[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] By now, it’s a familiar and undisputed story. Journalism was once the profession of working-class people, unglamorous and interested in just reporting facts. In fact, they used to be called "reporters." I think being "journalists" was supposed to pay more, and they gave you a trench coat.
It did pay lots more, until it stopped paying anything at all.
Then came Watergate and Woodward and Bernstein in the 1970s. Journalism was suddenly considered sexy. Ooh! Ooh! Dustin Hoffman and... and... some other guy.
The profession became overrun with elites who badly slanted their stories to push the narrative of liberalism. As a result, they lost readers. And now the legacy media are dying. Three words: Columbia School of Journalism. Four, if you count the preposition.
It’s all true. Still, in 2024 we seem to have reached a dramatic tipping point where the far-left Fourth Estate finally comes crashing down. Sports Illustrated is shutting down. The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times are losing millions every week and laying off reporters. Notice they're laying off reporters, not journalists. CNN ...formerly the Cable News Network, now who know what it might stand for... has no audience. Pitchfork, Jezebel, Gawker? Toast. Does anybody even remember them? Just consider: In 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned largely as the result of the reporting in the Washington Post. In 2024, nobody takes the Washington Post seriously. The modern liberal media reign lasted 50 years. The Metro section used to be consistently amusing. I haven't read the Post in years. I still miss the late Washington Star. I think they might have been driven out of business because they always identified crooks by race, as in "Two black men held up a liquor store..."
Still, it can be constructive to note what went wrong, and how easily the media could have helped themselves. In my experience, it came down to one word: monkeyfishing. Investigative reporting journalism at its finest.
In 2001, a man named Jay Forman wrote a piece for the liberal website Slate called "Monkeyfishing." It described a trip Forman said he took to Florida’s Lois Key with a "monkeyfisherman." The monkeyfisherman, wrote Forman, casts a fruit-baited fish line onto the island where research monkeys were kept. A monkey takes the bait and is then pulled into the water. "Honest. I know somebody who seen it!"
"Monkeyfishing" was almost instantly revealed to be fake. I knew it wasn't true. As soon as I started grinding my organ Jocko told me real monkeys would never fall for it. Jack Shafer, the Slate editor who approved, edited, and ran the story, admitted that as soon as it went up, James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal and others "gouged huge holes" in the piece. The word "shredded" pops to mind.
Here’s the thing: I could have prevented "Monkeyfishing." When Slate launched in 1996, I emailed Shafer asking to contribute. I was freelancing for the New York Press and getting good reactions to my stuff. Yes, I was conservative — a popular piece I had written was called "Confessions of a Right-Wing Rock Fan" — but this would be a plus because Slate was liberal and I could offer an entirely new audience. That Slate discounted entirely. Shafer rejected my offer, using profanity to describe my writing. Like other media liberals, he could not or would not comprehend that hiring a conservative could provide balance, drive traffic, and offer a safety valve against stories that were crazy. He would have been helping himself. Ground his organ, did he? Eleven tuts.
In rejecting me, Shafer signed his own autopsy. Had I gone to Slate, I could have prevented "Monkeyfishing" because like anyone else outside of the East Coast bubble, I had common sense. The story sounded absurd. On top of that, my father was a top editor at National Geographic. I knew a lot about monkeys. There was no way monkeyfishing was a thing. At the first editorial meeting where it came up, I would have loudly announced that the story was surely bogus. I would have insisted on proof. And prob'ly gotten fired.
It took Shafer and Slate several years and an investigation by some journalism students at Columbia University The School of Journalism, no doubt.
in 2007 for them to admit as much. Failing upward, Shafer went on to become the media critic for Politico. Anybody remember the Peter Principle? In a recent analysis, Shafer argued there’s no crisis in journalism: "Yes, newspapers have contracted and laid off staff. Yes, more than a quarter of all U.S. newspapers (daily and weekly) have folded over the past 15 years. Yes, newspaper advertising revenue dropped 25% from 2019 to 2020. Yes, 42 of the 100 largest U.S. newspapers no longer publish daily. And yes, as you are well aware, the Washington Post has just announced 240 voluntary buyouts — nearly 10% of its staff — to correct for its unmet ’overly optimistic’ business projections. Yet, the heart still beats." lub... dub...lub... dub... flutter... dub... lub... burp... lub... fibrillate... lub... dub...
Shafer claimed that "the heart still beats" because of "the willingness of subscribers" to keep the Washington Post going. This is false. The Washington Post has lost 500,000 subscribers since 2020. It is being kept alive by owner Jeff Bezos. Money talks. Journalism walks. Two months later, Shafer — wrong again — changed his tune, writing in a new column that there was no way to stop "the newspaper death spiral." He even defended Bezos: "After a decade of supporting and expanding the paper, Bezos must fear that his entire newspaper investment will be swept out to sea. That’s not fearmongering. Newspaper trend lines are cratering and may prove to be too steep for Bezos’ tastes." "Cratering." We see a lot of that here, not always in journalism papers.
Fifty years is a decent run. Still, had the liberal media not walled itself off from the rest of America, they could have made it a century. That’s no monkey business. But then they wouldn't have been liberal, would they?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2024 00:00 ||
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#1
Journalism was once the profession of working-class people, unglamorous and interested in just reporting facts.
It was a trade - apprentice, journeyman, master. Then the so called institutions of 'higher learning' got involved credentialing for fun and profit. Gone were the days of learning about reality of the world/city on the beat.
#2
I worked in the bidness. For a very long time the typical newsroom had 25 true believers for every common sense, eyes-open thinker.
It's not a recent phenomenon.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2024 8:21 Comments ||
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#3
"Driving the narrative" and being the next Woodward & Bernstein became the goal, not reporting facts and keeping opinion in editorials
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/31/2024 11:54 Comments ||
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#4
I caution everyone not to forget who the Washington Post's benefactor is and how he makes the money he uses to support WaPo's lies. WaPo would have lasted as long as it has without Amazon.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/31/2024 12:51 Comments ||
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#5
WaPo would NOT have lasted as long as it has without Amazon.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/31/2024 12:52 Comments ||
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[American Thinker] It has been said that intellectuals can reduce a city of stone to sand. Unfortunately, this is especially true as today’s "thinking class" wages all-hands-on deck warfare against Western Civilization. The most prominent of these attacks is the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) movement but DIE is not, however, the only assault. Less obvious, but of no less importance, is how "scholars" now attack Western Civilization by celebrating, "indigenous" cultures that had largely been replaced by Western Civilization. These enemies are not romantics wanting to "return to nature" by living off the grid sans modern conveniences. Rather, the enemies of Western Civilization want it replaced.
This animus toward Western Civilization invites reverting to the Dark Ages of Europe. If, after all, any cultural practice is as valid as any other, why spend billions on modern medicine? Hire witch doctors and save a fortune.
This civilizational de-evolution is hardly hypothetical. Over a million Americans now identify themselves as "pagan" or "witches" along with others holding "new age" beliefs that resemble pre-modern spirituality. Salem, MA has become famous as "Witch City" whose annual witch-themed events draw huge crowds. According to a recent Pew survey, 28% of Americans answered "none" when asked their religion. Large numbers of Latinos, especially younger immigrants, embrace brujeria -- a religion that pre-dates Christianity. Read about it in Brujeria: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color.
Americans praising pagan rituals and so on are hardly misguided, according to some academics. For these professors, these "primitive" beliefs as equal or even superior to Western Civilization. Nor are these admirers anthropologists who might sympathetically depict the traditions of the Arctic-dwelling Intuits. Rather, they champion these pre-modern cultures. As one article in Science, circulation of over one million, put it, "Faced with the profound challenges of a rapidly changing environment, society needs other ways of knowing to illuminate a different way forward. Thanks to the leadership of Indigenous scholars and allied collaborators, Indigenous knowledge is receiving long overdue recognition for its potential to provide solutions for the mutual thriving of lands and cultures.
An urgent question is how institutions can appropriately support (and not hinder) Indigenous science’s key role in creating a sustainable future." That is, seek advice on solving contemporary American problems from people surviving in the rain forest.
This is hardly inconsequential rhetoric. According to the Science article, a 2022 White House conference called for "elevating" the knowledge of indigenous people on such topics as land management all the while noting our misguided attempts to erase them physically and through forced assimilation. Indeed, thanks to National Science Foundation funding, some 54 indigenous scholars at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) will tackle the worldwide problems of climate disruption, hunger, and sustaining native culture.
[FOX] The FBI violated private citizens’ constitutional rights when it seized contents from hundreds of safe deposit boxes during a 2021 raid on a Beverly Hills business suspected of money laundering, a federal appeals court ruled last week.
"This was a resounding victory, not just for our clients, but for the hundreds of people who've been stuck in a nightmare for years because of what the FBI did," Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Rob Frommer, who represented several plaintiffs in the case, told Fox News.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found the bureau violated U.S. Private Vaults box holders’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures by opening and cataloging the contents of 1,400 safe deposit boxes without individual criminal warrants for each.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
01/31/2024 06:51 ||
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[26 views]
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. Material at the link is available only through a VPN by Valery Rokunets
[RedStar] Ten years ago, on February 1, 2014, at the age of 97, Hero of the Soviet Union Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Ivanovich Petrov passed away.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Gevorg Mirzayan
[REGNUM] Throughout the evening of January 29, the political segment of the Internet followed the real Zaluzhniada.
First, a number of Ukrainian media outlets, citing former Ukrainian deputies and their internal sources in Zelensky’s office, wrote that Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny had been dismissed from his post.
Then, for several hours, everyone waited for official confirmation or denial of this news from Bankova. And in the president’s office at that time, apparently, a real internal drama was taking place with bargaining, persuasion and threats. The actors were the Zelensky administration, Zaluzhny himself (who refused to write “of his own free will”), as well as external sponsors, some of whom supported the president, and some of whom stood on the side of the commander in chief.
In the end, it turned out that Valery Zaluzhny still won a tactical victory in this round. Zelensky was unable to push through his dismissal. Bye. At the same time, there is no doubt that the head of the Kyiv regime will definitely repeat the approach to the projectile. After all, he views the popular commander-in-chief as a real threat to his own power and, most importantly, his main role in the Ukrainian tragedy (which became the pinnacle of the career of the actor from Krivoy Rog).
And in this regard, the question is: what scenario for the further development of Zaluzhniada is most beneficial for Russia? There are four scenarios in total.
First: Zelensky fires Zaluzhny.
Second: Zelensky removes Zaluzhny.
Third: Zaluzhny removes or fires Zelensky.
And the fourth option is the continuation of the conflict between the president and the commander in chief.
The first option for Russia is the most optimal. Yes, it would seem that Vladimir Zelensky will thus become omnipotent and omnipotent, consolidate all power in his hands and get rid of his political rival. But omnipotence in Ukraine is punished very harshly. The local president has always been not so much the head of state as a moderator in showdowns between oligarchic groups. And when the president concentrated excessive power in his hands, he immediately received a powerful internal faction uniting all his rivals. This is what happened with Yanukovych (to whom the Ukrainian oligarchy responded with Maidan), this happened with Poroshenko (to whom the oligarchy responded to Zelensky) and this is what will happen now with the current head of state. Especially considering the volumes of foreign money that are flowing through his fingers now and which neither Poroshenko nor Yanukovych have even dreamed of.
He won't become omnipotent either. Simply because the real owners of Ukraine - the Americans - will not forgive Zelensky for such self-will. Zaluzhny is their business partner, a conductor of their interests and, ultimately, a balancer for Zelensky. The resignation of the commander-in-chief to train the British could lead to the Americans punishing not their NATO partners, but Zelensky through an even greater reduction in funding.
Finally, Zelensky will not get rid of his political rival either. Resignation from the post of commander-in-chief will automatically transform Valery Zaluzhny from a general into a politician, around whom the entire opposition dissatisfied with Zelensky will concentrate and on whom the Americans will bet. This means that internal squabbling in Ukraine or even forcing Zelensky to hold presidential elections is inevitable.
Thus, the dismissal of Zaluzhny will weaken the Ukrainian president and cause chaos and confusion in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This means it will make it easier for Russia to liberate this territory.
The second scenario, in which Zelensky will remove Zaluzhny physically (by blaming the Russian missile or Russian intelligence), is slightly less beneficial for Russia. Here, of course, Zaluzhny the politician will not appear, however, on the other hand, the Ukrainian opposition will be much more radical. She will understand that Zelensky, in his thirst for power, crosses any red lines, which means he must be stopped urgently. Americans will probably come to the same conclusion. It is unlikely that they will be able to remove Zelensky (after all, to do this they will have to discredit him - and therefore discredit Ukraine along with him), but they will undoubtedly reduce the enthusiasm for supporting him. And, again, Russia will receive weakening and chaos in Kyiv.
Zaluzhny’s victory over Zelensky— the third scenario —looks unlikely. Zelensky’s thirst for power is too strong, it is too risky to discredit Zelensky or remove him. But still, this scenario cannot be excluded. And it is the worst option for Russia. The inadequate president-consumer of Colombian humanitarian aid will be replaced by a much more cunning and at the same time much more obedient politician to the West. Which will receive credit from external sponsors, will manage the army more effectively, and will also consolidate the Ukrainian elite for some time by providing individual politicians like Petro Poroshenko with access to the common budget trough. This means that the process of liberation of Russian territories occupied by Ukraine, as well as the dismantling of Ukrainian statehood, will be delayed.
Finally, the fourth option: the continuation of the Ukrainian toad viper - that is, the struggle between Zaluzhny and Zelensky without the resignation of one of them - is not the best scenario for Russia, but still an acceptable one. The dual power of Zaluzhny and Zelensky will inevitably affect the controllability of the Ukrainian army. The attempts of these two characters to bait each other, set up their opponent and shift the blame for the defeat onto him will not allow the Kyiv regime to pursue any single effective strategy to counter Russian offensive operations.
And finally, against the backdrop of Zelensky’s general weakness, the Ukrainian oligarchic front will continue. The same Petro Poroshenko and a number of other politicians, sensing Zelensky’s weakness, will do everything possible to sit on financial flows where Zelensky does not allow them.
So let the Ukrainian elites, as part of the ongoing Zaluzhniada, either gnaw at each other, or the aggressive one devours the dangerous one. Moscow will only applaud.
Posted by: badanov ||
01/31/2024 00:00 ||
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[22 views]
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[YouTube] Evergrande, formerly China’s largest property developer, has just declared bankruptcy and the fallout is going to be massive. Let’s look at how we got to this point and some potential paths forward.
[CouncilOnForeignRelations] Unfounded assumptions about a future rebound in national fertility rates weaken Chinese policymakers' ability to properly address the challenges posed by rapid demographic change.
China’s population fell by two million in 2023, marking the second straight year of decline. Statistics suggest that China’s total fertility rate, which has steadily declined from 1.5 births per woman in the late 1990s to 1.15 in 2021, is now approaching 1.0—far below the replacement level of 2.1 that would maintain current population levels. Naturally, China’s trajectory is far from unique. It is following the broad pattern seen throughout East Asia, with birth rates declining to the lowest in the world, and national populations poised to age rapidly in the coming decades. Such trends point to major economic, social, and political challenges ahead for both China and the region—including increasingly unsustainable pension systems, surging eldercare needs, and rapidly aging workforces.
Perhaps unappreciated is the extent to which current official population projections actually underestimate the extent of these challenges, precisely because they bake in shaky statistical assumptions that fertility rates will "rebound" in coming decades. China’s own long-term plans include similar assumptions. The 2016-2030 population development plan issued by the State Council assumes that China’s fertility rates will rise from 1.5-1.6 (in 2015) to around 1.8 by 2020 and 2030. Wenzhou’s corresponding municipal plan issued in 2022 assume that the total fertility rate will rise back to around 1.35 by 2035.
Absolutely nothing like these trends have been observed anywhere in East Asia over the past decades. Indeed, fertility rates are going in exactly the opposite direction. Fertility rates in Taiwan and South Korea, which hovered in the 1.1-2 zone in the early years of the 21st century, have steadily declined over the past two decades—reaching 0.87 in Taiwan (for 2022) and 0.72 for South Korea (in 2023). Even Japan, which had registered total fertility rates between 1.3 and 1.4 since the late 1990s, is now in the seventh year of a steady decline, reaching 1.26 in 2022.
China and East Asia’s descent to ultra-low fertility suggests far more rapid societal aging than current projections indicate. But by pinning their hopes on unfounded assumptions about a future rebound in national fertility rates, policymakers may be weakening their ability to appreciate the extent of the coming challenges posed by rapid demographic change, and undermining their ability to respond to the practical governance challenges that will result.
#4
China has been moving for some time, with help from US and European outsourcing, from an agricultural society to an urban, industrial society. History shows that birth rates decline as families move from the farms to high rise apartments where children are more of a liability than an asset.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/31/2024 13:29 Comments ||
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#5
The one child policy really screwed them. And now the females still aren't having kids. By the time 2100 rolls around, there will be 500-700 million less Chinese. If nothing goes wrong, like civil war.
[Daily Caller] Hoover Institute senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson stated Tuesday on Fox News that President Joe Biden appeared to be "leading" Americans to war, advising the leader to return some of former President Donald Trump’s foreign policies.
Hanson appeared on "Hannity" to discuss recent tensions between American and Iran following the killing of three service members due to a Jordan drone attack. Fox host Sean Hannity asked the senior fellow his thoughts on the threat America poses to the Middle East country, highlighting how we could attack at any time. (RELATED: Biden Admin Is Making A Habit Of Flip-Flopping Back To Trump’s Foreign Policies)
Hanson stated that there were "three" typical actions the U.S. government generally takes in response to an attack, highlighting that while they are "nice things" the real issue is "deterrents." The senior fellow reflected on Trump’s killing of Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani, stating that Trump’s actions had drastically helped in avoiding any point of war with Iran.
[Breitbart] Turning Point Action, the political arm of conservative movement leader Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, has identified more than 4.5 million so-called “disengaged” Republican voters in several battleground states around the country, enough to more than swing the 2024 presidential election’s results from 2020.
The group is holding its first-ever Restoring National Confidence event at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip on Monday and Tuesday, flying in county GOP chairs from 75 of the top 100 battleground counties across the country. The event—contrasting the Republican National Committee (RNC) winter meetings, which will happen from January 30 to February 3 in the same city—is designed, as Breitbart News has reported, to show things the event organizers, which include some of the 168 members of the RNC, should be doing. The counter event’s name—Restoring National Confidence—even trolls the RNC with the same acronym as the national Republican Party committee.
“It’s a turnout game,” Kirk, who leads Turning Point, told Breitbart News. “It’s the exact opposite of what people would have believed. I’m very, very focused and have been for quite some time and will continue to be on these numbers. I believe it’s all going to come down to three states. Trump is going to win Iowa. He’ll win Ohio. He’ll win North Carolina by a little bit—it’s not going to be a blowout. He’ll win Florida by a million votes, so I don’t think Trump should even actively campaign in Iowa, Ohio, and Florida. It’s got to be all in on Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Georgia, I’m feeling better and better about. Republicans are really coming home. They’re outpacing Democrats 1.5 to one in voter registration. Arizona, I think we’re beginning to get our act together. We’re headquartered there. We have a great new state party chair who really knows what she’s doing. Wisconsin, I’m worried about. The problem is, when I talk to some of these people, they say, ‘Oh my goodness, maybe Pennsylvania.’ I’m not that bullish on Pennsylvania. It’s a big state. If Pennsylvania falls, that means Wisconsin also falls. Look, it’s a turnout election. I really believe that, and it comes down to: Can we really turn out another 50,000 to 60,000 more Republican voters?”
Interestingly, here on Monday morning, the county-level GOP chairs from around the nation were provided with binders that include precinct-specific data in their counties as well as state-level data on what Turning Point Action’s Tyler Bowyer—also the Republican National Committeeman from Arizona—has deemed “low propensity GOP voters.” The definition, loosely applied, is basically voters who have been identified as likely to vote for the Republican for president who did not vote in the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections.
“This is what the left has targeted on their side,” Bowyer told the attendees gathered here. “They are obsessed with what we call low-propensity or low-information or less-likely or disengaged voters. We’re calling these disengaged voters. Why? I don’t care if they voted in 2022 or 2018, or any other time. What I know is they didn’t vote in 2016 and 2020, and that is scary. That is a scary person, whoever does that.”
“We have to try to squeeze out as many votes as possible to throw a monkey wrench into the left’s Moneyball game,” Bowyer added in his remarks to those gathered. “This is why we’ve developed our state alliances. If you’re in your state, you can work for the Turning Point Action team, and we will give you every resource we possibly can—starting with what’s in your binders. So I want to direct your attention–and I want to give a huge shoutout to our data team—every single one of you, in your binder that you received that’s under there, is what’s called a Bible for your county. You should have a state version for your state if you’re one of the critical states, and you should have one for your county. We have completely broken down the data on where the most low-propensity voters exist in your state and mapped it out down to the precinct and ward level. So, in your binder right now for your specific county exists a breakdown from top to bottom of what we consider ‘super chase’ precincts. What that means is that when we use that term—and some of us and our staff the next few days, you’ll hear us frequently talk about it—but what a super chase precinct is is a precinct where, through our methodology over 2016 and 2020, where there are 200 or more registered Republican voters or identified Republican voters who did not show up in that precinct.”
The numbers, which Turning Point Action provided to Breitbart News exclusively, are stunning. Across ten battleground states, the group identified 4,571,210 disengaged GOP voters who did not vote in 2016 or 2020. The ten states counted are Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, North Carolina, and Nevada. While Trump won Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and North Carolina in 2020, Democrat President Joe Biden took the other six states—and in each one, the disengaged GOP voters total was more than the margin of Biden’s victory over Trump.
[Breitbart] Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham says President Joe Biden’s recent decision to stop approval of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exports looks “more like retaliation than a sound policy decision.” Biden’s announcement came one day after “Texas took a bold stand in defending our border against foreign invaders,” the commissioner added.
President Biden announced on January 26 that he was placing a “temporary pause on pending decisions of Liquified Natural Gas exports,” Breitbart News reported. January 26 was also the DHS deadline sent in a letter to the State of Texas demanding access to Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas. The State has not budged on opening up the park seized earlier this month.
“Texas is the largest exporter of natural gas in the nation and the third in the world,” Commissioner Buckingham told Breitbart Texas. “This reckless federal decision made merely a day after Texas took a bold stand in defending our border against foreign invaders appears more like retaliation than a sound policy decision.”
Buckingham serves as commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, overseeing over 13 million acres of mineral-rich land. Severance taxes from production rights are used by the State of Texas to fund education.
“I will always defend Texas’ right to energy independence and stand up for the hardworking families and countless Texas schoolchildren this move will harm,” the commissioner stated.
Buckingham explained that Texas is the largest exporter of natural gas in the United States and the third-largest in the world.
President Biden claims his action was in line with his policies to “tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad.”While MAGA Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future, my Administration will not be complacent,” the president stated. “We will not cede to special interests.”
Late last year, Commissioner Buckingham certified an island in the Rio Grande as belonging to the State of Texas. This cleared the way for the Texas Military Department and the Department of Public Safety to clear Fronton Island and remove a critical asset from drug and human smuggling cartel operations, Breitbart Texas reported.
“Fronton Island, known as the single most dangerous spot on the southern border, is cleared to patrol,” the commissioner said at the time.
“For decades, Fronton Island has been utilized by the Mexican Drug Cartels as a refuge when fleeing from rival cartels and the Mexican Military,” Texas DPS spokesman Lieutenant Chris Olivarez told Breitbart Texas. “Still, it has primarily been used to facilitate transnational criminal activity involving human and drug smuggling.”
“With the authorization through Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, the State of Texas has taken over the island by clearing and fortifying it, allowing DPS and the National Guard to gain operational control in preventing cross-border crime,” Olivarez stated.
#3
Waiting for an explanation of what sort of "fossils" are responsible for the methane oceans on Titan...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2024 9:47 Comments ||
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#4
New York May Screw 4,000 Legal Residents Out Of A Job - So Migrants Can Have Them
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"These individuals are able to perform many of the core duties of the positions that state agencies seek to fill.. SLIP AND SLIDE anyone?
Posted by: Jack Creanter7508 ||
01/31/2024 9:51 Comments ||
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#5
He is treating a fellow state as an adversarial nation. This leads me to believe he is on a civil war path and in his, and his staffs< feeble mind Texas is no longer a state in the union. Shame on this president, the DNC that robbed our elections, and our government for standing by while this happens.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/31/2024 10:14 Comments ||
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#6
He has always been vindictive.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/31/2024 10:46 Comments ||
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#10
^That's going to be the interesting part. Are the Navy and Coast Guard going to stop them on behalf of the federal government? Or are they going to feel reluctant?
#11
I don't understand. Yes, natural gas produces CO2 when burned. But it is much better than coal, which produces only CO2, but also particulate matter, and fly ash. I don't know if natural gas is worse than oil, but I suspect it burns cleaner than oil.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/31/2024 16:22 Comments ||
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#12
OK, these are rough numbers, and like I said my Search-Fu is limited today, but this is interesting.
Through the Strait of Hormuz flows about 1/5, 20%, global petroleum consumption.
That is just percentage or two more, than what Texas supplies the world with LNG.
With one hand, Team Brandon did the LNG equivalent of closing The Strait of Hormuz.
#15
Looks like Team Brandon is revisiting the EIS for one (or more) new LNG export projects. One project is -
Planned for the Louisiana coast, the project, which is also called CP2, would have an export capacity of 20 million metric tonnes annually. The U.S. is currently the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, and the $10 billion project would increase export capacity by 20%.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/31/2024 18:06 Comments ||
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#16
Bear in mind that this natural gas used to be flared off and burned at the wellhead because there was no way to use it for anything. Now it gets liquified and shipped around the world, or contrarywise used to to make the synthetic oil for your car, or turned into medical grade plastics.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/31/2024 19:27 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] By now, it’s a familiar and undisputed story. Journalism was once the profession of working-class people, unglamorous and interested in just reporting facts. 
Just consider: In 1974, President 
Shafer rejected my offer, using profanity to describe my writing. Like other media liberals, he could not or would not comprehend that hiring a conservative could provide balance, drive traffic, and offer a safety valve against stories that were crazy. He would have been helping himself.
In a recent analysis, Shafer argued there’s no crisis in journalism: "Yes, newspapers have contracted and laid off staff. Yes, more than a quarter of all U.S. newspapers (daily and weekly) have folded over the past 15 years. Yes, newspaper advertising revenue dropped 25% from 2019 to 2020. Yes, 42 of the 100 largest U.S. newspapers no longer publish daily. And yes, as you are well aware, the Washington Post has just announced 240 voluntary buyouts — nearly 10% of its staff — to correct for its unmet ’overly optimistic’ business projections. Yet, the heart still beats."
Two months later, Shafer — wrong again — changed his tune, writing in a new column that there was no way to stop "the newspaper death spiral." He even defended Bezos: "After a decade of supporting and expanding the paper, Bezos must fear that his entire newspaper investment will be swept out to sea. That’s not fearmongering. Newspaper trend lines are cratering and may prove to be too steep for Bezos’ tastes."
