(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A neurologist recently published a book offering an explanation as to why some people have erotic dreams about individuals that they are not attracted to, the Daily Mailreported.
According to neuroscientist Rahul Jandial, eight in 10 people have had such dreams before, typically about people they know, even in instances in which they find them unattractive—or even dislike them.
Jandial claimed that in dreaming, the “moderating influence” we exercise while awake disappears, “allowing our erotic dreams to be wildly creative and exploratory.”
The neurologist also hypothesized that dreams are “like a prurient thought experiment” that takes place “liberated” from the realities of waking life, concluding that “it is highly possible that we become more open to erotic dreams at night.”
Thus, Jandial argued, erotic dreams tend to focus on those around which the dreamer spends a lot of time—whether there is genuine waking attraction present or not.
Interestingly, Jandial also suggested that many people today are psychologically “closer” to celebrities than to their own family and friends. This has the effect of leading to erotic dreams about celebrities.
Though these dreams tend to “stick close to home,” Jandial suggested, “celebrities have literally taken root in our neural architecture. Our response to them suggests they are as familiar to us as a long-time friend or neighbor.”
Ultimately, he argued, dreams of this nature express the dreamer’s “true desires,” and are “the embodiment of desire itself.”
Sexual desire, according to Jandial, is rooted in the natural human desire to have children.
“The essential biological imperative of life is to survive at least long enough to procreate,” he added, noting that erotic dreams are just another expression of that longing.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The non-profit Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft released an eye-opening report Tuesday on the Pentagon embedding officers in U.S. corporations.
Quincy’s report focused on the Defense Department’s Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows program, which entails military officers to working for major corporations. The program is aimed at giving participating military officers the ability to learn how private companies work, and to take what they learn back to the military.
But in practice, the SDEF program has served as corporate welfare and a revolving door for careerists, according to the Quincy Institute.
“Looking at a large sample of former SDEF fellows, we found that 43% have worked for a government contractor since leaving the program,” wrote policy researcher Brett Heinz, who helped draft the Quincy report, which said that figure suggests that SDEF fellows work for large government contractors at more than twice the rate of other Pentagon personnel.
“In some cases, fellows even go on to work for the exact same companies where they had been assigned, essentially using this government program as a launching pad for a lucrative career in the private sector,” the think tank reported.
Quincy also found that the SDEF program serves as a lobbying tool for U.S. corporations.
“We documented numerous examples of fellows making policy recommendations that would specifically benefit the company they worked for. Fellows at companies who export billions in weapons each year called for the government to loosen arms trade regulations. A fellow at a railroad company suggested that the DOD consider using railroads more, a fellow at a machinery rental company suggested the DOD rent more machinery, and a fellow at a private utility suggested the DOD continue buying energy from private utilities.
Quincy added that perhaps the most glaring example it found was of a fellow who recommended that the DOD to modify its outsourcing rules and make it easier for the fellow’s company to work with DOD. That company was Enron, and the recommendations were made just six months before the company imploded, according to Quincy.
Heinz concluded that the SDEF program has primarily benefited corporate interests at the expense of the American taxpayer.
“When given the opportunity, firms will push for policy reforms that have little to do with an effective defense strategy, but everything to do with their bottom line,” he said. “Allowing big businesses such a privileged opportunity to influence military policymakers serves to benefit shareholders and executives, not the American people.”
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The House Intelligence Committee has released the results of its investigation into sexual abuse at the CIA, finding that the agency failed to properly handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment within its workforce.
However, the report did not recommend any punishments, instead proposing a legislative solution to the CIA’s culture of abuse.
The House report stems from January 2023, when a CIA whistleblower approached the committee, alleging that she had been physically attacked and sexually assaulted at CIA headquarters by a fellow officer. In the following weeks, additional whistleblowers shared their own personal experiences of sexual assault and sexual harassment while employed by CIA.
The House Intel Committee launched an investigation into the matter, interviewing 26 CIA whistleblowers, holding two hearings and reviewing more than 4,000 pages of records. The report also said the committee “engaged constructively”with CIA Director William Burns—not mentioning that Burns’s links to one of the most notorious sexual abusers in American history: Jeffrey Epstein.
The House committee’s investigations yielded eight main findings, including that “there was confusion and disorder in the process for reporting sexual assault and harassment.”
Rather than hold anyone within the CIA accountable, the committee instead said the sex abuse problem can be handled legislatively.
“It was evident CIA was unable to appropriately address the challenges due to its lack of certain tools and authorities,” the committee’s report said. “The Committee sought to provide CIA with what it needs to fix these gaps in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024.”
The CIA has fired the initial whistleblower. The victim’s lawyer said the whistleblower’s firiing was a blatant act of retaliation for reporting the assault.
The attorney, Kevin Carroll, reportedly told the Associated Press that the agency had “unlawfully ended a young woman’s career only because she had the moral courage, lacking in her managers, to stand up and be a witness about her sexual assault.”
The CIA, for its part, has reportedly denied wrongdoing in relation to the whistleblower retaliation allegation.
As for the sexual harassment problem, the agency provided the following comment to the Associated Press: “We are absolutely committed to fostering a safe, respectful workplace environment for our employees and have taken significant steps to ensure that, both by bolstering our focus on prevention and strengthening the Agency’s handling of these issues when they arise.”
(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) One of the most powerful moments in modern cinema may be the ending to Mel Gibson’sApocalypto. (Warning:Spoiler ahead if you have failed to watch this 18-year-old film. Skip to the next section.)
The 2006 movie, filmed with limited dialogue in the Yucatec Mayan language and using a cast of indigenous actors, found the Aussie-raised star who had reached the pinnacle of film success as a Hollywood heartthrob and Oscar-winning director becoming even bolder in his artistic choices.
Gibson saw huge returns on 2004’s Passion of the Christ, the Jim Caviezel-fronted blockbuster that drew audiences for its authenticity—despite all odds and projections that its overt religious themes, intense gore and the decision to film entirely in the dead Hebrew language of Aramaic would be box-office poison.
Apocalypto, meanwhile, in spite of its ambition, presaged Gibson’s own unfortunate downfall.
Although it garnered critical praise from many in the industry, its release coincided with Gibson’s July 2006 drunken driving arrest and, worse, anti-Semitic rant (in the days back before such things were widely embraced by the Left).
Fittingly, Apocalypto’s ending portrayed a similar moment—a sort of deus ex machina that changes the entire paradigm with only a moment’s notice.
The film’s two-hour plot revolves around the efforts by Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) to escape after a warring tribe of Mayan raiders sacks his village, taking him hostage to be a human sacrifice.
It reaches its climax with a solar eclipse (see feature video above), which spares the captive hero from a certain doom and moves the action into its third and final act, culminating in a black-swan denouement that is both unexpected and entirely logical.
Jaguar Paw reaches the coast with his captors in hot pursuit—only to see ships bearing Spanish conquistadors preparing to disembark.
‘A THIEF IN THE NIGHT’
Having become deeply invested in the protagonist, viewers who know, in hindsight, how the bigger historical picture will play out are left with a sense of ambivalence and dread.
The immediate crisis may be resolved, but a much bigger one has been set in motion that will ultimately lead to the “extinction” of both warring tribes as their cultures are absorbed by the more powerful colonizers, who will trade the barbarity of human sacrifice for more humane and impersonal forms of mass genocide.
One could read into the film, knowing Gibson’s deep-seated Christian faith, a sort of religious allegory—in which the conquistadors represent the final Judgment Day, and all worldly conflicts and tribulations, no matter how severe, suddenly seem petty by comparison.
Indeed, the apostle Paul wrote that “the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.”
However, five years after the events of 9/11, Gibson and his Iran-born Apocalypto writing partner, Farhad Safinia, also were catering to an American audience that knew all too well what such moments felt like, as the miniscule and mundane give way to earth-shattering sea change.
Having recently endured the cataclysmic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, most contemporary readers can likewise relate on some level.
And there is a growing sense that another game-changing event may lie in store for us in the near future that could reframe all of the current existential crises we face in a much broader perspective.
UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS
As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said with respect to Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the biggest threats are the ones that cannot be anticipated.
“[A]s we know, there are known knowns—there are things we know we know,” Rumsfeld said, while reflecting on the capabilities and limitations of America’s intelligence-gathering community.
“We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know,” he continued. “But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.”
Approaching the 2024 election, Republicans must consider all of these various factors also.
The known knowns include factors such as ballot-harvesting in swing states (alongside other election-integrity issues), and Democrats’ plan to campaign heavily on abortion, as well as other political wedge issues. If GOP leaders are unable to offer strong solutions to these while also putting forth a strong offensive game plan, then shame on them.
There are a litany of known unknowns: the disposition of Trump’s trials, the Democrats’ possible plans to swap out Biden with another candidate, the loss of another GOP House member giving Democrats full control of Congress and the direction that the economy will take (pending possible Fed rate cuts), to name a few. All of these fall into the category of foreseeable challenges for which the GOP should have contingency plans in place within the existing political framework.
As for the unknown unknowns, those would be events that, theoretically, might be foreseeable, but the impact of which cannot be calculated due to their magnitude—in effect because they will render altogether moot the prior political wranglings.
Below are a few possible scenarios that could cause a disruption on that scale, and why they seem especially plausible at this rare cosmic juncture.
• An Act of Terrorism
Putting terrorism into the category of unknowns is a stretch since it seems almost inevitable given the current open-border situation. Yet, the response to it may vary greatly. Conventional wisdom would dictate that it would be a boon for Trump, underscoring the threat of illegal immigration brought about by Biden’s failed policies and effecting the same sort of rally-around-the-flag patriotism that sent George W. Bush’s approval rating soaring during his first term.
However, Biden also could, like Bush, use the incumbency to his advantage in a variety of ways, first and foremost by spinning the narrative in a moment when vulnerability compels Americans to look to their elected leaders. Democrats have traditionally fumbled in this arena, as the Obama administration did with Benghazi and ISIS, but with their seat of power at stake, they could learn from their past missteps to find just the right scapegoat.
There are a variety of ways this could happen, such as the soon-to-be-ratified treaty empowering the World Health Organization to mobilize the response to “Disease X.”
A coordinated “Black Lives Matter” type of movement with nationwide riots, potentially involving Palestinian insurgents or illegal immigrants in response to some catalyzing event, could do the job.
Or, of course, there is always the possibility of an FBI-orchestrated false-flag operation to put the blame on right-wing “domestic violent extremists.” One theory is that Trump will be found guilty in one of his many lawfare cases, but the Supreme Court will step in to overturn it, giving leftists the justification they need both to riot and to declare the court invalid.
Or perhaps there won’t even be any event at all, considering Biden has given signals of his intention to declare climate change a pandemic-level emergency that would require mobilizing his army of environmental brown shirts.
• Assassination
Again, it is a bit of gray area under the current circumstances to see the death of an ailing octogenarian leader like Biden as an “unknown unknown” since it could well happen due to natural causes at any given moment.
It is also much less likely—unless it were a well-covered-up insider job like the Kennedy assassination—that Biden would be at risk of this happening due to his security detail and his REAL protection/insurance policy: Vice President Kamala Harris. That said, if the Democrats or others in the deep state have a strong enough incentive to dispatch with him, never say never.
As for Trump, due to the temperature of the rhetoric coming from the Left, it seems a very real possibility exists that an unhinged hombre might make an attempt at taking him out as the election approaches, especially if his victory begins to seem more inevitable. It might make a martyr of him, but for all practical intents and purposes, it leaves open the gaping question of who would be next in line, particularly if he has not yet selected a running mate.
Although the obvious choice would be Donald Trump Jr., the presidential namesake and father to young kids might be reluctant to thus put himself in harm’s way. A safer bet would be that Nikki Haley would step in to comfort the grieving MAGA nation while helping to offer national “unity” on a coalition ticket with another ex-UN ambassador, Obama surrogate Susan Rice.
• World War III
Speaking of the aforementioned Ms. Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser has resurfaced from under her rock recently, which can only mean bad things.
Rice is now a free agent, and was trotted out as an attack dog last month, using her supposed authority to claim that Trump poses a “national security threat.”
NEW NARRATIVE – TRUMP IS NATIONAL SECURITY RISK: Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) warns Americans against voting for Donald Trump because he's a national security risk: "Trump clearly doesn't put American interests ahead of his own, so we're deeply vulnerable to exploitation by our… pic.twitter.com/3MjM9zrJ4a
Whatever country the administration and its flunkies declare Trump to be in cahoots with should beware that they soon to be the new “Russia.”
Since Rice’s oddly timed comments, Russia witnessed a stunning terrorist attack that was attributed to ISIS—seemingly apropos of nothing since Russia and ISIS are both regarded as western adversaries.
Fortunately, President Vladmir Putin did not take the bait in using this episode to retaliate against the more likely culprits: Ukraine and the U.S. But that did not stop Congress from recently allocating some $60 billion more in Ukraine funding as though it anticipated such a counterstrike.
Chinese tensions also appear to be heating up, with growing hostilities in the South China Sea, a series of earthquakes in Taiwan and New York City raising questions, as well as the possibility that they drugged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen before undertaking a major hacking operation last year.
And, of course, it’s anybody’s guess whether President Joe Biden is secretly negotiating with the Iranian government to bomb Israel and vice-versa, but the escalation of animosities in the Middle East adds more fuel to the fire.
Although Trump is supposed to be receiving courtesy intelligence briefings, he would be wise to be very wary of the selective information he is provided, lest they attempt to lay another trap for him to step into.
• The Apocalypse
Just in time for Passover—the Jewish holiday commemorating the 10 Biblical plagues of Egypt—Headline USA can officially report the arrival of the first “locusts” in North Carolina.
This summer’s rare confluence of two cicada broods, like the recent eclipse and other natural phenomena, have generated a spike in talk about the End of Days.
Those keeping score withMatthew 24have noticed that many of the signs have manifested, but we have yet to witness the rebuilding of the Jewish temple and the arrival, to our knowledge, of the so-called antichrist—which may not necessarily be what popular culture has construed it to be.
The temple prophesy could be set in motion any day now, with the expected sacrifice of a red heifer over Passover being the first step. That purification ritual would purportedly be only the 10th of its kind since the time of Moses, and would be the first step for a group of Israelis hoping to rebuild the storied Jewish temple in what they believe to be its original location.
The only problem: That same location currently houses the Muslim Dome of the Rock, one of their holiest and most historic sites. Some have speculated that the controversy over the temple may have been connected in some way with Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel.
As for the so-called antichrist, that could be a single individual or a multitude of people based on the vagueries of translation. And it may not necessarily be a demonic figure in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby or The Omen.
Rather, the antichrist could represent the Jewish leaders who advocate for the building of the temple, according to some interpretations, since they are, effectively, the ones who would usher in the Armageddon, but also the arrival of the heralded messiah.
Moreover, in the Christian tradition, there is talk of Israel being deceived and led astray by a false messiah—another possible interpretation of the antichrist—before realizing the error of its ways.
Here, of course, the prophesies begin to break down according to one’s faith. And that’s not to say any of it will happen like clockwork according to a predetermined schedule (remember what the Apostle Paul said…)
Still, when weighed collectively, the likelihood that at least one of these game-changing election disruptors could happen between now and November seems fairly strong in an era when bizarre, shocking and unprecedented phenomena seem to be ever-more commonplace. Who, after all, had “self-immolation wave” on their BINGO cards?
When it comes to the possibility of some black-swan event shifting our entire outlook in the months ahead, I would much sooner take those odds than to bet on smooth sailing this election season.
(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) Did you know Thomas Jefferson and many other prominent Founding Fathers predicted our current economic problems?
No, they didn’t have a crystal ball. They didn’t need one. All they needed was an understanding of money and human nature.
The founders recognized the “evils” of paper money. And they knew that if the U.S. went down the paper money path, it would cause all kinds of problems. Thomas Paine put it bluntly:
“The evils of paper money have no end.”
The founding generation knew this because they learned history. They also experienced the problems of paper money in their own day. In a 1787 letter to Superior Court Judge and former Deputy Governor Jabez Bown, George Washington commented on the impact of paper money in Rhode Island:
“Paper money has had the effect in your State that it ever will have, to ruin commerce – oppress the honest, and open a door to every species of fraud and injustice.”
Unfortunately, America didn’t heed the founders’ warnings. The U.S. embraced paper money and the consequences were predictable. American history is littered with booms, busts, and financial crises precipitated because of monetary malfeasance made possible with paper money.
Thomas Jefferson and the Depression of 1815-1821
In an 1814 letter to Thomas Cooper, Jefferson wrote, “Every thing predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper as we were formerly by the old Continental paper.”
The letter was prophetic.
Just one year later, a depression gripped the United States kicked off by financial panic. This economic downturn lasted until 1821 and is widely viewed as the first boom-bust period in U.S. history.
And it was exactly what Jefferson predicted.
The depression was rooted in an all-too-familiar problem – excessive money printing.
The economic downturn came on the heels of the War of 1812, which officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on Feb. 18, 1815. After the war, banknotes began to rapidly depreciate due to the exponential increase in the amount of paper in circulation.
The First Bank of the United States charter ended in 1811 and was not renewed. The Second Bank of the United States (SBUS) wasn’t created until 1816. This led to a proliferation of state-chartered banks.
As economist Murray Rothbard explained in his book, The Panic of 1819, to fund the war, the federal government turned to these state-chartered banks, and they issued large numbers of paper money banknotes far exceeding the amount of gold to back them.
This caused gold to drain from these banks. To keep the money flowing, the U.S. government agreed to a suspension of specie payments from state banks and the situation persisted after the war ended. This allowed banks to make loans with little to no regard for gold reserves to bank them.
It was a formula for disaster.
Jefferson understood this all too well, making his views clear in his letter to Cooper:
“I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for any thing but coin. but our whole country is so fascinated with this Jack lanthern wealth, that they will not stop short of its total and fatal explosion”
On March 23, 1815, the U.S. entered a period of financial panic. It was followed by several years of mild depression culminating in a sharp economic downturn — the Panic of 1819.
This panic was exacerbated by financial conditions in Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, but it was fundamentally a domestic problem caused by money printing.
Whenever the money supply rapidly expands, as it did during the war years, it creates all kinds of malinvestments in the economy. The expansion of credit fueled land speculation in the West, that likely would not have happened in a more sound monetary environment. Historian George Dangerfield argued that the entire postwar American economy was “based on a land boom.”
Since the U.S. Treasury accepted payments for land in the form of state-issued bank notes, state-chartered banks helped fund this land boom. The problem was most of them lacked sufficient specie to back their paper.
After it opened for business in 1817, the Second Bank of the United States (SBUS) jumped right in to further expand money and credit.
The SBUS had 18 branches. They were supposed to operate with oversight by the main bank in Philadelphia, but the oversight was lax. Meanwhile, the SBUS was supposed to regulate state banks. This oversight was also lax.
Meanwhile, western branches of the national bank got caught up in the land boom mania and began issuing SBUS banknotes at a dizzying pace. In his book The Awakening of American Nationalism, Dangerfield noted that SBUS banks tried to restock their insufficient gold reserves by redeeming their notes for hard money at eastern and northern SBUS branches.
The result was, as Jefferson called it, “a deluge of bank paper” without sufficient gold backing.
According to Rothbard, by 1818, the Second Bank of the United States had demand liabilities exceeding $22.4 million. Its specie fund stood at a mere $2.4 million – a 10:1 ratio. A 5:1 ratio was considered sustainable.
That year, the SBUS tried to rein in the problem by curtailing loans by its western branches. When state banks began presenting their banknotes for redemption at the Second Bank of the United States, it refused to provide gold specie from its reserves. There was simply too much paper and not enough gold. The state banks did the only thing they could do – they began foreclosing on heavily mortgaged farms and business properties.
This led to widespread bankruptcies, bank failures, a collapse in real estate prices, and spiking unemployment.
Again, it was exactly what Jefferson predicted.
In an 1819 letter to John Adams, Jefferson lamented that the situation would never change or even improve until people understood the root cause of the economic malaise – paper money.
“The evils of this deluge of paper money are not to be removed until our citizens are generally and radically instructed in their cause & consequences.”
Jefferson went on to pinpoint the root of the problem with paper money, “want of a stable, common measure of value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads & wampum of the Indian.”
Jefferson was responding to a letter penned by Adams discussing Chapter 6 of the 1817 Treatise on Political Economy by Destutt de Tracy. Adams cited a passage calling the printing of paper money more ruinous and a greater theft than empires of old shaving off a little gold from their coins and passing them off as full-weight. In other words, Tracy called it stealing.
“A theft of greater magnitude & still more ruinous is the making of paper. It is greater because in this money there is absolutely no real value. It is more ruinous because by its gradual depreciation during all the time of its existence it produces the effect which would be produced by an infinity of successive deteriorations of the coin.”
Adams put it in even harsher terms, writing to Jefferson:
“That is to say an infinity of successive felonious larcenies. If this is true as I believe it is we Americans are the most thievish people that ever existed, we have been stealing from each other for an hundred & fifty years.”
How much worse are things today?
We can accurately predict another economic meltdown in the future because, after more than 200 years, the problem of paper money remains. The people still have not become radically instructed as to the cause and consequences of the boom-bust cycle that’s fueled by printing massive amounts of paper (and today, electronic) money.
The government continues to print it at a dizzying pace. The Federal Reserve created nearly $5 trillion just through quantitative easing during the pandemic alone. That was on top of nearly $4 trillion created via three rounds of QE after the 2008 financial crisis.
Economic principles don’t change with the times. In 1788, Jefferson wrote, “Paper is poverty … it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.”
It’s still true today.
This is why I can confidently say that another crash is looming. Even though the Federal Reserve has tried to rein in the price inflation caused by the pandemic money creation, we still haven’t experienced the consequences of that monetary malfeasance. At some point in the not-too-distant future, the malinvestments and excessive debt created by Fed monetary policy will unwind.
Jefferson’s foresight underscores the enduring danger of paper money and government excess, echoing through history’s economic crises.
Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for MoneyMetals.com with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.
(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Twice failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed that if her erstwhile political opponent, former President Donald Trump, won the upcoming election he would likely make plans to “kill his opposition,” according to the Political Insider.
“Trump was like, you know, just gaga over Putin because Putin does what Trump would like to do,” Clinton said in the viral clip.
“Kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance,” she continued. “That’s what Trump really wants, and so we have to be very conscious of how he sees the world because, in that world, he only sees strongmen leaders.”
Clinton made the ludicrous claim on a podcast appearance with Democrat election lawyer Marc Elias, the notorious lawyer who helped her to concoct and implement the Russia-collusion hoax by recycling the discredited opposition research of British spy Christopher Steele.
Toward the end of her rant, Clinton threw in a comparison to North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un and China’s Xi Jinping for good measure.
“He sees Putin, he sees Xi, he sees Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Those are the people he is modeling himself after, and we’ve been down this road in our, you know, world history. We sure don’t want to go down that again.”
Twitter users reacted with shock Clinton’s either very severe projection or complete lack of self-awareness.
“She is literally describing herself and the current regime she is managing,” user Nicole said.
She is literally describing herself and the current regime she is managing.
Clinton and her associates are suspected to have connections to dozens of murders, suspected suicides and other deaths of people who previously ran in their circles.
The death of notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein became a popular meme after he died in his guarded cell under suspicious circumstances.
A Twitter user pointed out that one former Clinton advisor allegedly died from airplane turbulence on a business jet, making her the only person to do so in at least 20 years.
Here's an interesting one.
From 2009 to 2021 there were 0 deaths from turbulence.
In 2023, Dana Hyde died from turbulence on a business jet.
Ironically, she was a former advisor to Bill Clinton.
The only person to die from turbulence in the past ~20 years knew the Clintons.
(Stephen Horn, Headline USA) An Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department officer was disciplined in 2023 with a 10-day suspension for “participat[ing] in January 6 riot,” according to an annual report first reported on by the Washington City Paper.
MPD spokesperson Paris Lewbel told the City Paper that the officer “was disciplined for violating general orders relating to undercover operations during the January 6th insurrection.”
According to the report, only five of the 10 days of the suspension were taken out of accrued leave; the other five were “held in abeyance.” Other MPD officers listed in the report received the same length of suspension for misconduct such as sleeping on-duty, excessive force, misuse of official vehicles, and bodycam policy violations.
The recipient of this discipline, identified as a white/Caucasian male with a rank of investigator, appears to match the description of an MPD officer named Nicholas Tomasula.
In 2023, video captured by Tomasula was leaked to the public, revealing that he had encouraged the crowd at the Capitol on J6 with shouts of “keep going!” and “go, go, go!” while operating in an undercover capacity.
The first disclosure to the public of the undercover MPD officers in the crowd on J6 was in June 2021 in a Statement of Facts filed by the Department of Justice in the criminal case against J6 defendant Fi Duong.
The filing described how an unnamed “Metropolitan Police Department Undercover Employee” (later understood to be Tomasula) had met Duong on J6, and followed up with him to insert an undercover FBI agent into a “loosely affiliated, unnamed group of like-minded individuals” of which Duong was a member.
A year later, an MPD document first obtained by the Epoch Times revealed the plan for J6 included an Electronic Surveillance Unit under the command of Inspector Robert Glover. Plainclothes members of this unit were to wear a colored bracelet identifying them as MPD personnel.
Although the document included the names of 28 MPD personnel assigned to the unit, including “N. Tomasula”, it did not specify how many of those were operating in plainclothes on J6.
The specifics of Tomasula’s provocative statements while undercover were not revealed until November 2022, when pro-se J6 defendant Will Pope included a transcript of the video Tomasula captured of himself to refute claims by the government that it was “not aware of any individuals encouraging people on January 6 to move towards or into the Capitol … who were doing so on behalf of any U.S. local, state, or federal government agency organization.”
In March 2023, the DOJ acknowledged the video recorded by Tomasula while undercover at the Capitol, including that Tomasula and the two plainclothes officers he was with “appear[ed] to join the crowd around them in various chants, to include ‘drain the swamp,’ ‘U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!’, and ‘whose house? Our house!'”
Around this same time, the video in question was leaked to the public, despite it being marked as “sensitive” in the evidence database provided to J6 defendants.
An unknown party has released a selection of the GoPro video captured by the undercover MPD officer who encouraged people to "Go! Go! Go!" and "Keep going! Keep going!" at the Capitolhttps://t.co/s2Yx20A24rpic.twitter.com/RjTml0QWvm
Tomasula’s reported misbehavior was not merely limited to the statements he made while undercover on J6; another filing by Pope in August 2023 references internal investigation of Tomasula’s behavior, which found that “Tomasula did not preserve all potentially discoverable material, including any such material which may prove favorable to an accused” in relation to Tomasula’s infiltration of the Proud Boys leading up to J6.
Although the rank, race, and gender are consistent with Tomasula, and the timeline of Tomasula’s conduct being exposed is consistent with a 2023 disciplinary action, it is possible the unnamed officer in the MPD discipline report is another member of the ESU, or one of the non-ESU plainclothes MPD officers known to be present.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) President Joe Biden expressed his admiration for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., shortly after she defended the protests at Columbia University, which have been criticized for anti-Semitic and violent sentiments.
During an Earth Day event in Virginia, Biden disturbingly emphasized the importance of listening to Ocasio-Cortez, as seen in a video posted by journalist Greg Price.
Biden specifically claimed, “Representative Ocasio-Cortez of New York. I learned long time ago to listen to that lady, to listen to that lady. We’re going to talk more about another part of the world too real quickly.”
While speaking at Biden’s Earth Day event just now, AOC praised the pro Hamas protests at Columbia and Yale
Biden then opened his speech by saying “I learned a long time ago to listen to that lady.” pic.twitter.com/j2IUiyXXjR
Biden’s positive comments about Ocasio-Cortez came after her apparent support for the protests at Columbia University, despite widespread condemnation of the anti-Semitic elements within them.
Praising youth activism, Ocasio-Cortez remarked, “It is especially important that we remember the power of young people shaping this country today of all days, as we once again witness the leadership of those peaceful student-led protests on campus, like Columbia, Yale, Berkeley and many others.”
While it isn’t immediately clear which specific protests the lawmaker was referencing, Columbia University is currently embroiled in controversy over protests against what some students perceive as U.S. support for Israel.
The Jewish state is currently engaged in war with Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization, responsible for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, the deadliest day for Jewish individuals since the Holocaust.
Although Ocasio-Cortez depicts the protests at Columbia as peaceful, recent arrests by the NYPD and additional chilling footage suggest otherwise.
Over 100 students have been arrested for refusing to comply with law enforcement demands to vacate Columbia University premises.
The White House itself has condemned the anti-Semitic chants captured in viral videos from the protests, including praise for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas and the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
Approximately 1,200 people were tragically killed by Hamas terrorists on that day. Reports indicate that tactics such as mass rape, beheadings, and burning civilians alive were employed by Hamas during the attack.
It was reported by the New York Post that two men wearing MSA Security caps and bulletproof vests with a German shepherd in tow patrolled the Home Depot in New Rochelle, N.Y., on Apr. 16, 2024.
“It’s more about omnipresence. It’s not like we let them go bite anyone or anything,” one guard said.
The guard also said the company was hired a few weeks ago to prevent rampant crime.
“It’s not just because of [illegals], but because of a myriad of other things too, like people breaking into cars, that kind of stuff,” he said.
Among the problems that Americans who come to the store face are the illegals who try to aggressively sell them phony Apple Airpods or solicit tips for lifting items from shopping carts into cars, even if they were not asked to do so.
“You come out and [if] you’re a woman by yourself, they literally leech onto your wagon, and you’re like, ‘No, I don’t need any help.’ And when they’re following you to your car, it’s unnerving,” one worker said.
The store’s female supervisor told the news source that one of the illegals was washing his private parts with a water bottle in the lot. Additionally, several women called customer service to complain that illegals stole their purses or phones.
“I came to work one day and there had to be 100 guys out here. And I’m like, ‘Oh, my [Gosh]!’” the female worker said.
A regular customer at the store, who asked to be identified only as Cheryl, said she and her husband had a frightening encounter last month, with an illegal following them and touching the things they bought at the store. He left them alone only after Cheryl held up her pepper spray.
Other Home Depot customers also complained about the illegals, according to LaurieAnn Masciocco, who works in the store’s customer service department.
“It’s come to the point where they’re invading personal space, touching people’s belongings, just harassing. I get it, you’re trying to make a buck. But when it becomes aggressive and harassing, there’s a major issue,” she said.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The head of state of Papua New Guinea responded to President Joe Biden’s unproven suggestion that his World War II veteran uncle was eaten by “cannibals” after his plane crashed near the Pacific Ocean-based Island.
“President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” said Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape in a statement Monday, according to the Associated Press.
Marape’s response referred to Biden’s repeated claims that his uncle Ambrose Finnegan may have fallen victim to cannibals when his plane crashed on May 14, 1944.
“He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time,” Biden told reporters gathered outside a WWII memorial in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“They never recovered his body, but the government went back when I went down there and they checked and found some parts of the plane,” Biden added.
Biden’s got a new story about Uncle Bosey being shot down and eaten by cannibals…
The 81-year-old president repeated these claims while addressing members of the United Steelworkers union in Pennsylvania, where he campaigned ahead of the state’s primary election.
“He got shot down in New Guinea and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden said.
Biden, for the third time in less than 24 hours, tells the dubious story about his “Uncle Bosey” and “a lot of cannibals” in New Guinea before repeating the debunked “suckers and losers” hoax.
He also claims D-Day was on a Sunday (it was on a Tuesday).
Despite these assertions, there is no evidence to suggest that Finnegan fell victim to cannibals.
In fact, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, the federal body that gathers information on prisoners of war and other missing-in-action service members, said that Finnegan passed away after the plane was forced to ditch into the ocean. His body was never recovered.
“Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard,” the federal agency said. “Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash. One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members.”
Biden’s controversial claims came as he faces scorching criticism for making incoherent remarks, committing countless gaffes and stumbling over his own words.
It’s unclear whether the White House is preparing to apologize to Papua New Guinea. The press office in the Papua New Guinea Parliament referred Headline USA to the Prime Minister’s Office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Doocy: “And I agree. Second Lieutenant Ambrose Jake Finnegan was a war hero. But the Pentagon says, for unknown reasons, the plane was forced to ditch in the ocean and both engines failed at low out — altitude. Why is President Biden saying he was shot down? There’s no evidence… pic.twitter.com/MinnEzrk07
