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LogocideOne of the distinguishing features of authoritarian societies is the language becomes lifeless and dull. At the same time, the public space is filled with the language of the authoritarian ruling system. The people at the top give long arid speeches and their propaganda organs fill the spaces in between with official noise. Fidel Castro would give speeches that lasted half a day. Stalin would deliver long harangues to the Party Congress for no other reason than to fill the room with words. In America, this started to creep in after the Cold War. Bill Clinton would give long speeches...

Josh Homme’s legal team wanted five day jail sentence for Brody Dalle after criminal contempt conviction By Louder about 11 hours ago Brody Dalle escapes jail, receives community service sentence for her criminal contempt conviction stemming from custody battle The Distillers leader Brody Dalle has been ordered to undertake 60 hours of community service and fined $1,000 in a Los Angeles courtroom, as a sentence for her conviction for criminal contempt arising from her bitter custody battle with her former husband, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme. Rolling Stone reports that Homme’s lawyers had called for his ex-wife...

President Biden declared Tuesday during an event in Minnesota that he "used to drive" a tractor-trailer – a claim the White House has struggled to defend in the past. Biden repeated the debunked claim during a trip to Dakota County Technical College in Rosemount, Minnesota, to tout the newly passed bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Listen to this article 0:00 / 3:15 1X BeyondWords A new book about Hunter Biden's infamous laptop reveals that Hunter and his therapist exchanged text messages in 2019 joking about President Biden having dementia. "Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide" by Fox News contributor and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine hit the bookshelves on Tuesday, a little over a year after Biden's laptop was first reported on and censored by Big Tech. A few months before Joe Biden launched his presidential campaign, Hunter Biden was exchanging text messages with...

For the first time in recorded history, India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has fallen below replacement level, meaning the countries’ people are no longer producing children fast enough to replace the past generation and the net population growth will be negative. The finding, which was part of the National Family Health Survey released this week, is a huge milestone for India and its ongoing struggle against the rapidly growing population, which is set to overtake China as the most populous within the decade. The TFR represents the average number of births per woman, and for reference, the UK has a...

Chris Cuomo could return to CNN as early as next month following his suspension for secretly helping his brother, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, try to counter the sexual harassment scandal that made him quit, the network’s chief media correspondent predicted. During an appearance on CNN’s “New Day” program Wednesday, Brian Stelter said it was a “complicated situation” because despite widespread outrage, “a lot of viewers … love Chris Cuomo and they want to see him back on the air.” “I think the bottom line is, [Chris] Cuomo is on the bench for now,” he said.

Click on the image to watch the full versionTranscript of Riccardo Bosi's warning ["No consent. No consent. No consent"]Q is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation.Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding 'mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased...

To make sense of the current war on the family—and make no mistake, there is one—we must travel back to early 20th-century revolutionary Russia and then pass by Hungary on our way home. Because, odd as it may seem, recent snapshots from across our nation are all related. The Department of Justice targets parents for challenging the school’s racialist curriculum. Police officers arrest a dad after he exposes that his daughter was raped in her school’s bathroom by a boy in a skirt. A politician declares, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” These scenarios...

'Tis the season for McDonald's to bring back a fan favorite sweet treat: the Holiday Pie. The dessert has returned to menus in "select regions" across the United States, the company confirmed. McDonald's has released the festive pastry for the past 10 years, but the areas of availability vary. Fans have spotted the pies in places including Oregon, Illinois and Texas so far this year. According to the chain, the Holiday Pie is a "mouthwatering pastry" that's filled with vanilla custard and baked in a buttery crust (similar in shape to its rectangular apple pie) and topped with rainbow sprinkles....

A Playboy model was kicked out of a mall after she stripped down and used just body paint to dress as the nutcracker. Francia James, 31, who has wracked up over nine million followers on Instagram under the username @francety, stood in the middle of a shopping center in only her underwear and some paint, as she gave out nuts to people passing by - and her outfit, or lack there of it, eventually led to her being asked to leave. The model, originally from Manizales, Colombia, but now living in Miami, Florida, re-created the famous Christmas character using only...

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VIDEOSleepy Joe's nominee for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Dale Ho, was caught blatantly lying under oath before the U.S. Senate. If there is at least one Democrat Senator who thinks lying to the Senate is disqualifying to serve as a judge, then his nomination is toast. Oh, and Sleepy Joe can convincingly claim that he wasn't even aware of Ho's existence since he can say he just signed a piece of paper his handlers put in front of him without him knowing what was even on it.

South Africa’s coronavirus cases have doubled in a 24-hour period following the first detection of the omicron variant in the country last week. Authorities said there were 8,561 news cases recorded in South Africa on Wednesday, up from 4,373 on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported. Although it is too early to tell if the surge is due to the omicron variant, scientists say it is possible the new strain could be a factor.

A new strategy to reduce the spread of COVID-19 employs a mobile robot that detects people in crowds who are not observing social-distancing rules, navigates to them, and encourages them to move apart. Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy of the University of Maryland, College Park, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 1, 2021. Previous research has shown that staying at least two meters apart from others can reduce the spread of COVID-19. Technology-based methods—such as strategies using WiFi and Bluetooth—hold promise to help detect and discourage lapses in social distancing. However, many such approaches require...

President Joe Biden tried to distance himself from supply chain disruptions this Christmas, telling Americans on Wednesday he was not responsible for any problems. “I can’t promise that every person will get every gift they want on time,” Biden said. “Only Santa Claus can keep that promise.” Biden argued that shortages for some goods around Christmas were normal, citing the Cabbage Patch Kids doll shortage in the 1980s and also the shortage of Beanie Babies in past years. The president downplayed reports of reduced supplies of goods for Americans shopping for the holidays. “Here’s the deal. For the vast majority...

The Safeway grocery store at 2020 Market Street is a case study, not just for the recent concerns regarding retail theft in San Francisco, but issues around food accessibility, policing and poverty. The longstanding store in the Castro neighborhood was one of the few major grocery stores that stayed open 24 hours, providing a place for people who work the night shift to do their shopping and parents to make middle-of-the-night runs for children's medicine. But Safeway announced in late October it was cutting its hours to close at 9 p.m. because of an alleged “increasing amount of theft” at...

The Biden-Harris administration on Monday opened an investigation into retailers, and not itself, to scrutinize the supply chain crisis. The probe is a repeated strategy from November when the administration opened a Department of Justice probe into oil companies for allegedly “gouging people.” The investigations into private companies is an Obama-era tactic deployed to displace blame on failed administrative policies to the private sector.

...Now that the Covid-19 pandemic has been with us for close to two years and vaccines for almost one, we have learned that the vaccines work to a degree and that they have both known serious risks and theorized potential risks. Over the last few months, Americans have been increasingly facing demands that they be vaccinated or revaccinated—from governments, schools, employers, shopkeepers, even relatives. These demands include legally enforceable “mandates” that coerce Americans to choose between compliance with vaccination demands and their livelihoods, attending school, travel, and partaking in manifold occasions of civic and religious celebration. Some Americans feel that...

Yesterday in our “Picks” section we linked to Christopher Caldwell’s terrific CRB essay “France on the Verge of Civil War,” which was a deep dive into the rise of Eric Zemmour on the French political scene. The controversial Zemmour has rocked to the top of the early polls ahead of the presidential election scheduled for next spring, leaping ahead of Marine Le Pen, the previous outsider candidate from the right. Today Zemmour released a video declaring his candidacy for president, and I’ve heard comparisons (including from a French student in my political science class this semester) comparing it to Charles...

Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who came within striking distance of winning the Georgia governor’s mansion in 2018, announced on Wednesday that she would run once again to be the state's chief executive. Abrams has been expected for months to launch a second bid for governor. No other Democrat has entered the Georgia gubernatorial race and with Abrams’s announcement on Wednesday, it’s unlikely that any other candidate will seek the party’s nomination.