EARLY EDITION: Five Quick News Stories For Your Water Cooler Chat (Mon. Feb 13)

Epstein’s list; More ‘UFOs’; prof invites suicide; SCOTUS freedom case; AT&T stock hammered

1. Epstein’s client list to be made public!

In the final batch of Epstein-related documents to be unsealed lawyers are wrestling over the particulars of the much-anticipated client lists.

Some of the people on the list have fought to have their names redacted. Others are known public figures. In all, some 167 names are on the list.

Some of the anticipated names are already known to us — Prince Andrew, for example. The list may also include the familiar names of billionaires and politicians.

It is thought that any wrangling over redactions will be worked out in the coming months.

2. More flying ‘objects’ shot down over US & Canada

Perhaps because NORAD is actively looking for them after the balloon fiasco, we have suddenly seen an uptick of unnamed ‘objects’ soaring over American and Canadian sites.

Radar has been recalibrated to acknowledge smaller and slower-moving airborne objects than what we had been previously searching the skies to detect. And we have certainly found some.

Pentagon officials have not been specific as to whether ‘objects’ these are lighter-than-air or powered flight, but several have been shot down.

Tensions and speculations are running high as this comes just days after the downing of the Chinese weather balloon and just weeks after a Chinese satellite splashed Hawaii with green laser light.

3. Yale University Econ professor recommends mass suicides

Japan has a serious problem — so many people are living longer while having fewer children, that it’s created a demographic nightmare where the old are outnumbering the young.

A Yale professor (himself Japanese) has proposed a very simple solution. Old people should kill themselves en masse. That was Yusuke Narita’s solution in 2021. He has since had an opportunity to clear the air and tell us what he really maent.

In saying he was ‘taken out of context’, he did NOT walk back his idea of old people offing themselves, claiming that euthanasia may become mandatory in the future.

4. SCOTUS case pits religious freedom against identitarian politics

The case in question is Faith Bible Chapel International (FBCI) v. Tucker.

In that case, Gregory Tucker, a chaplain at FBCI, echoed some of the familiar refrains about white privilege and systemic bias that, recently, have been specifically excluded from Florida schools on grounds that they are indoctrination rather than education.

Tucker, described as the father of a black daughter, had lectured about ‘systemic bias’ to his students, which was not received well by students, teachers, or faculty. Parents were upset that the chaplain was preaching a political rather than a religious message. Tucker went on to organized an event on the topic of racism. After meeting with them on two occasions, and continuing to openly speak out against school leadership, Tucker was relieved of his duties.

Tucker sued on the grounds that he was wrongly fired. The religious school maintains that the state has no role in deciding what a religious institution says about hiring policies concerning ministers.

5. AT&T loses $10 billion in market value since dumping NewsMax from DirecTV

On Jan 24, DirectTV dropped NewsMax, one of the few right-of-center news outlets, from their programming lineup. While not as large as other players, NewsMax remained a popular channel among right-of-center viewers, with decent ratings.

With many still stinging from 2020’s censorship of Hunter’s Laptop and how the suppression of that story flipped an election, there was a predictable backlash by those claiming this was yet another example of censorship being brought to bear against the political right.

AT&T owns 70% DirectTV. Between that time and now, stocks for AT&T have anked by $10 billion in market value, or 7 of their stock prices. By way of comparison, the S&P 500 is slightly up in that same period, and Dow Jones is down by less than 2%.