Weekend Deaths

Flurry of Weekend Shootings, Violence Shows Fourth Estate in Disarray

In Australia, Providence, and Los Angeles, the postmodern blame game is already making the who, what, where, when, and why hard to figure

MATT TAIBBI DEC 15

At 6:47 p.m. Sunday, Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT) — 4:47 a.m. Eastern time in the U.S. — police heard reports of shots fired at a “Hanukkah by the Sea” celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

Two gunmen killed at least 16, including a ten-year-old and a Holocaust survivor, while an additional 38 were injured. Before most Americans were awake, a 43-year-old named Ahmed al Ahmed gained international renown by tackling and disarming one of the attackers despite being “riddled with bullets.”

Within 24 hours, two more were killed and nine injured in a mass shooting at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, while famed director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered in their home, with their son Nick arrested Sunday evening and booked at 5:04 a.m. PT today.

If you were like me and away for the weekend, you likely found digging out even that handful of facts difficult. The world by midday Monday was already plunged into a cacophonous argument about the meaning of this extraordinary flurry of violence, with even the journalistic enterprises spending more time assigning blame than figuring out what happened.

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Democrats Intimidating Matt Taibbi

Jim Jordan blew the whistle on Joe Biden for this bone-chilling move to silence a journalist

Joe Biden can’t stand journalists trying to hold his failing regime accountable.

He crossed one unthinkable line to stop it from happening.

And Jim Jordan blew the whistle on Joe Biden for this bone-chilling move to silence a journalist.

He was one of the journalists tapped by Twitter CEO Elon Musk to release the Twitter Files that exposed the company’s censorship schemes and collusion with the government under its previous leadership.

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi was at the center of one of the biggest stories in the news last year and then Biden's IRS was sent to his home the very day he was testifying in Confress.

Read about it...

Matt Taibbi speaks out

In FBI Case, the First Amendment Takes Another Bizarre Hit

The same Democratic minority staff that trashed the First Amendment in last week's Twitter Files hearings put something amazing in writing in a parallel case

Stacey Plaskett and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz were a disgrace!

"Racket readers may recall that in November, shortly before the Twitter Files began, I ran an interview with Steve Friend, a onetime FBI agent who lost his career after blowing the whistle on the Bureau.

Friend refused to participate in a bureaucratic scheme to put local agents across the country in charge of J6 cases that were really being run out of the Washington office, a plan that made one Washington-based case look like a national map full of domestic terror cases popping up everywhere. He also objected to heavy-handed tactics like the use of S.W.A.T. teams for a suspect communicating voluntarily through an attorney, and the questioning of people in connection with J6 in cases where the state had little to no evidence.

A little over a week ago, the same Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government that organized the Twitter Files hearings privately heard testimony from Steve and two other FBI whistleblowers. The Democratic Party response to Steve and his colleagues was eerily similar to tactics pulled out against myself and Mike Shellenberger:

— Mike and I were not real journalists, they said, but “so-called journalists.” Steve and his fellow agents “are not, in fact, whistleblowers,” according to the minority report, and “do not meet the definition of a whistle-blower,” according to the New York Times.

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Members of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before Judiciary

Congress vs. reporters who expose censorship collusion

Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, two of the reporters responsible for writing about the Twitter Files, testified before a House Judiciary Committee Thursday decrying the “censorship-industrial complex” and talking about how anti-disinformation and free speech can’t co-exist.

Congressional Democrat attacked hard, trying to diminish the reporters’ credibility, and trying hard to get them to exposes sources.

Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D, Virgin Islands), embarrassed herself by calling Taibbi a “so-called reporter,” despite his 30-year career that included a long stint at The Rolling Stone. She also accused the men of endangering the lives of Twitter employees by exposing company corruption and collusion with the government to censor people. [Ken LaCorte]

Matt Taibbi's opening statement

Michael Shellenberger's statement

Democrats weaponizing the Twitter Files hearing

Matt Taibbi Embarrasses Democrat With His Credentials After She Attacks His Credibility

The hearing surrounding the Twitter Files has begun and Democrats are officially on the defensive. You know they’re feeling the heat because Democrats arrived at the conclusion long ago that the best defense is a good offense, and the more personal the attack the closer you are to the truth.

Virgin Islands Democrat Rep. Stacey Plaskett called him a "so-called journalist."

Delivering his response with a smile, Matt Taibbi said, “Ranking member Plaskett, I’m not a so-called journalist,” said Taibbi. “I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I’ve written 10 books including four New York Times bestsellers.”

Read about this ignorant and rude Democrat but then, most of them are.