More on the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

(Facts You Can Neither Deny nor Ignore) 

I’m sure you remember that, during the 2020 election, the New York Post came out with a story about how Hunter Biden was doing all sorts of questionable deals in Russia, the Ukraine, and China. And that proof was on his laptop, which had mysteriously disappeared.

This was, for a few seconds, front page news in the mainstream media. But do you also remember that, soon after the story broke, 50 former intelligence officials signed a public letter claiming that what is now known as “The Hunter Biden Laptop Story” was “Russian disinformation”?

That letter was widely believed, and discredited the New York Post and the story. Since then, however, the facts have been leaking out. And now, just about everyone, including the media that published that Russian-propaganda misinformation, is admitting that the laptop story is true.

Yes, the laptop was real. And it was turned over to the Justice Department, which wouldn’t release it or even admit it had it. But there was another copy that was turned over to a Republican senator and released to the press. And after seeing it, even the NYT admitted it was legit.

Since then, the liberal media went quiet on the story. But information keeps piling up. The latest: Former Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morrell testified to the House Judiciary Committee that he was ordered to orchestrate the letter in the fall of 2020 by Antony Blinken, who at the time was a senior campaign adviser to Joe Biden.

That’s crazy, right?

And here’s something more: Several of the signatories of that disinformation were rewarded afterward with Biden administration jobs.

From The Daily Caller:

“Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff for the CIA, was the one who put Morrell in touch with Biden’s campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti, who personally thanked Morrell for facilitating the letter’s creation. Bash was then appointed to Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board. Two of the letter’s other signatories, Russell Travers and Nicholas Rasmussen, were appointed to the Biden Administration as Deputy Homeland Security Advisor and Counterterrorism Coordinator for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), respectively….

“In his testimony, written under oath, Morrell confessed that the purpose of the letter was ‘to help Vice President Biden’ in the 2020 election. Although there may not be any grounds for criminal charges, the revelation nevertheless reflects even further corruption and political bias within the American intelligence community in favor of Democrats. Blinken’s role in the scandal also seems to suggest that he was given his position as Secretary of State as a reward for orchestrating the letter in the first place.”

The End of Unbiased Reporting

The Ubiquity of Advocacy Journalism

And the Elon Musk BBC Interview

Reporting the facts, and all the facts, fairly and impartially, was once the acknowledged standard of journalism. It wasn’t always met. But it was, at least, a standard that all respectable news media accepted.

To be sure, there has always been a secondary source of information that presented itself as news but was devoted to other objectives. I’m thinking of the supermarket tabloids, which were fun, but meant to be fun. Nobody with any sense took them seriously. And there have always been periodicals with political, social, and economic viewpoints, but they didn’t present themselves as reporting the news.

Such viewpoints could also be seen in the daily news, whether in print or on TV, but they were always relegated to the editorial and opinion pages. So, again, there was no question about the intent.

In the 1980s, those viewpoints began appearing not only on the editorial and opinion pages, but in the news reporting of some papers, too. The Washington Times, for example, was funded to provide a conservative counter-perspective to The Washington Post’s decidedly liberal slant.

And then, in 1966, Fox News was launched. In its first year, it was dismissed by the liberal media as an irrelevant and passing fad. But when its circulation skyrocketed to 17 million cable subscribers in a single year, and continued to grow, the mainstream press began to understand that holding to the old standard of fair and impartial reporting could not compete with this new strategy of curating the news to support social and political perspectives.

I got into the newsletter business in the late 1970s and was able to watch this change take place from the beginning. Until Fox came along, it was obvious that the mainstream outlets were making an effort to at least look unbiased. But as they lost market share, they began to study the way that Fox and other conservative platforms were gaining market share. And gradually, they learned to hold their noses while they adopted the same techniques.

By the time Trump was elected in 2016, the liberal mainstream media was every bit as capable as the right at employing advocacy journalism. And because Trump’s win was so shocking and scary to them and their audience, they began moving into it with a vengeance. Literally.

Today, the old standard is all but dead and forgotten. With the questionable exception of a few digital news feeds that have appeared recently, all the large media outlets – in print, on TV, and on the internet – are completely committed to promoting narratives that match their political, social, and economic views.

And most of the time, because the audience for news is split, roughly, in two, journalists are allowed to do and say just about anything, so long as it is something their audience wants to see. We saw an example of that with the leaked backroom conversations at Fox. And we saw it in the leaked backroom conversations on NBC and CBS about the BLM riots.

And you can see it here in the way this BBC journalist, in an interview about Twitter, tries to “catch” Elon Musk. (Warning for my Musk-hating friends: This will – or should – embarrass you.)

Click here.

Speaking of Musk… 

Yes, you guessed it. I am a huge Musk fan. I love that he spent all those billions to buy Twitter. I love that he turned over all its dirty underwear to three reporters that have been exposing the way the Justice Department and other federal agencies were colluding with Twitter to censor conservative content, including important truths about COVID. And I love that he fired 80% of the workers at Twitter and the business is still going strong.

And I love his latest move at Twitter: labeling government-funded media as government funded.

Click here.

I found this clip interesting, but I feel like I’m wrong…

There is athleticism involved. It is a kind of scientific experiment. It’s mildly dramatic. But it’s also much ado about nothing. Right?

Two questions:

* We have all spent time pursuing purposeless objectives like this. But in the past, it was usually done solo or with a small group of likeminded friends. This guy is broadcasting his to the entire world. Is that an unexpected consequence of the ubiquity of social media?

* Also – should I be worried that clips like this capture my interest? Should you be worried if you open this link to find out?

Click here.

Vegetarians vs Carnivores: Another Point for Meat Meaters

I have a good friend that has been following a strict vegetarian diet for many years. He’s super energetic and swears by it. If I had to judge by his activity and demeanor, I’d say it has worked for him.

Nevertheless, we have several times debated the wisdom of eating as he does. He’s sent me studies that support vegetarianism, and I’ve sent him The Vegetarian Myth, which makes the case against it.

Recently, he’s developed a condition that makes his bones fragile. It’s scary. And I couldn’t help but wonder if his diet might have something to do with it. It may not. But in looking up “bone fragility,” I came across a short essay, written by a doctor whose books I once published. It’s about a recent study, of more than 26,000 women between the ages of 35 and 69, which found that vegetarians had a 33% higher risk of hip fracture compared with meat eaters.

You can read that short essay here.

Obviously, this doesn’t prove anything. And knowing my friend, I’m sure he’s aware of the latest studies and getting the best medical treatment that’s available. Still, it makes me wonder if there could be a connection.

India Surpasses China in Population

Will Its Economy Grow as Fast? 

India is about to pass China as the world’s most populous country. Analytical models project that at the end of this year, China will have 1,426 billion people, while India will have 1,429 billion.

When I was in high school, I remember India having a population of about 500 million. At that time, China’s population was about 650 million.

The difference in total population is insignificant. What is significant is the difference in average age. About 40% of India’s population is under 25 years old, with an overall median age of 28, compared to 38 in the US and 39 in China. That means India’s economy will probably grow faster in the coming years.

The Language Police Strike Again! 

Have you noticed that real estate ads no longer say “master bedroom”? Today, they are called “primary rooms.” According to the language police, it’s because the phrase “master bedroom” is racist – i.e., because it originated in the South, referring to the bedroom of the master of the plantation.

Wrong. There is no recorded use of “master bedroom” during the slave era in America, or at any time in the 19th century. The first recorded use was in a 1926 Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog.

I asked one of my real estate brokers if this fact would change her decision to go with primary bedroom. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Sticking with master bedroom is all risk and no reward. The arithmetic doesn’t work for me.”

Gun Control: I Said I’d Get Back to You

As promised, I’ve spent a fair amount of time this week researching the question I asked on Tuesday: Do gun control policies reduce gun-related deaths?

What I discovered is that most of what one is likely to read about the gun control issue is influenced by political leaning and based on unproven theories, anecdotal evidence, and correlative (i.e., non-scientific) studies.

A study conducted by the Rand Corporation reviewed most of the research published between 1995 and 2020. In the introduction to the report, the authors acknowledged that “a lot of what is out there are cross-sectional studies – observational research that basically just compares gun violence statistics at one point in time in a state that has a specific law to those in a state that doesn’t. That type of study is prone to mixing up correlation and causation,” they said.

In fact, they found only one set of laws that were conclusive: laws that restricted child access to guns. These significantly and incontestably reduce firearm suicide, unintentional self-injuries and death, and homicides among young people.

However, they also said that, despite the flaws among the studies and the biases among the conclusions, there was more evidence than not that gun control laws work. Except for drug-related murders and accidental killings, gun control laws do reduce gun-related deaths. Not greatly, but to a degree. That’s what they think.

What I think… 

Considering that gun control is such a powerful political issue, I expect that future studies will continue to be flawed by biased intent and/or unmerited conclusions. (A Democrat will tell you that the US has more gun-related deaths than any developed country. A Republican will tell you that if you control for just one factor – population – the US is not even in the top 10.)

To know for sure whether gun control laws reduce gun-related deaths, we need more randomized studies controlled by every factor that might count, including age, wealth, location, race, religion, and culture. Since that won’t happen any time soon, I’m going to have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And I suppose that means that I’ll continue my interactions with people, but assume that they are packing heat. As to whether I will… I’m not going to say.

Interesting 

* The US has more registered guns (393 million) than any other country in the world, with an average of 1.2 per person.

* Gun-related deaths in the US rose from 34,000 in 2012 to 48,000 in 2022.

* Gun-related killings by type: Suicide 58%; Homicide 39%; Accidental 2%; and Police Shooting 1.2%.

* According to Pew research, most Americans on both sides of the aisle agree on two questions about gun control. 85% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats believe that people with a mental illness should not be allowed to purchase guns. 70% of Republicans and 92% of Democrats support background checks for private and gun show sales. However, when it comes to expanding concealed carry rights, banning assault weapons, and tracking gun sales though a federal database, Democrats are strongly supportive, while Republicans are strongly negative.

One of the minor debates stemming from this issue is the question of whether “guns kill people” or “people kill people.” Here is an example of someone expressing the former position.

And here is a comic response.

When More Than 650 Refugees Arrived in This Town… 

LC, a friend, forwarded me this story. It’s about how, in a rural town in Australia, attitudes towards immigrants improved over a period of several years. I suppose the intention of the piece was to suggest that familiarity breeds contentment.

Two problems with this conclusion:

1. Attitudes towards immigration are initially fueled by fear and prejudice. But they get better or worse depending on the customs and behaviors of the immigrant population compared to the cultural norms of the host population.
2. Even in cases where the cultures clash, the attitudes don’t become significantly negative until the percentage of the immigrant population becomes significant enough to be considered a threat. Based on what has happened in Sweden and Denmark, I think that threshold is around 10%.

More on Chat-GPT

People that haven’t used it find it difficult to believe that Chat-GPT can provide in seconds high quality (competently researched and well written) answers to any reasonable question. Many of my colleagues in the writing, research, and publishing industries have the impression that AI technology is capable only of basic work and that it will be decades (if ever) before its production can match the brain.

I’m thinking the time has already come. Here’s an example. A NYC broker asks Chat-GPT three questions about real estate investing in the city. And he instantly receives three answers that would be approved for publication in any general information magazine. Click here.

Yes, but… 

As amazing as the functionality of Chat-GPT seems to be, there is room for concern.

According to two reports I’ve read lately, the app is not designed to check facts against current data. So, apparently, it’s possible to generate fake news that is then stored for future retrieval.

For example…

* A corporate cautionary tale in the making saw Samsung employees leak confidential company info by feeding it into Chat-GPT on at least three separate occasions. Yikes!

* Also troubling: Brian Hood, mayor of Australia’s Hepburn Shire may sue over Chat-GPT, saying he went to prison for bribery. (He was the whistleblower in the case.) Chat-GPT also named a law professor in a sexual harassment scandal that never happened, citing a Washington Post article that didn’t exist.

Before Politics, There’s the World 

I introduced you to Freddie deBoer in the April 7 issue.He’s a self-proclaimed Marxist and public intellectual that I’ve begun to read because his ideas are original, as opposed to voicing a party line.

Here, he talks about an argument he had with someone about whether it is ever appropriate for a teacher or caretaker to engage physically with emotionally troubled children. De Boer explains, very convincingly, that it is not only appropriate but virtuous in some cases.

Cocaine, Crime, and Consequences

How Bukele Beat Back the Cartels in El Salvador

Since I first traveled to El Salvador 12 years ago, the country has visibly improved in many ways. One of the most obvious is that it’s now rare to see armed bodyguards accompanying government officials and businesspeople in public areas. Statistically, crime is down. And you can feel this improvement in the air. Compared to the past, being in public feels relatively safe.

The improvement is largely due to the administration of El Salvador’s young and charismatic president, Nayib Bukele. In his campaign, his strongest promise was to “go to war” with the drug cartels, defeat them, and then restore law and order to the country.

This is a claim that has been made by Salvadoran presidential candidates for decades, as it has been for presidential candidates in Mexico and several other Central American countries. Until now, none of those promises had been achieved. It’s arguable that none had even been honored. The exception is Bukele. Against all odds, he seems to have accomplished the impossible: successfully defeating the dominance of the drug cartels.

Of course, this story is far from over. Bukele’s growing popularity (even with many opposition voters) is giving him more power. The challenge for him now will be to resist the urge to use that power to turn El Salvador into a dictatorship. We will have to wait and see.

Click here for a very good account of the situation that was sent to me by LC.

Who Wants Gun Control? 

In a recent essay in The Free Press, Nellie Bowles (a very smart and funny writer) wrote that “while conservatives balk at even the mildest gun control efforts… progressives have absolutely no intention of enforcing even existing gun control laws.”

* Example #1. Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner explaining why he will no longer prosecute illegal gun possession: “We do not believe that arresting people and convicting them for illegal gun possession is a viable strategy to reduce shootings.”

* Example #2. US Attorney for DC Matt Graves justifying why he has declined to prosecute 67% of all those arrested in his district: “The declinations are mostly coming after arrests in cases such as gun possession, drug possession, and misdemeanors – not violent crimes.”

AI: Let’s Take a Pause Before This Gets Out of Hand! 

The news about AI is moving at an incredible pace. Last week, Google announced that it had launched an application it calls “Bard.” Testing was scheduled to begin immediately in the US and the UK.

This week, Elon Musk joined Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and more than 1,000 other AI experts and industry executives in signing an open letter calling on all AI labs to “immediately pause” training of systems more powerful than Chat GPT-4 for at least six months. Citing extensive research, they argue that AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose “profound risks to society and humanity” and change the “history of life on Earth.”

A Government Agency Does One Thing Right 

I’m inclined to be skeptical of government programs on many levels and for many reasons. My observation is that, even if they are well-intentioned, they tend to do more harm than good.

I don’t feel that way about the FTC’s Consumer Alerts program. The agency sends out warnings about scams to the public. The warnings typically explain how the scams work and provide advice on how to protect against them. Impressively, the alerts are short and comprehensible, a rarity in US government publications of any sort.

Click here to see an email scam they’ve been alerting me to lately.

Trump’s Impending Arrest

Is That a Good Thing?

Many of my friends and relatives are overjoyed by the prospect of seeing Trump arrested in New York. This is reminiscent of how they felt, early in Trump’s presidency, when they were confident that he would be impeached and even convicted of “colluding” with Russia.” Nothing, besides thousands of man hours and tens of millions of dollars in fruitless research and wasted Congressional attention, came of that charge. Based on what I’ve read about Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA that is going after Trump, and the statutes he is claiming Trump violated, I don’t believe anything will come of this case either. It may not even get to trial.

What Trump’s foes hoped would come from it was a derailment of his presidential campaign. Given the strength of Trump’s ego and the passion of his fans, that doesn’t seem likely. The case might, as some have suggested, even boost his chances of winning by turning off centrist voters that see Bragg’s effort as an obvious and tawdry political ploy.

My bet is that this is going to blow over. But if Bragg is able to get an indictment and actually bring Trump to trial, it will set a precedent that will likely hurt Democrats in the future.

Just as the Republican majority in Congress is investigating the Hunter Biden/ Russia & Chinese collusion story in retaliation for the Trump/Russia collusion story, our political culture could easily mutate into one in which partisan DAs will routinely charge ex-presidents with who-knows-what to boost their own public profile.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, seems to have the same concern. In a recent radio interview, he called the lawsuit “politically motivated” and a “cancer in our body politic.” Click here.

Woke Report: “Oh. Gosh. I Guess That Didn’t Work!” 

 A transwoman, granted permission to serve her time in a female prison, has just been transferred to a male prison after getting two inmates pregnant!

Click here.

Institutional Creep in Public Schools 

The original idea of public schools was that they would operate “in loco parentis.” But now they seem to be acting “in loco status.”

Click here.

Remember Amanda Knox?

In November 2007, in Perugia, Italy, an American exchange student named Amanda Knox was accused of having taken part in the murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. Knox was accused even though there was zero evidence tying her to the murder and a great deal of DNA implicating someone else.

After spending two years in prison, Knox was found guilty in December 2009. She was 22 at the time. She was sentenced to 26 years behind bars.

In 2010, Knox’s lawyers appealed the verdict, submitting most of the exculpatory evidence that was not presented before. And on October 3, 2011, her conviction was overturned. She flew home the next day.

In the years since, Knox completed her college degree and wrote a best-selling book (Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir). She cohosts the podcast “Labyrinths.”

Click here for an essay she recently wrote for The Free Press.

Woke Watch #1: You Can’t Make This Up! 

Last year, San Francisco, a city that never had slaves or slaveholders, decided to take on the Critical Race Theory idea that the government should pay reparations to African Americans whose ancestors were either slaves or lived during the Jim Crow era.

And last week (or was it the week before?), the panel came back with its initial recommendations

The city should award $5 million to every black adult resident, eliminate their personal debt and tax burdens, guarantee annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years, and guarantee homes in San Francisco for just $1 a family.

The plan would cost about $600,000 per household.

Woke Watch #2: It’s About Time! 

Many people are not aware of it, but all across America, there is a vast social injustice being done. Thankfully, someone is finally doing something about it.

Click here to see Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signing an executive order banning “hair discrimination.”