Quick Bites: UFOs?… Airborne Criminal… Just When You Thought Sports Couldn’t Get Crazier… a Powerful Motown Cover 

* I’m not up on my UFO history… although I do know that the topic has been getting more coverage since reports from the US military have confirmed hundreds of UFO sightings. Remember: UFO means “unidentified flying object.” It doesn’t mean visitors from outer space. But you don’t have to have an opinion about the origins of UFOs to enjoy these old paintings that seem to depict ancient sightings of bean-shaped flying objects. Click here.

* “I’ve turned over a new leaf!” That was the pitch that this several-times-convicted felon gave to the judge in his plea to be summarily forgiven for his latest assault. “I don’t drink anymore,” he told the court. “I don’t steal. I’m not violent.”

He was referring to the months he spent outside of jail after his arrest, thanks to one of George Soros’s progressive DAs that believe the only way to correct the “inequity” of the “overrepresentation” of Black Americans in US jails was to, at the very least, give them “free bail” – i.e., let them out of jail until they are convicted.

His plea, to me, sounded sincere. He was calm and spoke with what I took to be evident sincerity. On top of that, he looked like a nice, well-spoken, and possibly unfairly charged man who had truly turned his life around.

He did, that is, until the judge denied his request and told him he’d have to wait in jail until his trial date. Then this happened.

* Follow this lunatic down a snow-covered trail. “This is an insane sport!” said JS when he sent in this clip. “I am not even sure what it’s called. Ski biking?”

* A compelling rendition of the 1974 classic “What’s So Funny ‘Bout” by the great Postmodern Jukebox. Click here.

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From JM, re my comment in the Jan. 2 issue that, according to several reports, women are more likely than men to have love partners before their divorce: 

“That also happens prior to a marriage. It is a survival strategy of not abandoning one ship before you have a different one to go to….”

From OM, a native of Nicaragua who is currently living in Florida: 

“A close friend of mine just visited Rancho Santana and he was stunned by the property and the beautiful community you built. The fact that you gave back to the locals by providing upward mobility to better their lives is a testament to who you are. Thank you.”

My Response: Thank you for your kind words. Of the many businesses and projects I’ve been involved in during my career, I’m especially proud of Rancho Santana (a for-profit resort) and FunLimón (a non-profit community center across the street from Rancho Santana). When I think that, 25 years ago, they were vacant land and cow pastures in one of the poorest districts in one of the poorest countries of Central America, it blows my mind.

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At a time like the one we are living through today… with so much division and discord and even antipathy… when almost every piece of news we encounter is laced with emotional tension… where every heartfelt thought one has feels like a landmine… something as pedestrian and almost cliché as this video can, for a few moments, serve as a sort of aloe for the hate-burned heart.

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Boys Will Be Boys 

I was backing up. I would have fallen over the barbell on the floor behind me had Paulo, my trainer, not stopped me.

I asked him, “As a kid, in Brazil, did you ever play that prank where you keep backing someone up until he falls over another guy who’s on all fours behind him?”

He had. It was common practice.

“In Brazil, too,” I said. “That’s funny.”

He asked, “Did you ever do that thing where you hyperventilate for a few seconds and then one of your friends gives you a bearhug till you pass out?”

“We did that,” I admitted.

“There must be other dumb and dangerous things that all boys do,” I said.

“Like jumping from a bridge when you don’t know how deep the water is below?”

“Exactly.”

“What the hell were we thinking?” we wondered.

My guess: We weren’t thinking at all. We were playing the kind of games that adolescent boys have been playing for hundreds – even thousands – of years. Stupid, semi-dangerous descendants of ancient coming-to-manhood rituals that have been practiced since Homo sapiens became sapient.

Becoming a man originally meant learning how to participate in dangerous things like hunting and warfare. It required not just bravery, but fierce loyalty to the clan – and, thus, to the survival of the species.

Girls must always have had coming-to-womanhood rituals. Note to self: Find out what they were.

 

Loving, Loyalty, and Pragmatism 

I came across this the other day: According to research by Dr. Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist from Stanford University (as well as numerous other studies), women initiate more than 70% of all divorces.

That surprised me. Maybe it shouldn’t have. Does it surprise you?

I did a bit of digging and found other facts about women vs. men in matters of marriage and divorce. For example:

* Did you know that, after the divorce, women move on to other relationships much faster than men? I didn’t.

* And how about this? According to several reports, women are more likely than men to have love partners before the divorce. It not only surprised me, it reminded me of a story I heard about a colleague of mine: By the time she told her husband she was divorcing him, she had already purchased a house for herself and her until-then-secret boyfriend!

* Here’s another thing I discovered: According to one survey, 98.7% of women surveyed a year after being divorced said their lives were “better” or “much better” than they were while married.

I’ve been thinking about why I was surprised by these facts. I suspect it’s because I’ve always assumed that women are naturally more loving and loyal than men, whereas men are naturally more pragmatic than women. I guess I’m going to have to rethink those assumptions.

And here’s something that any young man planning on playing house-husband in an upcoming marriage should know: According to a University of Chicago study, when women earn as much as or more than their husbands, the marriages are 50% more likely to end in divorce.

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Chart of the Week

This week, Sean provides a chart on US household spending that shows an uptrend in investment in stocks. The WSJ says it’s because it’s easier than ever to buy stocks. But Sean has a different and more alarming take… 

According to the Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finances, more US households own stocks than ever before.

58% of Americans own stocks in their retirement accounts, while over 20% directly own them in taxable brokerage accounts.

According to The Wall Street Journal, this surge of stock ownership comes from “the elimination of commission fees,” which makes investing cheaper and easier than ever. Many brokerages now allow fractional trading as well, permitting individual investors to purchase a sliver of stocks like BRK.A with only a $1.

These theories are all fine and good. But I can actually read a chart.

When did previous spikes in stock ownership occur?

1998-2001, at the beginning of the dotcom collapse. 2007, right before the Great Recession. 2016, right before the Fed tightening cycle that led to a precipitous drop in 2018.

We’re just witnessing a tale as old as time: people chasing past returns. Plus a dash of asset inflation.

Another thing: Most of these assets are in retirement accounts. Retirement accounts, notoriously, do not offer many easy options to invest in besides stocks. This asset class, for the majority of Americans, is the only game in town.

But in late 2022, conditions looked right to begin investing in gold. Between that and my big tech recommendations, it paid off for my family and my readers.

Now I have my eyes set on a new non-stock asset class that I’ve been pouring money into for 2024. – Sean MacIntyre

Click here to find out the asset class that Sean says is moving “into the limelight.”

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Health Watch 

More Bad News About Statin Drugs

As I’ve told you before, since I began researching statin drugs several years ago, I have yet to find any research indicating that taking them increases lifespan. “If it doesn’t do that, and yet has some unwanted side effects, why do it?” I asked my personal MD and my cardiologist. They both had the same answer: “It may decrease the chance that you will spend your last several years paralyzed by a stroke.” That made sense, and I promised myself I’d look for proof of it. But, so far, I haven’t done that research. Instead, I began taking them again, unsure of whether I didn’t want to know or I wanted too much to please my doctors.

A friend, BI, who is also on statins, sent me this piece, saying: “Some of the data is old. At the end are some more recent observations. It has me thinking about abandoning my statin regimen.”

Nurse Exposes Deadly Hospital Protocols 

To some, this nurse’s account of her experience working with COVID patients will sound alarmist and be dismissed as anecdotal. But if you have been following what we’ve learned (from reputable scientific studies) about COVID and its early treatments by hospitals, this interview should scare you.

Check it out here and let me know what you think.

Steve Kirsch Says He Has “Crystal-Clear Evidence” that the COVID Vaccine Is Deadly 

Steve Kirsch is a successful entrepreneur, inventor, and a philanthropic supporter of medical research. He’s also a COVID vaccine skeptic. He’s been writing about it for three years.

He’s not a doctor. Nor does he have a PhD in medicine. I’d call him an amateur researcher who has probably done more research into COVID-19 and the vaccines than 98% of the doctors and medical scientists in the country.

I’ve read dozens of articles by him over the last 12 to 18 months. He’s always seemed to be skeptical of talking points from government health officials, but also cautious about making definitive statements himself.

Recently, however, he has become convinced that the COVID vaccines are not only causing all sorts of heart- and vascular-related injuries and long-lasting symptoms, but that they may have been responsible for hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths.

One of the ways he came to this conclusion, he says, is by studying the data on “excess deaths” in countries all around the world since the vaccines were introduced. And he’s found that the number has skyrocketed.

Vaccine believers (and promoters) have attributed these excess deaths to other possible causes (including such absurdities as “global warming”). But as he explains here in talking about excess deaths in New Zealand, the connection is not compellingly explained by anything other than the COVID vaccines.

 

The End of Western Civilization 

In this series, I will be covering the many different but frightening and fundamentally connected events that are taking place all over the United States, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, in virtually all of Western Europe, and even, to a lesser extent, in Latin America. I see many of these disparate events as linked together by a new set of ideologies that derive from the same common cause: eradicating everything good from the Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian ideology and replacing it with primitive, tribal, and retrogressive ideas that, if they are allowed to continue, will put the world into a new Dark Age.

Here are some recent clips and tidbits:

Virginia Teacher of the Year Fired for Misgendering Student Remotely 

Peter Vlaming, a multiple-time Teacher of the Year, was fired after decades of teaching French because he wasn’t fully cooperative in pretending that a child suffering from gender dysphoria had been misgendered at birth.

Mr. Vlaming had successfully avoided the pronoun issue in class by speaking to the kid in the second person. What got him in trouble was speaking of him/her to other teachers in private. I know. You think I’m exaggerating or have it wrong. Check for yourself here.

Equity in Education 

The Minneapolis Dept. of Education is testing a new idea to promote racial equity: They are segregating math and writing classes by race!

“A lot of times within our education system, Black students are expected to conform to a White standard,” a Minneapolis administrator told the WSJ.

Meanwhile, the city of San Francisco is about to vote on whether eighth graders should be allowed to take algebra classes. Eighth graders used to take algebra until 10 years ago when the city administrators discovered that there was a racial hierarchy in terms of performance.

Migrant Attempts to Buy a Five-Year-Old 

Police in New York arrested Monji Jelassi, a 62-year-old Tunisian citizen, after a woman complained that he asked to “purchase” her daughter.

During an interview with the Buffalo Border Patrol, Jelassi admitted that he had entered the US illegally.

Instead of investigating and possibly jailing him as a dangerous pedophile, the arresting officers took a cue from the progressive leadership of the FBI and Justice Department in Washington and simply offered Jelassi a ride back to where he came from.

“Removing this individual… aligns with the interests of our law enforcement partners,” said Patrol Agent in Charge David Banks.

Banks didn’t respond to questions about how Jelassi’s home country will feel about having him back.

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“On the one hand, it’s amazing to think that the artists we love will never die. But on the other hand, it can start to feel like a scene from the movie Weekend at Bernie’s.”

In this essay, Andrew Zucker talks about The Beatles’ recently released track “Now and Then” and how AI will transform rock and roll music.

Watch the official video of the song here.

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Quick Bites: Something I Don’t Understand… Something I Never Knew… Something Nobody’s Ever Heard Before
 
A Question: What do people mean when they characterize the US as a “wealthy” country? How can a sovereign nation that is $33 trillion in debt be considered wealthy?

Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Jefferson? (From TS) Who knew? Click here.

* 10 Things Black Students DON’T Need. A Black father speaks out at a school meeting. Click here.

He built a drumophone! Click here.

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