Update(1510ET): After nearly two hours since the story first broke in international press, the Kremlin has issued its version of events concerning the US drone crash in the Black Sea Tuesday. The Russian Defense Ministry said nothing about the Pentagon's allegations that a Russian Su-27 aircraft dumped fuel on the MQ-9 drone, but instead blamed the pair of Russian jets' erratic maneuvering for the collision. 

"US drone MQ-9 fell into the Black Sea on Tuesday morning due to its own sharp maneuvering, Russian fighters did not come into contact with it and did not use weapons, the Russian Defense Ministry said," according to Russian media. The statement is as follows [emphasis ours]:

"As a result of sharp maneuvering around 09:30 Moscow time [06:30 GMT], unmanned aerial vehicle MQ-9 went into an uncontrolled flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface. The Russian fighters did not use airborne weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle and returned safely to their home airfield" the ministry said.

At a moment Western officials and even some mainstream media are beginning to express doubt over Ukraine's ability to push Russian forces back, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who will likely enter the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has issued his sharpest criticisms yet of America's role in the Ukraine war, calling it fundamentally a "territorial dispute" which the US should stay out of.

The statements came as part of his response to a questionnaire issued to possible 2024 presidential candidates by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. The questionnaire asked whether protecting Ukraine should be part of US "vital national interests". DeSantis ripped Biden's policy as a virtual "blank check" which serves to erode US interests and "distracts" from what should be more pressing priorities.

He stressed that the United States government "cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland" - which also echoes the scathing critiques of a small cadre of GOP Congressional members like Matt Gaetz, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Auto dealerships are encountering a major problem where auction (wholesale) prices are increasing while real book values stagnate, squeezing profitability. 

To make sense of this, auto-guru CarDealershipGuy expanded on our tweet, pointing out that Manheim wholesale auto prices are re-accelerating while other indexes tracking prices were flat. 

Here's what was revealed in the conversation as per the auto expert:

The US government may have made tens of millions of dollars in duplicate payments for virus research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology, according to a review of government records by a former federal investigator, CBS News reports. 

"What I've found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds. It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research," said Diane Cutler, whose services were engaged by Kansas Republican Senator Roger Marshall. 

Cutler has more than 20 years of experience investigating healthcare fraud and white-collar crime, an her conclusions spring from her review of over 50,000 documents relating to US grants that financed coronavirus research in China. 

Webmaster addition: The real scandal is that the US was paying for the work done at the Wuhan lab!

But the most outrageous portion of the Democratic Party’s report came in a section claiming that, because the agents were not really whistleblowers, and therefore really just expressing their opinion, they were not covered. “No law,” they wrote, “protects witnesses who speak to congress under these circumstances.”

The Whistleblower Protection Act specifically and the First Amendment generally come to mind, but not to this Committee office.

The style of the new anti-speech Democrat is clear: define all government critics as lacking standing to criticize, impugn their prior opinions and associations, imply that all their beliefs are conspiracy theory, define their lack of faith in the FBI’s judgment as treasonous, and declare their motivation to be financial. Lastly, when they invoke common constitutional rights, make a note that their activities exist in an uncovered carve-out.

This is the playbook, and we all better get used to it.

All a journalist has to do is read the documents and report their content. And yet, somehow, most legacy media journalists are apparently unable to gain awareness of and report what is immediately at hand.

Take the 2015 paper published by UNC Chapel Hill Professor Ralph Baric et al. titled A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence. As the authors (including Zhengli-Li Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology) state in their abstract:

Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations1. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.

Yesterday I wrote about the possible end of the Bay Area Rapid Transit train system (BART). Ridership on BART trains dropped dramatically during the pandemic and hasn’t recovered to even half of pre-pandemic levels. That puts the Bay Area in a financial bind with just two possible outcomes. Either the state of California steps up with hundreds of millions of dollars per year to subsidize the system or BART will have to dramatically scale back operations, shutting down entire lines, closing stops laying off most workers and reducing train service to once an hour.

Today the LA Times published a story which reads like a follow-up. It turns out LA’s metro rail system, which was never terribly popular, has also lost most of its riders. And the Times suggests the reasons aren’t limited to fewer people working in offices downtown. People are avoiding the metro because it has been overrun with homeless drug addicts.

That’s a whale of an economy you’ve got there, Brandon. The good news is swirling like…well…Ty*D*Bol. It sure seems you and your team are the only ones missing the picture.

None of this is news to any of us, no matter how you insist it’s not happening or better than it was.

CNBC host Jim Cramer just can’t stop saying dumb things. The Mad Money personality is now claiming the recent banking fiasco in the past week means brighter days are ahead for the Federal Reserve in its fight against inflation.

Cramer apparently hadn’t learned from the mockery he received for his horrific February call that Silicon Valley Bank was a buy at $320 a share before the stock collapsed a month later.

During the March 14 edition of his CNBC show, Cramer fawned about how he had been a big “supporter of Jay Powell, our Fed Chief” — the same person who tried to hoodwink Americans for months into believing that the inflation crisis his institution’s policies helped instigate was transitory. “I have been with him the whole way in his quest to beat back inflation because that’s how you destroy the power of the savings of the working person,” Cramer proclaimed. 

Then came Cramer’s hot take, and it was a doozy: “Until last week’s banking fiasco, I think Jay Powell was losing the war against inflation. Losing it!” Cramer slammed his signature buzzer for emphasis. “But the collapse of some highly visible banks, the fallout that could cause the folding of a great number of startups and” the general uneasiness in the economy meant the Fed plane “is on the cusp of a soft, safe landing.”

Huh?

Leonardo da Vinci, the painter of the "Mona Lisa" and a symbol of the Renaissance, was only half-Italian, his mother a slave from the Caucasus, new research revealed on Tuesday.

Da Vinci's mother had long been thought a Tuscan peasant, but University of Naples professor Carlo Vecce, a specialist in the Old Master, believes the truth is more complicated.

"Leonardo's mother was a Circassian slave... taken from her home in the Caucasus Mountains, sold and resold several times in Constantinople, then Venice, before arriving in Florence," he told AFP at the launch of a new book.

In the Italian city, she met a young notary, Piero (Peter) da Vinci, "and their son was called Leonardo".

The findings of Vecce, who has spent decades studying da Vinci and curating his works, are based on Florence city archives.

San Francisco residents lined up at a city board meeting last night to share their full-throated support of a wide-eyed reparations plan that would award every black resident $5million, wipe their personal debt, guarantee $97,000 incomes for 250 years and $1 homes. 

But no one at the emotional meeting - where residents burst into song and begged to be made 'whole' - asked  how the struggling, debt-addled city might pay for it. 

Reparations are being considered in various Democratic cities around America as a means of providing compensation to the descendants of enslaved African-Americans. 

Webmaster addition: We are all, black or white, slaves to that 1040 form. When do we get our reparations?

Occasionally, big media institutions still do valuable reporting.

As you’ll recall, the prestige press humiliated themselves back in January when the story first broke about how five black Memphis policemen beat a black motorist to death. The media’s initial response was heavy on explaining over and over that white people were still to blame…for reasons.

But now the Washington Post has paid for former sports reporter Robert Klemko, who looks like he is about one-fourth black, to talk to nine old-time cops who served at the Memphis police academy about what has gone wrong with the new generation.

Are they wholly trustworthy? Perhaps not (office politics are endlessly complex), but what they say makes a lot of sense.

As with most patterns in human society, their explanation involves both nature (Memphis has been scraping the bottom of the barrel harder when hiring cops) and nurture (its police academy has been made easier in order to not flunk out its new recruits, who are more fragile: mentally, emotionally, and ethically):

Payments of $5 million to every eligible Black adult, the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years and homes in San Francisco for just $1 a family.

These were some of the more than 100 recommendations made by a city-appointed reparations committee tasked with the thorny question of how to atone for centuries of slavery and systemic racism. And the San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing the report for the first time Tuesday voiced enthusiastic support for the ideas listed, with some saying money should not stop the city from doing the right thing.

Silicon Valley Bank might have been able to make good on $74 million promised to customers had it not pledged the money to leftist causes.

According to a new database by the conservative Claremont Institute, the collapsed bank donated or pledged to donate nearly $74 million to groups related to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told The Federalist that SVB’s failure on the heels of its left-wing activism “is yet another indication that SVB was focused on woke virtue signaling instead of protecting their customers’ deposits.”

Tobias Langdon makes a case that Jews have worked to undermine gentile countries. https://www.unz.com/article/the-trouble-with-trans-westernism-how-men-cant-be-women-and-jews-cant-be-american/

As I see it, if so, they have had a lot of help from gentiles themselves. The skepticism in Enlightenment thought in the end unravels civilization by subjecting everything to doubt. This is a long process of erosion, the story of which waits to be told. Jacques Barzun attempted the task in his book, From Dawn to Decadence dedicated “to all whom it may concern” and whose opening lines are: “It takes only a look at the numbers to see that the twentieth century is coming to an end. A wider and deeper scrutiny is needed to see that in the West the culture of the last 500 years is ending at the same time.”

It seems that Barzun is correct as it is difficult to find any remains of Western culture in the 21st century where the normalization of perversity and the institutionalization of tyranny and demonization of white ethnicities are the rage, but I have not seen any influence of Bazun’s effort or any attempt to recover the civilization that has been destroyed.

Joe Biden’s Treasury Department has been stymying the effort to get suspicious activity reporters related to the Biden family business deals for years. It’s been a scandal that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. When Rep. James Comer (R-KY) tried to get the records before the Republicans took over the House, the Biden administration changed the rules that prevented members of Congress from getting the records unless it was from the Committees (which Democrats controlled). Then, even when the Republicans took over the House, the Treasury Department wasn’t complying initially.

Violent Antifa protesters are being arrested on the University of California, Davis campus after smashing doors and windows as they attempted to storm a speech by Charlie Kirk sponsored by the school’s Turning Point USA chapter.

Antifa activists have been attacking Kirk in the press and on campus in the lead-up to the event, and one of the largest newspapers in the state, the Sacramento Bee, ran a piece Tuesday falsely claiming that Kirk has “called for the lynching of trans people” and calling for the cancellation of his speaking engagement.

Dove is facing backlash after slamming Oscar-winning film 'The Whale' for using a 'fat suit' on actor Brendan Fraser. 

The film received some criticism in the lead up to Sunday's Academy Awards as viewers took issue with an actor playing an obese man when they were not obese themselves.

In the latest swipe, Dove took a moral stance in response to a tweet in which one user said, 'our identity is not your costume.'

Florida Democrat Representative Anna Eskamani did her part in kicking off the Pride at the Capitol activities by stepping up to the mic and announcing that the legislation the group is protesting is “erasing trans babies”.

Yes, you read that correctly: Erasing. Trans. Babies.

Take a listen to the jaw-dropping statement at the 0:18 mark:

Russia, China and Iran and a number of other countries will hold joint naval exercises "Maritime Security Belt-2023" in the Gulf of Oman on March 15-19. This is reported by RIA Novosti with reference to the Ministry of Defense of the People's Republic of China.

So far, no other details regarding the exercises have been provided.

On February 17-27, the second joint naval exercises of Russia, China and South Africa were also held in the southern part of the Indian Ocean. On the Russian side, a detachment of ships of the Northern Fleet participated as part of the medium tanker "Kama" and the frigate "Admiral Gorshkov".

The chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has lauded the Iranian nation for standing up to the enemies, saying the more pressure they exert on the country, the more decisive the nation’s response will be.

Major General Hossein Salami made the remark at an event in the northwestern Iranian city of Orumiyeh in West Azarbaijan Province on Sunday.

Praising the “exemplary strength” of the Iranian nation, Salami said, “The year that passed was the year of the Iranian people standing up against the enemies, and the presence of the people [in various arenas] disappointed the enemy.”

The IRGC chief commander pointed to the unprecedented pressure and wide-ranging hostilities against the Iranian nation over the years, saying, “This amount of hostility and pressure is without precedent in human history.”

Young children can be “mixed berry gender fluid muffins,” a government document has instructed teachers in Wales.

A 170-page “Agenda” document detailing how sex education should be taught in Wales reportedly instructs teachers that children as young as seven can be “mixed berry gender fluid muffins”.

It is the latest evidence of militant transgenderism being taught in British schools, with government officials in both the UK and neighbouring Ireland becoming increasingly keen to see gender ideology taught as fact to young children.

According to a report by The Telegraph, the sex ed pamphlet produced by Cardiff University academics in partnership with the Welsh government tells the country’s teachers that there are many different genders.

The document furthermore encourages teachers to play the “mixed-muffin gender berry challenge” with children, a game which involves teaching children that “you can’t assume someone’s gender by how they look”.

Webmaster addition: This transgenderism agenda is designed to make children unsure of who they are, in order to weaken their sense of self and make them easier to control.

Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly has admitted that the Canadian government’s goal is not just to see Russia leave Ukraine but to topple the government of Russian president Vladimir Putin itself.

Foreign Minister Joly, a senior member of the cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, made her remarks as Canada has enacted new sanctions against the import of Russian aluminium and steel, outright mentioning the proposal of regime change.

“We’re able to see how much we’re isolating the Russian regime right now — because we need to do so economically, politically and diplomatically — and what are the impacts also on society, and how much we’re seeing potential regime change in Russia,” Joly stated, the National Post newspaper reports.

The City of Light is losing its luster with tons of garbage piling up on Paris sidewalks as sanitation workers strike for a ninth day Tuesday. The creeping squalor is the most visible sign of widespread anger over a bill to raise the French retirement age by two years.

The malodorous perfume of rotting food has begun escaping from some rubbish bags and overflowing bins. Neither the Left Bank palace housing the Senate nor, across town, a street steps from the Elysee Palace, where waste from the presidential residence is apparently being stocked, was spared by the strike.

More than 5,600 tons of garbage had piled up by Monday, drawing complaints from some district mayors. Some piles disappeared early Tuesday with help from a private company, the TV station BFMTV reported.

Webmaster addition: Good for the French people!

Declared and prospective Republican 2024 presidential contenders laid out their views on the Ukraine War, including some for the first time, in response to a questionnaire from Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Carlson posed six questions about Ukraine to declared 2024 candidates former President Donald Trump, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, as well as prospective candidates former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

In general, Trump, Ramaswamy, DeSantis, Noem, and Abbott fell into a camp leaning towards non-intervention in the conflict or limiting support to Ukraine; while Haley, Pence, Scott, and Christie fell into the more hawkish camp — with Pence being the most hardline.

Pakistan’s Ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan has held a fresh election rally in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore. Thousands of supporters, guarding his bulletproof vehicle, welcomed the former PM by chanting slogans and singing party anthems.

This was Khan's first rally in more than four months, as he has been organizing his party’s affairs via a video link after being injured in a failed assassination attempt last year in Punjab.

Khan was shot in the legs on November 3 as he waved to crowds from a truck-mounted container while leading a protest march to Islamabad to pressure the government into announcing an early election — but the march was cut short in Rawalpindi.

Khan said he’s determined not to appear before courts due to ‘security threats’, and that he has no trust in the incumbent government. He asked the country’s top Court to ensure his security, claiming that his life is in serious danger.

One in five students at UK top universities are considering dropping out due to the worsening cost-of-living crisis across the country, and a quarter are regularly going without food and other essentials, a new survey has revealed.

A new research by the Russell Group Students’ Unions, which represents 24 of the UK’s most elite higher education institutions, suggests that more than 20 percent of the students at high-ranking universities such as UCL and Edinburgh are under the intense pressure of soaring prices, being forced to quit their studies.

More than half of those surveyed said that they are experiencing concentration problems caused by poor nourishment and financial stress, as their academic performance is negatively influenced by the deepening crisis.