WHAT THE JAMES WEBB AND FRANK CAPRA SHARE: If you are of a certain age, you have likely watched Frank Capra’s classic film “It’s A Wonderful Life” more than once during Christmas seasons past. But did you know, as HillFaith informs us this morning, that the movie and the telescope have an image in common?

JEFFREY CARTER: Putting Clothes on the Emperor.

I have been watching the release of the Twitter files. As someone who was shadowbanned, I am watching with interest. I was early to Twitter and my original account got to 10k followers, then never went higher. I got so ticked I finally killed my account. I tried other social media platforms, but they were echo chambers.

Parler was coming on strong to challenge Twitter, and Big Tech used its power to kill it.

I am back on Twitter @pointsnfigures1 and I am paying Elon’s $8 fee for a blue check. I am happy to pay it since you know advertisers will try to leave the platform. It’s a small show of support for what he is doing for the platform. Feel free to follow me if you want.

When you are in a bubble, or you need to perpetuate a bubble, you consciously ignore data that would pop your bubble. For example, people still think Trump colluded with Russia to steal an election despite reams of data showing the contrary. People still think that Hunter Biden’s laptop is a nothing burger and the mainstream news media still hasn’t reported on it. It’s amazing.

Today, Elon tweeted that and the left-wing reacted with predictable outrage.

My guess is this is a hint as to what is coming. It’s already clear that the US government worked closely with Twitter employees to turn Twitter into a mouthpiece for leftist causes and the Democratic Party. The “Twitter Files” are the receipts.

Is Elon doing this stuff to drive engagement to the platform? You bet. I would too if I were Elon.

As an aside, Musk is kind of an amazing guy, isn’t he? He has SpaceX, Tesla($TSLA), The Boring Company, and Twitter. He must be able to recruit some pretty top-notch people to work for him at those companies because it would be impossible to be CEO and “hands-on” at all of them at the same time. It might be fun to work in a corporate culture that is guided by Musk.

My bet is that Twitter will get bigger, and somehow enter the payments industry. Combining cutting-edge information with payments will be fun to watch.

Should people go to jail, especially former Twitter employees? I am not an attorney but law professor Jonathon Turley thinks the former employees of Twitter ought to be lawyering up. My guess is they have about as much chance to go to jail as Sam Bankman Fried. I’d love to see people like John Brennan charged since they intentionally mislead the American public as well. But, that would be a hard case to prove.

What is sort of amazing to me is the willingness of the sheep on the left to continue to blindly follow the narrative despite clear and transparent releases that show exactly what everyone has been up to.

Well, that used to amaze me. Now I’ve come to expect it.

VERY MERRY DEALS ARE here. #CommissionEarned

HERE WE GO AGAIN: US scientists boost clean power hopes with fusion energy breakthrough. “The federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which uses a process called inertial confinement fusion that involves bombarding a tiny pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world’s biggest laser, had achieved net energy gain in a fusion experiment in the past two weeks, the people said.”

FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE?

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: “The economy seems to be slipping into a Carterian perfect economic storm: prices and interest rates jumping in unison, with lingering structural supply issues leaving shelves half-stocked.”

THIS IS WHY I DON’T PUT MUCH STOCK IN COMPARISONS OF “OFFICIAL” DEATH TOLLS:  Florida’s official death toll for Hurricane Ian is now 144.  By contrast, Puerto Rico officially claims a whopping 2975 deaths for Hurricane Maria in 2017.  That’s a big difference.  But as you might guess, the methodologies used to arrive at those figures were wildly different.  If you want to compare apples to apples, you’re better off comparing Ian’s 144 out of Florida’s population of 21.5 million to Hurricane Maria’s original count of 64 direct deaths out of Puerto Rico’s population of about 3.5 million.

In its recent report evaluating the Trump Administration’s response to Hurricane Maria, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights tried to compare the 2975 to much smaller numbers for Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida (both of which used the methodology used for Ian).   My Commissioner Statement in the report explains why this was error.

To be fair, the 2975 methodology isn’t crazy.  But it is a bit counter-intuitive. It looks to see how many “excess deaths” occurred during the six-month period following a natural disaster and assumes all of them are somehow disaster related, even if the connection is very, very loose.  That may well be an incorrect assumption, but in the absence of an alternative explanation for why deaths would be elevated during that period, it may be an assumption worth making for comparison’s sake.  The problem was that nobody has attempted to generate comparable figures for the other hurricanes.

BIDEN GOES AFTER GUNS AS HOMICIDES INCREASE, BUT THE DATA TELL A DIFFERENT STORY:

The increase in gun homicides documented in the Emory University study is attributable almost exclusively to one factor: a nearly 60 percent increase in homicide fatalities among black men. Not over a period of many years–but in a little over one year.

And what year was that? 2020. And what happened in 2020? The death of George Floyd, and the subsequent revelation that black lives especially matter.

Yes, but not in the way intended. Not by a long shot. That death and revelation brought in its train myriad consequences. Defund the police. The war on cash bail and the release of numerous criminals. The demoralization of police, who were instructed explicitly and implicitly that arresting black male offenders was a career risk, and the subsequent surrender of the streets to the thugs. And on and on. (The release of many from jail because of COVID didn’t help either.)

This is as close to a natural experiment as can exist in social science. An exogenous shock–the death of one man–leads to a tectonic shift in law enforcement, especially with regards to a particular demographic. The result?: a hyperbolic increase in homicide rates in that demographic. (I note that the previous uptick observable in the chart in 2014 corresponds to the proto-Floyd event, the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, which was the catalyst for Black Lives Matter.)

This is as close to a definitive proof of causation as is possible in observational social science.

Naturally, the “believe in science” crowd will ignore it.

HMM: Investigation Into Attacks on Power Stations Across the U.S. Continues.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): People seem to have forgotten the Silicon Valley substation attack of 2014, which quite a few people I know thought was a deliberately staged warning.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: From Shetlands to Azores, Europe’s space race takes off.

Related: The new space race will drive innovation. Here’s where it goes next.

Also: The Race For Space-Based Solar Power Is Underway.

ON SUNDAYS I HAVE A LITTLE PROMOTION POST FOR (MOSTLY) INDIE AUTHORS:  Book Promo And Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

There’s also a vignette writing challenge that keeps launching new novels. :)

AND IS AN UTTERLY POINTLESS SACRIFICE TO A RELIGION THAT MOST OF US DON’T SUBSCRIBE TO:  The “All-the-Above” Energy Policy Is a Compromise That Reverses Human and Environmental Progress.

WE KNOW:  The Twitter files: leftism requires censorship.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED:  Biden Diplomacy: Russia Mocks Us Again.

EUROTRASH:  Harry and Meghan: On The “Strategic Charm Offensive”.

YES, INDEED:  Elon Musk Claps At Fauci And The Deep State Claps Back. 

THEY’RE THE DEMOCRAT PARTY MOUTHPIECES:  NBC News Stealth Edits Report To Match WH Account Of Griner Swap With Russia.

AND THIS IS NOT THE WORST:  #Twitterfiles Part 4: ‘The Removal of Donald Trump’ From Twitter.

SUBPOENA? THEY NEED TO BE TIED TO A DONKEY’S TAIL AND WALKED ACROSS THE COUNTRY WHILE WE PELT THEM WITH ROTTED FRUIT: Kevin McCarthy Plans to Subpoena Intel Experts Who Signed Letter Calling Hunter Biden Laptop Russian Disinfo.

BIG BUSINESS HAS BEEN TREATING THE GOP THE WAY THE DEMOCRAT PARTY TREATS AFRICAN AMERICANS: TAKE THEM FOR GRANTED AND GIVE THEM NOTHING:  The great divorce: GOP to launch investigations into big business.

HALLELUJAH:  Finally, The Gibson’s Bakery Family Has Been Paid By Oberlin College.

WELL, WHEN THE PARTY OF THE FIRST PART IS RUNNING AROUND ON AND ABUSING THE PARTY OF THE SECOND PART …  “I’m sorry that’s happening to you. Best of luck.”

THERE ARE ALREADY THREE CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS CALLING TO EXTEND VOTING RIGHTS TO THEM:  Expert warns NYC’s new ‘rat czar’: ‘The rats are going to win’.

DEMOCRAT DONOR PRIVILEGE:  Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong slams media for treating Sam Bankman-Fried with ‘kid gloves’.

I DOUBT HE HAS MUCH CHOICE BUT IT SEEMS LIKELY HE’LL BE EMPLOYING THE SGT. SCHULTZ DEFENSE:  Sam Bankman-Fried ‘won’t be as helpful’ as he’d like in FTX testimony.