Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

He was arrested for making a joke on Facebook. A jury just awarded him $205,000 in damages.

Waylon
© unknownWaylon Bailey
On a Friday in March 2020, a dozen or so sheriff's deputies wearing bulletproof vests descended upon Waylon Bailey's garage at his home in Forest Hill, Louisiana, with their guns drawn, ordered him onto his knees with his hands "on your fucking head," and arrested him for a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The SWAT-style raid was provoked by a Facebook post in which Bailey had made a zombie-themed joke about COVID-19. Recognizing the harm inflicted by that flagrantly unconstitutional arrest, a federal jury last week awarded Bailey $205,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.

"I feel vindicated that the jury agreed that my post was satire and that no reasonable police officer should have arrested me for my speech," Bailey said in a press release from the Institute for Justice, which helped represent him in his lawsuit against the Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office and Detective Randell Iles, who led the investigation that tarred Bailey as a terrorist based on constitutionally protected speech. "This verdict is a clear signal that the government can't just arrest someone because the officers didn't like what they said."

On March 20, 2020, four days after several California counties issued the nation's first "stay-at-home" orders in response to an emerging pandemic, Bailey let off some steam with a Facebook post that alluded to the Brad Pitt movie World War Z.
"RAPIDES PARISH SHERIFFS OFFICE HAVE ISSUED THE ORDER," he wrote, that "IF DEPUTIES COME INTO CONTACT WITH 'THE INFECTED,'" they should "SHOOT ON SIGHT." He added: "Lord have mercy on us all. #Covid9teen #weneedyoubradpitt."

Star of David

Half of Americans think Israel is going 'too far' in Gaza

Gazastrip
© Abdulqader Sabbah/Getty ImagesGaza
Democrats were almost twice as likely as Republicans to find Israel's bombardment of the Palestinian enclave excessive...

Half of Americans think Israel's military response to the October 7 Hamas raid has "gone too far," according to an AP-NORC poll published on Friday. The figure represents a ten-point increase since the pollster asked the same question in November.

Less than a third (31%) of the 1,152 poll respondents said West Jerusalem's military actions had "been about right," while 15% said it had not gone far enough. Both figures represent a significant decrease from November, when 38% of those polled approved of the response, and 18% said it should go further.

Democrats were almost twice as likely as Republicans to say Israel had gone too far in its bombardment of Gaza - 62%, compared to 33%.

However, more Democrats also said the campaign had not gone far enough compared to November's polling (9% vs 7%). Over a third (37%) of respondents said the US was too supportive of Israel. However, the majority (61%) of those who answered the survey said Hamas held "a lot" of responsibility for the war compared to just 35% who said the same about the Israeli government. A third also thought the Iranian government was significantly responsible, but just one in ten thought Washington had played a major role.

Two-thirds (67%) disapproved of President Joe Biden's handling of the conflict, with a growing portion of Democrats speaking out against their leader (53% compared to just 39% in December).

Comment: The 'other half of Americans' do not think.


TV

CNN makes drastic cut as ratings slump takes its toll: Report

CNN, MSM, mainstream media
© Screenshot CNN
CNN is reportedly making drastic changes as a ratings slump continues to take its toll on the network, and one morning show left over from the Chris Licht era is getting the ax.

"CNN This Morning" hosts Poppy Harlow and Phil Mattingly will reportedly take on a new role at the network, though it's unclear what that role would be. Kasie Hunt, who currently hosts the morning show beginning at 5:00 a.m., will move into hosting a shorter version of "CNN This Morning" that will run from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m., according to Mediaite. Page Six is also reporting that the morning show will be sent to the chopping block.

CNN News Central, which currently runs after "CNN This Morning" beginning at 9:00 a.m., will move to the new slot of 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., according to the report.

Comment: Doesn't matter how much lipstick gets put on this pig. The ratings are still going to take a nose dive straight into the hog trough.


Penis Pump

UK continues to import Russian oil via 'refinery loophole', UK gov't denies it's happening - BBC

oil platform
© Getty
Millions of barrels of fuel made from Russian oil are still being imported to the UK despite sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine, research claims.

A so-called "loophole" means Russian crude is refined in countries such as India and the products sold to the UK.

This is not illegal and does not breach the UK's Russian oil ban, but critics say it undermines sanctions aimed at restricting Russia's war funds.


Comment: The UK would be an even worse energy crisis were it not flouting its own sanctions; but then, everybody is, because they're also just as hypocritical and desperate. They better hope that the multipolar world doesn't choose to enforce the West's sanctions on their behalf: Pentagon buying Russian oil via Greek intermediaries - WaPo


Bizarro Earth

7 Egyptian migrants gang-rape 13-year-old Italian girl, force her 17-year-old boyfriend to watch


Comment: There's no link between mass migration and crime, they tell us...


italy sicily
The girl, 13, was sexually assaulted in the Villa Bellini park in Catania, Sicily, around 7.30pm on January 30 while on a walk with her 17-year-old boyfriend (pictured: the public bathroom where she was raped)
An Italian teenage girl was dragged into a public toilet and gang-raped in front of her boyfriend.

The girl, 13, was sexually assaulted in the Villa Bellini park in Catania, Sicily, around 7.30pm on January 30 while on a walk with her 17-year-old boyfriend.


Comment: A 13-year-old girl with a 17-year-old boyfriend??


A group of young men forced the girl and her boyfriend into a public bathroom, where some of them held the boyfriend back while two others gang-raped the girl.

There are seven male suspects - three of them minors - who allegedly entered Italy illegally between November 2021 and March 2023 as 'unaccompanied minors', La Repubblica reports. The suspects are reportedly from Egypt and aged 15 to 19.

Comment: From Canada to Poland, as government sanctioned weaponised mass migration continues apace, so does the predictable (and one might say, intended) fall out; below is just a selection of incidents from the last year or so: See also: Canada's population grows by record 430,000 in Q3 - poll shows 75% of citizens unhappy with impact

And check out SOTT radio's: The Truth Perspective: Weapons of Mass Migration: Interview with Michael Springmann on Europe's Migrant Crisis


Arrow Up

NBC polling shows Trump's 'biggest lead' over Biden as it more than doubles

Trump, Biden, US 2024 election, polling
© Screenshot/X/Pro__Trading
A poll from NBC News displayed Sunday showed former President Donald Trump's "biggest lead" over President Joe Biden, more than double the lead Trump commanded from the last year the same poll was run.

NBC journalist Steve Kornacki analyzed Trump's apparent domination of Biden in recent polling from the network, displaying the former president's five-point lead during a "Meet the Press" segment.

"For the first time in November, Donald Trump pulled ahead in our poll, and now, at five points, this is the biggest lead NBC has ever had in 16 polls for Donald Trump over Joe Biden," Kornacki said.

Comment: Trump, despite all that has been thrown at him, continues to make ground.


Stock Down

Thousands of Canadian businesses could go bust

canadian business
© Getty Images / FOTOGRAFIA INC.
Thousands of small businesses in Canada face the risk of closing down after the government ended pandemic-era support last month and as interest rates are at a two-decade high, according to a Reuters report.

A surge in bankruptcies, which already jumped by 38% in the first 11 months of 2023, would weigh on the country's economic growth, lobby groups and economists cited by Reuters warn.

Businesses that took out Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) interest-free loans of C$60,000 ($44,676), which were made available during the pandemic, had until January 18 to repay them. The repayment deadline has already been pushed back several times from its original date at the end of December 2022 to give small businesses more time to get on their feet.

Small businesses, which are the source of employment for almost two-thirds of Canada's 12 million private-sector workers, are a critical segment of the country's economy. Official statistics show there were about 1.2 million small businesses in Canada in 2021, contributing over a third to the country's GDP. Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Monday that of the 900,000 businesses that had taken the government support, a fifth have not yet repaid their loans. The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses (CFIB) reportedly estimates that a quarter missed the deadline.

X

Elon Musk's 'unfathomable' pay package is null and void

elon musk
© Getty Images / ChesnotSpaceX and Tesla CEO and owner of X, Elon Musk.
A Delaware state court judge has thrown out the 2018 pay package that helped make Tesla CEO Elon Musk one of the richest people in the world.

A Tesla shareholder brought the suit, claiming the company's directors breached their fiduciary duties when they awarded Musk stock grants worth up to $55.8 billion.

Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick begins the post-trial opinion she released yesterday by posing the question, "Was the richest person in the world overpaid?" Her 200-page ruling concludes with a resounding "yes."

My main takeaways:

1. For a judge to rule on the question of whether a CEO's pay is "fair" is a huge deal

CEO pay apologists have long argued that the sky should be the limit on executive pay. In fact to claim otherwise, in their view, is downright un-American. In her decision, McCormick systematically strikes down every attempt by Tesla leaders to justify what she refers to as the "unfathomable" size of the pay package.

Star of David

Best of the Web: However bad you think Israel is, it's worse

israeli flag
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

So it turns out the IDF has been running a Telegram channel featuring homemade snuff films in which Gazans are brutally murdered by Israeli forces, captioned with celebrations of the gore and pain therein like "Burning their mother... You won't believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch." The IDF had previously denied any association with the channel, but Haaretz now reports that it was directly run by an IDF psychological warfare unit.

This is one of those many, many times where Israel is so awful that at first you're not sure what you're looking at. You think you must be misreading the report. Then you read it again and go "Oh wow, that's SO much worse than I would have guessed."

However bad you think Israel is, you can always be sure that information will come out later that proves it's even worse.



Tucker Carlson has been spotted in Moscow, generating speculation that he's there to interview President Vladimir Putin, and the liberal commentariat are losing their minds about it.

TV

CNN news team is shocked to learn that imprisoning criminals works

illegal alien beat nyc police officer
© Fox News
A short clip of a CNN news segment about the illegal aliens who beat up New York City police officers is making the rounds, and deservedly so. In it, the team sits in stunned silence after John Miller, CNN's own "Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst," explains that the gangs who terrorize New York live peacefully in Florida, where they would go to jail for the same crimes. But what's notable, too, about the clip is that Miller explains how illegal aliens are instantly hooked into crime networks upon their arrival in America.

Here's the video, which I've followed with a transcript. The relevant part begins at the 6-second mark, after Gov. Hochul stops speaking: