Oh, Monday.
Why do you have to be so consistent?
*.*
I married my wife for her looks...
But not the ones I've been getting lately.
*.*
Oneliners:
I was thinking about getting a ham radio, but I'm concerned about all that sodium.
Cleaning the house with kids is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos.
I hate when I'm waiting for Mom to cook dinner then I realize I'm Mom.
You can't plant flowers if you haven't botany.
Which wine pairs well with pretending to like sports?
SIGN: The last car to park here was never seen again.
When I was your age, I had to walk 10 feet through shag carpeting to change the TV channel.
It's me and my four hours of sleep against the world.
Every warning label has an awesome back story.
If you love someone, let them nap.
*.*
Top 5 Things We Wish The New iPhone 15 Was Able To Do:
Pay for itself.
Built-in Phasers, set to stun.
Floss me app.
Fillet a fish.
Air Fry.
*.*
Do not read the next sentence.
You little rebel, I like you.
Quote of the Times;
“Anyone who seriously believes that the war can be ended through Russian-Ukrainian negotiations lives in another world. Reality looks different. In reality, such issues can only be discussed between Washington and Moscow.” - Hungarian PM Viktor Orban
Link of the Times;
Eric July And Vox Day Respond To Attempts To Cancel Chuck Dixon:
https://boundingintocomics.com/2023/09/25/eric-july-and-vox-day-respond-to-attempts-to-cancel-chuck-dixon/
Issue of the Times;
Government Is The Hidden Hand Directing The Culture Wars by J.W. Rich
Recent data from the Pew Research Center shows that from 1994 to 2022, Americans’ views of opposing political parties became increasingly negative. In 1994, only 21 percent of Republicans and 17 percent of Democrats held “very unfavorable” views of the other party. In 2022, that category rose to 62 percent for Republicans and 54 percent for Democrats.
If we include those who hold “unfavorable” views, then over 80 percent of both Republicans and Democrats have negative views of the other party.
One of the many undesirable effects of this polarization is an environment in which anything can become a political lightning rod. Whether it involves Dr. Seuss books, Mr. Potato Head, or the Barbie movie, controversy seems to lurk around every societal corner. Nothing is safe, nothing is sacred, and anything can be weaponized by one political factor against another. The term often used to describe this perpetual conflict is “culture war”—a depressingly apt term. But through all the angry tweets, op-eds, and “cancel” campaigns, few ask about where these culture wars come from and whether we can end them.
While a complex social event is never the product of just one factor, culture wars generally emerge from one group of people using some form of power to pressure another group into changing its beliefs or behavior. The pressured group may fight back and cause the pressuring group to redouble its efforts. This cycle, if it continues, can broaden into a full-blown culture war.
What does this dynamic look like in practice? Imagine a country where a group of ice cream fanatics decide to make every citizen eat more ice cream. They might try to pass legislation that favors eating ice cream, attack and shame ice cream skeptics, and encourage eating ice cream as a social norm. They would probably win converts, but they would also make enemies (especially the lactose intolerant!). Those who do not wish to eat ice cream would react negatively and maybe try to push an anti–ice cream agenda. Soon, an ice cream culture war could break out, each side pressuring the other to conform to its beliefs.
The catalyst of a culture war is the pressure exerted by one group on another to adopt its ways of thinking and acting. But why do groups elect to use force on others to spread their viewpoints? Prima facie, there is no strong incentive to resort to aggressive evangelism. Societies are built through cooperation, even between those who disagree. The baker sells his bread to members of his political party as well as the opposing party. If he sold bread only to customers who adopted his political beliefs, the market would turn on him. The same incentive to cooperate exists for groups motivated by ideology. While it is certainly in their interest to add to their ranks, doing so in an aggressive and forceful manner is likely to work against them.
The state does not obey the same social norms as its citizens; its injunctions are not optional but coercive in nature. More importantly, such coercion (e.g., taxation, legislation, and law enforcement) does not exist in a vacuum but aims to achieve various ends. Interest groups looking to spread their beliefs can redirect state power to their own purposes. This may involve anything from getting a subsidy for an ideologically friendly company to using state-enforced censorship against ideological enemies.
As the power and reach of a state grows, so too do the opportunities to direct that power. In terms of total spending, the federal government of the United States is the largest in history. It is no coincidence that now, when the power of the state is greater than ever, culture wars are raging all around us. These conflicts are occurring not because people are deciding to fight with one another but because they are compelled to. If there were only free and voluntary associations, then alternative beliefs could coexist. There would be no need to promote, for example, one lifestyle over another, because everyone could live how they see fit.
But state power removes all choice and variety. As the state increases its control over domains like public school curricula and corporate subsidies, fewer ideas and directions are given a chance to succeed. Culture wars fester within such narrowing policy confines because values and beliefs are either represented or excluded.
Conflicts instigated through state power always spill into other areas of society. When the political representation or exclusion of one’s beliefs is at stake, a culture war can become an environment in which any means of defense seems fair game. Social institutions, corporations, and popular media can all be weaponized and wielded against one’s enemies. The result is as familiar as it is exhausting: unending conflict and controversy, with every institution, organization, and event in society politicized and nowhere to hide from the unceasing cross fire.
Culture wars are not created solely by the state, but a state with too much power makes them inevitable. High-minded sentiments about “having conversations” and “understanding the beliefs of others” might sound like appealing options for cooling the tensions of a culture war, but they gravely underestimate the scope of the problem. No amount of civil discussion will remove the divisions created by state power. Until that power is destroyed—or, at the very least, greatly diminished—the culture wars will continue.
News of the Times;
It’s No Accident The Southern Border Is Collapsing, It’s Intentional:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/21/its-no-accident-the-southern-border-is-collapsing-its-intentional/
Biden Admin Lets 221K+ Migrants Fly Directly Into U.S.:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/09/24/border-bypass-biden-admin-lets-221k-migrants-fly-directly-into-u-s-n1729490
American Tax Dollars Funding Way More Than Just Weapons in Ukraine:
https://www.westernjournal.com/uncovered-american-tax-dollars-funding-way-just-weapons-ukraine/
A war Russia set to win:
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/a-war-russia-set-to-win-441926
China is on a mission to spread deflation worldwide:
https://www.cryptopolitan.com/china-mission-to-spread-deflation-worldwide/
885,000 Full-Time Jobs Lost, 1.127 Million Part-Time Jobs Added:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/inside-todays-jobs-report-885000-full-time-jobs-lost-offset-1127-million-part-time-jobs
Dozens Of Baltimore Businesses Threaten to Not Pay Taxes:
https://www.newswars.com/weve-reached-our-breaking-point-dozens-of-baltimore-businesses-threaten-to-not-pay-taxes/
Killing Of Baltimore Tech CEO Is Yet Another Failure Of 'Soft-On-Crime' Policies:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/killing-baltimore-tech-ceo-yet-another-failure-soft-crime-policies-pushed-democrats
FBI Sued for What Elderly Man Says Happened to His Coin Collection:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/fbi-sued-elderly-man-says-happened-coin-collection/
Croydon stabbing:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12566905/Croydon-stabbing-girl-boy-bus-way-school-murder.html
Body of Forbes '30 Under 30' tech CEO, 26, was found on the roof:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12564889/amp/pava-lapere-baltimore-murder-jason-billingsley-roof.html
Vetoing Liquor Privatization:
https://reason.com/2015/07/03/vetoing-liquor-privatization-pennsylvani/
All Philly Liquor Stores Closed After Mass Looting:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/watch-all-hell-breaks-out-philadelphia-teen-looters-target-retail-stores
If you need some fire in your belly, watch this North Carolina mom:
https://notthebee.com/article/viral-video-shows-north-carolina-mom-go-nuclear-on-school-board-for-wasting-their-time-and-not-actually-educating-children
FBI Targets Trump Voters As Domestic Terrorists Ahead Of 2024 Election:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/04/fbi-targets-trump-voters-as-domestic-terrorists-ahead-of-2024-election/
Hand?
Living?
Best get up and get going.
Today's bad decisions aren't going to make themselves!
*.*
SON: Can we go to a haunted house this year?
DAD: What's wrong with the one we live in?
SON: Huh?
DAD: Goodnight...
*.*
Oneliners:
Alexa, rake my leaves.
I've been diagnosed as a kleptomaniac; I've been taking all kinds of stuff for it.
Why does life keep teaching me lessons I have no desire to learn?
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
Everyone needs a friend that they probably shouldn't be able to sit next to at a serious function.
In Canada, is AI referred to as AI, eh?
If you were 7 when "Rock Lobster" came out, then you'd B-52 by now.
I'm at the age where I appreciate a nice handrail.
Moving day tip: wear lots of deodorant.
I'm fairly certain that my final word will be, "Oops!"
*.*
Top 5 Signs your Genie in the Lamp is a Dud:
He just granted you three fishes.
Keeps saying, "Well, you're no Aladdin."
Mid-riff exposing outfit shows off beer belly.
He identifies as a leprechaun.
Had Dylan Mulvaney's face laser etched into She / Her / Hers lamp.
*.*
Some days I amaze myself.
Other days, I put my phone in the freezer.
Quote of the Times;
“The United States, South Africa, and Zimbabwe all provide copious historical information on the economic results of changing the demographics of the population. And the per capita lifetime budgetary impact makes it clear that even a relatively small demographic shift on the order of 10 percent can have a massive and lasting impact on the wealth of nations.” - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class:
https://nypost.com/2022/05/26/team-biden-might-be-purposefully-crushing-the-middle-class/
Issue of the Times;
The Middle Class Is Increasingly Becoming “The Impoverished Class” by Michael @ http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/
America’s middle class is being systematically eviscerated. When the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system during the pandemic, most Americans didn’t realize what that would do to them. That money certainly made the wealthy a whole lot wealthier, but it also dramatically increased the cost of living for the rest of us. So now inflation has been rising much faster than paychecks have, and the cost of living has become exceedingly oppressive. In fact, last year we witnessed the largest decline in real median household income in more than a decade…
The official tally is in and it is brutal: Americans suffered the biggest drop in household income in 2022 in a dozen years.
Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, a drop of 2.3 percent from the prior year, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
This is the biggest drop in household income since 2010, when it household income fell 2.6 percent. That means it is worse than the pandemic decline of 2.2 percent. It is the fourth worst year in records going back to 1985.
In 2010, the U.S. economy was just coming out of the horrible recession that we had just experienced in 2008 and 2009.
Those were not fun times.
And the times that we are moving into will not be fun either.
We are being told that “high inflation” is the primary reason why real median household income is falling…
The declines were driven by high inflation. The measure of inflation that is used to calculate real income rose 7.8 percent, the worst inflation since 1981.
1981 was a long time ago.
But at that time, the U.S. economy quickly recovered under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan.
We will not be so fortunate this time around.
Our leaders flooded the system with giant mountains of money, and almost everyone cheered as they were doing it.
But now we are paying the price.
Recently, a “Gen X mom” named Jessica McCabe made headlines all over the world when she posted a video on TikTok in which she expressed how frustrating it is to watch her adult children deeply struggle in this economy…
“I am so tired of feeling helpless as a parent,” McCabe started off the video. She acknowledged that her son was 25 and her daughter was 28 and explained: “I thought by teaching them what I learned, which is you work hard, you get a good job, you’re gonna get the things in life that you need, right? Worked for me, why wouldn’t it work for them?”
Unfortunately for all of us, the rules have changed.
What worked in the 1980s and 1990s simply does not work today.
In her video, she acknowledged that struggle is a part of life, but she also said that it is just so disheartening to see her kids “get further and further down” no matter how hard they try…
She continued: “I see them struggling, and before my generation comes at me, yes, I understand struggling as a part of life. We all struggle, but there’s a difference between struggling and drowning. So we struggled, and it was tough. But you know what, we made it. We knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel with our struggle. It seems like kids today, no matter how much they struggle, they just get further and further down.”
Sadly, this is the reality of life for most Americans today.
More than 60 percent of the nation is currently living paycheck to paycheck, and former Ford CEO Mark Fields just admitted to CNBC that someone needs to make more than $100,000 a year just to be able to afford a new vehicle these days…
The former Ford CEO said that a consumer has to “make over $100,000 to afford a new car.” As a result, the price of vehicles is starting to come down, which is leading to an inventory correction.
“Vehicles are getting older, they need to be replaced.”
Americans are keeping their vehicles longer than ever, and that is because most of us simply cannot afford to replace them.
As I have discussed previously, Americans are increasingly turning to debt to help make ends meet from month to month.
Credit card debt surged dramatically during the second quarter, and this is starting to become an enormous problem…
American households now have an average of $10,170 credit card debt, as record numbers say they are worried about being cut off from access to loans.
Data from the New York Federal Reserve shows nationwide credit card debt swelled by $43 billion in the second quarter of the year – the second largest increase on record.
Of course there is a limit to how much debt that U.S. consumers can take on, and financial institutions are starting to say “no” a lot more often…
Meanwhile a separate survey by the Fed revealed 60 percent of respondents found it more difficult to access credit – the highest level since the data series began in June 2013.
I warned my readers that the flow of credit would start to get tighter and tighter.
And now it is happening.
Right now, so many formerly middle class Americans have been pushed into what I call “the impoverished class”, and many that were formerly poor now find themselves pushed out into the streets.
In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal we have witnessed the largest increase in homelessness ever recorded this year…
The United States has seen the biggest ever spike in homeless people living on the streets – as preliminary figures showed a record 11 percent increase in one year.
There are nearly 600,000 rough sleepers across cities and towns in America, and the jump from 2022 to 2023 so far is the highest since the government started tracking the data in 2007, according to the WSJ.
Places like Oakland and San Francisco in California have become hotbeds for homelessness, as people living on the streets are like ‘drug tourists’ who arrive to have easy access to narcotics.
So please don’t believe anyone that tries to convince you that the economy is doing just fine.
It most certainly is not.
Homeless encampments are popping up like mushrooms all over the nation, and many communities are not pleased about this at all.
For example, just check out what has been happening in Austin, Texas…
Shocking footage has exposed the scene in an Austin park filled with liquor bottles, needles, Narcan and junk ‘as far as the eye can see,’ as a homeless encampment continues to grow.
The videos were of the West Bouldin Creek Greenbelt were posted on Monday by activist Jamie Hammonds, who reports from the Texas capital on the X page @DocumentingATX.
‘Another Greenbelt destroyed here in Austin… nothing but trash and junk as far as you can see… this is absolutely horrible,’ Hammonds said, adding that the encampment was at least the size of a football field, and you could smell it ‘even before you enter the greenbelt.’
As the economy continues to crumble, things are going to get even worse.
And as things get worse, the middle class will continue to shrink.
It is almost as if we are all playing a really bizarre game of musical chairs.
With each passing day, even more spots in the middle class are being removed from the game, and the ranks of “the impoverished class” continue to grow larger and larger.
News of the Times;
Russian foreign minister: US ‘directly at war’ with Russia:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/sep/24/russian-foreign-minister-us-directly-war-russia-us/
Child Poverty More than Doubled in Biden’s Second Year:
https://theohiostar.com/news/child-poverty-more-than-doubled-in-bidens-second-year-census-data-shows/ohstarstaff/2023/09/13/
Elites Enjoy Lavish Dinner at Palace of Versailles While Discussing Climate Change:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/elites-enjoy-lavish-dinner-palace-versailles-while-discussing/
Federal Judge Knocks Down DACA:
https://headlineusa.com/federal-judge-knocks-down-daca-rules-obamas-dreamers-scheme-illegal/
California man says his wife was stabbed to death:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/hemet-mom-killed-drugs-couple
Academic Whose Research ‘Proved’ Systemic Racism is Fired from University for Faking Data:
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/anti-white-academic-whose-research-proved-systemic-racism-is-fired-from-university-for-faking-data/
Woman Dies After Abortion at Planned Parenthood:
https://www.lifenews.com/2023/09/25/woman-dies-after-abortion-at-planned-parenthood-causes-deadly-sepsis/
Texas Republican Mayra Flores:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/texas-republican-mayra-flores-mexican-cartel-is-full/
Illegal Immigrant Who Was Released Into US by Biden Admin Arrested for Murder Months Later:
https://www.westernjournal.com/illegal-immigrant-released-us-biden-admin-arrested-murder-months-later/
Devastating risks of transitioning to 'green' energy:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12545855/Devastating-transition-green-energy-metal-mining-23-million-people-toxic-waste-rivers-polluted-farmland.html
The Two-Parent Advantage:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-two-parent-advantage
As Trump predicted, Washington and Jefferson are next:
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/09/20/as-trump-predicted-washington-and-jefferson-are-next-n579151
1,000 school districts support hiding kids' gender issue from parents:
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/education/stparents-rights-group-finds-1000-school-districts-support-kids-hiding
Western Heights principal defends drag queen alter ego:
https://nondoc.com/2023/09/11/western-heights-principal-shane-murnan-drag-queen-shantel-mandalay/
Today's bad decisions aren't going to make themselves!
*.*
SON: Can we go to a haunted house this year?
DAD: What's wrong with the one we live in?
SON: Huh?
DAD: Goodnight...
*.*
Oneliners:
Alexa, rake my leaves.
I've been diagnosed as a kleptomaniac; I've been taking all kinds of stuff for it.
Why does life keep teaching me lessons I have no desire to learn?
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
Everyone needs a friend that they probably shouldn't be able to sit next to at a serious function.
In Canada, is AI referred to as AI, eh?
If you were 7 when "Rock Lobster" came out, then you'd B-52 by now.
I'm at the age where I appreciate a nice handrail.
Moving day tip: wear lots of deodorant.
I'm fairly certain that my final word will be, "Oops!"
*.*
Top 5 Signs your Genie in the Lamp is a Dud:
He just granted you three fishes.
Keeps saying, "Well, you're no Aladdin."
Mid-riff exposing outfit shows off beer belly.
He identifies as a leprechaun.
Had Dylan Mulvaney's face laser etched into She / Her / Hers lamp.
*.*
Some days I amaze myself.
Other days, I put my phone in the freezer.
Quote of the Times;
“The United States, South Africa, and Zimbabwe all provide copious historical information on the economic results of changing the demographics of the population. And the per capita lifetime budgetary impact makes it clear that even a relatively small demographic shift on the order of 10 percent can have a massive and lasting impact on the wealth of nations.” - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class:
https://nypost.com/2022/05/26/team-biden-might-be-purposefully-crushing-the-middle-class/
Issue of the Times;
The Middle Class Is Increasingly Becoming “The Impoverished Class” by Michael @ http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/
America’s middle class is being systematically eviscerated. When the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system during the pandemic, most Americans didn’t realize what that would do to them. That money certainly made the wealthy a whole lot wealthier, but it also dramatically increased the cost of living for the rest of us. So now inflation has been rising much faster than paychecks have, and the cost of living has become exceedingly oppressive. In fact, last year we witnessed the largest decline in real median household income in more than a decade…
The official tally is in and it is brutal: Americans suffered the biggest drop in household income in 2022 in a dozen years.
Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, a drop of 2.3 percent from the prior year, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
This is the biggest drop in household income since 2010, when it household income fell 2.6 percent. That means it is worse than the pandemic decline of 2.2 percent. It is the fourth worst year in records going back to 1985.
In 2010, the U.S. economy was just coming out of the horrible recession that we had just experienced in 2008 and 2009.
Those were not fun times.
And the times that we are moving into will not be fun either.
We are being told that “high inflation” is the primary reason why real median household income is falling…
The declines were driven by high inflation. The measure of inflation that is used to calculate real income rose 7.8 percent, the worst inflation since 1981.
1981 was a long time ago.
But at that time, the U.S. economy quickly recovered under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan.
We will not be so fortunate this time around.
Our leaders flooded the system with giant mountains of money, and almost everyone cheered as they were doing it.
But now we are paying the price.
Recently, a “Gen X mom” named Jessica McCabe made headlines all over the world when she posted a video on TikTok in which she expressed how frustrating it is to watch her adult children deeply struggle in this economy…
“I am so tired of feeling helpless as a parent,” McCabe started off the video. She acknowledged that her son was 25 and her daughter was 28 and explained: “I thought by teaching them what I learned, which is you work hard, you get a good job, you’re gonna get the things in life that you need, right? Worked for me, why wouldn’t it work for them?”
Unfortunately for all of us, the rules have changed.
What worked in the 1980s and 1990s simply does not work today.
In her video, she acknowledged that struggle is a part of life, but she also said that it is just so disheartening to see her kids “get further and further down” no matter how hard they try…
She continued: “I see them struggling, and before my generation comes at me, yes, I understand struggling as a part of life. We all struggle, but there’s a difference between struggling and drowning. So we struggled, and it was tough. But you know what, we made it. We knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel with our struggle. It seems like kids today, no matter how much they struggle, they just get further and further down.”
Sadly, this is the reality of life for most Americans today.
More than 60 percent of the nation is currently living paycheck to paycheck, and former Ford CEO Mark Fields just admitted to CNBC that someone needs to make more than $100,000 a year just to be able to afford a new vehicle these days…
The former Ford CEO said that a consumer has to “make over $100,000 to afford a new car.” As a result, the price of vehicles is starting to come down, which is leading to an inventory correction.
“Vehicles are getting older, they need to be replaced.”
Americans are keeping their vehicles longer than ever, and that is because most of us simply cannot afford to replace them.
As I have discussed previously, Americans are increasingly turning to debt to help make ends meet from month to month.
Credit card debt surged dramatically during the second quarter, and this is starting to become an enormous problem…
American households now have an average of $10,170 credit card debt, as record numbers say they are worried about being cut off from access to loans.
Data from the New York Federal Reserve shows nationwide credit card debt swelled by $43 billion in the second quarter of the year – the second largest increase on record.
Of course there is a limit to how much debt that U.S. consumers can take on, and financial institutions are starting to say “no” a lot more often…
Meanwhile a separate survey by the Fed revealed 60 percent of respondents found it more difficult to access credit – the highest level since the data series began in June 2013.
I warned my readers that the flow of credit would start to get tighter and tighter.
And now it is happening.
Right now, so many formerly middle class Americans have been pushed into what I call “the impoverished class”, and many that were formerly poor now find themselves pushed out into the streets.
In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal we have witnessed the largest increase in homelessness ever recorded this year…
The United States has seen the biggest ever spike in homeless people living on the streets – as preliminary figures showed a record 11 percent increase in one year.
There are nearly 600,000 rough sleepers across cities and towns in America, and the jump from 2022 to 2023 so far is the highest since the government started tracking the data in 2007, according to the WSJ.
Places like Oakland and San Francisco in California have become hotbeds for homelessness, as people living on the streets are like ‘drug tourists’ who arrive to have easy access to narcotics.
So please don’t believe anyone that tries to convince you that the economy is doing just fine.
It most certainly is not.
Homeless encampments are popping up like mushrooms all over the nation, and many communities are not pleased about this at all.
For example, just check out what has been happening in Austin, Texas…
Shocking footage has exposed the scene in an Austin park filled with liquor bottles, needles, Narcan and junk ‘as far as the eye can see,’ as a homeless encampment continues to grow.
The videos were of the West Bouldin Creek Greenbelt were posted on Monday by activist Jamie Hammonds, who reports from the Texas capital on the X page @DocumentingATX.
‘Another Greenbelt destroyed here in Austin… nothing but trash and junk as far as you can see… this is absolutely horrible,’ Hammonds said, adding that the encampment was at least the size of a football field, and you could smell it ‘even before you enter the greenbelt.’
As the economy continues to crumble, things are going to get even worse.
And as things get worse, the middle class will continue to shrink.
It is almost as if we are all playing a really bizarre game of musical chairs.
With each passing day, even more spots in the middle class are being removed from the game, and the ranks of “the impoverished class” continue to grow larger and larger.
News of the Times;
Russian foreign minister: US ‘directly at war’ with Russia:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/sep/24/russian-foreign-minister-us-directly-war-russia-us/
Child Poverty More than Doubled in Biden’s Second Year:
https://theohiostar.com/news/child-poverty-more-than-doubled-in-bidens-second-year-census-data-shows/ohstarstaff/2023/09/13/
Elites Enjoy Lavish Dinner at Palace of Versailles While Discussing Climate Change:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/elites-enjoy-lavish-dinner-palace-versailles-while-discussing/
Federal Judge Knocks Down DACA:
https://headlineusa.com/federal-judge-knocks-down-daca-rules-obamas-dreamers-scheme-illegal/
California man says his wife was stabbed to death:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/hemet-mom-killed-drugs-couple
Academic Whose Research ‘Proved’ Systemic Racism is Fired from University for Faking Data:
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/anti-white-academic-whose-research-proved-systemic-racism-is-fired-from-university-for-faking-data/
Woman Dies After Abortion at Planned Parenthood:
https://www.lifenews.com/2023/09/25/woman-dies-after-abortion-at-planned-parenthood-causes-deadly-sepsis/
Texas Republican Mayra Flores:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/texas-republican-mayra-flores-mexican-cartel-is-full/
Illegal Immigrant Who Was Released Into US by Biden Admin Arrested for Murder Months Later:
https://www.westernjournal.com/illegal-immigrant-released-us-biden-admin-arrested-murder-months-later/
Devastating risks of transitioning to 'green' energy:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12545855/Devastating-transition-green-energy-metal-mining-23-million-people-toxic-waste-rivers-polluted-farmland.html
The Two-Parent Advantage:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-two-parent-advantage
As Trump predicted, Washington and Jefferson are next:
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/09/20/as-trump-predicted-washington-and-jefferson-are-next-n579151
1,000 school districts support hiding kids' gender issue from parents:
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/education/stparents-rights-group-finds-1000-school-districts-support-kids-hiding
Western Heights principal defends drag queen alter ego:
https://nondoc.com/2023/09/11/western-heights-principal-shane-murnan-drag-queen-shantel-mandalay/
ESPN?
36% of people in a Good Housekeeping survey said they always have chopsticks in their kitchen.
59% of people say that Chopsticks is the only song they can play on the piano.
*.*
Joan: "I'm looking for a golden anniversary gift for my husband."
Lisa: "But haven't you only been married fifteen years?"
Joan: "Yes, but it feels like fifty!"
*.*
Top Five Major Regrets I've Had In 2023:
Spending $250 on that Aaron Rogers Jets jersey.
Buying Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner an early anniversary gift.
Going to a Mitch McConnell motivational seminar.
Operating a mud bath booth at Burning Man.
Making that World Series bet on the Oakland A's.
*.*
My therapist says I have trouble expressing emotion.
Can't say I'm surprised.
*.*
One review on the new movie, "The Nun 2," said it was scary enough that it could become habit.
Gotta get those nun jokes in when you can.
Quote of the Times;
“Go ahead and watch a black-and-white film from the 1950s and see for yourself how it makes you feel. Intact families, close communities, disciplined people, penitent churchgoers, innocent children, reverence for our elders, and a cohesive national fabric stitched tightly together with hard work, dignity, and pride.” - @PiratesNFlowers
Link of the Times;
Tradewinds of Change:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-91323-tradewinds-of-change
Issue of the Times;
ESPN Vs. Charter Could Be The End Of The Cable Bundle… And Televised Sports As We Know It by Clay Travis
In the summer of 2014, the cable and satellite bundle peaked. One hundred million households were subscribed to ESPN, the most successful channel in the history of cable, and the apex of the greatest business in the history of media had been reached.
But no one knew it.
Cable, satellite, and media executives were all blissfully unaware of what was coming. Fox Sports FS1 had launched the prior year — yours truly appeared on the very first show in the history of the network, a 2013 college football preview show. In the summer of 2014 the SEC Network would make its debut. The SEC Network was, in fact, the single most successful cable and satellite channel debut in the history of the cable industry. With the launch of the SEC Network, ESPN, the channel’s owner, stood at the pinnacle of its power, the company seemed indestructible, a gold plated money minting machine.
Billions of dollars in profits flowed off ESPN each year, enabling all of Disney to flourish. It was the crown jewel of the company, a profit spigot, the Titanic of the cable fleet.
But an iceberg loomed ahead.
And almost no one saw it coming.
The era of cable and satellite cord cutting began in the fall of 2014.
Quietly, at first.
So quietly, in fact, that most at ESPN and in the cable industry refused to acknowledge what was occurring. A few million here, a few million there, slowly a trickle turning into a stream and then the stream turning into a river and before long there was a flood of cord cutters.
If they made a movie about the cord cutting disaster — and at some point they might — a quant would be the hero. Someone deep in the recesses of ESPN’s business department who looked at the cable revenue spigot and started to realize what was going on — the greatest business in the history of media was sputtering, just as ESPN spent greater and greater sums of money on sports rights. That person probably jumped and waved their arms, begged ESPN executives not to keep spending money on sports rights like drunken sailors.
And that person was summarily ignored.
By the summer of 2023, just nine years after peak cable was hit in 2014, only 70 million households were paying for cable or satellite subscriptions. ESPN had lost 30% of its business, just as the cost for sports rights loomed larger and larger.
And then last week, inexplicably, things got worse. Charter Communications, home to 15 million cable and satellite subscribers, refused to bend the knee to ESPN’s price increase demands and cut the channel — along with ABC and all other Disney properties — off air just as Florida prepared to kick off against Utah on the opening Thursday night of college football.
And the games remained off air all throughout Week Zero and into the first full weekend of college football.
Now, the NFL season looms for ESPN, the Jets against the Bills, Aaron Rodgers vs. Josh Allen on Monday Night Football and still there’s no resolution in sight.
How did ESPN’s business die?
Gradually and then all at once.
Nine years ago ESPN was in 100 million households, without Charter they are in around 55 million households. In the space of nine years, ESPN has lost almost half its audience, half its business, half its subscription revenue.
This is a massive media story, one of the biggest of our lives. And it’s not just ESPN. ESPN just stands to lose the most because it had the most lucrative business model in cable. It’s all of the cable and satellite bundle, the entire cable neighborhood is on fire.
As much as you’ve read about this ESPN-Charter battle so far? It should be ten times that much. Because this is how the free ride that most of us sports fans have grown used to comes to a screeching halt. This is bad, very bad, if you’re a sports fan, a sports media employee, a sports executive or an employee of a sports team, this is asteroid hitting the planet bad, a dinosaur level extinction event.
Whether you’re a star athlete, an owner, or just a fan, if you care who wins games or simply enjoy watching those games, we’re all about to have to pay a ton more for that privilege.
Put simply, everyone is fucked.
Including, potentially, everyone in all of media, not just those of us in sports media.
Because the golden cable cash spigot has suddenly run out of coins and if sports collapses, the entire cable bundle may collapse with it.
How do we begin to figure out what comes next?
Well, we first have to start at the beginning, when ESPN was founded in 1979 in Bristol, Connecticut. Few knew it then, but ESPN was destined to become the greatest cash producing business in the history of media.
Some people think of me as anti-ESPN, but that’s not accurate. I used to be one of the biggest ESPN fans on the planet. Because I did and still do love sports to an unhealthy degree. Before Keith Olbermann decided men should become women’s sports champions, he, alongside Dan Patrick, were the best tag team of sports anchors in my life. Every morning as I got ready for school I would sit on the couch in my Nashville, Tennessee home and watch SportsCenter as I shoveled cereal in my mouth. If you’d told me in 1993 that at some point Keith Olbermann or Dan Patrick would have ever known my name, I would have walked on air for a week, a month even.
Because when I was fourteen years old, I was convinced that Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann were two of the coolest dudes on the planet.
And it wasn’t just that duo. Chris Berman, Tom Jackson, Linda Cohn, Stuart Scott, these ESPN anchors were all legends in my mind.
Because I was old enough to remember an era when our family didn’t have cable. When you got a couple of minutes of crappy local sports highlights, when you had to get the newspapers and, oh no!, your team was on the west coast and you’d have to go the entire day waiting to see if they won or not. Hell, I listened to games on the radio. And not because I happened to be in the car on a long ride while a game was going on, because that was the only way I knew to hear a game live. There was no option to watch it on TV, not even on pay-per-view.
If you haven’t ever found yourself squinting at the bottom of the TV screen to see the score ticker go by on CNN Headline News or ESPN, you really have no idea what I’m talking about.
But for sports fans, ESPN in those days was the oasis in a media desert, our salvation, nirvana for the sports fan soul.
I didn’t understand ESPN’s business back in those days, but I understood the raw concept of supply and demand. ESPN was selling what I wanted. And chances are it was selling what you wanted too. And what did we want? The games. (And the highlights, at least back then).
Over the decades, ESPN ran a game plan that allowed it to become the most lucrative media company in American history. They used our cable and satellite subscription fees — our cable bill — to buy up sports rights and as their cable and satellite subscription revenue grew they bought better and better sports rights. And when the cable and satellite companies balked at paying ESPN more, what did they do? They got fans to threaten to leave the cable and satellite companies so that the cable and satellite companies always buckled and ended up paying more.
We were the addicts and ESPN had the games that sated our need.
It was a hell of a business, like I said, the best business in the history of American media.
By the fall of 2014, ESPN was making around $6 a month per subscriber, at $6 a month x 100 million subscribers that means ESPN was making around $7 billion a year. Toss in another couple of billion in advertising and we’re talking about a $9 billion, roughly, revenue enterprise.
A quick refresher for those of you who don’t understand the cable and satellite business — every channel has a cost per month. So while you might pay $100 a month for a cable or satellite subscription, each channel costs a different amount. Some channels cost a quarter a month, others a dollar, ESPN was far and away the most expensive channel, costing several dollars a month for every single cable and satellite subscriber, all 100 million of us at the peak in 2014. And ESPN used all the money they made off cable and satellite subscriptions to buy up sports rights. The better the sports rights, the more they could charge, it was a phenomenal business, a fly wheel of cash.
Presently, ESPN spends roughly nine billion a year on sports rights. The company has committed, and this is before they have to pony up for new rights for the NBA and new rights for the college football playoff, $45 billion in sports rights fees through 2027. $45 billion! With tens of billions more still to come for the NBA and college football, ESPN wants to keep both.
The biggest and most expensive rights packages presently? That’s the college football playoff and the NFL’s Monday Night Football package, each of which airs exclusively on ESPN’s cable channel. ESPN pays $2.7 billion per year for Monday Night Football, a gargantuan sum of money for less than twenty games a year. That’s well over $100 million per NFL game.
But the flaw in the business, and all businesses have flaws, was this — most people paying for ESPN, that is, most of the 100 million subscribers in 2014, weren’t actually sports fans. Yet they still paid $100 a year for ESPN. Your Aunt Gladys, who hadn’t watched a sporting event in decades, paid the same every month for ESPN as you did. Only she didn’t know. Because your cable bill was never itemized. You knew what HBO cost a month, because it was extra, a premium channel — and your mom and dad, like my mom and dad, may well have refused to pay extra for it, leaving you gorging on the free previews back in the day — but you never knew what ESPN or TBS or TNT or AMC or CNN or Fox News cost because the cable cost wasn’t itemized by channel, it was buried in your cable and satellite bundle, in your monthly bill.
Now let’s pause for a moment and go back in time to 2014, when the cable and satellite bundle peaked.
Do you know what else happened in 2014 in the world of media?
“House of Cards” season two debuted on Netflix.
Do you remember “House of Cards?” Kevin Spacey played a diabolical South Carolina politician hellbent on the pursuit of power. It was a great show, but it was also an incredible gamble, because it was the first ever Netflix original show. Up to that point, Netflix had made all of its money by buying up everyone else’s reruns and bundling them in its streaming service. I still remember how stunned I was, as I sat bleary eyed up in front of my family’s first flat screen TV, and watched each “House of Cards,” episode keep playing, one after the other unless I stopped each new episode, the weekly scheduled show was no more, Netflix released entire seasons all at once.
Let’s consider the stature of two media companies back in 2014 when “House of Cards” season two debuted — Disney, ESPN’s parent company, and Netflix, which just released season two of its first ever original series, were widely divergent in their power.
Disney stock traded at $84 a share when season two of Netflix debuted in 2014. Netflix, meanwhile, traded at $57 a share. Their market caps were wildly different, but let’s fast forward to today, Netflix is presently $445 a share. That means in the past nine years, your initial Netflix stock purchase has increased by roughly 8x. Meanwhile, Disney is currently $81 a share, a LOWER price than it was nine years ago.
Netflix, which was a $25 billion market cap stock in 2014 is now worth just shy of $200 billion and Disney is a $148 billion market cap stock, roughly the same as it was in 2014.
How did this happen?
Streaming.
It turns out “House of Cards,” star Frank Underwood’s biggest kill wasn’t on screen at all, it was in the media business.
Netflix, which soon had many competitors in the streaming space, destroyed the cable and satellite bundle.
In 2014, I paid for one streaming service, Netflix. Now, and I shudder to even lay all these out, the Travis household is subscribed to what feels like every streaming service on the planet. And we still have cable too, you’re welcome, Comcast. The Travis household is subscribed to Amazon Prime — I think we actually have two of these accounts because I lost our password and it was either get divorced or just have my wife sign up a new account because I couldn’t track down the old password — Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, Peacock, Apple+, Paramount, I still think we pay for the WWE Network somehow, basically if you have created a streaming service we pay for it.
Disney made tens of billions on the cable and satellite bundle. Do you know what Disney has made off streaming so far? They’ve lost $11 billion.
Let me repeat that, they’ve lost $11 billion. I’m not a math genius, but when you have to make $11 billion to get back to zero, that doesn’t seem like a great business to be in.
And the same is true for every American company that has entered streaming except for Netflix.
All of them have lost money, every single one. Netflix is the only American content company to make money off streaming so far.
Why is that?
Because Netflix’s only business is streaming.
Every other one of these big media companies, except for Apple and Amazon, which are using streaming as ancillary offerings for their primary businesses, has cut their own cable and satellite throat by creating a streaming service because they were afraid Netflix would have the streaming industry to themselves.
The cable and satellite industry was the best business in world media history. And all of these big media companies destroyed that business by going all-in on streaming, which so far is the worst business in world media history.
Okay, you might be thinking, how does this impact sports and the ESPN/Charter battle?
Well, you know the broadband wires in your house that you probably forgot are there — it turns out that’s actually a way better business for the cable and satellite companies than the cable and satellite business is.
We’re all addicted to the Internet.
And we can’t get on the Internet without those broadband cables (at least most of us can’t). And that business is a way better business now than cable and satellite.
Charter has been in the cable and satellite business for a long time. But they have smart business guys too and those smart business guys are seeing all of you drop cable and satellite bundles and they see that the long range cable business is not going to be particularly profitable. What’s more, even if they don’t have smart quant guys they can see what Disney is telling everyone about ESPN because Disney CEO Bob Iger keeps telling everyone his plans for ESPN.
And that plan is this, succinctly, “We’re going to take ESPN directly to consumers as a streaming service eventually, but not yet. First we’re going to bleed the cable and satellite companies for as much money as we can.”
In the meantime ESPN+ is just an attempt to monetize all the content that isn’t good enough to be on regular ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, the SEC Network, you get my drift. ESPN+ is just a test case for the future when all of ESPN will be streamed direct to the consumer.
But ESPN got cocky — they went and told everyone that eventually ESPN would put all its games on a direct to consumer streaming company. And then they wouldn’t need the cable and satellite companies at all to bring their channel to the masses.
But, in the meantime, ESPN expected the cable and satellite companies to keep paying them full freight. But that wasn’t all, ESPN expected they could keep raising prices too. Effectively ESPN told the cable and satellite companies that it was going to cut their arms and legs off, but it wasn’t sure when it would decide to do so. Still, ESPN expected for the cable companies to sharpen the sword for them.
And most cable and satellite companies didn’t fight back that hard because they also have exposure to the cable and satellite bundle. Comcast, for instance, doesn’t want to lose ESPN because if they do then all the NBC cable properties will lose a ton of money due to the cord cutting. So they may not like their ESPN deals, but they can at least convince themselves that they are making a ton of money by milking the cable and satellite bundle dry too.
But the Charter guys, who don’t own cable channels like Comcast, look at the math and think, “We don’t really care about the cable and satellite bundle because we make most of our money off broadband.” So unlike virtually every other carriage dispute we’ve seen, when ESPN’s games being pulled made fans furious and the resulting threats terrified the cable companies, the Charter people are actually encouraging you to go sign up for YouTube TV or whatever other streaming service you want to use. Why? Because they make more money off broadband, they don’t really care about their cable business any more.
And they know that ESPN wants to cut their arms and legs off, but they’re calling ESPN’s bluff here because for the first time ever, ESPN’s got less leverage than the cable company does. ESPN needs cable more than cable needs ESPN.
So ESPN is fucked.
And so, maybe, is the entire cable and satellite bundle.
Because Charter knows that if ESPN goes direct to consumer, guess what, THEY STILL MAKE MONEY!
Because you have to stream ESPN on their broadband service and they take a share of the sign up money to bring ESPN to the home too.
And ESPN knows that their cable and satellite business is collapsing but, and this is key, they’ve also done the math and realize that streaming is going to destroy their existing cable business. Because, and this is what no one seems willing to say, ESPN doesn’t just have one bad business now — the cable and satellite bundle — they have the streaming business too, which is an even worse business. And, and this is very key, each business is accelerating the demise of the other. Streaming isn’t making ESPN stronger, it’s making ESPN weaker because it’s hastening the destruction of a profitable business — cable and satellite — for a money-losing business — streaming.
And that’s what many are still missing — as the cable and satellite bundle boat takes on water and sinks, the streaming bundle is also taking on water and sinking too. ESPN has tried to sell people on the idea that at the exact moment that the cable and satellite bundle collapses they are going to step to a brand new business, the streaming business, and it’s going to be a sturdy and successful lifeboat that carries them to richer waters.
But the reality is, streaming is a way worse business than the cable and satellite bundle. Because the only people who pay for ESPN will be sports fans. The free ride is over, your Aunt Gladys is never signing up and subsidizing your sports viewing again.
For the record, I’m not great at math. The only math class I ever took in college was – and I’m not making this up – something called, “Mathematical Concepts,” It was me and every sorority girl at George Washington University.
So it was the greatest class of my life.
Anyway, let me help you here with my rudimentary math ability. Let’s say ESPN makes $8 billion a year now in subscription fees. ($10 a month x 70 million subscribers they has before Charter cut this by 15 million). Toss in another two billion in advertising and let’s say ESPN presently nets around $10 billion a year. Okay, how many people will sign up for ESPN as a direct to consumer streaming service? If they could get 70 million subscribers we’d all have to pay $120 a year for ESPN streaming by itself. (This assumes advertising will still be the same, which it won’t, but let’s just be generous and pretend it will.) But, as I noted above, many of these people paying for ESPN now as part of their cable and satellite package never watch ESPN.
So how many people will actually subscribe to a direct to consumer ESPN streaming service? Turns out there are some early test cases.
The NFL Sunday Ticket is the most desirable direct to consumer product on the planet. Do you know how many households subscribe for NFL Sunday Ticket? Around three million.
Uh oh.
Wait a minute, you’re telling me that the NFL can only get around three million households to sign up for actual NFL games, all of the out of market games, in the entire country?
We’ve got a major math problem here for ESPN.
Let’s be generous again and say that ESPN can get 7x as many subscribers as the NFL can for Monday Night Football and college football. That’s 20 million, roughly, subscribers. What would those 20 million people have to pay for ESPN over streaming to replicate what ESPN makes now? $500 a year. That’s roughly $40 a month.
And that’s if everyone pays that amount all year around.
Which they won’t.
Not even close.
Because here’s the other problem — most people will pay seasonally for the sports they actually care about the most.
Many ESPN streaming subscribers will pick the months they care about the most — football season — and cancel for non-football season. Especially when the service costs this much a month. (Most ESPN+ subscribers aren’t paying for the service now or its bundled for free alongside other products so ESPN+ isn’t a good test case.) Churn is a major issue on streaming, which is why there has to be constantly new offerings. And even with this constant flow of new content lots of people cut their subscriptions, return and binge, and then cut their subscriptions again. And this doesn’t even consider the amount of shared passwords ESPN will have for games, that will be a huge mess.
As if this math weren’t bad enough, remember that ESPN has $45 billion already in sunk sports costs. They bought like the cable bundle was going to last forever. And they still have to buy forever in the future. The NBA and college football playoffs which both expire soon are going to cost tens of billions more. It’s likely ESPN is going to end up with $100 billion in total sports rights costs before long.
And what happens if they don’t buy these rights? No one signs up. So ESPN is locked into a bad streaming business that keeps getting worse.
That’s why Charter has essentially called ESPN’s bluff. They’re telling ESPN to go ahead and launch their direct to consumer streaming service because Charter thinks they’ll make more money on this than they do on cable. But ESPN knows the streaming math doesn’t add up. And I’m honestly not sure what the long range plan here is for ESPN. Because the math, I don’t think, ever adds up. And this is why I think ESPN is trying desperately to find a buyer for the network. Because the ultimate flaw of ESPN’s business is now revealing itself.
And it’s this — ESPN doesn’t actually produce anything of value, it just rents the games from the leagues.
ESPN is the sports version of Blockbuster Video. You remember Blockbuster, right? They didn’t produce anything, they just carried the movies you came to rent. And Netflix destroyed them too.
ESPN, truth be told, has never fit what works for Disney. Because Disney, whatever you think about the company, is in the production of content it owns forever business. The Marvel movies, Star Wars, Pixar, the animated films, the amusement parks, Disney is in the business of creating content that will last for generations. Notwithstanding the looming disaster that is the new woke, live action version of “Snow White,” your kids and grandkids will probably watch these old animated movies and enjoy them just like you did. Same with Star Wars and the Marvel movies. Your grandkids will know who Darth Vader is.
But a Thursday night college football game or an NBA game on Christmas that’s played this year?
It’s all disposable content immediately replaced by the next rented games on the network.
None of it has any lasting value.
That’s bad for Disney, but ESPN is worse than Blockbuster Video because when Blockbuster Video collapsed the entire shopping mall didn’t go bankrupt with it. The grocery store was still open, the Subway still made sandwiches, the gas station stayed open, a new store probably opened where Blockbuster used to be.
But ESPN’s demise threatens to destroy every shop in the neighborhood.
TNT, Turner, AMC, Nickelodeon, you name the channel, all of them are basically being held together by the cable bundle. And ESPN is the most important channel in the cable and satellite bundle, it’s the linchpin, the anchor store. ESPN is your neighborhood shopping mall’s anchor tenant — the Macy’s, the Nordstrom, the Dillard’s the JC Penny. When a mall’s anchor tenant leaves the mall is often dead for, the rest of the shopping mall collapses around it. That’s why the best analogy for ESPN isn’t Blockbuster, it’s Sears, a big mall anchor tenant that collapsed and went bankrupt.
(Side note: I actually think CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News will be okay long range because the demand for live news isn’t going away, they’ll have to just find new ways to distribute their content. Plus, unlike ESPN which has to pay tens of billions for sports rights, the news isn’t licensed, it’s easier to cut costs. But all the non-live cable channels? They’re going to vanish into the streaming universe. Shark Week will come to Netflix or the like. They’re all finished.)
Okay, if you’ve read to this point, you might be thinking, “This feels like it’s going to be really bad, Clay.”
Uh, yeah, it is, that’s why I called it a media extinction level event.
The asteroid is going to hit everyone in media.
In a major way.
This is also why I don’t see why anyone buys ESPN. Unless you desperately need the sports rights ESPN has right now, why wouldn’t the streaming companies, if they really want to get in the sports business, just outbid ESPN for the NBA and the college football playoff and the other rights as they come to market? ESPN’s only real assets are the rights they presently own. So why would you pay ESPN for the rights fees when you could just wait and outbid them for those games as they come to market? The only value ESPN has is if someone has to have these existing sports rights immediately. But if you wait over the next five to ten years those ESPN rights end and the leagues will sell to the highest bidders on the open market.
And the streaming companies deciding to bid is the best case for the sports leagues.
Because unless the streaming companies step up to the plate, athlete salaries and sports team valuations may have peaked. Because, remember, athlete salaries and sports teams valuations have been subsidized by the cable and satellite bundle too. Do you really think NBA players you’ve never heard of deserve $50 million a year salaries? Of course not. They’re getting paid that because of the cable and satellite bundle. The regional sports networks, which fund much of this salary largesse, are already going bankrupt and no one seems to be able to explain what happens next in terms of local sports rights.
But this isn’t just sports.
Every cable and satellite channel is in danger of bankruptcy too. As I laid out above, ESPN is the anchor tenant in the cable and satellite bundle mall. The only thing holding our mall together is sports and live news. And sports may have just left the building.
Now, to be fair, in the time I wrote this maybe Charter and ESPN have come to an agreement and the immediate collapse of the cable and satellite bundle will be forestalled. Maybe this will all happen in three or four years instead of right now.
But it is happening.
It is inevitable. We’ve basically reached the scene in Avengers where Thanos, the evil villain in the Marvel films, snaps his fingers and half of the population vanishes.
It’s like that, except with media companies.
And unlike in the Avengers, no one can travel back in time and reverse the snap. In fact, crazily, with the rush to streaming the cable and satellite companies have been competing to see who can snap first. They’re all Thanos-ing themselves.
Intentionally.
So, yeah, this is bad. Probably way worse than you ever thought it was.
And if you’re a sports fans like me and you just want to sit down on your couch and pick up one remote and watch every game with ease, that’s never happening again. Watching sports is going to cost you a ton, way more than you ever paid for cable. And some of the games you want to watch are going to be on services that aren’t available in your market or aren’t at a price point you’re willing to pay.
And what’s old may become new again.
You might find yourself scanning for games on your radio. You might be hitting refresh on your phone to watch scoreboards, the new digital version of the cable and satellite streaming scores on the bottom of the screen that we grew up with.
And no matter what teams you root for, you’re about to pay infinitely more to watch them.
If you can find their games at all.
And as much as you may think ESPN’s woke politics suck, things are about to get much worse for every sports fan.
But, again, it’s not just sports, it’s all of cable.
I liked the cable and satellite bundle. You probably did too. And I liked the mall too. I enjoyed going there, getting a pretzel in the food court, buying a new pair of jeans.
I went to my local mall recently, the one I grew up going to, the one I used to have a job in at the local “American Eagle,” but the anchor tenants are all gone.
The parking lot was empty.
Most of the stores were vacant.
The bustle and hubbub was all gone, almost no one was there.
It was a ghost town.
It felt just like one of those zombie shows.
That I used to watch on cable.
News of the Times;
Audit the Pentagon:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2023/09/11/audit-the-pentagon-trillions-still-mia-since-pre-9-11/
Biden ignores genocide of Christians:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/09/biden-ignores-genocide-of-christians-reaffirms-commitment-to-and-friendship-with-democratic-nigeria
There’s Nothing Slow-Motion About Uncle Sam’s Financial Train Wreck:
https://www.the-red-line.com/2023/09/15/theres-nothing-slow-motion-about-uncle-sams-financial-train-wreck
The Toxic Gentleness of the American Theater:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/toxic-gentleness-american-theater
NYC's $4.7BN migrant bill equal to cost of:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12492779/New-York-migrants-cost.html
NYC school kids KICKED OUT to make room for migrants:
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-news-why-it-matters/nyc-school-kids-kicked-out-to-make-room-for-migrants-no-more-room
Bill Maher Drops Truth Bomb About Hunter Biden Scandal:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/michaelcantrell/2023/09/07/bill-maher-drops-truth-bomb-about-hunter-biden-scandal-n1725223
How college diversity statements got started as a way to weed out White and Asian job applicants:
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/09/08/how-college-diversity-statements-got-started-as-a-way-to-weed-out-white-and-asian-job-applicants-n576673
Dem Who Got Carjacked Takes Another Wild Turn With New Report:
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2023/09/09/story-about-the-mn-dem-who-wanted-to-dismantle-police-who-got-carjacked-takes-another-wild-turn-n2163609
GOP Rep Calls for States to Begin Considering Secession:
https://www.westernjournal.com/gop-rep-calls-states-begin-considering-secession/
Reporter Owen Shroyer Sentenced to 60 DAYS IN PRISON for Speech Crimes:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/breaking-owen-shroyer-sentenced-60-days-prison-speaking/
Carjackers Now Targeting Unsuspecting Drivers by Intentionally Crashing into Them:
https://www.dailyfetched.com/carjackers-now-targeting-unsuspecting-drivers-by-intentionally-crashing-into-them/
France halts iPhone 12 sales over radiation levels:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66795168
Media Outlets EDITS Zelensky’s United Nations Speech To Give The Appearance That He Had A Much Larger Audience:
https://www.usasupreme.com/media-outlet-edits-zelenskys-united-nations-speech-to-give-the-appearance-that-he-had-a-much-larger-audience-so-much-so-that-the-impossible-happened-at-the-0014-mark/
U. Maryland professor gets $600k grant to make math more ‘diverse’:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/u-maryland-professor-gets-600k-grant-to-make-math-more-diverse-and-equitable/
59% of people say that Chopsticks is the only song they can play on the piano.
*.*
Joan: "I'm looking for a golden anniversary gift for my husband."
Lisa: "But haven't you only been married fifteen years?"
Joan: "Yes, but it feels like fifty!"
*.*
Top Five Major Regrets I've Had In 2023:
Spending $250 on that Aaron Rogers Jets jersey.
Buying Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner an early anniversary gift.
Going to a Mitch McConnell motivational seminar.
Operating a mud bath booth at Burning Man.
Making that World Series bet on the Oakland A's.
*.*
My therapist says I have trouble expressing emotion.
Can't say I'm surprised.
*.*
One review on the new movie, "The Nun 2," said it was scary enough that it could become habit.
Gotta get those nun jokes in when you can.
Quote of the Times;
“Go ahead and watch a black-and-white film from the 1950s and see for yourself how it makes you feel. Intact families, close communities, disciplined people, penitent churchgoers, innocent children, reverence for our elders, and a cohesive national fabric stitched tightly together with hard work, dignity, and pride.” - @PiratesNFlowers
Link of the Times;
Tradewinds of Change:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-91323-tradewinds-of-change
Issue of the Times;
ESPN Vs. Charter Could Be The End Of The Cable Bundle… And Televised Sports As We Know It by Clay Travis
In the summer of 2014, the cable and satellite bundle peaked. One hundred million households were subscribed to ESPN, the most successful channel in the history of cable, and the apex of the greatest business in the history of media had been reached.
But no one knew it.
Cable, satellite, and media executives were all blissfully unaware of what was coming. Fox Sports FS1 had launched the prior year — yours truly appeared on the very first show in the history of the network, a 2013 college football preview show. In the summer of 2014 the SEC Network would make its debut. The SEC Network was, in fact, the single most successful cable and satellite channel debut in the history of the cable industry. With the launch of the SEC Network, ESPN, the channel’s owner, stood at the pinnacle of its power, the company seemed indestructible, a gold plated money minting machine.
Billions of dollars in profits flowed off ESPN each year, enabling all of Disney to flourish. It was the crown jewel of the company, a profit spigot, the Titanic of the cable fleet.
But an iceberg loomed ahead.
And almost no one saw it coming.
The era of cable and satellite cord cutting began in the fall of 2014.
Quietly, at first.
So quietly, in fact, that most at ESPN and in the cable industry refused to acknowledge what was occurring. A few million here, a few million there, slowly a trickle turning into a stream and then the stream turning into a river and before long there was a flood of cord cutters.
If they made a movie about the cord cutting disaster — and at some point they might — a quant would be the hero. Someone deep in the recesses of ESPN’s business department who looked at the cable revenue spigot and started to realize what was going on — the greatest business in the history of media was sputtering, just as ESPN spent greater and greater sums of money on sports rights. That person probably jumped and waved their arms, begged ESPN executives not to keep spending money on sports rights like drunken sailors.
And that person was summarily ignored.
By the summer of 2023, just nine years after peak cable was hit in 2014, only 70 million households were paying for cable or satellite subscriptions. ESPN had lost 30% of its business, just as the cost for sports rights loomed larger and larger.
And then last week, inexplicably, things got worse. Charter Communications, home to 15 million cable and satellite subscribers, refused to bend the knee to ESPN’s price increase demands and cut the channel — along with ABC and all other Disney properties — off air just as Florida prepared to kick off against Utah on the opening Thursday night of college football.
And the games remained off air all throughout Week Zero and into the first full weekend of college football.
Now, the NFL season looms for ESPN, the Jets against the Bills, Aaron Rodgers vs. Josh Allen on Monday Night Football and still there’s no resolution in sight.
How did ESPN’s business die?
Gradually and then all at once.
Nine years ago ESPN was in 100 million households, without Charter they are in around 55 million households. In the space of nine years, ESPN has lost almost half its audience, half its business, half its subscription revenue.
This is a massive media story, one of the biggest of our lives. And it’s not just ESPN. ESPN just stands to lose the most because it had the most lucrative business model in cable. It’s all of the cable and satellite bundle, the entire cable neighborhood is on fire.
As much as you’ve read about this ESPN-Charter battle so far? It should be ten times that much. Because this is how the free ride that most of us sports fans have grown used to comes to a screeching halt. This is bad, very bad, if you’re a sports fan, a sports media employee, a sports executive or an employee of a sports team, this is asteroid hitting the planet bad, a dinosaur level extinction event.
Whether you’re a star athlete, an owner, or just a fan, if you care who wins games or simply enjoy watching those games, we’re all about to have to pay a ton more for that privilege.
Put simply, everyone is fucked.
Including, potentially, everyone in all of media, not just those of us in sports media.
Because the golden cable cash spigot has suddenly run out of coins and if sports collapses, the entire cable bundle may collapse with it.
How do we begin to figure out what comes next?
Well, we first have to start at the beginning, when ESPN was founded in 1979 in Bristol, Connecticut. Few knew it then, but ESPN was destined to become the greatest cash producing business in the history of media.
Some people think of me as anti-ESPN, but that’s not accurate. I used to be one of the biggest ESPN fans on the planet. Because I did and still do love sports to an unhealthy degree. Before Keith Olbermann decided men should become women’s sports champions, he, alongside Dan Patrick, were the best tag team of sports anchors in my life. Every morning as I got ready for school I would sit on the couch in my Nashville, Tennessee home and watch SportsCenter as I shoveled cereal in my mouth. If you’d told me in 1993 that at some point Keith Olbermann or Dan Patrick would have ever known my name, I would have walked on air for a week, a month even.
Because when I was fourteen years old, I was convinced that Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann were two of the coolest dudes on the planet.
And it wasn’t just that duo. Chris Berman, Tom Jackson, Linda Cohn, Stuart Scott, these ESPN anchors were all legends in my mind.
Because I was old enough to remember an era when our family didn’t have cable. When you got a couple of minutes of crappy local sports highlights, when you had to get the newspapers and, oh no!, your team was on the west coast and you’d have to go the entire day waiting to see if they won or not. Hell, I listened to games on the radio. And not because I happened to be in the car on a long ride while a game was going on, because that was the only way I knew to hear a game live. There was no option to watch it on TV, not even on pay-per-view.
If you haven’t ever found yourself squinting at the bottom of the TV screen to see the score ticker go by on CNN Headline News or ESPN, you really have no idea what I’m talking about.
But for sports fans, ESPN in those days was the oasis in a media desert, our salvation, nirvana for the sports fan soul.
I didn’t understand ESPN’s business back in those days, but I understood the raw concept of supply and demand. ESPN was selling what I wanted. And chances are it was selling what you wanted too. And what did we want? The games. (And the highlights, at least back then).
Over the decades, ESPN ran a game plan that allowed it to become the most lucrative media company in American history. They used our cable and satellite subscription fees — our cable bill — to buy up sports rights and as their cable and satellite subscription revenue grew they bought better and better sports rights. And when the cable and satellite companies balked at paying ESPN more, what did they do? They got fans to threaten to leave the cable and satellite companies so that the cable and satellite companies always buckled and ended up paying more.
We were the addicts and ESPN had the games that sated our need.
It was a hell of a business, like I said, the best business in the history of American media.
By the fall of 2014, ESPN was making around $6 a month per subscriber, at $6 a month x 100 million subscribers that means ESPN was making around $7 billion a year. Toss in another couple of billion in advertising and we’re talking about a $9 billion, roughly, revenue enterprise.
A quick refresher for those of you who don’t understand the cable and satellite business — every channel has a cost per month. So while you might pay $100 a month for a cable or satellite subscription, each channel costs a different amount. Some channels cost a quarter a month, others a dollar, ESPN was far and away the most expensive channel, costing several dollars a month for every single cable and satellite subscriber, all 100 million of us at the peak in 2014. And ESPN used all the money they made off cable and satellite subscriptions to buy up sports rights. The better the sports rights, the more they could charge, it was a phenomenal business, a fly wheel of cash.
Presently, ESPN spends roughly nine billion a year on sports rights. The company has committed, and this is before they have to pony up for new rights for the NBA and new rights for the college football playoff, $45 billion in sports rights fees through 2027. $45 billion! With tens of billions more still to come for the NBA and college football, ESPN wants to keep both.
The biggest and most expensive rights packages presently? That’s the college football playoff and the NFL’s Monday Night Football package, each of which airs exclusively on ESPN’s cable channel. ESPN pays $2.7 billion per year for Monday Night Football, a gargantuan sum of money for less than twenty games a year. That’s well over $100 million per NFL game.
But the flaw in the business, and all businesses have flaws, was this — most people paying for ESPN, that is, most of the 100 million subscribers in 2014, weren’t actually sports fans. Yet they still paid $100 a year for ESPN. Your Aunt Gladys, who hadn’t watched a sporting event in decades, paid the same every month for ESPN as you did. Only she didn’t know. Because your cable bill was never itemized. You knew what HBO cost a month, because it was extra, a premium channel — and your mom and dad, like my mom and dad, may well have refused to pay extra for it, leaving you gorging on the free previews back in the day — but you never knew what ESPN or TBS or TNT or AMC or CNN or Fox News cost because the cable cost wasn’t itemized by channel, it was buried in your cable and satellite bundle, in your monthly bill.
Now let’s pause for a moment and go back in time to 2014, when the cable and satellite bundle peaked.
Do you know what else happened in 2014 in the world of media?
“House of Cards” season two debuted on Netflix.
Do you remember “House of Cards?” Kevin Spacey played a diabolical South Carolina politician hellbent on the pursuit of power. It was a great show, but it was also an incredible gamble, because it was the first ever Netflix original show. Up to that point, Netflix had made all of its money by buying up everyone else’s reruns and bundling them in its streaming service. I still remember how stunned I was, as I sat bleary eyed up in front of my family’s first flat screen TV, and watched each “House of Cards,” episode keep playing, one after the other unless I stopped each new episode, the weekly scheduled show was no more, Netflix released entire seasons all at once.
Let’s consider the stature of two media companies back in 2014 when “House of Cards” season two debuted — Disney, ESPN’s parent company, and Netflix, which just released season two of its first ever original series, were widely divergent in their power.
Disney stock traded at $84 a share when season two of Netflix debuted in 2014. Netflix, meanwhile, traded at $57 a share. Their market caps were wildly different, but let’s fast forward to today, Netflix is presently $445 a share. That means in the past nine years, your initial Netflix stock purchase has increased by roughly 8x. Meanwhile, Disney is currently $81 a share, a LOWER price than it was nine years ago.
Netflix, which was a $25 billion market cap stock in 2014 is now worth just shy of $200 billion and Disney is a $148 billion market cap stock, roughly the same as it was in 2014.
How did this happen?
Streaming.
It turns out “House of Cards,” star Frank Underwood’s biggest kill wasn’t on screen at all, it was in the media business.
Netflix, which soon had many competitors in the streaming space, destroyed the cable and satellite bundle.
In 2014, I paid for one streaming service, Netflix. Now, and I shudder to even lay all these out, the Travis household is subscribed to what feels like every streaming service on the planet. And we still have cable too, you’re welcome, Comcast. The Travis household is subscribed to Amazon Prime — I think we actually have two of these accounts because I lost our password and it was either get divorced or just have my wife sign up a new account because I couldn’t track down the old password — Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, Peacock, Apple+, Paramount, I still think we pay for the WWE Network somehow, basically if you have created a streaming service we pay for it.
Disney made tens of billions on the cable and satellite bundle. Do you know what Disney has made off streaming so far? They’ve lost $11 billion.
Let me repeat that, they’ve lost $11 billion. I’m not a math genius, but when you have to make $11 billion to get back to zero, that doesn’t seem like a great business to be in.
And the same is true for every American company that has entered streaming except for Netflix.
All of them have lost money, every single one. Netflix is the only American content company to make money off streaming so far.
Why is that?
Because Netflix’s only business is streaming.
Every other one of these big media companies, except for Apple and Amazon, which are using streaming as ancillary offerings for their primary businesses, has cut their own cable and satellite throat by creating a streaming service because they were afraid Netflix would have the streaming industry to themselves.
The cable and satellite industry was the best business in world media history. And all of these big media companies destroyed that business by going all-in on streaming, which so far is the worst business in world media history.
Okay, you might be thinking, how does this impact sports and the ESPN/Charter battle?
Well, you know the broadband wires in your house that you probably forgot are there — it turns out that’s actually a way better business for the cable and satellite companies than the cable and satellite business is.
We’re all addicted to the Internet.
And we can’t get on the Internet without those broadband cables (at least most of us can’t). And that business is a way better business now than cable and satellite.
Charter has been in the cable and satellite business for a long time. But they have smart business guys too and those smart business guys are seeing all of you drop cable and satellite bundles and they see that the long range cable business is not going to be particularly profitable. What’s more, even if they don’t have smart quant guys they can see what Disney is telling everyone about ESPN because Disney CEO Bob Iger keeps telling everyone his plans for ESPN.
And that plan is this, succinctly, “We’re going to take ESPN directly to consumers as a streaming service eventually, but not yet. First we’re going to bleed the cable and satellite companies for as much money as we can.”
In the meantime ESPN+ is just an attempt to monetize all the content that isn’t good enough to be on regular ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, the SEC Network, you get my drift. ESPN+ is just a test case for the future when all of ESPN will be streamed direct to the consumer.
But ESPN got cocky — they went and told everyone that eventually ESPN would put all its games on a direct to consumer streaming company. And then they wouldn’t need the cable and satellite companies at all to bring their channel to the masses.
But, in the meantime, ESPN expected the cable and satellite companies to keep paying them full freight. But that wasn’t all, ESPN expected they could keep raising prices too. Effectively ESPN told the cable and satellite companies that it was going to cut their arms and legs off, but it wasn’t sure when it would decide to do so. Still, ESPN expected for the cable companies to sharpen the sword for them.
And most cable and satellite companies didn’t fight back that hard because they also have exposure to the cable and satellite bundle. Comcast, for instance, doesn’t want to lose ESPN because if they do then all the NBC cable properties will lose a ton of money due to the cord cutting. So they may not like their ESPN deals, but they can at least convince themselves that they are making a ton of money by milking the cable and satellite bundle dry too.
But the Charter guys, who don’t own cable channels like Comcast, look at the math and think, “We don’t really care about the cable and satellite bundle because we make most of our money off broadband.” So unlike virtually every other carriage dispute we’ve seen, when ESPN’s games being pulled made fans furious and the resulting threats terrified the cable companies, the Charter people are actually encouraging you to go sign up for YouTube TV or whatever other streaming service you want to use. Why? Because they make more money off broadband, they don’t really care about their cable business any more.
And they know that ESPN wants to cut their arms and legs off, but they’re calling ESPN’s bluff here because for the first time ever, ESPN’s got less leverage than the cable company does. ESPN needs cable more than cable needs ESPN.
So ESPN is fucked.
And so, maybe, is the entire cable and satellite bundle.
Because Charter knows that if ESPN goes direct to consumer, guess what, THEY STILL MAKE MONEY!
Because you have to stream ESPN on their broadband service and they take a share of the sign up money to bring ESPN to the home too.
And ESPN knows that their cable and satellite business is collapsing but, and this is key, they’ve also done the math and realize that streaming is going to destroy their existing cable business. Because, and this is what no one seems willing to say, ESPN doesn’t just have one bad business now — the cable and satellite bundle — they have the streaming business too, which is an even worse business. And, and this is very key, each business is accelerating the demise of the other. Streaming isn’t making ESPN stronger, it’s making ESPN weaker because it’s hastening the destruction of a profitable business — cable and satellite — for a money-losing business — streaming.
And that’s what many are still missing — as the cable and satellite bundle boat takes on water and sinks, the streaming bundle is also taking on water and sinking too. ESPN has tried to sell people on the idea that at the exact moment that the cable and satellite bundle collapses they are going to step to a brand new business, the streaming business, and it’s going to be a sturdy and successful lifeboat that carries them to richer waters.
But the reality is, streaming is a way worse business than the cable and satellite bundle. Because the only people who pay for ESPN will be sports fans. The free ride is over, your Aunt Gladys is never signing up and subsidizing your sports viewing again.
For the record, I’m not great at math. The only math class I ever took in college was – and I’m not making this up – something called, “Mathematical Concepts,” It was me and every sorority girl at George Washington University.
So it was the greatest class of my life.
Anyway, let me help you here with my rudimentary math ability. Let’s say ESPN makes $8 billion a year now in subscription fees. ($10 a month x 70 million subscribers they has before Charter cut this by 15 million). Toss in another two billion in advertising and let’s say ESPN presently nets around $10 billion a year. Okay, how many people will sign up for ESPN as a direct to consumer streaming service? If they could get 70 million subscribers we’d all have to pay $120 a year for ESPN streaming by itself. (This assumes advertising will still be the same, which it won’t, but let’s just be generous and pretend it will.) But, as I noted above, many of these people paying for ESPN now as part of their cable and satellite package never watch ESPN.
So how many people will actually subscribe to a direct to consumer ESPN streaming service? Turns out there are some early test cases.
The NFL Sunday Ticket is the most desirable direct to consumer product on the planet. Do you know how many households subscribe for NFL Sunday Ticket? Around three million.
Uh oh.
Wait a minute, you’re telling me that the NFL can only get around three million households to sign up for actual NFL games, all of the out of market games, in the entire country?
We’ve got a major math problem here for ESPN.
Let’s be generous again and say that ESPN can get 7x as many subscribers as the NFL can for Monday Night Football and college football. That’s 20 million, roughly, subscribers. What would those 20 million people have to pay for ESPN over streaming to replicate what ESPN makes now? $500 a year. That’s roughly $40 a month.
And that’s if everyone pays that amount all year around.
Which they won’t.
Not even close.
Because here’s the other problem — most people will pay seasonally for the sports they actually care about the most.
Many ESPN streaming subscribers will pick the months they care about the most — football season — and cancel for non-football season. Especially when the service costs this much a month. (Most ESPN+ subscribers aren’t paying for the service now or its bundled for free alongside other products so ESPN+ isn’t a good test case.) Churn is a major issue on streaming, which is why there has to be constantly new offerings. And even with this constant flow of new content lots of people cut their subscriptions, return and binge, and then cut their subscriptions again. And this doesn’t even consider the amount of shared passwords ESPN will have for games, that will be a huge mess.
As if this math weren’t bad enough, remember that ESPN has $45 billion already in sunk sports costs. They bought like the cable bundle was going to last forever. And they still have to buy forever in the future. The NBA and college football playoffs which both expire soon are going to cost tens of billions more. It’s likely ESPN is going to end up with $100 billion in total sports rights costs before long.
And what happens if they don’t buy these rights? No one signs up. So ESPN is locked into a bad streaming business that keeps getting worse.
That’s why Charter has essentially called ESPN’s bluff. They’re telling ESPN to go ahead and launch their direct to consumer streaming service because Charter thinks they’ll make more money on this than they do on cable. But ESPN knows the streaming math doesn’t add up. And I’m honestly not sure what the long range plan here is for ESPN. Because the math, I don’t think, ever adds up. And this is why I think ESPN is trying desperately to find a buyer for the network. Because the ultimate flaw of ESPN’s business is now revealing itself.
And it’s this — ESPN doesn’t actually produce anything of value, it just rents the games from the leagues.
ESPN is the sports version of Blockbuster Video. You remember Blockbuster, right? They didn’t produce anything, they just carried the movies you came to rent. And Netflix destroyed them too.
ESPN, truth be told, has never fit what works for Disney. Because Disney, whatever you think about the company, is in the production of content it owns forever business. The Marvel movies, Star Wars, Pixar, the animated films, the amusement parks, Disney is in the business of creating content that will last for generations. Notwithstanding the looming disaster that is the new woke, live action version of “Snow White,” your kids and grandkids will probably watch these old animated movies and enjoy them just like you did. Same with Star Wars and the Marvel movies. Your grandkids will know who Darth Vader is.
But a Thursday night college football game or an NBA game on Christmas that’s played this year?
It’s all disposable content immediately replaced by the next rented games on the network.
None of it has any lasting value.
That’s bad for Disney, but ESPN is worse than Blockbuster Video because when Blockbuster Video collapsed the entire shopping mall didn’t go bankrupt with it. The grocery store was still open, the Subway still made sandwiches, the gas station stayed open, a new store probably opened where Blockbuster used to be.
But ESPN’s demise threatens to destroy every shop in the neighborhood.
TNT, Turner, AMC, Nickelodeon, you name the channel, all of them are basically being held together by the cable bundle. And ESPN is the most important channel in the cable and satellite bundle, it’s the linchpin, the anchor store. ESPN is your neighborhood shopping mall’s anchor tenant — the Macy’s, the Nordstrom, the Dillard’s the JC Penny. When a mall’s anchor tenant leaves the mall is often dead for, the rest of the shopping mall collapses around it. That’s why the best analogy for ESPN isn’t Blockbuster, it’s Sears, a big mall anchor tenant that collapsed and went bankrupt.
(Side note: I actually think CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News will be okay long range because the demand for live news isn’t going away, they’ll have to just find new ways to distribute their content. Plus, unlike ESPN which has to pay tens of billions for sports rights, the news isn’t licensed, it’s easier to cut costs. But all the non-live cable channels? They’re going to vanish into the streaming universe. Shark Week will come to Netflix or the like. They’re all finished.)
Okay, if you’ve read to this point, you might be thinking, “This feels like it’s going to be really bad, Clay.”
Uh, yeah, it is, that’s why I called it a media extinction level event.
The asteroid is going to hit everyone in media.
In a major way.
This is also why I don’t see why anyone buys ESPN. Unless you desperately need the sports rights ESPN has right now, why wouldn’t the streaming companies, if they really want to get in the sports business, just outbid ESPN for the NBA and the college football playoff and the other rights as they come to market? ESPN’s only real assets are the rights they presently own. So why would you pay ESPN for the rights fees when you could just wait and outbid them for those games as they come to market? The only value ESPN has is if someone has to have these existing sports rights immediately. But if you wait over the next five to ten years those ESPN rights end and the leagues will sell to the highest bidders on the open market.
And the streaming companies deciding to bid is the best case for the sports leagues.
Because unless the streaming companies step up to the plate, athlete salaries and sports team valuations may have peaked. Because, remember, athlete salaries and sports teams valuations have been subsidized by the cable and satellite bundle too. Do you really think NBA players you’ve never heard of deserve $50 million a year salaries? Of course not. They’re getting paid that because of the cable and satellite bundle. The regional sports networks, which fund much of this salary largesse, are already going bankrupt and no one seems to be able to explain what happens next in terms of local sports rights.
But this isn’t just sports.
Every cable and satellite channel is in danger of bankruptcy too. As I laid out above, ESPN is the anchor tenant in the cable and satellite bundle mall. The only thing holding our mall together is sports and live news. And sports may have just left the building.
Now, to be fair, in the time I wrote this maybe Charter and ESPN have come to an agreement and the immediate collapse of the cable and satellite bundle will be forestalled. Maybe this will all happen in three or four years instead of right now.
But it is happening.
It is inevitable. We’ve basically reached the scene in Avengers where Thanos, the evil villain in the Marvel films, snaps his fingers and half of the population vanishes.
It’s like that, except with media companies.
And unlike in the Avengers, no one can travel back in time and reverse the snap. In fact, crazily, with the rush to streaming the cable and satellite companies have been competing to see who can snap first. They’re all Thanos-ing themselves.
Intentionally.
So, yeah, this is bad. Probably way worse than you ever thought it was.
And if you’re a sports fans like me and you just want to sit down on your couch and pick up one remote and watch every game with ease, that’s never happening again. Watching sports is going to cost you a ton, way more than you ever paid for cable. And some of the games you want to watch are going to be on services that aren’t available in your market or aren’t at a price point you’re willing to pay.
And what’s old may become new again.
You might find yourself scanning for games on your radio. You might be hitting refresh on your phone to watch scoreboards, the new digital version of the cable and satellite streaming scores on the bottom of the screen that we grew up with.
And no matter what teams you root for, you’re about to pay infinitely more to watch them.
If you can find their games at all.
And as much as you may think ESPN’s woke politics suck, things are about to get much worse for every sports fan.
But, again, it’s not just sports, it’s all of cable.
I liked the cable and satellite bundle. You probably did too. And I liked the mall too. I enjoyed going there, getting a pretzel in the food court, buying a new pair of jeans.
I went to my local mall recently, the one I grew up going to, the one I used to have a job in at the local “American Eagle,” but the anchor tenants are all gone.
The parking lot was empty.
Most of the stores were vacant.
The bustle and hubbub was all gone, almost no one was there.
It was a ghost town.
It felt just like one of those zombie shows.
That I used to watch on cable.
News of the Times;
Audit the Pentagon:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2023/09/11/audit-the-pentagon-trillions-still-mia-since-pre-9-11/
Biden ignores genocide of Christians:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/09/biden-ignores-genocide-of-christians-reaffirms-commitment-to-and-friendship-with-democratic-nigeria
There’s Nothing Slow-Motion About Uncle Sam’s Financial Train Wreck:
https://www.the-red-line.com/2023/09/15/theres-nothing-slow-motion-about-uncle-sams-financial-train-wreck
The Toxic Gentleness of the American Theater:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/toxic-gentleness-american-theater
NYC's $4.7BN migrant bill equal to cost of:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12492779/New-York-migrants-cost.html
NYC school kids KICKED OUT to make room for migrants:
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-news-why-it-matters/nyc-school-kids-kicked-out-to-make-room-for-migrants-no-more-room
Bill Maher Drops Truth Bomb About Hunter Biden Scandal:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/michaelcantrell/2023/09/07/bill-maher-drops-truth-bomb-about-hunter-biden-scandal-n1725223
How college diversity statements got started as a way to weed out White and Asian job applicants:
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/09/08/how-college-diversity-statements-got-started-as-a-way-to-weed-out-white-and-asian-job-applicants-n576673
Dem Who Got Carjacked Takes Another Wild Turn With New Report:
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2023/09/09/story-about-the-mn-dem-who-wanted-to-dismantle-police-who-got-carjacked-takes-another-wild-turn-n2163609
GOP Rep Calls for States to Begin Considering Secession:
https://www.westernjournal.com/gop-rep-calls-states-begin-considering-secession/
Reporter Owen Shroyer Sentenced to 60 DAYS IN PRISON for Speech Crimes:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/breaking-owen-shroyer-sentenced-60-days-prison-speaking/
Carjackers Now Targeting Unsuspecting Drivers by Intentionally Crashing into Them:
https://www.dailyfetched.com/carjackers-now-targeting-unsuspecting-drivers-by-intentionally-crashing-into-them/
France halts iPhone 12 sales over radiation levels:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66795168
Media Outlets EDITS Zelensky’s United Nations Speech To Give The Appearance That He Had A Much Larger Audience:
https://www.usasupreme.com/media-outlet-edits-zelenskys-united-nations-speech-to-give-the-appearance-that-he-had-a-much-larger-audience-so-much-so-that-the-impossible-happened-at-the-0014-mark/
U. Maryland professor gets $600k grant to make math more ‘diverse’:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/u-maryland-professor-gets-600k-grant-to-make-math-more-diverse-and-equitable/
Matter?
Sometimes I read a text and think to myself, "Wow, what a psycho!"
Then I hit send.
*.*
According to U.S. News rankings, Russia is the world’s most corrupt country.
To show you how corrupt they are, they actually finished second in the study, but bribed their way to number one.
*.*
The climate crisis has been getting worse, despite liberal elites' best efforts to fly all over the country in their private jets lecturing everybody about it.
There seemed to be no end in sight until a new tech startup, Hypocri-Fuel, introduced a private jet that runs on liberal hypocrisy.
"We just hook this bad boy up to Leo DiCaprio, Al Gore, Justin Trudeau, or any other of the thousands of progressive elites who refuse to change their lifestyles to match their beliefs, and presto - plenty of fuel to go around," said the startup's CEO, Gus Perder. "One fuel-up can power a jet for over a year."
Perder said he was trying to figure out what resource the earth has that's nearly limitless when it hit him: the hypocrisy of rich lefties. "There is so much liberal hypocrisy to go around that we never have to worry about running out," he said. "Fossil fuels may go away in a few hundred years, and people are scared of nuclear, but we have an inexhaustible supply of liberal hypocrisy."
And every time one of these liberal elites gives a condescending Oscar speech or goes on a world tour in their private jet to tell people how bad they are for flying commercial and not running around in a Flinstones car, they're just generating more energy to power these new airplanes.
"It's a win-win for everybody - liberals can keep lecturing people and actually be useful, and the rest of us can go on ignoring them while the planet cools substantially."
*.*
Oneliners:
The 5-second rule does not apply if you have a 2-second dog.
If you gotta tell them to help carry the bricks, they aren't the ones you should be building with.
All I want is a two-income household and to live alone.
I would have started saving money in kindergarten if I knew life was going to be like this.
It's important to get out of the house every now and then to remind you why you don't go out of the house.
My favorite childhood memory is not paying bills.
If someone from Ziplock could contact literally anyone in the cereal industry, that would be great.
Too old for Snapchat, too young for Life Alert.
I wonder with ESPN now being 44, if its too old for Leonardo DiCaprio.
You are more disappointing than an unsalted pretzel.
*.*
The Rolling Stones have a new album on the way.
As predicted.
By Nostradamus.
Quote of the Times;
“When the bubonic plague struck Geneva in 1530, everything was ready. They even opened a whole hospital for the plague victims. With doctors, paramedics and nurses. The traders contributed, the magistrate gave grants every month. The patients always gave money, and if one of them died alone, all the goods went to the hospital. But then a disaster happened: the plague was dying out, while the subsidies depended on the number of patients. There was no question of right and wrong for the Geneva hospital staff in 1530. If the plague produces money, then the plague is good. And then the doctors got organized. At first, they just poisoned patients to raise the mortality statistics, but they quickly realized that the statistics didn’t have to be just about mortality, but about mortality from plague. So they began to cut the boils from the bodies of the dead, dry them, grind them in a mortar and give them to other patients as medicine.” - François Bonivard
Link of the Times;
Global Economic History in 2.5 Hours:
https://michael-hudson.com/2023/07/global-economic-history-in-2-5-hours/
Issue of the Times;
Apparently, Not All Black Lives Matter by Ann Coulter
Let’s be honest: As far as the media are concerned, most black lives don’t matter. Only in the tiny, infinitesimally small percentage of cases when a black person is killed by a white guy do the media sit up and take notice.
Thus, while there was blanket coverage of a white racist 21-year-old (mentally ill, it hardly needs mentioning) who killed three black people in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday, the families of Khaaliq Williams, 16, Hamza Ali Omar, 18, Allan Howard, 34, Ashuntice Wilburn, 17, RayJohn Harshaw, 14, and Brandon Hatcher Jr., 24, mourned alone.
Those are just some of the black Chicagoans murdered two weekends ago in one single city in an area comprising about 14 square miles.
Am I cherry-picking by going back two weeks? No, I just wanted to wait for more information on some of the murdered black people whose deaths the media weren’t interested in covering.
The wildly atypical killing in Jacksonville has already generated hundreds of thousands of stories on Google. The New York Times alone has run about a dozen stories on those three black victims — with more to come!
If anything, it ought to be the reverse. To paraphrase Jesus, the mentally ill you have with you always; the criminals, you can lock up.
But media coverage that reflected reality wouldn’t keep the nation in a panic over the imaginary scourge of white supremacy. Bashing whites is more soul-satisfying than treating black people like adults. Also, ginning up black hatred of whites helps create more exciting crime stories for journalists to report!
White supremacists are responsible for .001% of all murders each year. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics for 2021, black people are responsible for 60% of all murders in the U.S., and the majority of their victims are other blacks. Those are the many, many black lives that absolutely do not matter to the media.
Nor to Democrats. Predictably, President Joe Biden immediately issued a statement on the Jacksonville shooting decrying “white supremacy.” There will be no denunciations of black criminality, no photos of their victims’ grieving families, no black pastors saying, “We’re burying our future.” It’s doubtful that more than 10 people could name any of the eight black Chicagoans killed between Friday night, Aug. 18, and Sunday, Aug. 21.
Imagine if tomorrow, instead of one white person being killed in Chicago every week, whites suddenly started being killed once a day, Monday through Thursday — and twice on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It would be a national crisis. But that’s what’s happening to blacks. And the media and Democratic Party don’t care. If black people have a disagreement with one another, who are we to interfere?
Here, specifically, are some of the black lives that don’t matter.
On Friday, Aug. 18, at 7:50 p.m., 16-year-old Khaaliq Williams was riddled with bullets as he stood on a sidewalk. There are three brief mentions of Williams on Google, plus one bare-bones Instagram post — by a criminal defense law firm looking for business.
The shooter wasn’t white, so no biggie.
Two hours later, someone fired into a car on West Maypole Avenue, hitting 18-year-old Hamza Ali Omar in the head, cheek and abdomen, killing him. According to his GoFundMe page, Omar was born and raised in Minneapolis, loved basketball and enjoyed traveling.
That’s about it for news on Omar. His friends and family surely took great comfort in the knowledge that at least he wasn’t killed by a white man.
Four hours after Omar’s murder, 34-year-old Allan Howard was killed in a drive-by shooting in the Washington Heights neighborhood of the South Side. That’s the sum total of what we know about Howard.
To give the press the benefit of the doubt, maybe they assumed these three were criminals themselves, involved in retaliatory gang violence.
But being “justice-involved” (copyright: Barack Obama) didn’t tarnish the sainthood of the BLM heroes. All were engaged in criminal behavior — Mike Brown, George Floyd, Daunte Wright and Breonna Taylor. That’s why the police were arresting them.
Luckily, they were part of the 2% of all black homicide victims who were killed by police. That’s the only reason their lives mattered.
What about teenagers Ashuntice Wilburn and RayJohn Harshaw? They were also killed that weekend in Chicago, and they appear to have been as innocent as the Jacksonville victims.
Wilburn was a volunteer for an anti-violence program at Greater St. John Bible Church, along with her grandmother. She planned to be a dental hygienist.
If only — like Breonna Taylor — Wilburn had been the bag woman for a major crack dealer, whose boyfriend was shooting at the police when she was killed, her life might have “mattered.”
Fourteen-year-old Harshaw’s life didn’t “matter” because he wasn’t facing criminal charges for trying to choke a woman to death while robbing her at gunpoint and getting shot trying to flee from the police — like Daunte Wright.
Instead, Harshaw was a “top student” who “was going to be somebody,” as his aunt put it.
Don’t those black lives matter, media? Nope! They weren’t killed by a white person! No harm, no foul.
News of the Times;
They’re Sexualizing Children:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/theyre-sexualizing-children-la-school-district-launches-virtual/
Tucker is Outing Obama as Gay. I’m Obama’s College Classmate:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/wayne-root-tucker-is-outing-obama-as-gay/
Seattle loses last 24-hour drug store amid rising retail theft:
https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-loses-last-24-hour-drug-store-amid-rising-retail-theft
How The Jews Of Weimar Germany Ensured The Rise Of National Socialism:
https://christiansfortruth.com/how-the-jews-of-weimar-germany-ensured-the-rise-of-national-socialism/
Ivermectin Reduces Excess Deaths by 74%, New Study Shows:
https://slaynews.com/news/ivermectin-reduce-excess-deaths-74-percent-new-study/
Pilot of Commercial Flight Incapacitated:
https://wltreport.com/2023/09/08/pilot-commercial-flight-incapacitated/
Masks Are Ruining Children's Lives:
https://vigilantnews.com/post/masks-are-ruining-childrens-lives-dr-makis-uncovers-how-bad-it-is
Teachers Are Being Decimated by Aggressive and Metastatic Cancers After COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates:
https://vigilantnews.com/post/teachers-are-being-decimated-by-aggressive-and-metastatic-cancers-after-covid-19-vaccine-mandates
Authorities seize over $1.5 million in methamphetamine and cocaine from Mexico:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cbp-seizes-1-5-million-meth-cocaine-trafficked-mexico
Harvard named worst school for free speech:
https://notthebee.com/article/harvard-named-worst-school-for-free-speech/
Connecticut school brings in DEI consultant who then 'accidentally' introduced gay porn:
https://lawenforcementtoday.com/connecticut-school-brings-in-dei-consultant-who-then-accidentally-introduced-gay-porn-into-the-presentation
Immigrants could ‘destroy’ New York – mayor:
https://www.rt.com/news/582550-new-york-mayor-migrants/
Left-Wing Organizations to Spend Over $500 Million in Campaign to Influence Local Media:
https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/08/left-wing-organizations-to-spend-over-500-million-in-campaign-to-influence-local-media/
Bill Gates Puts $100M Behind Bud Light After Transphobic Backlash:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/bill-gates-puts-100m-behind-bud-light-after-transphobic-backlash/ar-AA1glgYJ
Tucker Carlson Just Shared Terrifying Information in Exclusive Broadcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_wLaMn64jU&ab_channel=AnonymousOfficial
Then I hit send.
*.*
According to U.S. News rankings, Russia is the world’s most corrupt country.
To show you how corrupt they are, they actually finished second in the study, but bribed their way to number one.
*.*
The climate crisis has been getting worse, despite liberal elites' best efforts to fly all over the country in their private jets lecturing everybody about it.
There seemed to be no end in sight until a new tech startup, Hypocri-Fuel, introduced a private jet that runs on liberal hypocrisy.
"We just hook this bad boy up to Leo DiCaprio, Al Gore, Justin Trudeau, or any other of the thousands of progressive elites who refuse to change their lifestyles to match their beliefs, and presto - plenty of fuel to go around," said the startup's CEO, Gus Perder. "One fuel-up can power a jet for over a year."
Perder said he was trying to figure out what resource the earth has that's nearly limitless when it hit him: the hypocrisy of rich lefties. "There is so much liberal hypocrisy to go around that we never have to worry about running out," he said. "Fossil fuels may go away in a few hundred years, and people are scared of nuclear, but we have an inexhaustible supply of liberal hypocrisy."
And every time one of these liberal elites gives a condescending Oscar speech or goes on a world tour in their private jet to tell people how bad they are for flying commercial and not running around in a Flinstones car, they're just generating more energy to power these new airplanes.
"It's a win-win for everybody - liberals can keep lecturing people and actually be useful, and the rest of us can go on ignoring them while the planet cools substantially."
*.*
Oneliners:
The 5-second rule does not apply if you have a 2-second dog.
If you gotta tell them to help carry the bricks, they aren't the ones you should be building with.
All I want is a two-income household and to live alone.
I would have started saving money in kindergarten if I knew life was going to be like this.
It's important to get out of the house every now and then to remind you why you don't go out of the house.
My favorite childhood memory is not paying bills.
If someone from Ziplock could contact literally anyone in the cereal industry, that would be great.
Too old for Snapchat, too young for Life Alert.
I wonder with ESPN now being 44, if its too old for Leonardo DiCaprio.
You are more disappointing than an unsalted pretzel.
*.*
The Rolling Stones have a new album on the way.
As predicted.
By Nostradamus.
Quote of the Times;
“When the bubonic plague struck Geneva in 1530, everything was ready. They even opened a whole hospital for the plague victims. With doctors, paramedics and nurses. The traders contributed, the magistrate gave grants every month. The patients always gave money, and if one of them died alone, all the goods went to the hospital. But then a disaster happened: the plague was dying out, while the subsidies depended on the number of patients. There was no question of right and wrong for the Geneva hospital staff in 1530. If the plague produces money, then the plague is good. And then the doctors got organized. At first, they just poisoned patients to raise the mortality statistics, but they quickly realized that the statistics didn’t have to be just about mortality, but about mortality from plague. So they began to cut the boils from the bodies of the dead, dry them, grind them in a mortar and give them to other patients as medicine.” - François Bonivard
Link of the Times;
Global Economic History in 2.5 Hours:
https://michael-hudson.com/2023/07/global-economic-history-in-2-5-hours/
Issue of the Times;
Apparently, Not All Black Lives Matter by Ann Coulter
Let’s be honest: As far as the media are concerned, most black lives don’t matter. Only in the tiny, infinitesimally small percentage of cases when a black person is killed by a white guy do the media sit up and take notice.
Thus, while there was blanket coverage of a white racist 21-year-old (mentally ill, it hardly needs mentioning) who killed three black people in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday, the families of Khaaliq Williams, 16, Hamza Ali Omar, 18, Allan Howard, 34, Ashuntice Wilburn, 17, RayJohn Harshaw, 14, and Brandon Hatcher Jr., 24, mourned alone.
Those are just some of the black Chicagoans murdered two weekends ago in one single city in an area comprising about 14 square miles.
Am I cherry-picking by going back two weeks? No, I just wanted to wait for more information on some of the murdered black people whose deaths the media weren’t interested in covering.
The wildly atypical killing in Jacksonville has already generated hundreds of thousands of stories on Google. The New York Times alone has run about a dozen stories on those three black victims — with more to come!
If anything, it ought to be the reverse. To paraphrase Jesus, the mentally ill you have with you always; the criminals, you can lock up.
But media coverage that reflected reality wouldn’t keep the nation in a panic over the imaginary scourge of white supremacy. Bashing whites is more soul-satisfying than treating black people like adults. Also, ginning up black hatred of whites helps create more exciting crime stories for journalists to report!
White supremacists are responsible for .001% of all murders each year. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics for 2021, black people are responsible for 60% of all murders in the U.S., and the majority of their victims are other blacks. Those are the many, many black lives that absolutely do not matter to the media.
Nor to Democrats. Predictably, President Joe Biden immediately issued a statement on the Jacksonville shooting decrying “white supremacy.” There will be no denunciations of black criminality, no photos of their victims’ grieving families, no black pastors saying, “We’re burying our future.” It’s doubtful that more than 10 people could name any of the eight black Chicagoans killed between Friday night, Aug. 18, and Sunday, Aug. 21.
Imagine if tomorrow, instead of one white person being killed in Chicago every week, whites suddenly started being killed once a day, Monday through Thursday — and twice on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It would be a national crisis. But that’s what’s happening to blacks. And the media and Democratic Party don’t care. If black people have a disagreement with one another, who are we to interfere?
Here, specifically, are some of the black lives that don’t matter.
On Friday, Aug. 18, at 7:50 p.m., 16-year-old Khaaliq Williams was riddled with bullets as he stood on a sidewalk. There are three brief mentions of Williams on Google, plus one bare-bones Instagram post — by a criminal defense law firm looking for business.
The shooter wasn’t white, so no biggie.
Two hours later, someone fired into a car on West Maypole Avenue, hitting 18-year-old Hamza Ali Omar in the head, cheek and abdomen, killing him. According to his GoFundMe page, Omar was born and raised in Minneapolis, loved basketball and enjoyed traveling.
That’s about it for news on Omar. His friends and family surely took great comfort in the knowledge that at least he wasn’t killed by a white man.
Four hours after Omar’s murder, 34-year-old Allan Howard was killed in a drive-by shooting in the Washington Heights neighborhood of the South Side. That’s the sum total of what we know about Howard.
To give the press the benefit of the doubt, maybe they assumed these three were criminals themselves, involved in retaliatory gang violence.
But being “justice-involved” (copyright: Barack Obama) didn’t tarnish the sainthood of the BLM heroes. All were engaged in criminal behavior — Mike Brown, George Floyd, Daunte Wright and Breonna Taylor. That’s why the police were arresting them.
Luckily, they were part of the 2% of all black homicide victims who were killed by police. That’s the only reason their lives mattered.
What about teenagers Ashuntice Wilburn and RayJohn Harshaw? They were also killed that weekend in Chicago, and they appear to have been as innocent as the Jacksonville victims.
Wilburn was a volunteer for an anti-violence program at Greater St. John Bible Church, along with her grandmother. She planned to be a dental hygienist.
If only — like Breonna Taylor — Wilburn had been the bag woman for a major crack dealer, whose boyfriend was shooting at the police when she was killed, her life might have “mattered.”
Fourteen-year-old Harshaw’s life didn’t “matter” because he wasn’t facing criminal charges for trying to choke a woman to death while robbing her at gunpoint and getting shot trying to flee from the police — like Daunte Wright.
Instead, Harshaw was a “top student” who “was going to be somebody,” as his aunt put it.
Don’t those black lives matter, media? Nope! They weren’t killed by a white person! No harm, no foul.
News of the Times;
They’re Sexualizing Children:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/theyre-sexualizing-children-la-school-district-launches-virtual/
Tucker is Outing Obama as Gay. I’m Obama’s College Classmate:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/wayne-root-tucker-is-outing-obama-as-gay/
Seattle loses last 24-hour drug store amid rising retail theft:
https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-loses-last-24-hour-drug-store-amid-rising-retail-theft
How The Jews Of Weimar Germany Ensured The Rise Of National Socialism:
https://christiansfortruth.com/how-the-jews-of-weimar-germany-ensured-the-rise-of-national-socialism/
Ivermectin Reduces Excess Deaths by 74%, New Study Shows:
https://slaynews.com/news/ivermectin-reduce-excess-deaths-74-percent-new-study/
Pilot of Commercial Flight Incapacitated:
https://wltreport.com/2023/09/08/pilot-commercial-flight-incapacitated/
Masks Are Ruining Children's Lives:
https://vigilantnews.com/post/masks-are-ruining-childrens-lives-dr-makis-uncovers-how-bad-it-is
Teachers Are Being Decimated by Aggressive and Metastatic Cancers After COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates:
https://vigilantnews.com/post/teachers-are-being-decimated-by-aggressive-and-metastatic-cancers-after-covid-19-vaccine-mandates
Authorities seize over $1.5 million in methamphetamine and cocaine from Mexico:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cbp-seizes-1-5-million-meth-cocaine-trafficked-mexico
Harvard named worst school for free speech:
https://notthebee.com/article/harvard-named-worst-school-for-free-speech/
Connecticut school brings in DEI consultant who then 'accidentally' introduced gay porn:
https://lawenforcementtoday.com/connecticut-school-brings-in-dei-consultant-who-then-accidentally-introduced-gay-porn-into-the-presentation
Immigrants could ‘destroy’ New York – mayor:
https://www.rt.com/news/582550-new-york-mayor-migrants/
Left-Wing Organizations to Spend Over $500 Million in Campaign to Influence Local Media:
https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/08/left-wing-organizations-to-spend-over-500-million-in-campaign-to-influence-local-media/
Bill Gates Puts $100M Behind Bud Light After Transphobic Backlash:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/bill-gates-puts-100m-behind-bud-light-after-transphobic-backlash/ar-AA1glgYJ
Tucker Carlson Just Shared Terrifying Information in Exclusive Broadcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_wLaMn64jU&ab_channel=AnonymousOfficial
Leaks?
I recently spotted an albino Dalmatian.
It was the least I could do for him.
*.*
A big nose is not an excuse for not wearing a mask.
I mean, I still wear underwear.
*.*
A man stops by his local florist shop to buy flowers for his new girlfriend. He asks the proprietor, "You know the expression, 'You should say it with flowers'?"
"How about three dozen of my finest roses?" the florist asks.
"Make it a half dozen roses," the man answers. "I'm a man of few words."
*.*
Top 5 Pumpkin Spice Products That Should Never Be Made:
Pumpkin Spice Cotton Candy
Pumpkin Spice Vix
Pumpkin Spice Bubblicious
Pumpkin Spice Nachos
Pumpkin Spice Mountain Dew
*.*
What do you call a dog with a hammer?
A Labra-Thor.
Quote of the Times;
“I expect the neocons and their cultural war colleagues will be seen by history as the US equivalent of Rome’s Praetorian Guard, making and unmaking political leaders at will as it profits them to do so. The US is no more capable of surviving its neocons than Rome survived its praetorians.” – Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Parents need to assume they will be deceived by their school:
https://www.wnd.com/2023/08/parents-need-assume-will-deceived-school/
Issue of the Times;
Secret Intelligence Leaks vs. Basic Common Sense by Ron Unz
During 1940 the determined efforts of President Franklin Roosevelt to involve America in the war against Hitler’s Germany were blocked by the overwhelming opposition of the American people, running at 80% according to some polls. A group of young Yale Law School peace activists had launched the America First Committee and it quickly attracted 800,000 members, becoming the largest grassroots political organization in our national history. The leadership of the AFC included many of our most prominent business and journalistic figures, and famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, one of our greatest national heroes, served as its top spokesman.
With American antiwar sentiment so seemingly strong and resolute, various political stratagems were employed to reduce it. In late October 1941, just few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor finally settled the issue, FDR announced in a nationwide radio broadcast that he had obtained a German map that revealed the secret Nazi plans to seize control of Latin America, which Hitler would then use as a base to attack the United States as part of his bold plan of world conquest.
Our President declared:
Hitler has often protested that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean. I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s government – by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it…This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America but against the United States as well.
Probably millions or even tens of millions of Americans believed FDR’s words about that direct threat to our national security and therefore softened their resistance to our country’s involvement in the European war. But as historians have long since acknowledged, the map was a forgery, probably produced by FDR’s own close British collaborators. In an earlier private conversation with the British ambassador, FDR had warned that his secret activities with the British would probably lead to his impeachment if they were revealed.
I think few Americans at the time were willing to publicly accuse our President of such major falsehoods, but from a distance of more than eighty years, what strikes me is the sheer absurdity of FDR’s accusation. Germany had no significant navy and had been stymied for over a year by the barrier of the English Channel, only 18 miles wide. Yet apparently a large majority of the American media and the American public were willing to believe that the Germans could easily cross the thousands of miles of the Atlantic Ocean and gain control of the countries of South America, whose total population was considerably larger than that of Germany itself. So the excitement of being privy to a secret intelligence document seems to have triumphed over rational thought in the minds of many people, including eager journalists.
FDR’s illegal efforts to involve us in a totally unnecessary war outraged many of our Military Intelligence professionals at the time, but they were bound by an oath of secrecy, and their views only became known years or decades later when they published their books and personal memoirs. Extensive archival research by Prof. Joseph Bendersky fully uncovered their extremely bitter contemporaneous sentiments, and he noted the “fierce delight” they took in FDR’s eventual death:
“Finally, the evil man was dead!”
American Pravda: Secrets of Military Intelligence
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 10, 2019 • 12,500 Words
Just after the end of the war, Gen. George Patton, one of our most illustrious military commanders, told his colleagues that he intended to resign his commission so that he could begin a nationwide speaking tour to provide the American public with the true facts about the war that they had just fought. Patton soon died in a highly-suspicious vehicle accident, and decades later his self-confessed American assassin revealed that he had killed Patton under direct orders from top figures in our own government.
American Pravda: Was General Patton Assassinated?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • August 22, 2016 • 2,400 Words
Government officials have long recognized that secret information, even if heavily distorted or completely false, can be used to effectively shape media coverage. Many journalists and pundits are always eager to receive leaks, confidential tidbits that they are willing to make the centerpiece of their one-sided stories, thereby allowing themselves to be manipulated.
A perfect example of this process occurred during the run-up to the Iraq War, when leaks of secret intelligence information from Bush Neocons were widely promoted in such elite media outlets as the New York Times and the New Yorker. This persuaded our gullible citizenry that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons and also planned to attack our country with anthrax and other deadly biological weapons, while seemingly being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden, his regional arch-enemy. As I described a decade ago, most of Congress and the American people fully accepted such obvious nonsense, resulting in our disastrous Iraq War, which began the destruction of much of the Middle East:
The circumstances surrounding our Iraq War demonstrate this, certainly ranking it among the strangest military conflicts of modern times. The 2001 attacks in America were quickly ascribed to the radical Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the Middle East had always been Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleading public statements, false press leaks, and even forged evidence such as the “yellowcake” documents, the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies utilized the compliant American media to persuade our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs posed a deadly national threat and required elimination by war and invasion. Indeed, for several years national polls showed that a large majority of conservatives and Republicans actually believed that Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was being fought as retribution. Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America had attacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.
An even greater absurdity unfolded last year, after a series of mysterious underwater explosions destroyed the $30 billion Russian-German Nord Stream pipelines, probably Europe’s most important civilian energy infrastructure.
Numerous top American officials had publicly threatened to eliminate the pipelines if Russia invaded Ukraine, but after Russia did so and Nord Stream was destroyed, virtually all the mainstream media outlets both in America and in Europe declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin had probably destroyed his own pipelines, thereby further demonstrating his criminal insanity, and scarcely any other possibility was even considered. When Prof. Jeffrey Sachs was interviewed on Bloomberg TV and pointed to the American government as the obvious suspect, his statement was greeted with horror and disbelief and he was quickly yanked off the air.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs [Columbia] on Bloomberg causing chaos saying US was most likely involved in Nordstream leaks according to data & other experts “even reporters tell me …. privately of course …” and that we are on a pretty dangerous path to a nuclear conflict pic.twitter.com/U6FsC2tdp6
— Detty (@0ddette) October 3, 2022
American Pravda: Of Pipelines and Plagues
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • October 3, 2022 • 3,900 Words
Over the last half-century, Seymour Hersh had established himself as our greatest investigative journalist, and a few months after the attacks, he provided a very detailed account of exactly how our own military had destroyed the pipelines under orders from President Joe Biden, but no mainstream outlets reported his bombshell revelations.
However, Hersh had successfully broken many previous government cover-ups, and his blockbuster revelations left the earlier claim that Russia had destroyed the Russian pipelines looking rather threadbare, so various Western Intelligence agencies soon leaked a replacement cover story. The Nord Stream pipeline attacks probably ranked as the greatest act of industrial terrorism in world history, but the media now began reporting that the attacks had probably been carried out by a handful of shadowy Ukrainian activists operating from a rented sailboat. I’m not sure how many gullible Westerners fell for that particular fabrication, but Hersh quickly explained why the technical details of that new scenario were completely impossible.
Seymour Hersh: Standing Tall in a Sea of Lies
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 13, 2023 • 2,000 Words
“But That Newspaper Is Dead”
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 27, 2023 • 2,400 Words
Obviously not all intelligence leaks are false or useless. But we must be very cautious in accepting them, especially if they seem to strongly support the obvious political goals of the leakers.
Covid Origins Leaks
These are some of the points I think we should keep in mind as we consider the recent flurry of discussion regarding the origins of the Covid epidemic.
One of the most important developments may have come in a long Tucker Carlson interview of Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., which according to Twitter might have been watched a couple of million times.
I found myself in strong agreement with most of Kennedy’s views, including his sharp criticism of our Ukraine War policy and the hidden reality of America’s enormous and longstanding biological warfare program. In his #1 Amazon bestseller, Kennedy had devoted a long chapter to that last subject, and he made a good case that after President Richard Nixon had publicly abandoned our biowarfare efforts in 1969, those operations were later reconstituted under the label of “biodefense” and “vaccine development,” while being shifted from the Pentagon to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division at the National Institutes of Health.
Then in 2014, as Kennedy tells the story, several high-profile leaks at American facilities led Congress to force an end to such dangerous biowarfare work on U.S. soil, forcing Fauci to relocate our bioweapons development research to overseas labs. All of this seems quite plausible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKkanHZBTFg&ab_channel=SmartSense
The problem came towards the end of his 8 minute discussion. According to Kennedy, the Pentagon and the CIA funded and controlled Fauci’s biowarfare development research, which obviously constituted one of America’s most advanced and powerful military technologies. But Kennedy then claimed that our government decided to transfer all of that cutting-edge biowarfare technology to the Chinese. So beginning in 2014, America’s future biowarfare development work would be performed at the Wuhan lab, a facility that he describes as being under Chinese military control.
Does this make any sense whatsoever? In 2012, the Obama Administration had announced its “Pivot to East Asia,” declaring that it would refocus American strategic and military resources against China, which was seen as America’s most formidable long-term competitor and rival. But we are to believe that two years later, the Pentagon and the CIA decided to transfer our most powerful biowarfare technologies—producing bioweapons unmatched by those of any other nation—to the Chinese, selecting a Chinese military lab to develop our own bioweapons. We even paid them a few hundred thousand dollars for that privilege, a tiny fraction of one percent of our large biowarfare budget. Compared to that absurdity, the notion of Nazi Germany conquering most of the Western Hemisphere without the benefit of a navy seems far more plausible.
Furthermore, in 2015 Harvard’s Graham Allison had published a very high profile article arguing that the U.S. and China were almost inevitably headed for open warfare, and a couple of years later, his book on the same subject became a national bestseller, widely discussed and accepted in DC political circles. Yet with many top Pentagon and CIA officials being convinced that we would soon be at war with China, Kennedy seems to believe that these same officials nonetheless continued relying upon Chinese military researchers to develop our most powerful biowarfare technology.
None of these astonishing claims had appeared in Kennedy’s previous book and he doesn’t provide any sources for his interview remarks. But based upon some of his details, I think his information probably came from several stories published two months ago by various journalists, all of which were apparently based upon confidential leaks from anonymous sources.
Back in March, President Joseph Biden had ordered the complete declassification within 90 days of all U.S. intelligence information relating to the origins of the Covid virus. With that deadline approaching in late June, there suddenly appeared a flurry of articles based upon anonymous leaks. These claimed that secret evidence proved that three identified researchers at the Wuhan lab had been the earliest infected individuals or even suggested that Covid had been developed as a Chinese bioweapon whose accidental leakage had killed perhaps twenty million people worldwide, including over a million Americans.
Such explosive charges might seem like the sort of wild conspiratorial claims found in dark corners of the Internet, but they instead appeared in such leading mainstream newspapers as the London Sunday Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, or were co-authored by reputable investigative journalists such as Matt Taibbi.
The first of those outlets had published the earliest and most dramatic account, a long investigative piece that relied upon anonymous American sources to claim that Covid was a leaked Chinese bioweapon. Much of Kennedy’s information seems to have been derived from that article.
What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted
However, just a couple of days later, the editor of the Daily Sceptic, another British publication, pointed out some of the serious weaknesses in that reconstruction. He noted that the leadership of the Wuhan lab and the Chinese government hardly reacted as if a dangerous Chinese bioweapon had suddenly begun circulating in a city of 11 million that served as a major national transit hub.
If China Knew COVID-19 Was an Escaped Bioweapon, Why Did it Publish the Genetic Sequence in January 2020?
Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • June 13, 2023 • 1,700 Words
Several other articles appeared over the next couple of weeks, mostly focusing on claims that three specific Wuhan lab researchers had become infected with Covid during November 2019, the earliest such cases anywhere and therefore the likely source of the outbreak. Once again, all these accounts were based upon anonymous government intelligence sources.
First People Sickened By COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists At Wuhan Institute Of Virology, Say US Government Sources
The three scientists were engaged in “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses when they fell ill
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag • Substack • June 13, 2023 • 1,800 Words
Documents Link Potential Covid Patient Zero to U.S.-Funded Research in Wuhan
New reporting, attributed to U.S. government sources, identified a coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in November 2019
Ryan Grim • The Intercept • June 17, 2023 • 800 Words
U.S.-Funded Scientist Among Three Chinese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Early Covid-19 Outbreak
Identification of three who worked at Wuhan Institute of Virology fuels suspicion for proponents of lab-leak theory
Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel • The Wall Street Journal • June 20, 2023 • 1,400 Words
The Government Must Say What It Knows About Covid’s Origins
Zeynep Tufekci • The New York Times • June 21, 2023 • 1,300 Words
The long WSJ article was the weightiest piece, and two years earlier those same reporters had published a previous very high-profile article making similar claims, probably relying upon the same unnamed government sources.
Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin
Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab
Michael R. Gordon, Warren P. Strobel, and Drew Hinshaw • The Wall Street Journal • May 23, 2023 • 1,700 Words
This cascade of articles naturally raised enormous anticipation regarding the intelligence documents about to be released. But the result was a tremendous anticlimax when the declassified DNI report largely refuted all these claims, denying the existence of any solid evidence that Wuhan researchers had been hospitalized with Covid-like symptoms and stating that any reported illness they suffered had not necessarily been suggestive of Covid.
These official DNI conclusions seemed to confirm the personal testimony of the best single Western eyewitness, Australian virologist Danielle Anderson, who had been working at the Wuhan lab during the period in question. In a long 2021 interview, she had told Bloomberg that no one at the lab had become seriously ill with Covid-like symptoms, nor had she heard any rumors of a lab-leak or even any indication that the Covid virus had been developed there.
The Last—And Only—Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out
Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute
Michelle Fay Cortez • Bloomberg • June 27, 2021 • 2,200 Words
So just three days after publishing their explosive article, that same pair of WSJ reporters released a short piece summarizing this new intelligence information, almost amounting to a retraction of their previous story.
Covid Virus Wasn’t at Wuhan Lab Before Pandemic, U.S. Report Says
Spy agencies remain divided on whether the virus passed to humans via an infected animal or laboratory accident
Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel • The Wall Street Journal • June 23, 2023 • 500 Words
And oddly enough, the byline of the second co-author of that controversial earlier article seems to have now been removed, leaving only the name of Michael R. Gordon. Two decades earlier, Gordon had shared numerous bylines with Judith Miller at the New York Times, when the two of them had eagerly promoted the Neocon hoax of Saddam’s WMDs, also based upon anonymous government leaks.
Vanity Fair‘s Katherine Eban had previously published several long articles generally sympathetic to the lab-leak scenario, and she now summarized this confusing situation, including the angry reactions of several U.S. Senators who claimed that our intelligence agencies had failed to comply with the law by refusing to release other documents.
A New Intelligence Report Suggests That the Lab-Leak Wars Will Never End
Given a 90-day deadline to share what they know about COVID’s origins, America’s divided intelligence agencies produced a slim report that leaves both major hypotheses on the table—and raises as many questions as it answers.
Katherine Eban • Vanity Fair • June 28, 2023 • 2,700 Words
Since coming into office, the Biden Administration has become extremely hostile to China, denouncing it at every turn, seeking to choke-off its entire technology industry, and repeatedly violating its “red lines” regarding Taiwan. If any half-plausible evidence existed that Covid had leaked from the Wuhan lab, it’s difficult to understand why our government would be working to keep it secret. Yet the official release of all relevant documents provided no evidence of a lab-leak, and the DNI declared that nearly all of our 17 different Intelligence agencies had taken that same position.
This strongly suggests that the wave of lab-leak stories may have been based upon the very same sort of extremely doubtful or even fraudulent evidence as Saddam’s WMDs two decades ago, possibly peddled by anti-China former officials from the Trump Administration, who had repeatedly made such accusations in the past.
A very long NYT Sunday Magazine article late last month by veteran science writer David Quammen summarized much of this new information. He actually seemed quite impressed with some of these recent media developments and was now far more open to the lab-leak theory than when he had published his own book Breathless last year.
The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Origin
We still don’t know how the pandemic started. Here’s what we do know — and why it matters.
David Quammen • The New York Times Sunday Magazine • July 25, 2023 • 9,300 Words
Over the last couple of years, Sherri Markson has become one of the leading media advocates of the lab-leak theory, writing a 2021 book on the subject, though it hadn’t particularly impressed me. Last month she published a long magazine article in the Australian, summarizing the latest evidence, some of which seemed quite intriguing.
What really happened in Wuhan: new lab leak evidence over the origin of Covid-19
Sharri Markson • The Australian Weekend Magazine • July 28, 2023 • 5,500 Words
Then late last week, she came up with a genuine scoop, revealing on SkyNews and in the Australian that several named Pentagon analysts believed they had found “smoking gun” evidence that Covid had been bioengineered, noting that a particular genetic segment was identical to one found in another Wuhan lab virus, and three other intelligence groups had come to similar conclusions. Moreover, they claimed that their important findings had been excluded from the released intelligence documents in an act of blatant censorship by the Biden Administration:
When the report was published it concluded that most intelligence agencies assessed the virus, even if it had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was natural rather than manipulated in a laboratory.
Sky News can reveal that this was not the assessment made by the four groups within the intelligence agencies that actually engaged in scientific analysis, who concurred that there was either a highly likely or reasonable chance the virus was genetically engineered.
Scientists at the Defence Intelligence Agency’s National Centre for Medical Intelligence (DIA NCMI) had conducted rigorous research on the genomic sequence of the virus and firmly concluded that it was, most likely, a laboratory construct.
In a world exclusive, Sky News can for the first time reveal their story, their research and their discoveries about SARS-CoV-2…
Their internal research at the Pentagon-based agency led to a finding that was described internally as a “smoking gun”.
One of the scientists discovered that the size and location of a fragment of COVID-19 resembled the same fragment in Wuhan Institute of Virology research from more than a decade earlier, in 2008. It was the same technique that the WIV had used in grant applications to make chimeric viruses.
“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct,” a source said.
But their input into the 90-day origins probe was censored…
They [NCMI scientists Robert Greg Cutlip, Jean-Paul Chretien and John Hardham] wrote an unclassified working paper, dated May 26th 2020, titled ‘Critical Analysis of Anderson et al. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2′. Their paper was circulated within the NCMI and among multiple scientists within the intelligence community. It was also intended for wider publication, so that the public could have a greater understanding of the new virus sweeping the globe. But it was never allowed to be disseminated more broadly, in yet another cover-up of scientists who questioned the natural origins narrative perpetuated by senior officials.
The report was scathing of the Proximal Origin authors’ claim that COVID-19 had a natural origin.
“We consider the evidence they present and find that it does not prove that the virus arose naturally. In fact, the features of SARS-CoV-2 noted by Anderson et al. are consistent with another scenario: that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory, by methods that leading coronavirus researchers commonly use to investigate how the viruses infect cells and cause disease, assess the potential for animal coronaviruses to jump to humans, and develop drugs and vaccines.”
Their unclassified working paper from May 2020 is available on the Internet and all this important new information was summarized in an excellent Daily Sceptic article:
Biden Probe Censored Findings of Intelligence Agency Scientists That Covid was Likely Made in Lab
Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • August 25, 2023 • 1,900 Words
Articles that name specific government officials are obviously far more credible than those of the anonymous variety, and I would expect numerous investigative journalists may soon attempt to directly contact and interview those research analysts.
Furthermore, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress can request that they testify under oath regarding their important scientific findings on the true origins of an epidemic that killed more than a million Americans. Given that President Biden had publicly promised to declassify all American intelligence on Covid origins, he could hardly justify blocking such important investigative efforts.
But I suspect that both Markson and nearly all of her readers are missing a crucial aspect of these new revelations. Unlike all those other recent stories, this one focused on the bioengineered aspects of the Covid virus rather than claimed any evidence of a Wuhan lab-leak, two separate issues that have been regularly—and wrongly—conflated by nearly all the journalists covering the story. Last year I reviewed the contradictory evidence and the arguments of the key proponents on both sides, suggesting that an excluded third possibility was the best solution.
I think these exchanges demonstrate that to a considerable extent, the two main camps on the Covid origins debate have been talking past each other.
The testimonies provided by Quammen and Holmes strongly challenged the possibility of any lab-leak at Wuhan, suggesting that this proves the virus must have been natural, even though few arguments on that latter point were ever made; at most, they raised some doubts about the strength of the evidence for bioengineering.
Meanwhile, the articles and papers by Wade, Sachs, Bruttel, and others have provided strong evidence that the virus was artificial. All of this has usually been interpreted as support for the lab-leak hypothesis, even though very little evidence was ever presented that any lab-leak had occurred.
Yet the apparent vector-sum of these conflicting arguments is the conclusion that the Covid virus neither leaked from the Wuhan lab nor was natural, and this suggests that the public debate has been improperly restricted to just those two possibilities.
For more than 30 months I have emphasized that there are actually three perfectly plausible hypotheses for the Covid outbreak. The virus might have been natural, randomly appearing in Wuhan during late 2019; the virus might have been the artificial product of a scientific lab in Wuhan, which accidentally leaked out at that time; or the virus might have been the bioengineered product of America’s hundred-billion-dollar biowarfare program, the oldest and largest in the world, a bioweapon deployed against China and Iran by elements of the Trump Administration at the height of our hostile international confrontation with those countries.
The first two possibilities have been very widely discussed and debated across the Western mainstream and alternative media, while the third has been almost totally ignored, despite top Russian, Iranian, and Chinese government officials having publicly accused America of releasing Covid in a deliberate biowarfare attack.
Indeed, beginning in April 2020 I have published a long series of articles arguing that there is strong perhaps even overwhelming evidence in favor of that third, disregarded possibility.
Last December I had discussed and reviewed several important recent books on the origins of the Covid virus, all advocating the lab-leak hypothesis. I noted that none of the authors—Jasper Becker, Sharri Markson, Alina Chan and Matt Ridley—had dared to even consider the excluded third possibility, perhaps because the realities of the publishing industry required them to apply such Orwellian “crimestop” to their thinking.
Covid/Biowarfare Series
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 2020-December 2021 • 60,000 Words
If Congress can now confirm that several different scientific groups at our intelligence agencies have concluded that the Covid virus probably came from a laboratory, we can then begin asking the far more dangerous question of which laboratory and how and why the virus was released.
News of the Times;
Gold Star Father Blasts "A$$hole" Biden:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-gold-star-father-blasts-asshole-biden#comment-stream
Canadian "health care" is fast-tracking euthanasia:
https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/08/22/canadian-health-care-is-fast-tracking-euthanasia-n572945#google_vignette
Major Trans Activist Walks Right Into Sting Operation:
https://www.westernjournal.com/major-trans-activist-walks-right-sting-operation-arrested-alleged-child-sexual-abuse-attempt/
Top Law Schools Promote Ditching The Constitution:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/top-law-schools-promote-ditching-constitution
Mohamad Barakat could have slaughtered HUNDREDS:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12434149/Mohamad-Bakarat-slaughtered-HUNDREDS-Syrian-north-dakota.html
What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving:
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/what-exactly-are-conservatives-conserving
Boy killed as Haitian national crashes into Ohio school bus:
https://www.lawofficer.com/aiden-clark-killed-haitian-national-hermanio-joseph-crashes-into-ohio-school-bus/
Governor Murphy Refuses to Accept NYC Migrants:
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/governor-murphy-refuses-to-accept-nyc-migrants-after-vowing-to-make-new-jersey-sanctuary-state/
New discovery confirms nightmare scenario:
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/09/01/fbi-dna-revelation-new-discovery-confirms-nightmare-scenario-1392183/
Viganò responds to MediaPressInfo on the request for dissolution:
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/6775-vigano-responds-to-mediapressinfo-on-the-request-for-dissolution-of-civitas
Terrorist convicted of bomb plot handed job as Asda manager after early release:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/terrorist-convicted-bomb-plot-handed-30850905
To call this a celebration of black culture is an insult:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12463059/NANA-AKUA-call-Notting-Hill-Carnival-celebration-black-culture-insult.html
HIMARS missiles:
https://tass.com/defense/1668967
Bike-Riding Arsonist IDENTIFIED:
https://nationalfile.com/bike-riding-arsonist-identified-in-trump-won-yard-sign-burning/
Interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHOYPHJqZq0&ab_channel=PaulJosephWatson
It was the least I could do for him.
*.*
A big nose is not an excuse for not wearing a mask.
I mean, I still wear underwear.
*.*
A man stops by his local florist shop to buy flowers for his new girlfriend. He asks the proprietor, "You know the expression, 'You should say it with flowers'?"
"How about three dozen of my finest roses?" the florist asks.
"Make it a half dozen roses," the man answers. "I'm a man of few words."
*.*
Top 5 Pumpkin Spice Products That Should Never Be Made:
Pumpkin Spice Cotton Candy
Pumpkin Spice Vix
Pumpkin Spice Bubblicious
Pumpkin Spice Nachos
Pumpkin Spice Mountain Dew
*.*
What do you call a dog with a hammer?
A Labra-Thor.
Quote of the Times;
“I expect the neocons and their cultural war colleagues will be seen by history as the US equivalent of Rome’s Praetorian Guard, making and unmaking political leaders at will as it profits them to do so. The US is no more capable of surviving its neocons than Rome survived its praetorians.” – Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Parents need to assume they will be deceived by their school:
https://www.wnd.com/2023/08/parents-need-assume-will-deceived-school/
Issue of the Times;
Secret Intelligence Leaks vs. Basic Common Sense by Ron Unz
During 1940 the determined efforts of President Franklin Roosevelt to involve America in the war against Hitler’s Germany were blocked by the overwhelming opposition of the American people, running at 80% according to some polls. A group of young Yale Law School peace activists had launched the America First Committee and it quickly attracted 800,000 members, becoming the largest grassroots political organization in our national history. The leadership of the AFC included many of our most prominent business and journalistic figures, and famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, one of our greatest national heroes, served as its top spokesman.
With American antiwar sentiment so seemingly strong and resolute, various political stratagems were employed to reduce it. In late October 1941, just few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor finally settled the issue, FDR announced in a nationwide radio broadcast that he had obtained a German map that revealed the secret Nazi plans to seize control of Latin America, which Hitler would then use as a base to attack the United States as part of his bold plan of world conquest.
Our President declared:
Hitler has often protested that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean. I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s government – by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it…This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America but against the United States as well.
Probably millions or even tens of millions of Americans believed FDR’s words about that direct threat to our national security and therefore softened their resistance to our country’s involvement in the European war. But as historians have long since acknowledged, the map was a forgery, probably produced by FDR’s own close British collaborators. In an earlier private conversation with the British ambassador, FDR had warned that his secret activities with the British would probably lead to his impeachment if they were revealed.
I think few Americans at the time were willing to publicly accuse our President of such major falsehoods, but from a distance of more than eighty years, what strikes me is the sheer absurdity of FDR’s accusation. Germany had no significant navy and had been stymied for over a year by the barrier of the English Channel, only 18 miles wide. Yet apparently a large majority of the American media and the American public were willing to believe that the Germans could easily cross the thousands of miles of the Atlantic Ocean and gain control of the countries of South America, whose total population was considerably larger than that of Germany itself. So the excitement of being privy to a secret intelligence document seems to have triumphed over rational thought in the minds of many people, including eager journalists.
FDR’s illegal efforts to involve us in a totally unnecessary war outraged many of our Military Intelligence professionals at the time, but they were bound by an oath of secrecy, and their views only became known years or decades later when they published their books and personal memoirs. Extensive archival research by Prof. Joseph Bendersky fully uncovered their extremely bitter contemporaneous sentiments, and he noted the “fierce delight” they took in FDR’s eventual death:
“Finally, the evil man was dead!”
American Pravda: Secrets of Military Intelligence
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 10, 2019 • 12,500 Words
Just after the end of the war, Gen. George Patton, one of our most illustrious military commanders, told his colleagues that he intended to resign his commission so that he could begin a nationwide speaking tour to provide the American public with the true facts about the war that they had just fought. Patton soon died in a highly-suspicious vehicle accident, and decades later his self-confessed American assassin revealed that he had killed Patton under direct orders from top figures in our own government.
American Pravda: Was General Patton Assassinated?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • August 22, 2016 • 2,400 Words
Government officials have long recognized that secret information, even if heavily distorted or completely false, can be used to effectively shape media coverage. Many journalists and pundits are always eager to receive leaks, confidential tidbits that they are willing to make the centerpiece of their one-sided stories, thereby allowing themselves to be manipulated.
A perfect example of this process occurred during the run-up to the Iraq War, when leaks of secret intelligence information from Bush Neocons were widely promoted in such elite media outlets as the New York Times and the New Yorker. This persuaded our gullible citizenry that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons and also planned to attack our country with anthrax and other deadly biological weapons, while seemingly being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden, his regional arch-enemy. As I described a decade ago, most of Congress and the American people fully accepted such obvious nonsense, resulting in our disastrous Iraq War, which began the destruction of much of the Middle East:
The circumstances surrounding our Iraq War demonstrate this, certainly ranking it among the strangest military conflicts of modern times. The 2001 attacks in America were quickly ascribed to the radical Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the Middle East had always been Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleading public statements, false press leaks, and even forged evidence such as the “yellowcake” documents, the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies utilized the compliant American media to persuade our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs posed a deadly national threat and required elimination by war and invasion. Indeed, for several years national polls showed that a large majority of conservatives and Republicans actually believed that Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was being fought as retribution. Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America had attacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.
An even greater absurdity unfolded last year, after a series of mysterious underwater explosions destroyed the $30 billion Russian-German Nord Stream pipelines, probably Europe’s most important civilian energy infrastructure.
Numerous top American officials had publicly threatened to eliminate the pipelines if Russia invaded Ukraine, but after Russia did so and Nord Stream was destroyed, virtually all the mainstream media outlets both in America and in Europe declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin had probably destroyed his own pipelines, thereby further demonstrating his criminal insanity, and scarcely any other possibility was even considered. When Prof. Jeffrey Sachs was interviewed on Bloomberg TV and pointed to the American government as the obvious suspect, his statement was greeted with horror and disbelief and he was quickly yanked off the air.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs [Columbia] on Bloomberg causing chaos saying US was most likely involved in Nordstream leaks according to data & other experts “even reporters tell me …. privately of course …” and that we are on a pretty dangerous path to a nuclear conflict pic.twitter.com/U6FsC2tdp6
— Detty (@0ddette) October 3, 2022
American Pravda: Of Pipelines and Plagues
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • October 3, 2022 • 3,900 Words
Over the last half-century, Seymour Hersh had established himself as our greatest investigative journalist, and a few months after the attacks, he provided a very detailed account of exactly how our own military had destroyed the pipelines under orders from President Joe Biden, but no mainstream outlets reported his bombshell revelations.
However, Hersh had successfully broken many previous government cover-ups, and his blockbuster revelations left the earlier claim that Russia had destroyed the Russian pipelines looking rather threadbare, so various Western Intelligence agencies soon leaked a replacement cover story. The Nord Stream pipeline attacks probably ranked as the greatest act of industrial terrorism in world history, but the media now began reporting that the attacks had probably been carried out by a handful of shadowy Ukrainian activists operating from a rented sailboat. I’m not sure how many gullible Westerners fell for that particular fabrication, but Hersh quickly explained why the technical details of that new scenario were completely impossible.
Seymour Hersh: Standing Tall in a Sea of Lies
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 13, 2023 • 2,000 Words
“But That Newspaper Is Dead”
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 27, 2023 • 2,400 Words
Obviously not all intelligence leaks are false or useless. But we must be very cautious in accepting them, especially if they seem to strongly support the obvious political goals of the leakers.
Covid Origins Leaks
These are some of the points I think we should keep in mind as we consider the recent flurry of discussion regarding the origins of the Covid epidemic.
One of the most important developments may have come in a long Tucker Carlson interview of Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., which according to Twitter might have been watched a couple of million times.
I found myself in strong agreement with most of Kennedy’s views, including his sharp criticism of our Ukraine War policy and the hidden reality of America’s enormous and longstanding biological warfare program. In his #1 Amazon bestseller, Kennedy had devoted a long chapter to that last subject, and he made a good case that after President Richard Nixon had publicly abandoned our biowarfare efforts in 1969, those operations were later reconstituted under the label of “biodefense” and “vaccine development,” while being shifted from the Pentagon to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division at the National Institutes of Health.
Then in 2014, as Kennedy tells the story, several high-profile leaks at American facilities led Congress to force an end to such dangerous biowarfare work on U.S. soil, forcing Fauci to relocate our bioweapons development research to overseas labs. All of this seems quite plausible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKkanHZBTFg&ab_channel=SmartSense
The problem came towards the end of his 8 minute discussion. According to Kennedy, the Pentagon and the CIA funded and controlled Fauci’s biowarfare development research, which obviously constituted one of America’s most advanced and powerful military technologies. But Kennedy then claimed that our government decided to transfer all of that cutting-edge biowarfare technology to the Chinese. So beginning in 2014, America’s future biowarfare development work would be performed at the Wuhan lab, a facility that he describes as being under Chinese military control.
Does this make any sense whatsoever? In 2012, the Obama Administration had announced its “Pivot to East Asia,” declaring that it would refocus American strategic and military resources against China, which was seen as America’s most formidable long-term competitor and rival. But we are to believe that two years later, the Pentagon and the CIA decided to transfer our most powerful biowarfare technologies—producing bioweapons unmatched by those of any other nation—to the Chinese, selecting a Chinese military lab to develop our own bioweapons. We even paid them a few hundred thousand dollars for that privilege, a tiny fraction of one percent of our large biowarfare budget. Compared to that absurdity, the notion of Nazi Germany conquering most of the Western Hemisphere without the benefit of a navy seems far more plausible.
Furthermore, in 2015 Harvard’s Graham Allison had published a very high profile article arguing that the U.S. and China were almost inevitably headed for open warfare, and a couple of years later, his book on the same subject became a national bestseller, widely discussed and accepted in DC political circles. Yet with many top Pentagon and CIA officials being convinced that we would soon be at war with China, Kennedy seems to believe that these same officials nonetheless continued relying upon Chinese military researchers to develop our most powerful biowarfare technology.
None of these astonishing claims had appeared in Kennedy’s previous book and he doesn’t provide any sources for his interview remarks. But based upon some of his details, I think his information probably came from several stories published two months ago by various journalists, all of which were apparently based upon confidential leaks from anonymous sources.
Back in March, President Joseph Biden had ordered the complete declassification within 90 days of all U.S. intelligence information relating to the origins of the Covid virus. With that deadline approaching in late June, there suddenly appeared a flurry of articles based upon anonymous leaks. These claimed that secret evidence proved that three identified researchers at the Wuhan lab had been the earliest infected individuals or even suggested that Covid had been developed as a Chinese bioweapon whose accidental leakage had killed perhaps twenty million people worldwide, including over a million Americans.
Such explosive charges might seem like the sort of wild conspiratorial claims found in dark corners of the Internet, but they instead appeared in such leading mainstream newspapers as the London Sunday Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, or were co-authored by reputable investigative journalists such as Matt Taibbi.
The first of those outlets had published the earliest and most dramatic account, a long investigative piece that relied upon anonymous American sources to claim that Covid was a leaked Chinese bioweapon. Much of Kennedy’s information seems to have been derived from that article.
What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted
However, just a couple of days later, the editor of the Daily Sceptic, another British publication, pointed out some of the serious weaknesses in that reconstruction. He noted that the leadership of the Wuhan lab and the Chinese government hardly reacted as if a dangerous Chinese bioweapon had suddenly begun circulating in a city of 11 million that served as a major national transit hub.
If China Knew COVID-19 Was an Escaped Bioweapon, Why Did it Publish the Genetic Sequence in January 2020?
Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • June 13, 2023 • 1,700 Words
Several other articles appeared over the next couple of weeks, mostly focusing on claims that three specific Wuhan lab researchers had become infected with Covid during November 2019, the earliest such cases anywhere and therefore the likely source of the outbreak. Once again, all these accounts were based upon anonymous government intelligence sources.
First People Sickened By COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists At Wuhan Institute Of Virology, Say US Government Sources
The three scientists were engaged in “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses when they fell ill
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag • Substack • June 13, 2023 • 1,800 Words
Documents Link Potential Covid Patient Zero to U.S.-Funded Research in Wuhan
New reporting, attributed to U.S. government sources, identified a coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in November 2019
Ryan Grim • The Intercept • June 17, 2023 • 800 Words
U.S.-Funded Scientist Among Three Chinese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Early Covid-19 Outbreak
Identification of three who worked at Wuhan Institute of Virology fuels suspicion for proponents of lab-leak theory
Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel • The Wall Street Journal • June 20, 2023 • 1,400 Words
The Government Must Say What It Knows About Covid’s Origins
Zeynep Tufekci • The New York Times • June 21, 2023 • 1,300 Words
The long WSJ article was the weightiest piece, and two years earlier those same reporters had published a previous very high-profile article making similar claims, probably relying upon the same unnamed government sources.
Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin
Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab
Michael R. Gordon, Warren P. Strobel, and Drew Hinshaw • The Wall Street Journal • May 23, 2023 • 1,700 Words
This cascade of articles naturally raised enormous anticipation regarding the intelligence documents about to be released. But the result was a tremendous anticlimax when the declassified DNI report largely refuted all these claims, denying the existence of any solid evidence that Wuhan researchers had been hospitalized with Covid-like symptoms and stating that any reported illness they suffered had not necessarily been suggestive of Covid.
These official DNI conclusions seemed to confirm the personal testimony of the best single Western eyewitness, Australian virologist Danielle Anderson, who had been working at the Wuhan lab during the period in question. In a long 2021 interview, she had told Bloomberg that no one at the lab had become seriously ill with Covid-like symptoms, nor had she heard any rumors of a lab-leak or even any indication that the Covid virus had been developed there.
The Last—And Only—Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out
Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute
Michelle Fay Cortez • Bloomberg • June 27, 2021 • 2,200 Words
So just three days after publishing their explosive article, that same pair of WSJ reporters released a short piece summarizing this new intelligence information, almost amounting to a retraction of their previous story.
Covid Virus Wasn’t at Wuhan Lab Before Pandemic, U.S. Report Says
Spy agencies remain divided on whether the virus passed to humans via an infected animal or laboratory accident
Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel • The Wall Street Journal • June 23, 2023 • 500 Words
And oddly enough, the byline of the second co-author of that controversial earlier article seems to have now been removed, leaving only the name of Michael R. Gordon. Two decades earlier, Gordon had shared numerous bylines with Judith Miller at the New York Times, when the two of them had eagerly promoted the Neocon hoax of Saddam’s WMDs, also based upon anonymous government leaks.
Vanity Fair‘s Katherine Eban had previously published several long articles generally sympathetic to the lab-leak scenario, and she now summarized this confusing situation, including the angry reactions of several U.S. Senators who claimed that our intelligence agencies had failed to comply with the law by refusing to release other documents.
A New Intelligence Report Suggests That the Lab-Leak Wars Will Never End
Given a 90-day deadline to share what they know about COVID’s origins, America’s divided intelligence agencies produced a slim report that leaves both major hypotheses on the table—and raises as many questions as it answers.
Katherine Eban • Vanity Fair • June 28, 2023 • 2,700 Words
Since coming into office, the Biden Administration has become extremely hostile to China, denouncing it at every turn, seeking to choke-off its entire technology industry, and repeatedly violating its “red lines” regarding Taiwan. If any half-plausible evidence existed that Covid had leaked from the Wuhan lab, it’s difficult to understand why our government would be working to keep it secret. Yet the official release of all relevant documents provided no evidence of a lab-leak, and the DNI declared that nearly all of our 17 different Intelligence agencies had taken that same position.
This strongly suggests that the wave of lab-leak stories may have been based upon the very same sort of extremely doubtful or even fraudulent evidence as Saddam’s WMDs two decades ago, possibly peddled by anti-China former officials from the Trump Administration, who had repeatedly made such accusations in the past.
A very long NYT Sunday Magazine article late last month by veteran science writer David Quammen summarized much of this new information. He actually seemed quite impressed with some of these recent media developments and was now far more open to the lab-leak theory than when he had published his own book Breathless last year.
The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Origin
We still don’t know how the pandemic started. Here’s what we do know — and why it matters.
David Quammen • The New York Times Sunday Magazine • July 25, 2023 • 9,300 Words
Over the last couple of years, Sherri Markson has become one of the leading media advocates of the lab-leak theory, writing a 2021 book on the subject, though it hadn’t particularly impressed me. Last month she published a long magazine article in the Australian, summarizing the latest evidence, some of which seemed quite intriguing.
What really happened in Wuhan: new lab leak evidence over the origin of Covid-19
Sharri Markson • The Australian Weekend Magazine • July 28, 2023 • 5,500 Words
Then late last week, she came up with a genuine scoop, revealing on SkyNews and in the Australian that several named Pentagon analysts believed they had found “smoking gun” evidence that Covid had been bioengineered, noting that a particular genetic segment was identical to one found in another Wuhan lab virus, and three other intelligence groups had come to similar conclusions. Moreover, they claimed that their important findings had been excluded from the released intelligence documents in an act of blatant censorship by the Biden Administration:
When the report was published it concluded that most intelligence agencies assessed the virus, even if it had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was natural rather than manipulated in a laboratory.
Sky News can reveal that this was not the assessment made by the four groups within the intelligence agencies that actually engaged in scientific analysis, who concurred that there was either a highly likely or reasonable chance the virus was genetically engineered.
Scientists at the Defence Intelligence Agency’s National Centre for Medical Intelligence (DIA NCMI) had conducted rigorous research on the genomic sequence of the virus and firmly concluded that it was, most likely, a laboratory construct.
In a world exclusive, Sky News can for the first time reveal their story, their research and their discoveries about SARS-CoV-2…
Their internal research at the Pentagon-based agency led to a finding that was described internally as a “smoking gun”.
One of the scientists discovered that the size and location of a fragment of COVID-19 resembled the same fragment in Wuhan Institute of Virology research from more than a decade earlier, in 2008. It was the same technique that the WIV had used in grant applications to make chimeric viruses.
“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct,” a source said.
But their input into the 90-day origins probe was censored…
They [NCMI scientists Robert Greg Cutlip, Jean-Paul Chretien and John Hardham] wrote an unclassified working paper, dated May 26th 2020, titled ‘Critical Analysis of Anderson et al. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2′. Their paper was circulated within the NCMI and among multiple scientists within the intelligence community. It was also intended for wider publication, so that the public could have a greater understanding of the new virus sweeping the globe. But it was never allowed to be disseminated more broadly, in yet another cover-up of scientists who questioned the natural origins narrative perpetuated by senior officials.
The report was scathing of the Proximal Origin authors’ claim that COVID-19 had a natural origin.
“We consider the evidence they present and find that it does not prove that the virus arose naturally. In fact, the features of SARS-CoV-2 noted by Anderson et al. are consistent with another scenario: that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory, by methods that leading coronavirus researchers commonly use to investigate how the viruses infect cells and cause disease, assess the potential for animal coronaviruses to jump to humans, and develop drugs and vaccines.”
Their unclassified working paper from May 2020 is available on the Internet and all this important new information was summarized in an excellent Daily Sceptic article:
Biden Probe Censored Findings of Intelligence Agency Scientists That Covid was Likely Made in Lab
Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • August 25, 2023 • 1,900 Words
Articles that name specific government officials are obviously far more credible than those of the anonymous variety, and I would expect numerous investigative journalists may soon attempt to directly contact and interview those research analysts.
Furthermore, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress can request that they testify under oath regarding their important scientific findings on the true origins of an epidemic that killed more than a million Americans. Given that President Biden had publicly promised to declassify all American intelligence on Covid origins, he could hardly justify blocking such important investigative efforts.
But I suspect that both Markson and nearly all of her readers are missing a crucial aspect of these new revelations. Unlike all those other recent stories, this one focused on the bioengineered aspects of the Covid virus rather than claimed any evidence of a Wuhan lab-leak, two separate issues that have been regularly—and wrongly—conflated by nearly all the journalists covering the story. Last year I reviewed the contradictory evidence and the arguments of the key proponents on both sides, suggesting that an excluded third possibility was the best solution.
I think these exchanges demonstrate that to a considerable extent, the two main camps on the Covid origins debate have been talking past each other.
The testimonies provided by Quammen and Holmes strongly challenged the possibility of any lab-leak at Wuhan, suggesting that this proves the virus must have been natural, even though few arguments on that latter point were ever made; at most, they raised some doubts about the strength of the evidence for bioengineering.
Meanwhile, the articles and papers by Wade, Sachs, Bruttel, and others have provided strong evidence that the virus was artificial. All of this has usually been interpreted as support for the lab-leak hypothesis, even though very little evidence was ever presented that any lab-leak had occurred.
Yet the apparent vector-sum of these conflicting arguments is the conclusion that the Covid virus neither leaked from the Wuhan lab nor was natural, and this suggests that the public debate has been improperly restricted to just those two possibilities.
For more than 30 months I have emphasized that there are actually three perfectly plausible hypotheses for the Covid outbreak. The virus might have been natural, randomly appearing in Wuhan during late 2019; the virus might have been the artificial product of a scientific lab in Wuhan, which accidentally leaked out at that time; or the virus might have been the bioengineered product of America’s hundred-billion-dollar biowarfare program, the oldest and largest in the world, a bioweapon deployed against China and Iran by elements of the Trump Administration at the height of our hostile international confrontation with those countries.
The first two possibilities have been very widely discussed and debated across the Western mainstream and alternative media, while the third has been almost totally ignored, despite top Russian, Iranian, and Chinese government officials having publicly accused America of releasing Covid in a deliberate biowarfare attack.
Indeed, beginning in April 2020 I have published a long series of articles arguing that there is strong perhaps even overwhelming evidence in favor of that third, disregarded possibility.
Last December I had discussed and reviewed several important recent books on the origins of the Covid virus, all advocating the lab-leak hypothesis. I noted that none of the authors—Jasper Becker, Sharri Markson, Alina Chan and Matt Ridley—had dared to even consider the excluded third possibility, perhaps because the realities of the publishing industry required them to apply such Orwellian “crimestop” to their thinking.
Covid/Biowarfare Series
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 2020-December 2021 • 60,000 Words
If Congress can now confirm that several different scientific groups at our intelligence agencies have concluded that the Covid virus probably came from a laboratory, we can then begin asking the far more dangerous question of which laboratory and how and why the virus was released.
News of the Times;
Gold Star Father Blasts "A$$hole" Biden:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-gold-star-father-blasts-asshole-biden#comment-stream
Canadian "health care" is fast-tracking euthanasia:
https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/08/22/canadian-health-care-is-fast-tracking-euthanasia-n572945#google_vignette
Major Trans Activist Walks Right Into Sting Operation:
https://www.westernjournal.com/major-trans-activist-walks-right-sting-operation-arrested-alleged-child-sexual-abuse-attempt/
Top Law Schools Promote Ditching The Constitution:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/top-law-schools-promote-ditching-constitution
Mohamad Barakat could have slaughtered HUNDREDS:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12434149/Mohamad-Bakarat-slaughtered-HUNDREDS-Syrian-north-dakota.html
What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving:
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/what-exactly-are-conservatives-conserving
Boy killed as Haitian national crashes into Ohio school bus:
https://www.lawofficer.com/aiden-clark-killed-haitian-national-hermanio-joseph-crashes-into-ohio-school-bus/
Governor Murphy Refuses to Accept NYC Migrants:
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/governor-murphy-refuses-to-accept-nyc-migrants-after-vowing-to-make-new-jersey-sanctuary-state/
New discovery confirms nightmare scenario:
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/09/01/fbi-dna-revelation-new-discovery-confirms-nightmare-scenario-1392183/
Viganò responds to MediaPressInfo on the request for dissolution:
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/6775-vigano-responds-to-mediapressinfo-on-the-request-for-dissolution-of-civitas
Terrorist convicted of bomb plot handed job as Asda manager after early release:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/terrorist-convicted-bomb-plot-handed-30850905
To call this a celebration of black culture is an insult:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12463059/NANA-AKUA-call-Notting-Hill-Carnival-celebration-black-culture-insult.html
HIMARS missiles:
https://tass.com/defense/1668967
Bike-Riding Arsonist IDENTIFIED:
https://nationalfile.com/bike-riding-arsonist-identified-in-trump-won-yard-sign-burning/
Interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHOYPHJqZq0&ab_channel=PaulJosephWatson
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And someone shot a duck.
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No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.