The Shameful Role of RINOs and CINOs

 From TFP:

The Republicans have always been plagued by the so-called RINOs—Republicans In Name Only. These liberals in conservative clothing cast their votes with the other side, especially when moral issues are at stake. They take victory away from the pro-life and pro-family cause.

The Senate RINOs always include Sen. Susan Collins (Me.), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and often Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah). Nine others can now be added to this list of shame: Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.); Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis (N.C.); Sen. Shelley Capito (W.V.); Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa); Sen. Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.); Sen. Dan Sullivan (Alaska); Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio); and Sen. Todd Young (Ind.). It is worthwhile noting that Senators Blunt, Burr and Portman are leaving office in January and had nothing to lose by voting against the measure in this lame-duck session.

The shameful appearance of so many RINOs is contrasted by nary a single DINO—Democrats In Name Only. Congressional Democrats voted obediently as a bloc to codify same-sex “marriage.” There was no debate or hesitation. Iron-fisted Nancy Pelosi ruthlessly made everyone in the House toe the party line. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made sure that even wannabe DINO senators, Sen. Joe Manchin (W.V.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), voted in lockstep with the party.

No one is surprised that Democrats vote consistently with their lack of principles on important moral issues. On abortion, the Democrats have displayed a fanatical zeal to make sure the slaughter of innocents continues unabated even until birth.

Gone are the days of the blue-dog Democrats who defied their party on these vital issues. The control of elected Democratic officials is total in today’s polarized America. Favoring abortion and same-sex “marriage” is nonnegotiable for the left. (Read more.)

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Deprivation and Corporal Punishment in Childhood

 From Neuroscience News:

Children who have experienced deprivation are more likely to make more impulsive choices than those who don’t and can lead to addictions in later life – research has shown.

‘Trait impulsivity’, the preference for immediate gratification, has been linked to spending more on food, especially unhealthy, highly calorific food. Studies have shown that children who experience poverty and food insecurity tend to have a higher body-mass index as adults than those who do not.

Researchers from the School of Psychology at Aston University found a link between deprivation in childhood and impulsive behavior – leading to addictions later in life. The findings, which are a culmination of six years of research, also found a further link between impulsivity, obesity and the cost of living crisis.

Professor Richard Tunney, head of the School of Psychology at Aston University, published a study in Scientific Reports earlier this year where he showed that children who experience deprivation make more impulsive choices than children who don’t. (Read more.)

Also from Neuroscience News:

Corporal punishment can be simply defined as the “intentional infliction of physical pain by any means for the purpose of punishment, correction, discipline, instruction, or any other reason.” This violence, particularly when inflicted by a parent, evokes a complex emotional experience.

The researchers, led by Kreshnik Burani, MS, and working with Greg Hajcak, Ph.D., at Florida State University, wanted to understand the neural underpinnings of that experience and its downstream consequences. The study appears in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.

The researchers conducted a longitudinal study on 149 boys and girls ages 11 to 14 from the Tallahassee, FL, area. Participants performed a video game-like task and a monetary guessing game while undergoing continuously recorded electroencephalography, or EEG—a noninvasive technique to measure brain-wave activity from the scalp. (Read more.) 

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Guide to Table Setting Trends Through the Decades

 From Architectural Digest:

The ritual of table setting is something of a long lost art. So many of us, myself included, are ignorant to the nuances of cooking and plating, forgoing it for the convenience of food delivery. Even so, I’ve found myself noting that nothing satisfies like a well-plated, well-cooked meal—ideally, one I’ve made myself. To offset my food ordering ways, I’ve decided to research all that goes into the ideal tablescape. You read that right, tablescape.

In researching all the elements associated with table setting trends, I’ve uncovered different iterations of the perfect tablescape to figure out my own preferences. Though cheap cutlery certainly has its charm (especially when you’re on a budget), few things compare to a gracefully designed set, each piece of which sits ergonomically between your thumb and forefinger. And when you’ve finally cleared whatever home-cooked delicacies have awaited you, you’re greeted with another pleasant surprise: some beautifully crafted dishes, bone white or awash in playful motifs. Though the food has been great, the old adage “you eat with your eyes” seems to have proven itself, as the table settings have tied together another meal.(Read more.)

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Invasion

 From Jeffrey Lord:

On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) announced that he will be invoking an “invasion” clause of the U.S. and Texas Constitutions to combat President Biden’s (D) illegal immigration crisis at the U.S. southern border. The announcement comes shortly after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported that border officials had encountered more than 230,000 migrants attempting to illegally cross the southern border last month – an all-time record for October.

Additionally, CBP officials reportedly told Fox News that there were about 64,000 “gotaways” in October, meaning that more than 2,000 illegal immigrants managed to evade border patrols each day.

“I invoked the Invasion Clauses of the U.S. & Texas Constitutions to fully authorize Texas to take unprecedented measures to defend our state against an invasion,” Abbott announced on Tuesday.

“I’m using that constitutional authority, & other authorization & Executive Orders to keep our state & country safe,” he added. (Read more.)

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The Tomb of Heqaib-ankh

 From Ancient Origins:

The tomb was built to catch the rays of the rising sun in such a fashion that the place where the statue of the governor was meant to be installed was flooded with light. This discovery was made by researchers from the University of Malaga (UMA) and the University of Jaen (UJA) and has been published in the journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry . A UMA press release states that the tomb is assigned the number 33 in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa and was possibly built by Governor Heqaib-ankh. Heritage Daily reports that Qubbet el-Hawa is located on the western bank of the Nile opposite the city of Aswan. Qubbet el-Hawa was used to inter dead nobles and priests from the Old and Middle Kingdoms of ancient Egypt. The XII dynasty is said to have constituted the pinnacle of the Middle Kingdom, a period stretching from roughly 2030 BC to 1650 BC, including the reigns of the XI, XII, and XIII Dynasties.

According to Phys.org, the tomb was excavated by archaeologists from the UJA between 2008 and 2018. Since that time, it has been studied by researchers with different specializations. Professor of Architecture at the UMA, Lola Joyanes, has been associated with the project since 2015 and from 2019 she has pursued an independent line of research. She has closely studied the tomb’s architecture and landscaping, particularly by using drawing and photogrammetry. (Read more.)

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Crayke Manor

 

From Country Life:

Crayke Manor sits at the bottom of Castle Hill, immortalised by its appearance in one of our best-loved nursery rhymes. Penny Churchill takes a look at this beautiful period home. In the rolling landscape of North Yorkshire’s Howardian Hills you’ll find the historic village of Crayke, which stands on the southern slopes of Castle Hill — the hill where, back in the day, ‘the grand old Duke of York’ reputedly marched his 10,000 men up and then down again. Half a mile below the village is Grade II*-listed Crayke Manor, for sale through Savills at a guide price of £2.25m. Sympathetically renovated over the years, this charming 5,858sq ft house is set in 17½ acres of gardens, parkland, pasture and paddocks. Most recently it’s been in use as a successful wedding venue, but could easily be reconfigured as a private family home — one with truly breathtaking period interiors that really must be seen. (Read more.)

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The Covid/Crypto Connection: The Grim Saga of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried

 From Jeffrey Tucker at Brownstone Insitute:

A series of revealing texts and tweets by Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO of FTX, the once high-flying but now belly-up crypto exchange, had the following to say about his image as a do-gooder: it is a “dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.” 

Very interesting. He had the whole game going: a vegan worried about climate change, supports every manner of justice (racial, social, environmental) except that which is coming for him, and shells out millions to worthy charities associated with the left. He also bought plenty of access and protection in D.C., enough to make his shady company the toast of the town. 

As part of the mix, there is this thing called pandemic planning. We should know what that is by now: it means you can’t be in charge of your life because there are bad viruses out there. As bizarre as it seems, and for reasons that are still not entirely clear, favoring lockdowns, masks, and vaccine passports became part of the woke ideological stew. 

This is particularly strange because covid restrictions have been proven, over and over, to harm all the groups about whom woke ideology claims to care so deeply. That includes even animal rights: who can forget the Danish mink slaughter of 2020?

Regardless, it’s just true. Masking became a symbol of being a good person, same as vaccinating, veganism, and flying into fits at the drop of a hat over climate change. None of this has much if anything to do with science or reality. It’s all tribal symbolism in the name of group political solidarity. And FTX was pretty good at it, throwing around hundreds of millions to prove the company’s loyalty to all the right causes. 

Among them included the pandemic-planning racket. That’s right: there were deep connections between FTX and Covid that have been cultivated for two years. Let’s have a look. 

Earlier this year, the New York Times trumpeted a study that showed no benefit at all to the use of Ivermectin. It was supposed to be definitive. The study was funded by FTX. Why? Why was a crypto exchange so interested in the debunking of repurposed drugs in order to drive governments and people into the use of patented pharmaceuticals, even those like Remdesivir that didn’t actually work? Inquiring minds would like to know. (Read more.)

 From The Wall Street Journal:

When FTX raised $420 million from an array of big-name investors in October last year, the cryptocurrency exchange said the money would help grow the business, improve user experience and allow it to engage more with regulators.

Left unmentioned was that nearly three-quarters of the money, $300 million, went instead to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who sold some of his personal stake in the company, according to FTX financial records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the transaction.

Mr. Bankman-Fried’s cashout was large by startup-world standards, where such sales historically were taboo because they allow founders to reap profits before investors. Mr. Bankman-Fried told investors at the time it was a partial reimbursement of money he spent to buy out rival Binance’s stake in FTX a few months earlier, according to some of the people familiar with the transaction.

The deal offers a glimpse at the swirl of money between Mr. Bankman-Fried and multiple entities he controlled while his crypto business flourished, a funding stream that helped finance a burst of political donations, philanthropic commitments and a large purchase of Robinhood Markets Inc. stock in the past year.

That swirl is now under scrutiny in the sprawling bankruptcy of FTX and Alameda Research LLC, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund. FTX, which lent customer funds to Alameda, faces a funding gap of roughly $8 billion, Alameda and FTX executives have said.

John Ray, FTX’s new chief executive installed to oversee the bankruptcy, said in a court filing Thursday the process would involve the “comprehensive, transparent and deliberate investigation into claims against Mr. Samuel Bankman-Fried” and other cofounders of the entities.

The filing highlighted numerous failings, including “the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals.”

Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sale of stock in October 2021 came in the midst of a six-month fundraising blitz that ultimately brought in roughly $2 billion from investors including Sequoia Capital, funds managed by BlackRock Inc. and the Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek.

The October 2021 fundraising valued the company at $25 billion. In a press release, Mr. Bankman-Fried said he was happy “to partner with investors that prioritize positioning FTX as the world’s most transparent and compliant cryptocurrency exchange.”

The amount raised contained numerical references to marijuana and oral sex: $420.69 million raised from 69 investors. An article published by one of FTX’s investors, Sequoia, called that fundraising a “meme round,” referring to the embedded jokes.

Three months earlier, in July 2021, Mr. Bankman-Fried bought out the roughly 15% stake owned by Binance, FTX’s first outside investor. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted this month that the amount totaled $2.1 billion, paid in a combination of FTT, FTX’s in-house crypto currency, and BUSD, Binance’s stablecoin, whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar.

It couldn’t be learned where Mr. Bankman-Fried came up with the money for the Binance stake. At the time, crypto was booming and Alameda was highly profitable, Mr. Bankman-Fried has said. Those finances came under question this week from Mr. Ray, who said prior numbers were unreliable and Alameda lacked audited financials.

After the July 2021 sale, the FTX shares Binance previously owned ended up in Paper Bird Inc., according to FTX documents. Paper Bird is an entity 100% owned by Mr. Bankman-Fried, according to documents on FTX filed with Miami-Dade County, in Florida. (Read more.)

From Breitbart:

The Wall Street Journal reviewed FTX financial records and spoke with people familiar with the transaction to learn that nearly three-quarters of the money raised, $300 million, went to Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the exchange. According to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s cashout was large even by Silicon Valley startup-world standards, where such sales were historically considered unacceptable as they allowed founders to profit before investors. According to Bankman-Fried, he bought out rival Binance’s stake in FTX a few months prior to the transaction and reimbursed investors part of the money he had spent. (Read more.) 

From The Guardian:

The collapse of FTX rocked the cryptocurrency industry and reduced the paper fortune of its 30-year-old founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, from more than $15bn to almost nothing in a matter of days. FTX and its affiliates filed for bankruptcy in Delaware on 11 November, leaving an estimated 1 million creditors, although the extent of the losses is not yet fully known because of alleged poor record-keeping. The company said on Saturday that at least 101 companies around the world were part of the bankruptcy proceedings.

The exchange was the second biggest in the world until concerns over its solvency sparked a surge in withdrawals, which exposed that it did not have assets notionally worth billions of dollars that it claimed.

The company, which has been taken over by bankruptcy experts, said on Saturday it had launched a strategic review of its global assets and was preparing for the sale or reorganisation of some businesses, with the investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners hired. A hearing on FTX’s first-day motions is set for Tuesday morning before a US bankruptcy judge, according to a separate court filing.

FTX on Sunday warned that cryptocurrency stolen in the final stages of its collapse was being transferred to other exchanges. The allegedly stolen cryptocurrency was worth $270m on Sunday, according to analysts tracking the transactions. FTX asked other exchanges to help to return the assets to the bankruptcy court. (Read more.) 

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Nancy Lemann’s Shabby-Genteel

 From The Paris Review:

In the early years of the revived Vanity Fair, I happened to be in Tina Brown’s office when the conversation turned to a dispatch Nancy Lemann had just filed from the trial of Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, which Nancy, a child of New Orleans, was covering for the magazine. Tina was dissatisfied, borderline exasperated: Nowhere in the article, she complained, did Nancy specify what the trial was about, what the actual charges were, and what the criminal penalties might be; it was all mood, séance atmosphere, and sketch artistry. This was not journalism as we knew it in the halls of Condé Nast. “I’ll talk to Nancy and get her to work all this in up front,” said Pat Towers, Nancy’s editor. In Towers’s comment, I caught an echo of something I once heard Nancy sigh aloud about: an editor’s suggestions regarding her latest novel manuscript, primarily its lack of story. “I guess I’ll have to go back and put in some plot,” Nancy had said—but of course you can’t retroactively implant a plot into a body of fiction as if installing a new transmission.

Starting with her first novel, Lives of the Saints, Nancy Lemann has spread her impressions across the page in a style that calls to mind smooth, panning camera shots. Lives of the Saints, Sportsman’s Paradise, The Fiery Pantheon, Malaise (what a title, so Françoise Sagan): they’re like pre-mumblecore movies with a more interesting ensemble of neurotics, a firmer point of view, and a shapelier sense of comedy. No Lemann scene is complete without several characters in various stages of disrepair or subtle agitation, in need of flotation devices to get through the day. Although Nancy was a protégé of Gordon Lish, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Walker Percy—a heady triad of influences and personality-pluses that might have easily overloaded her circuits—her literary voice from the outset was assuredly, distinctively hers. In temperament and sensibility, she seems to me closer to F. Scott Fitzgerald than any of her mentors—or perhaps she’s Scott and Zelda rolled into one, her work suffused with a longing for a lost glamour. And she has no imitators. (Read more.)

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Ivana Trump’s NYC Townhouse

From New York Post:

The 17-room Lenox Hill compound that the late Trump called home from 1992 until her death this year has listed for sale, asking a cool $26.5 million. Adam Modlin of Modlin Group and Roger Erickson of Douglas Elliman hold the co-exclusive listing for the five-bedroom, 5½-bathroom, six-story home. Its apt grandeur is immediately visible in the listing’s marketing images. In July, the 73-year-old’s body was found at the bottom of its grand staircase.

Trump purchased the 8,725-square-foot historic limestone row house in 1992 for $2.5 million — some $5.4 million today — which was when her divorce from Donald Trump was finalized, according to the Wall Street Journal. The outlet added that the proceeds of the sale will go to the children she shared with the former president: Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka.

Highlights of the decadent interior include a leopard print-covered library — with leopard print in the wall paneling, along the carpet and even on the furniture’s upholstery, as well as a painting of two leopards playing over the sofa. That space comes complete with gold-tone moldings and window drapes.

Just off that room, there’s a pink fixture-filled bathroom where gold accents extend in the form of faucets, moldings and columns. Listing images also show a grand curved staircase, plus a Versailles-inspired dining room with gold-tone wall coverings, ornate gold moldings and a woodburning fireplace — all under a chandelier hanging from a ceiling dressed with more gilded moldings. That space also includes a smaller eat-in area fronting a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking a private interior courtyard.

On the same level as the dining room stands a living room, boldly decorated in shades of red and emerald, underneath a gold fabric ceiling from which another chandelier hangs. In her 2017 book, “Raising Trump,” Ivana described this room as “how Louis XVI would have lived if he had had money.” (Read more.)

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