Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of Congress on Thursday and received several bipartisan standing ovations as he thanked the U.S. Congress for their generosity.
With the $45 billion of proposed spending on Ukraine in the $1.7 trillion omnibus government funding bill, the total given to Mr. Zelenkyy’s government since Russia’s unprovoked invasion will be north of $100 billion. In less than a year. With zero congressional oversight.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives received billions of dollars in secret loans from the crypto mogul’s Alameda Research, the hedge fund’s former chief told a judge in her guilty plea for her role in the exchange’s collapse.
Caroline Ellison, former chief executive of Alameda Research, said she agreed with Bankman-Fried to hide from FTX’s investors, lenders and customers that the hedge fund could borrow unlimited sums from the exchange, according a transcript of her Dec. 19 plea hearing that was unsealed on Friday.
“We prepared certain quarterly balance sheets that concealed the extent of Alameda’s borrowing and the billions of dollars in loans that Alameda had made to FTX executives and to related parties,” Ellison told U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan federal court, according to the transcript.
Holy Crap.
More … Chief executive of FTX sister company pleads guilty to seven offences
Practically everybody loves babies — unless they’re nepo babies, that is. The trendy social media term blasted into full-fledged controversy after New York magazine dubbed 2022 the “year of the nepo baby.”
The term, which is short for “nepotism babies,” refers to children of celebrities who have become famous themselves. As it turns out, there’s a lot of them. When it comes to getting a job, it’s often about who you know; but in the entertainment industry, it’s really about who your parents are.
An activist who’s also a licensed therapist based in Philadelphia shared this video on IG stories which calls for violence against political opponents pic.twitter.com/qmie5Zx2eL
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 23, 2022
Welcome back! I hope you enjoy the night’s offerings. Put your faves in the comments and we’ll play them ASAP.
Thanks.
Vivaldi Four Seasons: Winter – from Norman In New York
And also … Ang Pasko ay Sumapit • Teatro Pilipino Choir
The Kinks – Father Christmas – from canminuteman
And also … Pretenders – 2000 Miles
Frank Sinatra – The Christmas Waltz – from Kiki982
And also … Who Put The Stump
And … Paul Harvey ~ A Christmas Story: The Man And The Birds
And … Alabama – Christmas In Dixie
Also … Andrea Bocelli, Céline Dion – The Prayer
Plus … The Twelve Pains Of Christmas – Twisted Christmas
Sixpence None The Richer – Angels We Have Heard On High – from PaxCan
And also … Cocteau Twins – Winter Wonderland
Former New York Post editor Emma-Jo Morris describes how Twitter suppressed her story
Two of the week’s biggest news stories are unfolding in hermetically sealed chambers.
The left half of the country, and the international press, is aghast at the criminal referrals from the January 6 Committee, while the right ignores the panel’s findings as a foregone conclusion, part of a witch hunt against Donald Trump.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled 5,000 miles wanting Congress to give him $45 billion but more so wanting not to ask for it.
The charismatic Ukrainian leader insisted, “Your money is not charity.” Who called truth the first casualty of war?
The aid package requested amounts to 30 percent of Ukraine’s prewar gross domestic product and likely all of its 2023 military expenditures. It roughly equals the entire annual economy of Vermont or Wyoming. Zelenskyy wants to transfer a lot of money from the U.S. economy to the Ukrainian economy, and he does not even need to fire the prosecutor to make it happen.
The 28-year-old pulled a knife on four passengers on a high-speed train in the southern state of Bavaria last November. The trial focused on whether his attack was motivated by Islamic extremism or schizophrenia.
… Presiding judge Jochen Boesl rejected a defense of mental illness on the basis of seven expert evaluations and identified a jihadist motive for the crime.
Boesl said the defendant had frequently listened to radio programs “with Islamist content” and from May 2021 “at the latest” began envisioning “taking part in jihad, or armed combat.”
“These views led him to this act,” Boesl said. “He wanted to kill non-Muslim passengers because they were in his view non-believers and thus had no right to live.”
While the government of Turkey continues to crush the basic human rights and freedoms of its citizens, its officials are making statements completely detached from facts. On October 17, for instance, the head of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Çağatay Kılıç said that “racism and discrimination against religious identities in Europe have reached a peak.”
“A human being is an entity with thoughts, feelings, beliefs and social networks,” he added. “If a person is not allowed to live with these characteristics, this person’s fundamental rights and freedoms are taken away from them.”
A convicted Jihadi and disciple of Anjem Choudary has been cleared by a jury of brandishing a sharpened toilet brush while protesting about ‘racist prison staff’.
Kazi Islam, 26, was being held in HMP Rochester in Kent when he climbed a wall to demand a move to another jail.
A Christmas carol by a Nazi poet loyal to the regime is still in the Protestant hymnal. Now, there is a discussion about removing the song by Hermann Claudius in the next edition.
Christianity and its customs were a thorn in the side of the National Socialists. After all, it was not Jesus Christ who was to be celebrated as the savior, but the “Führer” Adolf Hitler. Germans were supposed to place their faith and hope in him alone during the Christmas season. The Nazi regime made every effort to replace the Christian Christmas ideal with a nationally oriented, National Socialist Christmas cult.
In that crusade, Christmas carols also became the focus of the Nazis. All connections between the Christian faith and Judaism were to be obliterated. During the Nazi era, even the lyrics of popular Christmas carols were rewritten. Jewish names such as Jesse or Isaiah disappeared from “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” (“A Rose Has Burst Into Bloom,” also known as “Behold a Rose of Judah”) — standard repertoire on Christmas Eve — and entire lines were completely replaced. Songs like “Tochter Zion, freue dich” (“Daughter of Zion, Rejoice!”) and “Zu Bethlehem geboren” (“In Bethlehem is Born”) were banned altogether.
Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was spotted early Friday arriving at his parents’ Palo Alto, California, home where he will remain under house arrest after being released on a record $250 million bond.
Two vehicles were seen pulling up to Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried’s residence located in an exclusive neighborhood on the edge of Stanford University’s campus at around 4:30 a.m.
A Stanford campus police vehicle was seen outside the home, where the accused cryptocurrency fraudster will be spending his time with mom and dad, both law professors.
Podcast mega star Joe Rogan blasted people who have put transgenders in a “protected class,” and won’t even refer to them by their biological sex, even if they are rapists and murderers. “What the fuck are we doing” Rogan asked.
WTF?