oppressed citizens of China and Iran in a life and death struggle for actual liberation while America, the erstwhile beacon of freedom, is moving in the exact opposite direction with nary a peep. That's mostly because the media Mandarins – pun absolutely intended – have done all in their power to silence all protest to the overthrow of our nation and society and culture by the heirs apparent of Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Love him, hate him, indifferent to him, wary of him, or some mix of all of it, Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter hasn't caused this powerful a reaction by the anti-Americans since the near-parallel ascendancy of talk radio and the internet. For good reason; to control the narrative is to control the direction of the nation. In the past 30 years, so many myths about our government and heretofore sacrosanct institutions have been exploded because of new media. That was perhaps the first direct threat to the goal of the post-war "new world order" and the power of those who put us on that path. The election of Donald Trump and then his overthrow four years later was the capstone. And his overthrowing was our overthrowing.

In any case, the genie is out of the bottle and there can be no going back to the way things were. So the gloves are off.

The [so-called quote-unquote "president"] launched into Musk the day after the midterms with a mafioso-style warning that his administration would be investigating whether the 51-year-old billionaire is a “national-security threat” over his purchase of the social-media behemoth. The White House keeps saying ominously that it is “keeping a close eye” on Twitter.

Yet Musk remains intransigent, suggesting at one point this week that he was “going to war . . . This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”

In a poll of his 120 million Twitter followers, Musk asked whether he “should publish all censorship actions [Twitter] has taken that affect its customers.” The answer was a resounding “yes,” and so he tweeted tantalizingly: “The people have spoken.”

This is an existential blow to the left’s ability to control the narrative. A lot of secrets are set to be revealed that a lot of powerful people want to remain hidden.

Most important is to reveal details of collusion among the FBI, Big Tech and the government.

This collusion has been the focus of Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s numerous lawsuits against the Biden [junta], alleging that White House officials and federal agencies acted with Big Tech to censor “disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content on social-media platforms.”

Emphasis mine, and absolutely 100% correct. It's funny; the first thing out of an anti-American's pie-hole when an innocent person is arrested is "if they're innocent, they have nothing to worry about." Well, the shoe is now on the other foot, in a way. And that is the essence of the First Amendment vis a vis real dictionary-definition journalism. If every criminal in this criminal junta, from the Bidens to Fauci to Pelosi on down are truly innocent as they claim to be, then why are they sweating bullets and screaming at the top of their lungs?

This in a very real way is a microcosm of the anti-Americans across the board. As Rush Limbaugh of blessed memory would always say, "The Left doesn't want to level the playing field. They want to clear it." That's because in an honest, open, fair debate about who and what they are and what they want, they'd lose the argument every time.

Seriously, if you are so strident in your beliefs, then what do you really have to fear if someone who merely disagrees with you is prevented from even stating his case, nearly to the point of being physically assaulted?

Far-left activists reportedly swarmed an event Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk held at the University of New Mexico on Wednesday evening, with protesters calling to “shut down white supremacy.”

“My welcoming committee at University of New Mexico for tonight’s event,” Kirk tweeted along with a video that showed tens of protesters dressed in black, wearing masks, shouting and holding slogans protesting Kirk’s appearance on their campus. . .

. . . Campus police appeared to form a border between the protesters and the event venue, but that did not prevent the activists from continuing to protest.

The activists shouted through megaphones, banged on items, and marched from behind the barrier. Some protesters could be seen waving signs that read “SHUT DOWN WHITE SUPREMACY.”

The list goes into the scores if not hundreds of intellectuals, politicians, artists and thinkers who are even a millimeter to the right of Leon Trotsky who have been hounded, attacked and suffered actual violence up to the point of lethality from speaking on campuses and in public generally. More frightening perhaps than what Charlie Kirk went through is this madness:

The global law firm Hogan Lovells fired a retired equity partner after she spoke positively about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in a conference call with other female employees, some of whom expressed anger at her, she wrote in a Tuesday Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

Every other speaker on the company call in June, which had been dubbed a “safe space” for women to talk about the decision, decried the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling that month, attorney Robin Keller alleged. Keller said she received “immediate” outrage after she pointed out that many jurists and commentators argued Roe v. Wade had been incorrectly decided, opined that sending the abortion issue to states was right and “referred to numerous reports of disproportionately high rates of abortion in the black community, which some have called a form of genocide,” calling this “tragic.”

“The next speaker called me a racist and demanded that I leave the meeting,” Keller wrote. “Other participants said they “lost their ability to breathe” on hearing my comments.”

This person is not an infant, nor an adolescent, nor even a teenager. This is a college and law school graduate, and an adult. Beyond merely having a strong opinion about something, even a strident opinion, to claim that you can't breathe because someone voiced an opinion opposite yours indicates that not merely has their been brainwashing in our schools but in point of fact what can only be described as some sort of sustained, multi-generational mass psychosis.

As I stated above, in an honest, open, fair debate about who and what the anti-American Left are and what they want, they'd lose the argument every time. So, what's the answer? Take over the schools, teach lies as truth from pre-school through post-grad, ???, Profit!

Cutting through the madness of this individual's case of the vapors, if I have to tell a grown adult to "use your words" as to WHY you think Roe v. Wade or any other issue under the sun you believe in is right and someone else's is wrong, then we are well and truly fucked.

This is evil. And it starts at the top. That Nuremberg Rally at Independence Hall last Labor Day wherein half the nation was blood libeled as a cancer to be eradicated is all you need to know. This is why I think that even if this nation were to physically split into two halves, there would still never be peace. If we were to live on a planet at the furthest reaches of the galaxy, they'd build a starship to come and get us. To do so, and to thrive while they devolve into squalor, violence and despair as everything they believe in is instituted turns into hell on earth instead of the worker's paradise, would be intolerable.

In the immortal words of Gracie Slick, "When the truth is found to be lies. And all the joy within you dies." That sure describes my political consciousness-raising the past 10-20 years. What of your average leftist and "their truth?"

Gotterdammerung America.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• "Diversity is not always a strength. In this context, diversity means fewer white people, fewer Englishmen, and fewer Christians. There are the who would celebrate that. I would call them racists."

  Why Enoch Was Right
  
• "America’s most daring and insightful playwright tried to warn us that we were going haywire. By making him a hate object, American theater has made us all poorer."
  Fuck David Mamet
  
• "The pressing question is not whether the border crisis meets the constitutional definition of 'invasion' but whether the Constitution will survive widespread anarchy."
  A Constitutional Comedy of Errors Will Lead to Constitutional Tragedy

Daily Tech News 1 December 2022

—Pixy Misa

• Here's everything that went wrong with FTX. (The Verge)
  
  Yeah, it just "went wrong". By accident.
  
  
  
• FTX's Collapse Was a Crime, Not an Accident. (CoinDesk)
  
  That's more like it.

  In the weeks since Sam Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency empire was revealed to be a house of lies, mainstream news organizations and commentators have often failed to give their readers a straightforward assessment of exactly what happened. August institutions including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have uncovered many key facts about the scandal, but they have also repeatedly seemed to downplay the facts in ways that soft-pedaled Bankman-Fried's intent and culpability.

  More October institutions, possibly November, but yes.

  It is now clear that what happened at the FTX crypto exchange and the hedge fund Alameda Research involved a variety of conscious and intentional fraud intended to steal money from both users and investors. That's why a recent New York Times interview was widely derided for seeming to frame FTX's collapse as the result of mismanagement rather than malfeasance. A Wall Street Journal article bemoaned the loss of charitable donations from FTX, arguably propping up Bankman-Fried's strategic philanthropic pose. Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias, court chronicler of the neoliberal status quo, seemed to whitewash his own entanglements by crediting Bankman-Fried's money with helping Democrats in the 2020 elections – sidestepping the likelihood that the money was effectively embezzled.

  This is the straight shit. If you're interested in the real story behind this latter day love child of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff, read most of the thing.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk met with Tim Cook and announced that the war is cancelled. (Yahoo Finance)
  
  Build your own war.

Wednesday Overnight Open Thread (11/30/22) The End of November Can Only Mean December Zappa Month Eve Edition & Christmas Music As Well

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Quote I

“The FBI’s processes and procedures have proven to be partisan-driven and untrustworthy in recent years. This is the latest example of systematic corruption happening at the highest levels of the FBI, and the American people deserve full transparency.” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)

Quote II

"It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars [to run for office]," Maloney said in the email. "And now, I learned firsthand why it's tough for regular people to run for office." Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, (D-NY)

Quote III

“It tells me all I need to know. And that is, just because it’s legal does not make it the right thing. I tell people all the time, the institution of slavery was legal, but it was not right. Just because they purchased these weapons legally does not mean that’s what the law ought to be.” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC)

Quote IV

“I’m thrilled to see this step forward. It’s long past time for us to protect the blood supply based off what people do and not who people are.” North Carolina Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley

***

I guess I'm aging. And Keith Richards isn't. RIP Christine McVie, age 79.

The musician, best known for songs including Dreams, Everywhere, Don’t Stop and Little Lies, died peacefully in hospital, following a short illness.

Her family confirmed the news in a statement, which read: ‘It is with a heavy heart we are informing you of Christine’s death.

‘She passed away peacefully at hospital this morning, Wednesday, November 30, 2022, following a short illness. She was in the company of her family.

***

Not content to let their "Helicopter parents" wash their clothing. The Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter at the University of Cincinnati (UC) want free laundry. When everything is free, nothing will be free.

Students demand univeristy provide free laundry
An announcement about the effort was made to their instagram page that said 'Free Laundry is a right that all students have. And we’re trying to secure it for students at UC.'
The cost of laundry, according to the University website, is $1.75 for a wash and $1.50 per dry. However, for students with a Bearcat Card, those prices are discounted to $1.50 and $1.10.

***

The projected date of actual deployment isn’t too far off, either. Embark said it intends to commence commercial operations in 2024. But will it survive 2022 let alone 2023?

Out of all the beaten-down public companies in the autonomous driving space, Embark Technology stands out as a conspicuously terrible stock market performer.

The San Francisco-headquartered company, which develops autonomous driving technology for the trucking industry, has presided over a roughly 98% share price decline since going public a year ago. In the process, it’s wiped out close to $5 billion in market capitalization.

Today, Embark and a few others that carried out SPAC mergers are in that weird category of companies trading below the value of cash reserves. In Embark’s case, the company’s recent market capitalization of $110 million is actually quite a bit lower than the $191 million cash it had at the end of Q3. In other words, investors seem to think it’s worth less than nothing.

***

The Democrats keep going down the Progressive Road. Not a surprise.

Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York was elected the next Democratic House leader on Wednesday, making history as the first black lawmaker to lead a political party's caucus.

***

In France, you can be boring.

A French court recently ruled that a man fired from a consulting firm for not being fun enough at the workplace has the right to be as boring as he likes.

In 2015, Cubik Partners, a French management consultancy based in Paris, fired Mr. T, whose full name was not disclosed for privacy reasons, arguing that he was difficult to work with, a poor listener, and simply boring. What the company apparently meant, however, was that Mr. T didn’t go out with his colleagues enough after work, as part of the company’s “fun-based” approach to team building. The employee, on the other hand, clarified that he simply refused to forcibly partake in various excesses, such as consuming large quantities of alcohol and even sharing a bed with colleagues afterward.

And our dearly departed Frank Zappa sings about France.............

Just a tune up folks for December.........

***

Schadenboner.

THE CN-END? Massive Layoffs Hit CNN, Read CEO's Memo to the Network

***

Donation Dollars or Bribery? You be the judge.

The financing of election campaigns, and their results, have been increasingly dominated by a small number of wealthy donors. But a newly approved ballot measure in Oakland is likely to give everyday people more of a voice in future elections, judging from results in the only other U.S. city with such a law.

Measure W, supported by nearly 74% of Oakland voters on Nov. 8, requires the city to send four $25 vouchers every two years to each resident 18 and over, including non-U.S. citizens with legal permanent residency, to donate to one or more candidates for mayor, City Council or the school board. The candidates would have to abide by spending limits. The money, about $4 million per election, will come from the city’s general fund, which currently pays for a little-used program of limited public funding for local candidates.

Proponents call the vouchers Democracy Dollars. Oakland is the second U.S. city to enact such a program; the first, Seattle, implemented it in 2017, two years after voter approval, and has reported substantial changes in its elections, with more public involvement.

***

You know folks, The ONT Is Always Looking Out For You^TM And tonight is no different.

Warning to check Christmas trees for clumps that must be removed immediately

Social media users have warned people to check their Christmas trees immediately or risk an insect infestation as small clumps that resemble pine cones could be harbouring hundreds of bugs

It's on the internet so it has to be true. Amirite?

***

You and I know this. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy don't give a flying fvck. Elon Musk says Twitter interfered with elections.

Elon Musk said Wednesday that under prior ownership, Twitter “failed trust & safety” of its users and “interfered in elections” in a post on the site.

“The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections,” Musk tweeted in response to a comment on a Reuters article. “Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.” (RELATED: Fox Guest Claims The Left Hates Musk For Making Censorship Against Conservatives ‘Difficult’)

Yael Roth, who resigned as Twitter head of safety Nov. 10, said during an interview at a Tuesday Knight Foundation event that the social media site was less safe since Musk took over the site, Reuters reported.

***

The ONT Musical Interlude & Hot Buttered Popcorn Emporium

Born on this day: 30 Nov 1944
Rob Grill, who with Grass Roots had the 1968 US No.5 single 'Midnight Confessions', plus 13 other US Top 40 singles. Grill died on 11th July 2011 after suffering a head injury from a fall caused by a stroke. He was 67. via thisdayinmusic.com

&&&

On this day: 30 Nov 1999
Don 'Sugarcane' Harris was found dead in his Los Angeles apartment at the age of 61. The American guitarist and violinist was part of the 50s duo Don & Dewey. He also worked with Little Richard, John Mayall, Frank Zappa, John Lee Hooker and Johnny Otis. via thisdayinmusic.com

You're welcome!

***

Just a tad too much eggnog that evening. Genius Award Winner.

A Victoria police officer was injured while trying to arrest a man at the Santa Claus parade Saturday, according to the department.

Authorities say officers were marching in the Peninsula Co-op Santa Claus Parade and handing out candy canes when they were alerted to a disturbance.

"A parade spectator approached members of the VicPD contingent to report that a man had assaulted a member of the crowd and was walking through the crowd trying to instigate additional fights," a statement from the department said.

Speaking of too much eggnog........ A second set of Genius Award Winners.

CONCORD, N.H. —
Two Massachusetts men are accused of driving while intoxicated after they were each clocked going 100-plus miles per hour on Interstate 93 in New Hampshire, according to authorities.

New Hampshire State Police officials said a trooper who was monitoring traffic on I-93 in Bow saw a vehicle approaching his location at a very high rate of speed at about 3:20 a.m. Sunday.

The trooper obtained a radar reading of 120 mph as the vehicle approached and passed him. The trooper then stopped the vehicle and identified the driver as 25-year-old Jacob Hulsoor, of Boston's Dorchester neighborhood

***

It really is a life. Tonight's Feel Good Story of The Day.

The delivery of medication via the umbilical vein to a baby in utero with a rare genetic condition was proven to be a success in preventing the infant’s death.

It’s the first time in history Pompe disease has been treated in utero, and could represent a life-saving new standard of care that’s safe and effective for both mother and infant.

In Canada, the parents of 16-month-old Ayla were relieved when she was born as expected, with no signs of the disease that can cause lethal heart complications. Pompe affects fewer than 1 in 100,000 infants, but this inherited condition arising from a defective gene copy is often fatal.

***

Cuteness, at least I think so.

***

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Ice Melt.

Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire & AceCorp, LLC. For a transcript of tonight's festivities please send $5.00 and SASE to petmorons at the gmail dot com. Extra $10.00 gets it faxed to you.

Close it up

Sheepish Smile Cafe

—Ace

Happy sheep.

There's a fox or something seen on the right of the screen just before our relentless low-center-of-gravity hero charges in from stage left, his hapless minder in literal tow.

Domestic battery.

This is creepy.

The Forbidden Love (which a photographer staged between two critters).

Even if you're cool, you're never completely cool.

Tenth day of training as a guard dog: attacking the snowdummy.

Quick Hits

—Ace

CNN announces "hundreds" of Christmas layoffs, or, as Don LeMon calls them, "promotions to the morning unemployment line."

Even worse news? Those Zoom calls will be conducted by CNN's new Chief People Officer, Jeffrey Toobin.

Milo Yiannopoulos: I Arranged the Nick Fuentes Dinner to Embarrass Trump and To Teach Him a Lesson About Excluding Me From His Circle of Advisors.

Mission complete, I'd say.

Streiff at RedState digests an NBC article, relying mostly on Yiannopoulos' gleeful confession:

"I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he's missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can't hang out with," Yiannopoulos told NBC News.

"I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end," he added.

...

"We saw everybody in the dining room get up and start applauding, and then the president entered," Fuentes told NBC News. "He greeted us, and he invited Ye into dinner and Ye said that he wanted to bring us with him to the table. So we walked in and Ye took some pictures with some of the guests in the dining room and then we sat down at the table."

...

Ye criticized Trump for not doing enough to help pay the legal bills of those arrested in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots; and he also told Trump he might run for president against him and said Trump should instead be his running mate -- all of which angered the former president, who attacked Ye's ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, according to two dinner participants and Ye, who blasted out a "Mar-a-Lago debrief" video to his 32.2 million Twitter followers the next day.

"Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes," Ye said in the video.

Fuentes said that he praised Trump as "my hero" and criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his potential GOP primary challenge to Trump, but he also told him to his face at the dinner that the one-time 2016 insurgent was in danger of becoming a scripted establishment bore who could lose in 2024.

...

Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor who was banned from Twitter in 2016 for inciting a racist campaign against the comedian Leslie Jones, told NBC News that he was "the architect" of the plan to have Fuentes travel with Ye in the hopes of slipping him into the dinner with Trump. The intent, according to Yiannopoulos, was for Fuentes to give Trump an unvarnished view of how a portion of his base views his candidacy.

...

And, Yiannopoulos said, he arranged the dinner "just to make Trump's life miserable" because news of the dinner would leak and Trump would mishandle it.

An anonymous Trump aide told NBC:

"The master troll got trolled," the adviser said. "Kanye punked Trump."

...

"Trump was totally blindsided," the source said of Fuentes' presence. "It was a setup."

The NBC "News" reporter who got the story about the Paul Pelosi police visit remains disappeared for two weeks, precisely because he did get it right.

In the Empire of Lies, you are punished for telling the truth, and rewarded for telling Regime Lies with zest.

Gavin Newsom argues with local officials about who it is who is responsible for California being turned into an open-air mass-toilet for homeless drug addicts, the streets running with human shit and heroin needles.

Everyone's responsible, of course.

California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom and local lawmakers argue over who should be responsible for the homelessness plaguing the state, as the governor threatened to withhold funds from those who dispute liability, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

The Democrat governor and local government officials, including many from his own political party, are arguing over the responsibility for the lack of progress in battling the ongoing homelessness problem across America's most populated state.

The report explained that Newsom recently placed a temporary hold on $1 billion of state grants that were meant for city and county homelessness programs as he rejected the proposals from the officials that outlined how they would spend the money. He said the proposal was inadequate, even though it would have reportedly reduced homelessness statewide by two percent from 2020 to 2024.

A columnist named Richard Clap laughs about this absurd theater:

Recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his plan to fight homelessness in California, including the concept of mental health courts. What struck me was how righteously angry he was at the lack of progress in dealing with this issue. After a minute I began to wonder, whom is he mad at?

Newsom was just completing his first four-year term as California's governor. Was he mad at himself? Was he upset that he hadn't done what he said he would do and was taking it out on himself?

Maybe he was mad at the legislature, which has a supermajority of Democrats. They can do almost anything they want to do and have certainly voiced concerns about the homeless problem but have done little or nothing to effectively deal with it.

Maybe he was angry with the cities. That is where the homeless are. Since every major city in California is run by councils and mayors that are Democrat, perhaps he is angry at them for not doing enough to solve the problem.

Maybe he is angry at the people of California. After all, they elected him, the legislators and all the city governments that have done little or nothing to find homes for the homeless. Is he mad they haven't elected people who will solve the problem?

You would think the voters of California would also be angry about this. When you talk to most Californians, they are unhappy with homelessness, gas prices, crime, lack of water, electrical outages, cost of housing and inflation. But when it comes time to vote, they vote as if everything is fine and wonderful. The governor, the legislator, city and county governments are the ones who have the resources and power to fix these problems. They have been in charge for a long time and very little has gotten better.

Yet we just reelected the same people.

Iranian Officials Warn Soccer Players: Unless You Sing Our Anthem and Praise Our Mullahs, We'll Torture Your Family Members Remaining Home in Iran

—Ace

According to a "security source," the mullahs worried about Iran's soccer team amplifying the protests still raging in Iran while on the world stage, and so threatened their families with prison and torture unless the players "behaved."

Following the refusal of Iranian players to sing the nation's national anthem in their opening match against England on November 21, the source said that the players were called to a meeting with members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The source said that they were told that their families would face "violence and and torture" if they did not sing the national anthem or if they joined any political protest against the Tehran regime.

The players sang the anthem before their second game against Wales last Friday, which saw 2-0 victory for Iran.

The source, who is closely monitoring Iran's security agencies operating in Qatar over the World Cup period, said that dozens of officers from the IRGC had been drafted in to monitor the Iranian players who are not allowed to mingle outside the squad or meet with foreigners.

"There are a large number of Iranian security officers in Qatar collecting information and monitoring the players," the source said.

Relatedly, a couple of Twitter accounts claim that an Iranian man was shot and killed by members of the Iranian security forces for honking his car horn in an apparently celebratory way after the US defeated the Iranian team.

This may or may not be true. I'll assume it's true because a repressive state should have every question assumed to be answered in the most uncharitable way possible. (I apply the same rule to the Monopoly Tech and US government conspiracy.)

The 27-year-old World Cup fan was shot in the head and killed by regime militias in Anzali, northern Iran, by Iran's Islamic Regime's security forces, according to reports.

New information is materialising after news broke of Mr Sammack's death in the early hours of Wednesday.

A German lawyer, Niema Movassat (@NiemaMovassat) tweeted a photograph of the deceased, with a message

He posted: "Mehran Sammak was only 27 years old. Regime militias shot him in the head in Anzali, northern Iran.

"Reason for his assassination: he honked his car horn for joy at the elimination of the Iranian team at the #WM [World Cup]."

Via PJMedia, Iranians certainly are celebrating the defeat of the mullahs' team:

What a Surprise! New Disney Reboot of an Old LucasFilm IP, Willow, Features a Teen Lesbian Relationship "Front and Center:" "It was just organic," Claims Screenwriter

—Ace

So organic! It was also completely organic when Disney made gay teen relationships central to all of their other children's shows in the past two years!

It just happened! The Muse just spoke to the writers and producers, and just kept saying: 70% of the world's teenagers are gay, or at least should be!

Disney's Willow puts a queer romance front and center -- and it was 'just organic,' says creator A princess and a lady knight never got together in George Lucas' original, but for Jonathan Kasdan, it was an obvious next step

By Susana Polo@NerdGerhl Nov 29, 2022, 12:15pm EST 6 Comments / 6 New

...

This time, Willow is accompanied by a whole ensemble squad of mostly teenagers, each pulling and pushing against fantasy tropes that will be excitingly familiar to an audience in an era where D&D is mainstream and YA fiction is full of plucky heroes and heroines....

Willow's two mains are Kit and Dove, both young women who wrestle with the legacy of Elora Danan. But Kit's own bildungsroman may come to overshadow Dove's in conversations about the show, as a good part of her journey is realizing that she's in mutual love with her best friend. In a long overdue and welcome development for fantasy cinema, television, and the Disney corporation itself, Kit (a self-centered tomboy princess who spends most of the series dressed like the Dread Pirate Roberts) and Jade (an orphan girl who wants to become her country's first female knight) are as though someone took every tomboy fantasy heroine in the YA literature canon, tossed them in a blender, and flipped a big mad scientist lever from SUBTEXT to TEXT.

Polygon sat down with Kasdan to talk first and foremost about being the first true franchise on Disney Plus to really center a queer story -- and also about weird movies from the 1980s, the road from there to modern YA fantasy, and the flip side of the fantasy hero coin: truly terrible villains.

Polygon: How did a queer relationship come to be the core of this show? When did it enter the process and was there any pushback?

Jonathan Kasdan: There was no pushback. What's interesting is -- I hope and I believe we're at a moment where you're going to see a paradigm shift in that. And hopefully, the way that it's gonna happen is that these kinds of [queer] stories, particularly like this one, that were just organic to the narrative we were telling, find their way in, and it becomes less of a surprising and unusual thing to see.

It's very unsurprising. It's in literally every Disney project aimed at children. It's in Willow, it's in Strange World, it was in Lightyear, it was in Beauty and the Beast, it was in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, it was in Thor: Love and Thunder, it was Star Wars: Rise of the Skywalker.

Oh, and Solo, co-written by Jonathan Kasdan and his father, featured a pansexual Lando Calrissian who has sex with an SJW robot. (Strongly implied in the script, and stated outside the film in interviews.)

"Organic!" It just happens! The ink just sashays out of the pen, gaily!

There would be "pushback" from Disney if there was not gay messaging in a project aimed at children.

New Study: Don't Worry About Reports of Vaccine Injuries. Vaccine Injuries Are Mostly Caused by... "Misinformation" About the Existence of Vaccine Injuries.

—Ace

Say, did you know that "gaslighting" is Merriam-Webster's 2022 word of the year, based on the number of look-ups?

The word became a verb based on a play, in which a murderer attempted to make a witness doubt her sanity by changing the lighting (the gas lighting) and then insisting it hadn't been changed. (At least, that's my guess; I've never seen the movie. A friend told me this explanation, and I don't think he saw it, either.) (Correction: A commenter explains the actual meaning at end of post.)

"Gaslighting" -- mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful -- has been named the 2022 Word of the Year by online dictionary Merriam-Webster.

"Oligarch", "Queen Consort", "Omicron" and "codify" also made the top of the list
Searches for the word on merriam-webster.com increased 1,740 per cent in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened.

There wasn't a single event that drove significant spikes in the curiosity, as was usually the case for the chosen word of the year.

The gaslighting was pervasive.

"It's a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us," said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor-at-large, in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press prior to the word's unveiling.

"It was a word looked up frequently every single day of the year," he said.

Speaking of: A new study says that the adverse effects attributed to the vaccine aren't real, they're just caused by people believing their will be adverse effects, due to people, such as yourselves, spreading "misinformation."

A recent study suggests that it is not mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that are "most likely" responsible for adverse effects such as blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks, but concerns widely expressed about the vaccines.

In September, the Indian journal "Biomedicine" published a so-called study by self-professed "mRNA Alchemist" and biotech engineer Raymond D. Palmer, entitled "Covid 19 vaccines and the misinterpretation of perceived side effects clarity on the safety of vaccines." The study is presently being hosted on the National Library of Medicine site, which is operated by the U.S. federal government.

The gaslight is set at its normal level. I have no idea what you're talking about.

While various experts, such as internationally esteemed American cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, have issued warnings about potential downsides of the vaccines, Palmer, an astronomy hobbyist and former realtor, claimed that those wary about the COVID-19 vaccines do not just suffer "a profound lack of scientific and medical training" but are at the root of a great deal of vaccine recipients' suffering.

At last, we're finally getting some Tom Nichols-level experts to weigh in.

The gas-lamp is working as it always does. Why are you obsessing about it?

Palmer's paper claimed that various adverse effects that take place "in and around the time of receiving the [COVID-19] vaccine" may result from the "mental stress" generated by concerns about those very vaccines.

While noting that "the likelihood of mental stress causing strokes, heart attacks or blood clots may at first appear unlikely," Palmer nevertheless claimed that "anti-vaccination sentiment could be attributed to the alleged side effects that are perpetuated across social media from anti-vaccination groups."

According to Palmer, blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, dizziness, fainting, blurred vision, and loss of smell and taste are products of mental stress. The mRNA alchemist claimed also that the "science for the vaccines causing blood clots has not been found."

Contrary to Palmer's published suggestion, the University of Utah reported that the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines have, for instance, been associated with thrombotic thrombocytopenia, where antibodies lead to "uncontrolled activation of platelets ... and blood clots to form."

In April 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a pause in its recommendations for the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for this very reason.

Discounting previous blood clot links, Palmer said that mental stress "clearly causes vasoconstriction and arterial constriction of the blood vessels."

Persons who are "panicked, concerned, stressed or scared of the vaccination" may therefore see their arteries "constrict and become smaller in and around the time of receiving the vaccine."

I think Jimmy Dore or Kurp Metzger noted that if the "stress and fear causes thrombosis and clots" theory had any validity to it, we should see semi-annual spikes of such conditions in students, at mid-terms and finals week.

But we don't.

Apparently this Tom Nichols level Cognitive Athlete says he's a Ph.D. candidate, but can't say where he's pursuing it.

...

When asked by Rebekah Barnett of the "Dystopian Down Under" Substack about his Ph.D. candidacy, Palmer allegedly said he couldn't provide an answer on account of having signed nondisclosure agreements.

I told you, the gaslight is working normally. Is there something wrong with you?

The CDC just released a report -- forced to do so by a court; they were trying to hide it.

The report says the gaslights have been in good working order for the past two years.

Anyone shocked by the report that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) withheld data about a potentially fatal complication from COVID-19 vaccinations until it was forced under court order to release the data hasn't been paying attention to the CDC's multitude of misstatements and lies over the last two years.

As reported by Just the News, data released under court order shows 1 in 3 among the earliest populations to get vaccinated reported needing medical care, missed school or work, or was unable to "perform normal daily activities," while the CDC continued to fight to keep the data from the public.

Here's more, via Just the News:

Among the 10 million-plus users of the agency's v-safe active monitoring smartphone app through July -- 8.5 million of whom signed up between December 2020 and April 2021, before all adults were eligible for COVID vaccines -- nearly 8% said they required medical care after receiving the vaccines.

For patients ages 3 and older needing such care, nearly 3 in 4 couldn't rely on telehealth visits. They required urgent care (48%), emergency room (15%), or hospitalization (10%).

For infants who were authorized to receive the jabs this summer and are enrolled in v-safe through parents or guardians, hospitalizations were much lower (2%) but urgent care [was] much higher (66%).

Meanwhile, Dr. Science, who knows all there is to know about covid, was deposed regarding his illegal government-corporate censorship scheme and, wouldn't you know it, he was hit with Sudden Onset Specific Subject Alzheimer's.

AG Jeff Landry @AGJeffLandry

Wow! It was amazing to spend 7 hours with Dr. Fauci. The man who single-handedly wrecked the U.S. economy based upon "the science." Only to discover that he can't recall practically anything dealing with his Covid response!

Fauci couldn't remember something else -- to wit, any actual studies establishing that masking was effective in stopping covid (or any other RSV), before announcing that The Science (TM) had changed and now demanded that we all mask up.

Dr. Anthony Fauci couldn't cite any studies that changed his mind about masking against COVID-19 during a recent deposition, according to lawyers who were in the room.

Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director, was among the U.S. officials repeatedly urging people to not wear a mask early in the COVID-19 pandemic unless they were showing symptoms. Among his many public and private statements, he wrote in a Feb. 5, 2020, email that "the typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material."

About two months later, Fauci and other top officials reversed course and issued widespread masking recommendations, regardless of symptoms.

Asked about the change while under oath on Nov. 23, Fauci couldn't provide any studies, according to lawyers representing plaintiffs in a case against the federal government.

"He was asked what studies or study changed his mind in that interim, which is what he claimed--he claimed that it was studied. He couldn't name any," Jenin Younes, one of the lawyers, told The Epoch Times.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who was also present during the deposition in Maryland, said on social media that Fauci "couldn't cite a single study" to back up his claim that masks were effective against COVID-19.

Over the weekend, the non-scientist politician Fauci played to his base of Hypochondriacal Karens and Goldbricking Teachers Union Officials and left it an open question about whether the government should order schools to be closed again this coming winter:

Woke Leftwing Financial Titan BlackRock "Begs" Texas to Remove It From the List of Companies that Boycott the Energy Industry

—Ace

BlackRock is a Clinton and Obama connected super-firm that has pioneered "Environmental Social Governance" -- ESG -- investing, which means investing where you don't worry about profit so much as leftwing political objectives.

They are the worst of bad actors and ESG is being used to redirect the full might of corporate power to the aims of the socialist left. If the Republican Party were anything other than a plutocrat services concierge they would roll back the Obama rules allowing companies to invest other people's money in companies where politics, not profit, is prioritized.

But they won't, because too many of their rich patrons are now invested in ESG.

Texas pushed back against them, putting them on a list of companies that boycott traditional energy companies and thus making them ineligible to receive money from Texas state funds, and now they're demanding to be taken off the list.

They claim they don't boycott energy firms -- of course, they mean they invest in wind and solar and other non-energy-producing "energy" ventures.

BlackRock Inc. and UBS Group AG are among major financial firms taking steps to be removed from a list of companies that Texas has classified as "boycotting" the fossil fuel industry.

Representatives from at least five companies have asked the office of state Comptroller Glenn Hegar to remove them from the divestment list he published in August, arguing that they shouldn't have been included to begin with, according to documents Bloomberg obtained through a public records request.

The efforts underscore how crucial Texas' booming economy and population are as a source of growth for the finance world. Firms on the Republican comptroller's list may struggle to win underwriting business from the state's myriad issuers of municipal debt or gain access to entities like the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.

"We believe your determination is incorrect and is contradicted by verifiable public information," BlackRock Head of External Affairs Dalia Blass and Chief Client Officer Mark McCombe wrote in an Oct. 3 letter to Hegar. "BlackRock does not boycott energy companies" under the relevant state code.

As mandated by a law that the Texas Republican-controlled legislature passed last year and that took effect in September 2021, Hegar's office released a divestment list of 10 companies in late August -- including UBS and BlackRock -- as well as more than 300 individual funds.

Hegar's task was to prepare a list of firms that his office deems "boycott energy companies" -- a pillar of the state's economy -- under the Texas law. The entities then risk losing access to business with certain state governments and organizations.
...

Meanwhile, Tom Naratil, co-president of UBS Global Wealth Management until last month, submitted a clarification letter regarding the list in September. A UBS spokesperson told Bloomberg in October that the firm met with the comptroller's office and reiterated the importance of the energy industry and Texas. UBS said last month that it provided more information showing, "it is both our policy and practice to do business with energy companies, including those in the fossil fuel industry."
UBS Group's arm that underwrites US municipal bond sales hasn't handled any offerings in Texas' lucrative market for state and local-government debt since Hegar announced his findings, and was removed from a $3.4 billion transaction slated to price next year.

"We are actively working with the authorities in Texas to reinforce the importance of the energy industry and Texas to our business," Erica Chase, a UBS spokesperson, said in a statement. "UBS does not boycott the energy industry."

BlackRock didn't respond to requests for comment on the correspondence with Hegar's office.

More of this, please.

Tom "Salami Nipples" Nichols Admits: When We Said We Were NeverTrump, What We All Really Meant Was That We Were NeverRepublican, and Were Crazed Democrat Hyperpartisans

—Ace

Yeah, we know, Tom. But you've denied that until now.

I tried to include Salami Nipple McGee's sad puffies in the pic
but I got an I/O overflow error

And he's only admitting this now because he's attempting to score points on another weak c*ck, Dan McLaughlin, for not being NeverTrump enough.

He's attacking McLaughlin for supporting Republican challengers to Trump. This is insufficient, Scrapple Rack wheezes, his jiggling neck-fat shimmering in the light of Clarissa Explains It All! marathon playing on his blinged-out 65-inch TV.

You cannot just throw Trump overboard and say "all done," the bulbously obese Twitter Obsessive clucks, the words choking apnea-ically in the back of his Pizza-Hut-lubricated throat. To be a true NeverTrumper, you must vow to oppose all Republicans and conservatives in all races, from dog catcher to DA, and frantically support every hard leftwing Soros-funded Democrat out there.

That is the only way to be a True Republican and True Conservative, as all NeverTrumpers have been telling you they are for six fucking years now.

No, this is really what Bologna Areolae is saying now.

And he was only prompted to write his "column" (LOL) in the Atlantic (LOL) because he, get very much this, got into a Twitter fight with someone.

This "intellectual" and "scholar" is only moved to write something not on Twitter when he's been so humiliated on Twitter that he wants to recapitulate the Twitter fight to leftwing audience so they can say, "You really showed them what's what, Capicola Udders!"

A little on this sad, fat affair from John Sexton.

Tom Nichols has a piece at the Atlantic today explaining why Never Trump didn't really mean he'd never vote for Trump, it actually meant he'd never vote for Trumpism and that now includes all of the Republican Party.

In one of the most appalling appropriations of a political banner in years--or at least since Trump decided in 2012, after years of changing party registrations, finally to settle on calling himself a Republican--some of the conservatives hoping to salvage the GOP's fortune after the 2022 midterms are trying to seize and redefine the term Never Trump to mean a rejection of "only Trump, and no other Republicans who are like him." This is important not as some internecine fight among the right but because it is a preview of how many Republicans (and especially those coalescing around Florida Governor Ron DeSantis) intend to rehabilitate the GOP brand in 2024.

The strategy will be to make Trump the sin-eater for the entire party, designating him as the GOP's sole problem, and then rejecting him--and only him. The goal will be to scrub away the stain of having accommodated Trump while pretending that the Republican Party is no longer an extension of his warped and antidemocratic views. This will require an extraordinary suspension of disbelief and an expenditure of gigawatts of political energy on the pretense that the past seven years or so didn't happen--or didn't happen the way we remember them, or happened but don't matter because Trump, having escaped Elba to contest the primaries, will finally be sent to St. Helena after his inevitable defeat.

This will be the new Republican line, and it is nonsense.

As one of the original Never Trumpers--an appellation adopted by disaffected Republicans and conservatives who swore never to support Trump--I think I have a pretty firm handle on what the term means.

I don't know though. Does he have a firm grasp on what it means? Does he really remember what it used to mean? Let's jump back to the July 2016 article he wrote for the NY Times (linked above) and see what it actually says.

My brother heard I'd been saying bad things about Donald Trump.

...

I am a Never-Trump Republican, as we've come to be known, part of the alliance of conservatives implacably opposed to the idea of Donald J. Trump becoming president of the United States....

I formally came out as a Never Trump Republican in February, when I wrote a column for the conservative online publication The Federalist titled "I'll Take Hillary Clinton Over Donald Trump." I made the case that Republicans could tough out four years of Clinton, but that neither the party nor the American conservative movement could survive even a single year of Trump.

Prosciutto Jugs, you've formally come out as a NeverTrump Republican, and then as an ex-Republican, approximately sixty-three thousand times in six years. You literally have only one Area of Expertise, and that area of expertise is What Party Is Kielbasa Udders Supporting Now?

Spoiler: It's the same party he's supported for the last seventeen years.

Pastrami Tits finishes:

The Republicans know they have a problem. Many of them seem to believe their only recourse now is to say that they were all Never Trumpers in the hope that voters will somehow draw an unwarranted distinction between Trump and the party he has captured from top to bottom. But those of us who said "Never Trump" years ago--and meant it--know the difference.

Based on his past usage of the term -- combined with his previous insistence that was a True Republican and Better Republican Than You (TM) -- it sure does seem that ol' fat Knockwurst Knockers is lying for Internet Clout, as usual.

"Scrapple Rack" courtesy of Warai-otoko.

Nichols looks like he's trying to smuggle two garbage bags full of ham in the seat of his pants. Posted by: Marcus T, Byron Donalds

Four College Kids Were Brutally Murdered In Idaho But There's No Attack Angle for the Democrat Party So Their Deaths Don't Matter

—Ace

On November 13, between 3am and 4am, a killer crept into a house and butchered four people with a knife on the campus of the University of Idaho. They victims are not members of Democrat Grievance Group nor was the weapon used a Hate Weapon like a gun so the Corporate Propaganda Press has decided that these murders are Non-Useful.

Oh, also: The murders did not happen in NY, LA, or DC. Just some Flyover Country corpses. No big deal.

The killer is still unknown and at large.

The four victims are Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and the only male, Ethan Chapin, 20.

Strangely, there were two other housemates downstairs who did not wake during the murders, and also -- though this is not confirmed -- a dog in the house who did not stir.

The four murdered students were found on the second and third floor of their home, but the two roommates living on the ground floor -- Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen -- were spared. It's unclear why the two roommates were not killed and if they slept through the attacks.

Funke and Mortensen had also been out that night and arrived home just after 1 a.m. the morning of the murder. Neither has spoken publicly about the murders, but showed off matching tattoos to commemorate their fallen friends.

It has also emerged that murdered roommate Kaylee Goncalves' dog, Murphy, was at the house when police responded around midday.

However, authorities have not confirmed if they believe the dog was in the house at the time of the murders.

...

Authorities do not know who is responsible for the killings, but they have ruled out a slew of suspects, including: Goncalves' ex-boyfriend DeCoeur; the man seen with Goncalves and Mogen at the food truck; the person who drove the two girls home; the surviving two roommates, Mortensen and Funke; the victims themselves, as there is no evidence of a murder-suicide; and the friends summoned to the house by the surviving roommates the morning of Nov. 13.

Rumors circulated that Goncalves had said she had a stalker, but police have been unable to substantiate the claims.

Famed former FBI profiler Jim Clemente told The Post he believes the suspect is a "younger" man and a first-time killer who knew at least one of the victims.

"This is an extremely risky crime for the offender -- unless he knows one or more of the victims, or he's been stalking one of them," he said. "Going into an occupied dwelling with six young adults, any of whom could have a knife or a gun or a cellphone to call the police is extremely risky unless you know the circumstances inside."

The police seem to have nothing to go on, no witness reports, no forensics. Which is leading the media and general public to just start speculating and accusing baselessly.

A third-year law student is being accused of having something to do with the murder, based, it seems, only on him being tagged as being "socially awkward" in televised man-on-the-street media interviews.

Kaylee Goncalves' father has not yet held a funeral or commemoration service for his slain daughter, just out of disgust that the killer might show up.

"My wife's biggest fear, part of the reason we didn't have a funeral, is because she couldn't be guaranteed that that monster was going to not be there," he told ABC News.

He insisted that he still supports and trusts the law enforcement officers who are working the case, despite a lack of results so far and the killer still on the loose.

"I have to assume and hope that this is all part of their plan and ... they've got this all figured out," he told the news network.

That's a really good reason to have a funeral. I wonder if the cops are telling him to hold off on the funeral and make a big deal about not wanting the killer there to make the killer feel like he has to attend.

He says the weapon used -- which I guess is unspecified as to type -- is a "brutal weapon" which left large wounds in its victims. Correction: Oschisms points out the weapon has been ID'd as a Ka-Bar knife. He says that the NY Post -- great conservative paper! -- called the knife an "assault knife" already.

But Mr Goncalves says that his daughter and the other victims died quickly in the attack, which was carried out using a "brutal weapon", that has left the university town on edge.

"Nobody suffered and nobody felt like that kind of pain," added Mr Goncalves.

"The detective said this weapon is probably something (the killer) paid money for and something that they're proud of," he said.

The site of the crime. I assume the rear balcony deck has stairs going to the ground, which allowed the killer to enter the second floor without going through the first floor.

Update: Gref and Long Running Fool point out that there aren't stairs in the back -- because the ground level in the back of the property is at the height of the second level. What I thought was the "second story" is actually the third story.

Pictures and floorplans at the Daily Mail make this more obvious.

The front of the building is built to a lower level to meet the street, but the ground slopes up in the back to climb to the second story.

Horrifying stuff.

But who cares? There's no way to squeeze a point of Democrat political support out of it!

Note: Commenters said that there was a lot of forensic evidence being processed.

Okay, but that kind of evidence does not provide leads, unless you're already In The System. If you've got a clean record, police may pull your prints at a murder site, but they won't find you when they search your prints on VICAP or whatever it's called. If they had something that could provide that kind of lead, we'd probably already know.

The stuff they're getting is confirmatory stuff, stuff you can use to prove the suspect is guilty only after you've identified the suspect. That is, only once you've found a suspect and printed him can you compare his prints to the prints you found in the house.

I think it's pretty clear that, for now, the police have almost nothing.

That's not intended to be an insult. Sometimes a killer just leaves nothing much behind. Sometimes it's not even because he's careful or clever; he just doesn't bleed and leave DNA behind. He gets lucky.

And if he hasn't previously been arrested and fingerprinted, he can leave his prints all over the place and that won't help you find him. They'll help you convict him after you find him, but they won't help you find him in the first place.

Wednesday Morning Rant [Joe Mannix]

—Open Blogger

When I was in grade school, my fellow students and I went through some classes on "tolerance" to teach us that we had to put up with people even if they're different from us. It made sense to me, but I got a different perspective on it when I went home. My dad asked me what I learned in school that day, and I told him. He told me something along the lines of, "be careful, boy. That's not what they mean." I objected to that and told him that tolerance - that, as long as they're not hurting me, I should put up with different kinds of people, even if they're not like me - sounded like a decent approach to things.

He agreed, but insisted that what they were preaching was not about tolerance - that is, putting up with people who aren't like you - but rather about forced compliance. The way he put it to me was, "today it is tolerance, but tomorrow it will be acceptance. Next week, it will be celebration. Next month, you'll go to jail if you disagree with the celebration." I didn't really get what he meant at the time - I was just a child - but he turned out to be correct.