Day: December 2, 2022

THINK ABOUT TAKING ANOTHER FLIGHT! Air marshals warn that Biden’s handlers are ‘demolishing our chances to stop another 9/11’

Sonya Labosco of the Air Marshal National Council urges the Biden White House to fall back on a policy that sends air marshals to the U.S. southern border this holiday season.

Dan Ball: Rep. Brian Babin, Air Marshals Moved To Border To Manage Crisis, 12/1/22

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/12/air-marshals-warn-that-bidens-handlers-are-demolishing-our-chances-to-stop-another-9-11;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Are Biden’s handlers criminally incompetent, or do they actually want to bring disaster and ruin upon the United States?

“Air marshals sound an alarm about being sent to border: ‘Demolishing our chances to stop another 9/11,'” by Elizabeth Heckman, Fox News, November 28, 2022:

The executive director of the Air Marshal National Council delivered a clear message to the Biden administration Monday, warning that air travel is becoming less safe as marshals are diverted to the border.

Sonia Labosco joined “Fox & Friends First” to call on the Biden administration to stop sending air marshals to the southern border and return them to their duties patrolling commercial flights.

“We have been decimated. We have been depleted. We’re on less than 1% of flights. These ground-based duties that they’re pulling us out of the sky to go to the border are just demolishing our chances at stopping another 9/11.”

Labosco said Americans will suffer because many believe they’re safe in the presence of a trained air marshal, but “they’re just simply not.”

Labosco said marshals feel “torn” about being at the southern border while not doing the job they were trained to do.

“They have a humanitarian heart. We empathize with what’s happening at the border as human beings. However, it does not take away the responsibility or the oath that we have as air marshals to protect our aviation domain.”

Labosco said she has not heard back from the Biden administration after voicing concerns over recent safety risks on flights.

“We actually wrote him another letter over the weekend because we had a level four and a level three incident. Level four means that they tried to breach the cockpit. Level three, we had two of those, which means there were life-threatening behaviors on one of those aircraft. An individual had a straight razor to a passenger’s throat. So these are very serious incidents.”

The Air Marshal National Council is “calling on the president and DHS Secretary Mayorkas, to please stop this deployment of air marshals from the aircraft and reallocating them to the border,” said Labosco….

Florida Pulls $2 Billion in Investments From BlackRock Over ESG “Social Engineering Project”

Florida Pulls $2 Billion in Investments From BlackRock Over ESG “Social Engineering Project”

BY JAMES MURPHY

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/florida-pulls-2-billion-in-investments-from-blackrock-over-esg-social-engineering-project/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The globalist movement to insist that corporations do business according to how well they align with left-wing ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) scores received some pushback from another American state on Thursday. Florida’s CFO announced that the state was pulling $2 billion in investments from the behemoth investment management company BlackRock, largely over its commitment to valuing ESG scores in its business dealings.

Recall that several states, including West Virginia, Texas, and Idaho, have already pushed back against banks and corporations such as BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo for using ESG scores to determine, among other things, the creditworthiness of states.

Now, Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis has announced that the Sunshine State is backing away from ESG promoter BlackRock, promising a $2 billion dollar divestment from the globalist company.

“Using Florida’s cash to fund BlackRock’s social-engineering project isn’t something we signed up for. It’s got nothing to do with maximizing returns and is the opposite of what an asset manager is paid to do. We’re divesting from BlackRock,” Patronis tweeted.

Patronis further laid out his case in a statement:

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is on a campaign to change the world. In an open letter to CEOs, he’s championed ‘stakeholder capitalism’ and believes that ‘capitalism has the power to shape society.’ To meet this end, the asset management company has leaned heavily into Environmental, Social, and Governance standards — known as ESG — to help police who should, and who should not gain access to capital.

Indeed, Fink’s open letter could have been written by Klaus Schwab himself:

In today’s globally interconnected world, a company must create value for and be valued by its full range of stakeholders in order to deliver long-term value for its shareholders…. The pandemic has turbocharged an evolution in the operating environment for virtually every company.

But Patronis has the same questions a lot of people have about what Schwab and Fink refer to as “stakeholder capitalism.”

“Whether stakeholder capitalism, or ESG standards, are being pushed by BlackRock for ideological reasons, or to develop social credit ratings, the effect is to avoid dealing with the messiness of democracy,” the Florida CFO pointed out. “I think it’s undemocratic of major asset managers to use their power to influence societal outcomes. If Larry, or his friends on Wall Street, want to change the world — run for office. Start a non-profit. Donate to the causes you care about.”

A statement from BlackRock accused Patronis of valuing politics over the performance of funds: “We are disturbed by the emerging trend of political initiatives like this that sacrifice access to high-quality investments and thereby jeopardize returns, which will ultimately hurt Florida’s citizens. Fiduciaries should always value performance over politics.”

But isn’t that exactly what ESG is doing? Valuing ideology over performance? Using a corporation’s or a government’s commitment to left-wing values such as climate-change action, abortion availability, and transgender rights as a means to determine something that should be as black and white as creditworthiness would certainly make it seem so.

And it’s not some future “what if” scenario — it’s already happening.

“The ESG rating methodology that S&P has implemented to ‘provide additional disclosure and transparency’ when evaluating creditworthiness appears to be nothing more than a subjective way to penalize Idaho and other states for their political priorities,” said Idaho Treasurer Julie Ellsworth in May.

If financial companies are already using ESG scores to determine the creditworthiness of states and corporations, how long will it be until individual consumers are asked to take a “loyalty oath” to purchase a new car?

Ask the nation of Sri Lanka or Dutch farmers how their governments’ very high ESG scores have worked out for them.

According to Patronis, Florida will no longer play BlackRock’s ESG game:

Using our cash, however, to fund BlackRock’s social-engineering project isn’t something Florida ever signed up for. It’s got nothing to do with maximizing returns and is the opposite of what an asset manager is paid to do. Florida’s Treasury Division is divesting from BlackRock because they have openly stated they’ve got other goals than producing returns.

Disney Animated Film Featuring First Openly Gay Main Character

Disney Animated Film Featuring First Openly Gay Main Character BOMBS at Box Office

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/culture/rick-moran/2022/12/01/disney-animated-film-featuring-first-openly-gay-main-character-bombs-at-box-office-n1650002;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

A Disney animated film released over the Thanksgiving weekend ended up being a total bomb at the box office. The film, Strange World, brought in an anemic $18.6 million during its five-day opening, the second-worst Disney opening in history. Only the pandemic-era release of West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg, performed worse, according to Variety.

Disney was expecting a $30-$40 million opening.

Strange World was billed as the first Disney movie to include an openly gay main character. Why the woke folk at Disney thought this was a selling point for a “family movie” is beyond me.

Nevertheless, Disney assembled an all-star voice cast including Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Lucy Liu, and Gabrielle Union and gave the film a budget of  $180 million.

Variety reports that the film is now expected to lose $120 million. “Normally this time of year, a Disney family film is the big draw,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior Comscore analyst, told Variety. “It shows we’re still recovering and adapting to the constraints of the pandemic.”

Right. Let’s blame the pandemic for Disney’s stupidity.

NRO:

As with other recent Disney animated movies including Lightyear (another disappointing box office flop), Strange World sought to crowbar progressive causes into the film, including for the first time in Disney’s history an openly gay main character. However, one liberal movie reviewer said Disney would likely use homophobia to shield it from the film’s obvious shortcomings.

Indeed, for a big-budget movie released to kick off the Christmas season, Strange World did not get the full Disney marketing treatment. This, more than the main character, who is gay, probably contributed to the bad opening.

But the gay character definitely played a role.

Overseas grosses may not provide much of a lifeline. “Strange World” was similarly jilted at the international box office with $9.2 million from 43 markets. Like most Hollywood films, it won’t play in China or Russia, two major international markets, due to geopolitical tensions. Beyond that, Disney opted to not submit “Strange World” to several smaller markets, including the entire Middle East, Malaysia and Indonesia, because the movie features a gay character. Films with LGBTQ references have been regularly targeted by censors in those territories and Disney wasn’t willing to cut out parts of the movie to comply with their guidelines.

One dad reports that his kid wanted to leave about 10 minutes into the showing.

In short, the movie failed in its primary objective: to entertain the audience. Will the return of former Disney CEO Bob Iger fix what’s broken at Disney?

Disney’s latest flop comes on the heels of the return of its iconic former CEO Bob Iger who is expected to turn around the ailing company after suffering several financial setbacks. Iger is taking over for Bob Chapek, who openly embraced progressive social causes while leading the media company, drawing the ire of Governor Ron DeSantis and fellow Florida Republicans.

Disney+, the company’s touted streaming service, has lost more than $8 billion since it first launched three years ago.

Oh, yeah. Let’s say it all together: “Get Woke. Go Broke.”