MAKE THEM PAY: Court Orders Southwest Airlines to Provide Back Pay to Employee Fired Over Union Criticism: Former flight attendant Charlene Carter objected to union’s left-wing spending, support for Women’s March.

FAFO: Elon Musk Pulls a Reagan vs. Air Traffic Controllers Move by Firing Janitors Protesting at Twitter.

It’s a Reaganesque move, showing that Musk has little to no time to waste on these matters as he deals with severe internal issues, namely how a former FBI official scrubbed internal documents detailing how Twitter censored the Hunter Biden laptop story. This person, James Baker, was formerly with the FBI’s general counsel. Before his role was discovered, Baker was Twitter’s deputy general counsel, and Musk fired him on Tuesday.

Mr. Baker was revealed to be part of the group reviewing the files about the social media giant’s Hunter Biden protocols, the first batch of which was reported by former Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi last Friday. Baker was one of the main stooges who kept the Russian collusion hoax alive within the walls of the DOJ.

Exit quote: “20 janitors lose their jobs and it’s national news and the Dems are outraged. 11,000 pipeline workers lost their job thanks to Biden and it was (mostly) crickets. Enjoy the show!”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Biden knows nothing about guns except that he wants to ban them.

SCHIFF PICKS FIGHT WITH WRONG GUY: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), teller of tall tales and purveyor of fabulous telephone transcripts, isn’t happy with Elon Musk’s management of Twitter’s historical documents, The Lid’s Wes Walker reports.

So Schiff launched another of his trademark falsehoods aimed right at what he supposed to be Musk’s weak spot, toleration of “hate speech.” Ooh, bad mistake. Do not miss the video of Schiff taking out his frustration on a punching bag.

REPUBLICANS POUNCE! GOP Jump On Biden Official Sam Brinton’s 2nd Theft Allegation—Blames ‘Wokeness’ For Their [sic] Hire.

Evergreen:

Related: “Sam Brinton, A Fraud Our Media Helped Create.”

They won’t do better, because too many of them regard their job as nurturing, confirming, and advancing a Narrative. Some decades from now, people will look back at this insane time in American history, and wonder how so many important institutions failed, and bankrupted their own authority. It will be interesting to see which, if any, major media outlets look into Brinton’s past in light of his felony theft arrest. Or will this too just go down the memory hole?

Fortunately, there is a way to avoid being the victim of Brinton’s alleged crimes:

EPIC HOLIDAY DEALS are here. #CommissionEarned

UNEXPECTEDLY! Price of Wholesale Goods Jumps More Than Expected as Inflation Persists.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Elon Musk Slashes Bureaucracy, Giving Twitter a Chance to Soar.

Since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, he has undertaken a rapid restructuring that few large technology companies would attempt unless faced with an immediate liquidity crisis. Minutes after closing his purchase of the company, he started a process that reduced the workforce from 7,500 to 2,500 in 10 days.

Media pundits immediately slammed him, arguing that his slash-and-burn strategy would destroy one of the world’s most important social-media platforms—already in danger under the burden of $14 billion in debt. Much of this criticism came in the form of tweets, as the irony of using Twitter to denounce Twitter apparently escaped Mr. Musk’s critics. But the restructuring of Twitter won’t destroy the company.

Mr. Musk is trying to cure a degenerative corporate disease: systemic paralysis. Symptoms include cobwebs of corporate hierarchies with unclear reporting lines and unwieldy teams, along with work groups and positions that have opaque or nonsensical mandates. Paralyzed companies are often led by a career CEO who builds or maintains a level of bureaucracy that leads to declines in innovation, competitive stature and shareholder value.

Mr. Musk set his new tone immediately. He eliminated a 12-member team responsible for artificial-intelligence ethics in machine learning, the entire corporate communications department, and a headquarters commissary that cost $13 million a year (despite prior management’s pandemic decree that Twitter employees would be “remote forever”).

Three attributes give Mr. Musk a better chance of rebuilding Twitter into an innovative force in social media: He is an operator, an engineer and a sole owner.

As an operator, he knows he doesn’t need five layers between him and the employees who actually do the work. His recent email to the engineering team stating, “Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 pm today,” makes it clear he doesn’t want a membrane of corporate yes-men between him and the people who actually build things.

As an engineer himself, he will command respect and loyalty from certain existing and new engineers, and he won’t be jollied into agreeing to cushy timelines or accepting flippant rejections of his product requests that have merit.

As sole owner, he can also quickly terminate the members of Twitter’s black hole of middle management, that cold and lonely place where great ideas go to die at big companies.

Naturally our press and pundits hate him — if he can get away with firing thousands of useless appendages, they might be next!

YES. Shadowbanned Scientist Jay Bhattacharya: Twitter Harmed Science By Banning Debate on COVID, Censorship Led To Tremendously Bad Policies.

THE TWITTER FILES: Bari Weiss Twitter Files Reveal Systematic ‘Blacklisting’ of Disfavored Content.

The previous installment, released by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, focused on the confused and chaotic decision on the part of Twitter executives to offer a “hacked materials” rationale for suppressing the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story; as such, the files mostly provided more evidence of what was already fairly well-known.

The Weiss installment, on the other hand, offers significant evidence of something that many people merely suspected was taking place: wholesale blacklisting of Twitter accounts that were perceived to be causing harm.

Weiss provides several examples of ways in which the platform limited the reach of various high-profile users: Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University professor of medicine who opposed various COVID-19 mandates and lockdowns, was on a “trends blacklist,” which meant that his tweets would not appear in the trending topics section; right-wing radio host Dan Bongino landed on a “search blacklist,” which meant that he did not show up in searches; and conservative activist and media personality Charlie Kirk was slapped with a “do not amplify” label. At no point did anyone at Twitter communicate to these individuals that their content was being limited in such a manner.

These actions, of course, sound a lot like “shadow banning,” which is the theory that Twitter surreptitiously restricts users’ content, even in cases where the platform has not formally issued a ban or suspension. For years, various figures on the right and contrarian left have complained that the reach of their tweets had substantially and artificially diminished for nonobvious reasons, contrary to the stated claims of top-level Twitter staffers who steadfastly asserted: “We do not shadow ban.”

This claim depends upon how the term is defined. To be clear, Twitter has publicly admitted that it suppresses tweets that “detract from the conversation,” though the platform’s plan was to eventually move toward a policy of informing users about suppression efforts—a move that never took place.

Related: The Twitter Files are damning to the government.

Second, we are learning that Twitter worked closely with like-minded government bureaucrats to squelch legitimate news, information, and discussion. They did so to protect favored candidates (Democrats) and political positions (progressive). We will undoubtedly learn that Facebook, Google and other media giants had similar ties to Washington. We certainly need to know.

The government’s role here is damning. Its primary job under the First Amendment is to protect free speech, not to kill it. It botched that vital job, and it did so deliberately to increase its own control over private speech in public fora and, apparently, to promote certain political views.

The only good news here is that Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, is exposing the old management’s efforts to suppress speech and promote political bias on its platform. To expose those malign efforts, he ordered some of Twitter’s internal documents be given to two journalists: Matt Taibbi (who quickly published some of his findings as tweets) and Bari Weiss (who is beginning to publish some findings and promises to publish a longer analysis).

We have now learned that some of Twitter’s holdover executives worked secretly to prevent the transfer of those documents to Taibbi and Weiss. The key figure here seems to be Twitter’s second-ranking attorney, James Baker, who came to the company from his post as the FBI’s top lawyer. When Musk discovered Baker was undermining him, Musk fired him immediately. We don’t know if Baker was trying to shield bad behavior by Twitter’s old management, or by the FBI and CIA, or by all of them. In any case, Baker seems to be one of those swamp creatures who routinely slide through revolving doors, forging profitable links between their private employers and government agencies.

As bad as Twitter’s old management was, the reaction of left-leaning journalists to Elon Musk’s efforts has been frankly astonishing. Instead of seeking full disclosure, as reporters normally would (and should), they have attacked Musk for trying to ensure it. Instead of demanding free speech, as honorable journalists would (and should), they have demanded even more censorship to stop legally permissible content from appearing on the social media platform. They believe in “free speech for me, but not for thee.”

Just think of the media as Democratic party operatives with bylines (who recently lost many of their inside sources within Twitter after Musk’s purchase), and it all makes sense. Such as the Stig Bensmithing breaking news: NBC News’ Ben Collins offers an emoji to express his disinterest in Twitter Files Part 2.

JOEL KOTKIN: Anti-Semitism Isn’t Just for White Supremacists. It never was.

This was evident in 2020, when the ADL and many mainstream Jewish groups openly embraced the anti-Israel Black Lives Matter, even while CEO Jonathan Greenblatt acknowledged the hateful views of many of BLMs supporters. Greenblatt, like most Democrats, has genuflected towards Al Sharpton, a past dealer in anti-Semitic calumnies.

The third and perhaps the most disturbing face of antisemitism is neither left or right, but essentially black. This reflects the recrudescence of a dormant but persistent hostility that has characterized a century of relations between two prominent minority groups. African American communities, according to surveys, are the least admiring of Jews of all ethnic groups while many of their most prominent leaders—Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton—have all embraced, without much criticism, antisemitic tropes more recently adopted by such high-profile black celebrities as Kanye West and Kyrie Irving. . . .

American Jews, who vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, generally reserve their public concern and fear for the far right, who more closely resemble historic persecutors from Czarist Russia and the Nazis. But, contrary to the notions backed by the ADL and their claque in the mainstream media, Jews face an arguably bigger, if perhaps less lethal threat—at least in terms of politics, culture and education—from the Left. Two decades ago the famous Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld predicted that the main threat in the future would come from an alliance of Islamists and left-wing activists.

For many, the assault on Jews reflects a larger kulturkampf being waged against Western civilization; if Hitler saw the Jews as dangerous outsiders to European culture, the Left today blames them for being too influential in shaping continental values and ignoring Arab concerns. In Great Britain, for example, the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn embraced the virulently anti-Jewish Hamas and attended ceremonies laying wreaths at the graves of such heroes as the terrorist killers at the 1992 Munich games.

The Left’s antisemitism is less crude but rests on a wider base of political opinion. Today barely half of Europeans think Israel has a right to exist. The generally middle class Green Parties, which have emerged as big winners in Germany and across the continent, tend to support the BDS movement, with aims to demonize and eliminate the Jewish state. . . .

Despite media tropes to the contrary, a detailed survey from the University of Oslo found that in Scandinavia, Germany, Britain, and France, most antisemitic violence comes from Muslims, including recent immigrants. Similarly, a poll of European Jews found that most incidents of antisemitism came from either Muslims or from the left; barely 13 percent traced it to right-wingers. Violence against Jews is worst in places like the migrant dominated suburbs of Paris or Malmo in Sweden.

We see a similar pattern emerging in the United States. Far right antisemites tend to be alienated left-behinds with little institutional influence, but their leftist counterparts thrive in the comfy confines of college campuses, including Harvard, where “third world” oriented academics push “disinvestment” from Israel. Student groups at the publicly funded University of California, Berkeley School of Law recently voted to ban any speakers or participants who “support Zionism.” This prohibition is not specific to panels related to the question of Zionism; it excludes, presumably, any Jew who refuses to denounce Israel. Their candidates also find home in the fiercely anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America. Pitched merely as anti-Zionism, these same political warriors show their prejudice by targeting Israel and ignoring the depredations of far more repressive states as China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

This leftist antisemitism is now embedded in the Democratic caucus in Congress, largely in the progressive “squad.” Ilhan Omar’s pronouncements about Jews, about the power of money and their “dual loyalty,” have been tolerated by a party leadership intimidated by the rising Left.

That’s different because shut up.

I THOUGHT PUTIN DIDN’T DRINK? Putin sips champagne as he defends assault on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

SARAH A. HOYT, BEING A DITZ, FORGOT THIS WAS ON SALE. SORRY:  Dipped, Stripped and Dead (Daring Finds Book 1).

#CommissionEarned

A Dyce Dare Mystery
When she was six, Dyce Dare wanted to be a ballerina, but she couldn’t stop tripping over her own feet. Then she wanted to be a lion tamer, but Fluffy, the cat, would not obey her. Which is why at the age of twenty nine she’s dumpster diving, kind of. She’s looking for furniture to keep her refinishing business going, because she would someday like to feed herself and her young son something better than pancakes.
Unfortunately, as has come to be her expectation, things go disastrously wrong. She finds a half melted corpse in a dumpster. This will force her to do what she never wanted to do: solve a crime.
Life is just about to get crazy… er… crazier. But at least at the end of the tunnel there might be a relationship with a very nice Police Officer.

(Yes, it’s one of my pen names. Yes, I’m working on the fourth. Have been for a while, but I’m really starting to get confident of bringing it out next year.  Early next year. See, my health is actually getting almost unbelievably better. I guess altitude was worse for me than I thought. Other than a weird medicine side-effect this last month…. I’m so much better – SAH)

BEHOLD, MY SHOCKED FACE:  Insulated one-percenters warn struggling Americans of a recession.

INSULTING EVERY POOR BUT HONEST PERSON WHO EVER LIVED:  Jessica Valenti Feels Need Causes Crime.

I DON’T KNOW, BUT I WOULDN’T DISCOUNT IT EITHER:  Lab Leak: What If That Theory Isn’t True Either?

I do know the PCR test is about as reliable as a coin flip.

DON’T THEY REALIZE THERE IS NO CIVILIZATION WITHOUT FOSSIL FUELS?  ABC: “Ramp Down” Fossil Fuel Production Instead of Jailing Protestors.

GO DO LIKEWISE AND MAKE THEM HURT:  Pushback: Students win $90K from University of Idaho for restricting their free speech.

I DON’T KNOW. SHE’S STILL GOING TO VOTE WITH THEM:  Senima’s decision to leave Dems interesting.

DESPERATE COMPANY TRIES CRAZY THING:  Meta’s new rule not likely to be popular with woke employees.

You mean companies can have another purpose than preach wokeness? Why, that’s just crazy talk.

AT LEAST SOMEONE IS FIGHTING BACK:  Border Crisis: New Texas Task Force With Drones, K9s Aims to Catch ‘Gotaways’.

THIS MIGHT BE THE MOST HARMLESS KINK IN THIS ADMINISTRATION:  Non-Binary Energy Official Sam Brinton Allegedly Stole Luggage From Las Vegas Airport.

WELL DONE:  Elon Musk Pulls a Reagan vs. Air Traffic Controllers Move by Firing Janitors Protesting at Twitter.

WELL OF COURSE THEY DID:  #Twitterfiles Part 3: Twitter Regularly Interacted With FBI/DHS To Restrict PRE-ELECTION Tweets.

Can we abolish the three letter agencies and salt the Earth already?

PROBABLY THERE WAS A CRUMB OF FUN LEFT IN IT:  Social Justice Comic Creator Organizes Mob to Cancel Mike Baron’s Campaign.

Wokies have no fun, and they don’t want you to have any either.