DEMOCRATS ARE BATHING IN DIRTY MONEY THAT BELONGS TO DEFRAUDED CRYPTO INVESTORS:

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.

In lieu of Democrats actually returning the money, there will be hearings instead: Top House Committee to Hold Hearing Into FTX Collapse.

PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ! John Fetterman Adviser Admits Senator Will Not Be Able to Answer Questions in Usual Way.

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.”

VEHICLE HITS 25 LA COUNTY SHERIFF’S ACADEMY RECRUITS ON RUN:

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.

* * * * * * * *

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.

Developing, as they say.

AP, CNN, NBC, FOX, NRO: Republicans secure majority in House of Representatives.

RIP: Robert Clary, Corporal LeBeau on Hogan’s Heroes, Dies at 96.

EUROPE FACES ‘CANCER EPIDEMIC’ AFTER ESTIMATED 1M CASES MISSED DURING COVID.

Which is yet another reason why: There Can Be No ‘Amnesty’ On Lockdowns Without A Reckoning.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

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.”

INVENTING THE CRYPTO KING:

One of the most striking things about the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, once counted among the world’s largest, is the extent to which it caught the supposed watchdogs of the tech industry by surprise. How could Sam Bankman-Fried, the brainiac financial visionary, crowned earlier this year the “crypto emperor” by The New York Times, have steered his armada of crypto firms into the rocks so recklessly? With allegations of an enormous, brazen fraud lingering, the first place to look is at the central role of the media in this fiasco. Through an almost endless churn of fawning coverage, the news media turned an inexperienced—and, it seems, ethically deranged—trader into the second coming of Warren Buffett.

Over the past two years, Bankman-Fried cultivated the media lavishly, if not carefully. Drawing on what then seemed like an unlimited pool of cash, SBF (as we’ll call the mythologized version of the real person) dispersed investments, advertising dollars, sponsorships, and donations to key news outlets—including ProPublica, Vox, Semafor, and The Intercept—with extraordinary effectiveness.

Bankman-Fried’s head has filled the frame of the most coveted business news covers in the world, including Fortune (“The next Warren Buffett?”) and Forbes (“Only Zuck has been as rich (23 billion) this young (29)!”). CNBC star Jim Cramer once compared Bankman-Fried, who has been active in crypto finance for only a handful of years, to John Pierpont Morgan, the giant of industry who worked in banking for nearly four decades before striking out on his own.

Remarkably, some major news outlets have continued to round the edges of the SBF myth, even after the discovery of at least a billion-dollar hole in FTX’s books, the assets seeming to vanish into the crypto ether. This week, Twitter erupted in outrage when The New York Times published what many have described as a “puff piece” on Bankman-Fried, whose whereabouts remain unknown.

The Times story on Bankman-Fried, who allegedly funneled FTX customer money into his private hedge fund, Alameda Research, is couched in passive, soft-touch language reflected even in the headline: “How Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Collapsed.” The Times pieces describes Bankman-Fried’s misallocation of funds—which, if true, amounts to mass-scale fraud—in terms that remove active agency, writing: “Alameda had accumulated a large ‘margin position’ on FTX, essentially meaning it had borrowed funds from the exchange, Mr. Bankman-Fried said.” The piece, which describes Bankman-Fried as “surprisingly calm,” lays little to no blame at SBF’s feet, writing that FTX “lent as much as $10 billion to Alameda.” In contrast, business writer Trung Phan noted in a widely shared tweet that “fraud,” “crime,” “stolen,” “theft,” “criminal,” and “hidden,” make no appearance amid the article’s 2,000-plus word count.

But if critics found the recent Times article full of off-the-charts puffery, previous coverage makes this latest, post-FTX collapse piece look like searing investigative journalism. A May 2022 article by the same writer, The New York Times’ David Yaffe-Bellany, titled “A Crypto Emperor’s Vision: No Pants, His Rules,” jump-cuts from rapt audiences “roaring” with laughter at Bankman-Fried’s wit to his penchant for living “modestly” (in a $40 million Bahamas penthouse) to his chummy relationship with Tom Brady that purportedly began with Brady approaching the unassuming Bankman-Fried at a party to talk crypto.

In its flattery, the 3,500-word Times article flipped the famous fable about a naked emperor alluded to in the piece’s headline; rather than showing a naked emperor who thinks he’s elegantly clothed, it paints a picture of a figure we might all consider larger than life but who, by the Times’ account, is just a regular do-gooder whose smarts led him, almost haphazardly, to invent a proprietary money-printing machine.

And now that the ride is over, Bankman-Fried has dropped the mask: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself.

Exit quote: “I feel badly for those who get fucked by it.”

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Artemis I finally on its way to the Moon.

FTX FOUNDER SAM BANKMAN-FRIED HIT WITH CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT THAT ALSO NAMES BRADY, BUNDCHEN, SHAQ, CURRY, LARRY DAVID, AND OTHERS.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Watch the body language in this heated exchange yesterday between Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Chinese Emperor Xi.

SECOND LOOK AT BERNIE MADOFF AS WELL? Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Shocks By Saying He Would ‘Still Back’ Sam Bankman-Fried: He’s a ‘Great Trader.’

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: No Longer Flush With Cash, TV News Enters Belt-Tightening Era.

I FEEL THE NEED, THE NEED FOR SPEED! Ex-girlfriend of disgraced FTX founder bragged of ‘regular amphetamine use’ on Twitter.

Caroline Ellison, who served as CEO of Bankman-Fried’s crypto trading house Alameda Research, has been under intense scrutiny along with her former lover when their companies crashed and filed for bankruptcy last week.

Alameda was allegedly transferred $10billion of FTX customer money in secret by Bankman-Fried as investors withdrew $6billion from the crypto platform last week. The rush came just hours after rival Binance refused to bail out the competitor.

Around $2billion of the $10billion transferred to Alameda is reportedly still missing.

It was one of the biggest crashes in the crypto market, with one-time crypto golden boy Bankman-Fried at the center of the controversy as he admitted: ‘I f***** up.’

But the scrutiny has gone beyond Bankman-Friend as it is revealed Ellison once made a viral post on social media about using amphetamines.

‘Nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal, non-medicated human experience is,’ she tweeted on April 5, 2021.

Ellison did not elaborate which amphetamine drug she had taken, only that it helped motivate her to get out of her house and decide what to eat quickly.

* * * * * * * *

Back in 2020, Bankman-Fried also touted his use [of] Adderall, a prescribed amphetamine.

Strong case of restless leg syndrome possibly on display here:

https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1592638816866930688

JAMES LILEKS ON THE LATEST PAINTING TO BE VANDALIZED:

Let’s see, anything else today? Ah: two more morons defacing a painting. A Klimt this time. I still wonder how they get the paint into the museum. Or why no one does anything. Why, it’s almost as if they allow it to happen, because they don’t want to anger the right people who disapprove of the tactics but approve of the agenda. IO know, I know, nonsense, but:

In a statement, Leopold Museum director Hans-Peter Wipplinger said, “The concerns of climate activists such as those of the ‘Letzte (Last) Generation’ are valid, but attacking artworks is definitely the wrong way to prevent the intended goal of preventing the projected climate collapse.”

This is how you get more of these attacks on a daily basis. Then again:

Museums directors across the globe have fiercely decried protests such as this one, citing the “fragility” of the artworks being targeted. Institutions have also begun initiating heightened security measures in the hopes of stopping these actions before they happen.

Gosh, I wonder what form that might take. I’d post a docent who was good at the quick-draw with a Taser. This, of course, will strilke some as barbarism: violence to stop these earnest, worried advocates for a better world? Really, Tasers? Yes, because bean-bag guns would probably be too bulky to conceal, and would spoil the vibe. But it is not an act of barbarism to tase someone who is attempting to deface a painting. It is an act in favor of civilization.

Earlier: Joel Kotkin: Environmentalism is a Fundamentalist Religion.

Especially considering the tools to deliver the sermons:

VDH: Will Trump ride off into the sunset, or play the broken hero?

In this moment of wishing the wounded Shane would ride off into the Tetons and leave the more civilized alone, we should remember Trump’s four historical accomplishments that will only grow in light of Biden’s subsequent disastrous four years.

One is partisan. Trump utterly destroyed the 30-year Clinton grifting and quid pro quo machine in general, and Hillary Clinton’s endless and often toxic political career in particular. It was characterized by the despicable Uranium One sale, the foreign shake-down contributions to the Clinton Foundation, her destruction of subpoenaed emails and devices, and her blatant violation of State Department rules of personal communications.

Clinton’s failing campaign and eventual collapse in 2016 was so shocking that it all but crushed her very psyche — to the point that she had funded a foreign ex-spy to systematically and illegally destroy her political opponent. She ended up denying the very legitimacy of the election she lost. Then she topped that off by urging Joe Biden not to accept the 2020 verdict should he lose the popular vote. Hillary Clinton is physically, psychologically, and spiritually spent — and never recovered from her ill-fated collisions with Donald Trump.

Two, Donald Trump recalibrated the Republican Party to become more populist and nationalist. Previously it was shrinking and offered the Left an easy stereotype of a small club of aristocratic white corporate elites. Yet Trumpism did not renounce prior Republicanism, at least not entirely. Rather, Trump sought to save it by recalibrating the party. He demanded toughness with China, attacked illegal immigration, addressed the crisis of the deindustrialized American interior and adopted a Jacksonian foreign policy. That was all in addition to embracing Republican policies of low-taxes, small-government, deregulation, traditional values, and originalist justices.

Three, Trump’s actual four years of governance were characterized, before the advent of the pandemic, by robust growth, low inflation, energy independence, low unemployment, a rebuilding of the US military, eventual curbing of illegal immigration, the Abraham Accords, and forcing NATO to spend far more on defense. Trump saved the Supreme Court and lower federal courts for a generation.

Read the whole thing.

BLOWUP: Some photographers plan to stay away from San Francisco, demand change after violent camera robberies.

Days after a terrifying attempted robbery at gunpoint where a photographer wrestles with masked men to keep his camera gear, other photographers are speaking out, declaring they no longer will hold photoshoots in San Franciso.

The Dallas-based photographer targeted in the attack the afternoon of on November 9, did not want to be identified but says he was pistol-whipped and was “freaked out” and tried to console the wedding party where “the bride was crying the whole time.”

That same day, another photographer’s belongings were stolen at gunpoint at the same location…on the very same day.

These cases and a number of incidents ABC7 News anchor Dion Lim covered in recent years highlight the dangers for professional photographers shooting in popular tourist destinations in San Francisco.

HOW CAN WE MISS YOU, IF YOU WON’T GO AWAY? Donald Trump announces his 2024 presidential campaign in a bid to seize early momentum.

SAM BANKMAN-FRIED IS NOT ALONE: Some of History’s Greatest Monsters Were Democratic Megadonors.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” — Sir Isaac Newton

What happened: Sam Bankman-Fried, the digital guru who earlier this year pledged to spend as much as $1 billion in support of Democratic candidates, is under federal investigation after the cryptocurrency exchange he founded declared bankruptcy amid accusations of fraud and financial mismanagement.

Why it matters: Bankman-Fried is the latest in a long line of Democratic megadonors to be accused of egregious criminal acts.

The Washington Free-Beacon’s recent parodies of Axios’ bullet point-style articles are amusing in and of themselves, but that is indeed quite a, umm, err, colorful list of DNC financial enablers.

NEW VIDEO FROM AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: If Women Had The Same Rights As Guns.

JULIE KELLY: Feds Had Informants In Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for J6.

Prior to the September start of the seditious conspiracy trial against members of the Oath Keepers, prosecutors finally disclosed that at least five FBI informants were embedded in the groups weeks and months before January 6. Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia handling over 900 January 6 cases, sought to prevent the jury from hearing about the informants’ “activities or involvement in past investigations.”

None testified as a witness for the government. But the defense wanted to call to the stand the vice president of the Oath Keepers, a man who worked directly with Stewart Rhodes, the founder and head of the group. Greg McWhirter is a former sheriff’s deputy and current owner of a tactical shooting range and gun shop in Montana.

McWhirter also is an FBI informant.

According to a bombshell piece in the New York Times, McWhirter was “secretly reporting to the F.B.I. about the group’s activities in the weeks and months leading up to the Capitol attack.” Reporter Alan Feuer further revealed that McWhirter had suffered a medical emergency boarding a plane to Washington to testify and required hospitalization. (Prosecutors asked the presiding judge to find out who leaked the information about McWhirter’s role, under court-ordered protective seal, to Feuer. Defense dropped him as a witness.)

Not only did McWhirter work for the FBI, he lured Oath Keepers to his remote business by offering discounts to buy guns and ammunition before the 2020 election—presumably, at the behest of the FBI to produce evidence of a self-styled “militia” even though no crime was committed.

All of it reeks of the FBI-engineered plot to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, an entrapment scheme underway at the very same time the FBI utilized informants in the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers before January 6. In the Whitmer fednapping hoax, Dan Chappel, the lead informant, acted as the “commanding officer” of an imaginary militia—revealed during trial as a fabrication of the FBI—to lure the FBI’s targets into the trap.

Further, another Oath Keeper turned informant called the FBI tip line in November 2020 over fears the group planned to go “to war with the United States government” but investigators didn’t contact him until March 2021.

As Glenn noted yesterday, “Both the SDS and the KKK used to say in the 1960s that the guy in your group calling for illegal activity was the FBI mole.”

HEY, IT HELPED HIM STEM THE TIDE DURING THE MIDTERMS: Biden’s considering another (idiotic) student loan bailout.

MARK JUDGE ON THE PUNITIVE, PURITANICAL LEFT: The Unknown Hoya and why fun is more important than politics.

These days, it’s hard to make it an hour watching cable TV, combing through a bookstore, or scrolling social media without coming across someone whose main job in life seems to be punishing America. Our society has been overrun by American Stasi whose totalitarian impulses are far more dangerous than COVID ever was.

The best solution, as Schall put it, is to remember that we are first and foremost spiritual creatures and that the leftist bullies who would take away our rights would love nothing more than to make us forget that. They want docile, thoughtless sheep who know how to take orders — and that’s it. But what our society really needs is its own Wutanfall: joyful citizens determined to enjoy the freedoms they’ve been given while they still can.

Maybe we can kick things off with a keg party.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

IT’S NOT A CULT: The Curious Case of FTX’s ‘Company Therapist.’ FTX’s “company therapist” said he was actually an in-house coach who occasionally tried to find “dating options” for employees while serving as a psychiatrist to some on the side.

At times, though, [Psychiatrist George Lerner’s] job at FTX went beyond the duties of a traditional career coach. The company was based in the Bahamas, and though the country had a tropical climate and “amazing people,” according to Lerner, the 20-something FTX employees struggled with permanent island life and pined for a return to a major city. “THE biggest career discussion issue was not being in a big city,” he told Motherboard.

“When you’re in a big city, you know that there are options, even if you don’t seek them out,” Lerner told Motherboard. “The island has limited entertainment and social choices compared to Miami, NY, or SF.”

“A lot of people left relationships back home to move to the Bahamas,” he continued. “I knew a time would come when they would want to find someone to start dating. Also note that it’s not about sex. People can visit big cities and get that. It’s not what they were looking for. It’s about relationships.”

He became “very concerned that either they would leave the company due to lack of romantic relationships available (and some had) or would date within the company (not a great idea).” As the crypto news site CoinDesk reported last week, top FTX employees in fact had the sort of baroque interpersonal relationships that would be discouraged if not forbidden at most companies: In the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried lived for a time in a “luxury penthouse” with nine other members of his “inner circle,” all of whom had at one point “paired up in romantic relationships with each other” according to CoinDesk.

To make life in the Bahamas appealing without office entanglements, Lerner was “always looking for dating options for FTX people,” he told crypto-focused comedian and entrepreneur Margaux Avedisian in a message reviewed by Motherboard. Avedisian said she had met Lerner at a party at the home of FTX chief operating officer Constance Wang in April during the Crypto Bahamas conference put on by FTX and SALT, Anthony Scaramucci’s “global thought leadership” group. Avedisian was there to serve as master of ceremonies at an event put on by Deltec Bank, another Bahamas-based financial firm.

Anthony Scaramucci, eh? FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried — once dubbed ‘the next Warren Buffet’ before his downfall — rubbed shoulders with Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry at $3,000-a-head Bahamas crypto festival (but now his famous friends have gone dark). “Crypto Bahamas opened at midday on Tuesday, April 26 at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar, a luxury hotel on the island. The event was a partnership between FTX and SALT, a leadership and networking forum chaired by Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House Communications Director under Donald Trump.”

Something tells me next year’s show will have a different guest speaker:

FINALLY:

UPDATE: Republicans Win the House of Representatives. “Nancy Pelosi has been dethroned. The seat that pushed Republicans over the finish line was in California’s 3rd district, won by Kevin Kiley, who has been an outspoken fighter against Gavin Newsom in the state…This isn’t the outcome Republicans expected, but it is something. Winning is better than losing, and with winning comes the ability to dictate committee assignments, floor votes, and investigations. There are going to be a lot of entertaining things happening over the next two years. Buckle up and enjoy the show.”