Welcome to The Now

 Russell Brand give a hilarious take on this seriously dangerous revelation:

 I can only imagine that the students will be vetted:

 Garland Nixon talks to RBN about why just sending (old) tanks to Ukraine will amount to less than nothing:

 

 So apparently there was an event in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' district that was basically a military recruitment event. For those who witnessed AOC's role in voting for the Iron Dome , supporting Ukraine and generally being more of an enabler than an obstacle , this was more a feather in her cap than the straw that broke the camel's back.  Still, she has her defenders . For the sake of clarification, here are a couple videos by those who saw the event for what it was, and rightly criticized AOC for her now-standard "I'm the victim" explanation: Even msn.com referred to this as a "military recruitment event." Here's a copy of the form , BTW:

  A snippet : The Donald Trump problem is the same as the Richard Nixon problem. When Nixon was forced to resign under the threat of impeachment, it wasn’t for his involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity, nor was it for his illegal use of the CIA and other federal agencies to spy upon, intimidate, harass and destroy radicals, dissidents and activists. Nixon was brought down because he targeted other members of the ruling political and economic establishment. Once Nixon, like Trump, attacked the centers of power, the media was unleashed to expose abuses and illegalities it had previously minimized or ignored.

 The actor has been arrested on alleged domestic dispute charges , and while movie fans discuss what this means for things like the MCU, there was one reaction that comes off as, well, subjective: In the wake of the allegations, the US Army announced it is pulling two recently released recruiting ads featuring Majors, saying in a statement it was “deeply concerned.” “ While Mr. Majors is innocent until proven guilty, prudence dictates that we pull our ads until the investigation into these allegations is complete ,” the statement from the Army Enterprise Marketing Office said. So a group whose primary mission is to engage in warfare (which leads to a massive loss of life and/or property) feels that this allegation is too toxic? 

 Don't take his financial advice unless you want to go broke:

 I noticed that in light of the recent SVB collapse (and the government's less-than-reassuring actions/reaction ) there are a few calls for a return to the gold standard , the idea being that if we get of the petrodollar and back to gold, there would be fewer recessions. First: the issue of the petrodollar may resolve itself sooner rather than later . Second: history says otherwise.  Let's start with a little background : On June 5, 1933, the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable. Soon after taking office in March 1933, President Roosevelt declared a nationwide bank moratorium

 Or rather, how some equate "grooming" with "non-heterosexuals" and blame everything on "wokeness" without bothering to define it:

 

  " Betrayal is the closing act in nearly all proxy wars. " -Chris Hedges, giving an educated speculation on how the Ukraine conflict will end . 

 The guy who gave us a barely working operating system wants to lecture us on environmentalism and farming:

  What babies : Canada has asked for formal consultations with Mexico over its restrictions on genetically modified (GM) agricultural imports under the North American free-trade agreement, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Canada requested the talks on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg, a day after the U.S. requested formal trade consultations over its objections to Mexico's plans to limit imports of GM corn and other agricultural biotechnology products. "Canada will always work with the U.S. and Mexico to strengthen our trade relationship and grow a clean, green agriculture sector," a spokesperson for Canada's Trade Minister Mary Ng said in a statement. Call me crazy, but I don't think "clean" or "green" when I read the phrase "genetically modified agricultural imports." I think of things like chips made with  olestra , that was FDA approved and ended up being on Time's list of 50 Worst

 Via Richard Medhurst: 

 Via Rolling Stone : A BLISTERING NEW official investigation decries violent, lawless “deputy gangs” that continue to wield extraordinary power within the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. The report delivers a call to action for new Sheriff Robert Luna: “It is time to eradicate this 50-year plague upon the County of Los Angeles.”  The report identifies at “least a half dozen” active gangs and cliques — and names them: the Executioners, the Banditos, the Regulators, the Spartans, the Gladiators, the Cowboys, and the Reapers.  These groups pose a threat to the general public — deputies hoping to prove themselves worthy of gang membership routinely seek out violent encounters with the public, the investigation reports — as well as to the internal command-and-control structure of LASD. The gangs “undermine supervision, destroy public trust, are discriminatory, disruptive, and act contrary to … professional policing,” the report concludes. Perhaps most alarming, the investigation reveals

 YouTuber Riggie breaks down the Silicon Valley Bank collapse:

 Here's a screen shot of the " Issues " page: "What's missing?," you may ask. Easy: anything about foreign policy. It's kinda important for a presidential candidate to have one because the US President is the Commander and Chief of the US military and is directly responsible for America's foreign excursions.  In addition, this is surprising considering that Williamson didn't shy away from addressing foreign policy issues in her previous run for office. For 2020, she stared off with a " peace-building " philosophy that became a little more detailed over time and then began to include solid views on China, the Middle East, North Korea, Russia, and the Global South .  (Williamson also mentioned free college, but it's not clear if she's aware that the US Military depends on people being broke/poor in order to replenish their ranks, and that higher education plays a part in that). It should not have been difficult to do a "cu

 Marianne Williamson is not the solution . It's not stopping her online left-leaning supporters from ignoring reality to the point that they are ironically using the very arguments that third-party advocates used in the last few election cycles.  Case in Point is this: Remember this is the same guy who put up multiple videos saying that Bernie could/should ask for concessions for dropping out in 2020 (which he wasn't/didn't), than proceeded to make "Biden's actually doing some good stuff!" videos. People like him are invested in the Bernie narrative, and can't psychologically break from that.

 Is capitalism just the latest an economical evolution? Second Thought has...thoughts:

 

 How? Because apparently whenever the Ukrainians abandon US-made weapons, Russia takes them and sends some of them Iran : Russia has been capturing some of the US and NATO-provided weapons and equipment left on the battlefield in Ukraine and sending them to Iran, where the US believes Tehran will try to reverse-engineer the systems, four sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Over the last year, US, NATO and other Western officials have seen several instances of Russian forces seizing smaller, shoulder-fired weapons equipment including Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft systems that Ukrainian forces have at times been forced to leave behind on the battlefield, the sources told CNN. In many of those cases, Russia has then flown the equipment to Iran to dismantle and analyze, likely so the Iranian military can attempt to make their own version of the weapons, sources said. Russia believes that continuing to provide captured Western weapons to Iran will incentivize Tehran to

 

  Another day, another case of "the populist left" hanging on to national electoral politics as the cure-all for America's ails. Even before Marianne Williamson tried to test the waters with RBN, Breaking Points and their affiliates (like Kulinski) have attempted to convince the American Left that Williamson is the heir to Bernie Sanders, and as such deserving of all the leeway he was given (at least until he told his supporters to vote for Joe Biden because Donald Trump was so scary).  But as mentioned earlier people aren't willing to participate in a part three of "Shepherd the Left into the Democratic Party," so people like Kulinski have to pretend like they haven't gone back and forth on Joe Biden like they have DID and now (as Due Dissidence predicted) do everything they can to portray Biden as "the villain" and Williamson as "the hero" so their dead-on-arrival strategy can appear valid. While this crowd does recogni

 "The cheerleading, or at best indifference, by Democratic Party supporters and much of the left to these show trials will come back to haunt them. We are exacerbating the growing tribalism and political antagonisms that will increasingly express themselves through violence. We are complicit, once again, of using the courts to carry out vendettas. We are corroding democratic institutions. We are hardening the ideology and rage of the far-right. We are turning those being hounded to prison into political prisoners and martyrs. We are moving ever closer towards tyranny." Chris Hedges, from his article titled, " Lynching the Deplorables ." In short: be careful when cheering that "your side" of politics is winning by questionable means and tactics because power shifts regularly and someday your "enemies" may return the favor.

 

 As noted in this Washington Post story about a fraud lawsuit against the DNC: Bruce Spiva, representing the DNC, made the argument that would eventually carry the day: that it was impossible to determine who would have standing to claim they had been defrauded. But as he explained how the DNC worked, Spiva made a hypothetical argument that the party wasn’t really bound by the votes cast in primaries or caucuses. “ The party has the freedom of association to decide how it’s gonna select its representatives to the convention and to the state party ,” said Spiva. “ Even to define what constitutes evenhandedness and impartiality really would already drag the court well into a political question and a question of how the party runs its own affairs. The party could have favored a candidate. I’ll put it that way .” In the corners of the media where the lawsuit was covered most, that answer became infamous — proof that the defeated Democrats did not respect the will of the voters. “ The DN

 Due Dissidence shows that Williamson will not run as an independent if she loses a primary challenge to Biden .

 At least that's the implication of this story . Now if Russia was really losing this this conflict (instead of making NATO burn through ammo and weapons ) would the media really be running these quasi-political human interest stories?  When the US was bombing Iraq and Afghanistan into the Stone Age, were there stories like this being pushed? Probably not, considering . 

 It's almost as if a higher power is trying to say, "America, you should do something about your railroad situation :" A Norfolk Southern train derailed Saturday evening in Springfield, Ohio, sending 28 cars sliding diagonally across the tracks but injuring no one, according to several state and local agencies. The crash marks the rail line's second major derailment in just over a month and comes amid lingering questions about environmental and public health in nearby East Palestine, where a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed on Feb. 3. Officials stressed that the 212-car train that derailed this weekend was not carrying toxic materials and does not pose a threat to the community. Both the Clark County emergency management agency and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency examined the site and deemed it safe. "There is NO risk to the public," said Norfolk Southern spokesperson Connor Spielmaker on Twitter. "We're looking at clean air, clean s

 

 Because people always want to slap an adjective in front of capitalism when things go sour:

 

 As stated here before, the more radical element of the American Left is willing to have temporary alliances in order to achieve specific goals. While I still believe that the left in America needs to get its own house in order, smearing and lying about those on the Left who participated helps no one but those who enjoy the boons of the status quo: 

 There's been a lot of debate (and a lot of attempts to silence debate) on this subject: 

 We also get a brief history lesson from the famed journalist: