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Cdr, did you see they discovered that James Baker, the FBI official who was deeply involved in Russiagate and who was then planted at Twitter as the company's general counsel, combed through the Twitter Files without telling Elon Musk?

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It seems Elon didn't even know this "new" employee!!

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The swamp has so many tentacles it could be in anime.

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Good one!

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I don't know much that would qualify as anime, but isn't there a strong anti-government undercurrent to much of it?

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I don't watch it myself, I just know there's tentacles. Lots of them.

https://tenor.com/search/anime-tentacle-gifs

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Edit: Newest "ex"-employee, that is,

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When did this happen?

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so this is the FBI Jim Baker?

what the Hell is going on..?

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It starts with a C.

It ends with over up.

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That explains the delay! I thought they were allowing the press to paint themselves into a corner!

There are literally no limits to what these people will do.

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Are you kidding? Why ask if he knows someone who works for a social media platform? dumb as hell.

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Because you already know the answer and you want him to say out loud that his daughter worked for Twitter.

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From my latest sub stack, a follow-up to my "record-setting" piece:

"Every one of America’s 40,000 MSM "journalists" KNOW that they cannot write or publish a story about an American citizen who died from the Covid vaccine.

"In a nutshell, expressed mathematically, that’s what we are up against. That's our bleak reality. The real story of our times - the most disturbing story and the one with the largest implications for our country’s future - is that the important stories will NOT be told by mainstream journalists."

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/my-vaccine-death-story-set-readership

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they are either ignoring it, or spending massive amounts of energy deriding how nothing it is.

regardless, I’m sensing panic...

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In the midst of the Twitter Files revelations, I was thinking today “Thank goodness there is Substack” to help sort all this out. I also realized that despite the fact that all the Big Tech/MSM moguls are famous names, I have no idea who started and runs Substack. Whoever you are, I thank you!

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Substack CEO Chris Best goes on Joe Rogan:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4SFTiMFkTRpknVfj6dYyMN

And some behind-the-scenes insights into the episode:

https://lulu.substack.com/p/joe-rogan-has-a-werewolf

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I know I’m changing the subject a bit but I couldn’t keep it in any longer.

On December 7th, 1941, my uncle Eugene Jamison was at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked.

His ship, the Conygham was not hit.

He died about 10 years ago.

I miss him.

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Denise, have you been to the Arizona Memorial? It is magnificent, solemn and eerie. God Bless your Uncle.

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Oh, thank you so much Martha. No, I haven’t been to the Arizona Memorial. But, My cousin lives in Arizona and I ‘m going to ask her if she’s been there. This year, I don’t know, but remembering my uncle has been really on my mind…….he was career Navy.

But your remembering him means a lot.

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The Destroyer Arizona was one of the first ships sunk in Pearl Harbor. The Navel base is just outside Honolulu. The ship remains on the ocean floor, still slowly leaking oil. To visit the site is so sobering. The site is managed by the US Park System. The Park Rangers ask visitors for silence while visiting .. I’ve been there twice, once I had to “ straighten out” a few noisy tourists.....

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Oh, God, I can’t believe I just said that…..of course, you were referring to the memorial of the ship…….I’ve been up since 4a.m. And my brain died an hour ago…….I think if I ever saw that memorial I would get hysterical and wouldn’t stop crying……..

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Denise, I second that. Anyone who gets a chance should visit the Arizona memorial. It is an experience that makes you really see the meaning of Liberty and Heroism. I will never forget it.

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We've all been there! :)

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I just wrote a piece, on of all topics, Alabama getting left out of the college football playoff. My thesis was that Alabama would be out and TCU in ... because Alabama is the "politically incorrect" villain in the accepted "narrative." There was no down-side for committee members leaving out Alabama. These committee members knew they would NOT be criticized if they selected TCU. However, if they picked Alabama (saying that Alabama was, in fact, one of the "best four teams" in college football at the end of the season), they would have been castigated. All the ESPN talking heads know the same thing. So this kind of fits your premise - just identify the politically correct position and you are safe from criticism, which is all that matters in "leadership" or mainstream journalism these days.

Who makes the college football playoffs doesn't matter in the big picture. But as far as I can tell all the decisions on all the important issues use the same formula. That NBC reporter - and NBC's executives - KNOW the position that won't get them sideways with anyone important.

Supporting the lockdowns - or the vaccines - was a no-risk career-advancing move. You'd only get in trouble if you challenged the narrative. Then you'd have to start your own Substack site ... like we did.

Here's my article. Somehow I ended up working Disney's decision to shut down Splash Mountain into my thesis.

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/disney-is-shutting-down-splash-mountain

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I loved that article even though I don't follow college football. They can destroy all the controversy by expanding the playoff to 8 teams, because realistically there's very very little chance that #9 can win a title. (Even #7/8 is stretching)

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That's also the politically correct answer. Keep expanding the playoff field. That's what they did in college basketball. More "participation trophies" for more programs. More money for ESPN with more playoff games .... but did expanding the NCAA basketball tournament to 68 teams really improve the popularity of the sport? Now the only thing that matters is March Madness. Nobody really cares about the regular season. The TV ratings are terrible except for the Big Dance.

All of this said, if the playoffs had been expanded to eight teams this year, I'd be happy as a Bama fan. It's going to actually be 12 teams .... but that will grow to 16. My alma mater, Troy, used to be Division II. Back then the playoffs had eight teams. Now Division II has 24 teams that make the playoffs.

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Agreed they will take it too far, but it seems like every year that 'possible champion' line is around the 4/5/6 mark. And luckily, college football already has the ridiculous bowl system that rewards anybody .500 or better.

Adding 65-68 did nothing at all for the Dance. It's all about $$$$$. Just like expanding football to 12 would be.

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I hope Taibbi is taking this all as a gigantic confirmation that he is a true, professional, honest journalist. Clearly his peers are not.

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Excellent article! Too bad presstitutes outnumber journalists by a very, very wide margin. Before long, I'm sure they'll come after the journalists.

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This is how we know Area 51 is real.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/uh-oh-looks-like-bidens-doj-just-raided-an-area-51-journalist-at-gunpoint

The Department of Justice allegedly raided a researcher who reports information about Area 51 on his self-run website — raising larger concerns, again, that the feds are abusing their power under President Joe Biden.

On Thursday, Nevada reporter George Knapp tweeted, “FBI agents came down hard on the operator of a popular website devoted to all things Area 51–its programs, lore, and legacy. More than a dozen agents served a no-knock warrant on the Rachel, NV home of Joerg Arnu, owner of http://dreamlandresort.com.”

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Wow! I'm not surprised. This seems to be happening more lately. Fear is a liar. I hope we can all stand together and not let fear settle in and stifle our voices. They will ramp up the intimidation. So predictable.

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Loved your post (you're a great writer), but loved the dog in dreads more. 😉 From an ardent dog lover, Thank-you very much!

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Really, really great stuff Commander. I love this breakdown and the way you've articulated the current state of "journalism". The capture of the field of journalism might be the single most dangerous thing that's happened to us in the past 10-20 years, and that's not an exaggeration.

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It got so bad they literally drove me into the field!

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Probably in the past 80 years (post- WWII)

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My criticism of Taibbi is mainly that he is a bit jaded when it comes to Trump, probably because he lived in NYC in the 80s, during the epic and hilarious public bitchfest between Spy magazine and DJT. It was all very entertaining, I still have the very first Spy issue (Chris Elliot on the cover), funny stuff. Anyway, I think this permanently and understandably colored his view of him and it is reflected in his writings about The Donald.

Nonetheless, Taibbi has always been a superb writer and good journalist. Anyone who remembers "The Great American Bubble Machine" from 2010 in Rolling Stone has to have a soft spot in their heart for the man who most perfectly described Robert Rubin:

"Rubin was the prototypical Goldman banker. He was probably born in a $4,000 suit, he had a face that seemed permanently frozen just short of an apology for being so much smarter than you, and he exuded a Spock-like, emotion-neutral exterior; the only human feeling you could imagine him experiencing was a nightmare about being forced to fly coach."

Absolutely spot on description. He should have gotten some kind of award for that line alone. The entire piece and his book about that fiasco are must-reads.

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Yet even with that giant chip on his shoulder, he was one of the only ones to call out Russiagate for the BS it was.

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Exactly, him and greenwald are willing to push personal feelings aside in pursuit of truth. There opinion of someone doesn’t dictate how they cover a story. The story will be the wherever the facts take them.

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True journalists.

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Slam dunk. Homerun. 12 points. Four aces with a king on top. What a ruddy good post of yours.

What we're seeing is journalism as it was 150 years ago, when what papers and leaflets there were, were solely in the pocket of power. Then came cheaper and easier printing presses and copy machines, and the small free press reporting all the stuff power didn't want reported was born.

And - at least here - the initial response from power was censorhip, fines, harassment, limiting the right and ability to own and operate printing/copying equipment, imposing quotas for the purchase of inks and paper for private citizens and so on.

Which was cheered in the established press at the time, privately owned or state run, as a guarantee for truth and the free word and so on.

To study history is to study the future.

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will anyone notice if journalists go on strike? all they do is copy/paste from CIA talking points

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My country has gone insane. The tribalism has separated us into camps that see themselves as victims and other tribes as oppressors. Just like a junior high cafeteria, the "cool girls" set themselves up as arbiters of all that is holy and seek out another tribe they can convince the rest of the need to be denied a place at the tables. Unfortunately, the cool girls never grow up, and never realize that their "coolness" doesn't translate into maturity.

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it is at high school level now.

“the cool kids” jockeying for status.

if one thing the last 4-5 years have show me, it’s that the left can be just as intolerant and cruel as the right has been.

probably more so...

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So, Fauci's the father of a Twitter woman. Or, as he so passively put it, a person who used to work at Twitter was his daughter.

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Actually, looking at the transcript (page 100), within 30 seconds Fauci went from saying, "A person who used to work as a software engineer for Twitter was my daughter" to saying, "I believe she was a software engineer."

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