We now know at least one part of how this plays out. The town was abuzz Saturday after an email spread that revealed that Michael Lewis — the most talented and successful non-fiction writer working today — had embedded with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for the past six months and was making the collapsing cryptocurrency exchange the centerpiece of his next book. The Ankler obtained the email from CAA agent Matthew Snyder, originally sent to potential buyers on Friday (CAA did not immediately return a request for comment). The email reveals that not a word of the book has been written yet but, well, things just can’t wait:
The email from Snyder:
Click to enlarge.
After Liar’s Poker, and his upcoming FTX book, the forecast here is simple: if you’re running a financial firm engaged in potential shady maneuvers, you know your business is absolutely doomed if Michael Lewis has embedded within it!
EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM! AGGREGATE WORLD HAPPINESS! OPERATIONALIZING CURRENCY!: Now that I’ve repeated the apparently magic mumbo-jumbo, where is my $36 billion to blow?
It appears no one today recalls [Al] Sharpton’s role in the attack on Crown Height’s Jews and the killing of Yankel Rosenbaum. According to the sworn testimony of then-Crown Heights resident Efraim Lipkind, Sharpton showed up before the riots. “Then we had a famous man, Al Sharpton, who came down, and he said Tuesday night, kill the Jews, two times. I heard him, and he started to lead a charge across the street to Utica,” Lipkind testified
For three days, local African and Caribbean Americans who were joined by others from outside the neighborhood rioted in Crown Heights, and the Jews hid indoors lest they meet the same fate as Rosenbaum. On the third day of the pogrom, Al Sharpton led a march chanting, “No Justice, No Peace!”, “Death to the Jews!”, and “Whose streets? Our streets!” The mob burned an Israeli flag.
“Loudmouth” executive producer John Legend told the audience about Sharpton’s attempt to smear NY City detectives: “It just makes you realize that anybody who’s making noise for justice, especially for an oppressed minority, is always going to be treated as persona non grata in society. They’re always going to be unpopular to an extent because they’re fighting to disturb a status quo that protects a lot of people.”
That’s how Sharpton was cleared of his shameful attempt to subvert justice in the Tawana Brawley case. Sharpton’s former aide, Perry McKinnon, said that Sharpton and attorneys Alton Maddox and Vernon Mason didn’t care about Brawley and were using the case to, as he had heard Sharpton say, make them “the biggest n***ers in New York.”
Spike Lee said “Loudmouth” should be shown in schools. “You have to show that racism doesn’t really have a particular Zip code,” he said.
Speaking of Zip codes, I searched the AP story for any mention of the Crown Heights pogroms, preparing myself for the sage way the Jewish filmmaker from California absolved this renowned Jew-hater of responsibility. I didn’t have to concern myself: there’s nothing in the AP report about those three days of infamy.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Europe seeks greater autonomy and independence in space. “Naja touched on a number of areas in which Europe needs to boost its independence, including exploration, for which requires nuclear power sources for long duration missions in deep space.”
Agents from the U.S. Air Force and FBI recently raided homes in Clark and Lincoln counties in an investigation of a man who operates a website about the top-secret military base known as Area 51, a spokesman said Wednesday.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations and FBI entered homes owned by Joerg Arnu in Las Vegas and the tiny town of Rachel on Nov. 3 and seized potential evidence for an undisclosed joint agency probe, according to Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry, spokesman for Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas.
“This is an open and ongoing law enforcement investigation between the Las Vegas FBI and Air Force OSI,” McGarry said in a statement.
He declined to elaborate on the basis for the investigation, but Arnu, of Las Vegas, is the webmaster of a site titled Dreamland Resort, focusing on Area 51, an Air Force base in Lincoln County about 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas where testing is conducted on new and classified U.S. military aircraft.
Dreamland Resort, at dreamlandresort.com, started by Arnu in 1999, features YouTube videos taken from drones flown over places around Area 51, satellite images of the base, a discussion forum with posts on the topic, articles on test flights, “black projects” and UFOs, and what it says are photos of new vehicles such as the so-called “super secret” Northrop Grumman RQ-180 unmanned stealth aircraft shown flying in 2021.
Arnu, reached by email Wednesday, declined comment until he can speak to his attorney. But he forwarded a news release posted on his web page last week telling his side of the story.
“I believe the search, executed with completely unnecessary force by overzealous government agents was meant as a message to silence the Area 51 research community,” he said.
Arnu said both his homes were raided “without warning” on Nov. 3 “by 15-20 agents in full riot gear.” The agents broke open the doors while Arnu was in the Rachel home and his girlfriend at the Las Vegas one, and then they “were detained and treated in the most disrespectful way.”
Some have suggested FTX was nothing but a Democrat Party slush fund, with Bankman-Fried relishing his role as second largest Democrat funder in the 2022 cycle (behind George Soros). It certainly bought him access to the upper echelons of the party, as White House log books and photos of him rubbing elbows with Bill Clinton demonstrate. And the grift goes on.
Considering the nefarious nature of these donations’ origins, shouldn’t the oh-so-principled Democrats return the dirty money to FTX’s investors?
Fox News contributor Miranda Devine, appearing on “Fox & Friends” this morning, noted that the Democrats had benefitted greatly from Bankman-Fried’s fraudulent largesse:
“And the Democrats, with their $40 million that they got at least this cycle to win the midterms, plus the $10 million that this guy put into Biden’s campaign in 2020, they really owe it to the victims of this scam to give it back,” she said, noting that Bankman-Fried visited the White House several times this year.
What exactly did Bankman-Fried get in return for his $50 million (and subsequent pledge to donate $1 billion in 2024)? According to Devine, he “was behind a whole lot of legislation that was being drafted that was supposedly going to regulate crypto, but keep the SEC out of it.” Oh.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), respectively the chair and ranking member of the committee, said in a joint statement that the lawmakers would want to hear about the collapse of the crypto exchange and its “broader consequences” for the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The committee plans to hear testimony from now-former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and representatives from FTX, its sister company, Alameda Research, and Binance, which briefly suggested it would acquire FTX.
FTX’s collapse harmed over a million users, Waters said in a statement,”Unfortunately, this event is just one out of many examples of cryptocurrency platforms that have collapsed just this past year,” she said. “… [I] know that we need legislative action to ensure that digital assets entities cannot operate in the shadows outside of robust federal oversight and clear rules of the road.”
It’s all that “effective altruism” sending peace, love, and slush funds around the world!
GOOD: FBI and White House Slapped Down By Judge in Major Censorship Case. “Are the wheels finally coming off the White House’s censorship train? It’s too soon to say for sure, but the Biden administration and the FBI got slapped down by a federal judge on Wednesday in a landmark case centering on the issue.The judge has ruled that the FBI can’t shield special agent Elvis Chan from being deposed in a lawsuit brought by Missouri AG (and soon-to-be senator) Eric Schmitt and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry. . . . Meta (Facebook) was at the center of censoring the Hunter Biden story prior to the 2020 election, possibly swinging the outcome. Its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, inadvertently admitted on Joe Rogan’s podcast that the FBI had come to them with more than a wink and nudge, suggesting that the story was actually Russian disinformation. Making matters worse, the FBI obviously knew at that point that the laptop story was true given they had been in possession of the hard drive for ever a year.”
Rebecca Katz, a longtime Fetterman adviser, said there are “two things we need to get out of the way” regarding the senator-elect when responding to a reporter’s tweet saying Fetterman did not answer a question on Tuesday about if he would be wearing a hoodie — his typical campaign attire — on the Senate floor.
“John Fetterman has a suit and will wear it to the Capitol,” she tweeted, admitting, “He is still recovering from a stroke and has lingering auditory processing challenges. The way Hill reporters are used to yelling questions at Senators will not work here.”
And the DNC-MSM will all go along, rather than risk being attacked on social media for defending “ableism”, a la NBC’s Dasha Burns: how the Media Trains Journalists to Lie: “By ‘ratioing’ NBC’s Dasha Burns for questioning John Fetterman’s health, her fellow journalists hid the truth from the public but exposed how they manufacture consent.”
The driver of an SUV veered into the wrong lane and plowed through dozens of Los Angeles County sheriff’s academy recruits running in formation during a training exercise early Wednesday, injuring 25 of the cadets, authorities said.
The most serious injuries included head trauma, broken bones and “loss of limb,” said Sheriff Alex Villanueva. He said five people were critically injured, four had moderate injuries and 16 had minor injuries.
“So far, it looks like it’s an accident, a horrific accident,” Villanueva said, adding that he was told the scene looked like the aftermath of an airplane wreck.
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The driver was identified only as a 22-year-old man from suburban Diamond Bar who suffered a minor injury. The sheriff said a field sobriety test on the driver was negative.
Assistant Chief Charlie Sampson of the California Highway Patrol, which is leading the crash investigation, said officials were looking at all possibilities, ranging from an intentional act to impaired driving.
FEMININITY AS PERFORMANCE ART: the Social Justice™ ‘Womanface’ Moral Dilemma. “So… what’s the essential difference between [Dylan] Mulvaney and [Rachel] Dolezal? You’d have to ask a women’s and gender studies scholar to get the convoluted answer. Before you do, just remember that asking questions is what white supremacist transphobe domestic terrorists do.”
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