Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. The Pentagon has failed its seventh audit in a row, losing track of $2.5 trillion worth of assets. Where will Elon Musk possibly find $2 trillion of waste and fraud? Last week, the Pentagon once again failed its legally mandated annual audit, suggesting that government workers are, in fact, above the law. Now the Defense Department is promising to get its books sorted by … 2028. Which just so happens to be Donald Trump‘s last year in office. In fact, the Pentagon has never passed an audit dating back to 1990 when they were mandated by the Chief Financial Officers Act. The law gave the Pentagon until 2017—27 years—to comply, since military industrial lobbyists have a lot of friends in Congress. Nonetheless here we are 34 years later, seven years after it became legally binding, and the Pentagon can’t account for $2.5 trillion. Was it sold on eBay? Was it purloined by contractors? Is it in a slush fund for regime change and election fortification? Who knows. The Pentagon’s chief financial officer was defiant, saying that “if a report card is half good and half bad, you wouldn’t call that a failure.” After all, the Defense Department does know where some of the assets are. For example, the Pentagon building, which is marked on a map and almost impossible to give to the Taliban. It’s worth noting that if your taxes are only 37% accurate, you will not get a pass to fix it in 2028. You will be in a cage. It’s also worth noting that Enron executives did 20 years for misstating assets. WorldCom got 25 years. So, how does the Pentagon manage to lose track of so much money? Alas, we have only glimpses since it can’t pass an audit. But what we can see is hilarious. For example, an estimated $220 billion in untracked spare parts—which literally are sold on eBay, presumably for export. To give a flavor, one warehouse allegedly containing $127 million in spare parts wasn’t even listed on property records. The Pentagon didn’t know it exists. Given nobody’s watching the till, this all means military contracts can be fantastically profitable. The Defense Department famously paid $640 for toilet seat covers—inflation-adjusted $1,650. In 2018, it paid $10,000 for a toilet seat cover for C-17 cargo planes—after a public outcry, it just 3D-printed the cover for 300 bucks. Beyond premium toilet seat covers, the Pentagon’s inspector general found that officials overpaid 4,451% for airplane parts—which they probably lost. Including a washer—a metal ring for a screw—that cost $4,000. Zoom out to entire programs and it’s grim: The new F-35 fighter—obsolete because of drones—was promised at $50 million a pop, but has climbed to nearly $700 million per plane. For perspective, $700 million would replace roughly 500 railroad bridges. It would pave 10,000 miles of road, or keep a military contractor in mistresses. In case you wonder why the wars must go on. So, what’s next? In a 2014 Gallup poll, Americans estimated that 51 cents of every federal dollar spent is waste and fraud—with state governments close behind at 47 cents. If that’s true, we are wasting more than $5 trillion per year fattening leaches with wars—more than twice the entire income tax. The solution is easy: Slash the spending, fire the leeches, repeal the income tax. All it takes is translating public opinion into public policy. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Pentagon Loses Track of $2.5 Trillion appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Australia has abandoned a draconian plan to impose hefty fines on social media companies that fail to curb the dissemination of misinformation online. The government had proposed penalties of up to 5% of global revenue for these platforms but faced insurmountable opposition that made it clear the legislation would not pass through the Senate. Pro-Censorship Communications Minister Michelle Rowland highlighted the lack of support for the bill in a statement, explaining, “Based on public statements and engagements with Senators, it is clear that there is no pathway to legislate this proposal through the Senate.” This decision marked a retreat from what would have been a significant expansion of regulatory measures targeting tech giants, many of which are based outside of Australia. The proposed legislation had been framed as a way to enhance transparency and hold these companies accountable for their role in controlling harmful content. Rowland tried to argue the need for such strict measures, noting that the bill would have “ushered in an unprecedented level of transparency, holding big tech to account for their systems and processes to prevent and minimize the spread of harmful misinformation and disinformation online.” Opposition came from various quarters, including the Liberal-National coalition, the Australian Greens, and crossbench senators, all of whom rejected the government’s overreaching approach. Critics within the government’s ranks and beyond labeled the initiative as overly punitive and challenging to implement effectively. Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young described the government’s efforts as a “half-baked option” during a televised statement on the Australian Broadcasting Corp. The government’s backdown comes as it faces declining popularity ahead of a federal election expected within the next year, with recent polls showing the center-left Labor government trailing behind the conservative opposition coalition. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Australia Backs Down on Censorship Law Plan to Fine Tech Giants for “Misinformation” appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Grammy and Academy Award-winning singer-songwriter Billie Eilish spent a day in an animal rescue ahead of her “Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour” shows in Denver. Brighter Days Dog Rescue, a Boulder-based non-profit animal rescue, revealed the singer-songwriter’s surprise visit on Tuesday, November 20. “Today our pups got to spend the day showered with love from Billie Eilish and her wonderful team,” the animal rescue wrote. The animal rescue also shared that they all needed the surprise visit after a tough week of losing a dog and having another one hospitalized. “It’s so great to see an artist with such a large platform use it for good and to help the animals and the world. Keep up the good work,” the animal rescue added. During her visit, Eilish also met a rescued pony, named Samson, from the Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary. “We had a beautiful afternoon with @billieeilish and her tour family, alongside @brighterdays_rescue and the world’s sweetest puppies and kittens, who were snuggled to their heart’s content by both a perfomer and a true animal advocate,” the Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary wrote in an Instagram post. Eilish visited the animal rescue ahead of her “Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour” shows at the Ball Arena in Denver. And her surprise visit was met with positive comments from online users and fans alike. One Facebook user wrote, “I love this woman. Thank you Billie! for using your platform and such a wonderful way.” “That is awesome! Way to spread the word and the love for these animals,” another one wrote. Bilie Eilish is a known vegan and animal advocate. She has always used her huge platform to speak out against animal cruelty. She has spoken out against animal agriculture and has publicly supported political bills that benefitted animals, such as the Healthy Future Students and Earth Act. For her advocacies, she was even named PETA’s Person Of The Year in 2021.

Democrats' New Strategy - Make America Gaslit Again

Isaac Newton’s third law of motion famously states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction: If you push an object, for example, the object pushes back against you with equal force. It turns out this isn’t just a law of physics. It’s a law of politics. President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks thus far have run the gamut from traditional and well-established (Sen. Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, Rep. Mike Waltz for National Security Adviser, Chris Wright for Secretary of Energy, Brendan Carr for FCC Chairman) to the more audacious and controversial (former Rep. Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services Secretary). What they all have in common is that they represent a precise reaction to the excesses and evils of the Obama-Biden bureaucracy that has, for over a decade and half, plagued American politics. Take, as the most obvious example, Gaetz. Gaetz is charismatic and brilliant; he has been both aggressive and effective on the House Judiciary Committee. He is also, as has been widely reported, thoroughly disliked in the House of Representatives. He has been generally perceived as a destructive force, an egotist focused more on media coverage than on the functioning of the House; his defenestration of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was unpopular among his colleagues, with many believing that he pursued McCarthy vindictively based on his opposition to McCarthy’s House Ethics investigation against him. And that’s precisely why Trump is picking him. To Donald Trump, the Department of Justice has been an instrument of vindictiveness from his first days in office. From insiders in the DOJ working with the FBI to gin up the Mueller investigation to the Merrick Garland DOJ targeting him repeatedly under legally shoddy auspices, the DOJ has consistently represented resistance to his presidency. And so Trump has picked precisely the type of person he believes will clean out the agency from top to bottom. Or take RFK Jr. RFK Jr. represents a slap in the face to the traditional health establishment. He has a long record of controversial statements on everything ranging from 5G to vaccination. But he is a reaction to the overweening arrogance of a conspiratorial elite who crammed down Covid-19 misinformation on an industrial scale, told Americans that boys could become girls, attempted to wield the reins of government against their medical opponents and even tried to mandate vaccination on 80 million Americans. RFK Jr. is the natural reaction to a health policy elite who have made themselves radioactive. Trump himself has always been a form of snapback against the overreach of what came before. Barack Obama tried to remake American politics in his image: high-handed, intersectional and replete with authoritarian overtones. Trump came along and ripped the idol off his pedestal. Joe Biden tried to transform American politics by radically reinterpreting the bargain between American citizens and their government. Trump is returning to reject that never-requested transformation. Every political action has its equal and opposite reaction. No doubt the same will hold true in the future if Republicans overreach in their own way. But for the moment, it’s vital to recognize that the Trumpian backlash has been well-earned.

Donald Trump made history when he won the 2024 presidential election in a landslide. But he didn’t do it alone, and his son’s wife, Lara Trump, played a big part in making that happen. Now she’s telling Liz Wheeler of “The Liz Wheeler Show” exactly how they did it. “There were people who had kind of been identified by us prior to our first days in the office, so to speak, at the RNC, who probably didn’t necessarily need to have a job there any more,” Trump tells Wheeler. “This election, the RNC was kind of trying to be too many things, I think to too many people, and when you do that, you really can’t adequately do anything, right? You’re spreading yourself too thin,” she continues, noting that they instead decided to focus on three things. “We said we want to have a world-class convention, we want to get out the vote, and we want to protect the ballot, and we’re going to focus on just those three things, and anyone who has ideas otherwise, quite frankly, maybe this isn’t the right place for you,” Trump explains. In order to make sure this was a “free, fair, and transparent election,” Trump tells Wheeler that they made sure “that people understand someone is watching and that there will be eyes every time a vote is cast and counted.” “We had to go to every single battleground state, and we had to get local media to cover the fact that we were going to have this huge election integrity push. So we opened offices all over the country, these election integrity offices, where we actually train people in terms of what you need to look for, how to be a poll watcher or a poll worker,” she explains. Trump’s team set out a “lofty” goal to recruit 100,000 people to work in polling locations — and they ended up with 230,000 people. They also got 6,500 lawyers to identify potential problems and deal with those problems if they occurred. “Most of these people, by the way, were volunteer attorneys,” she explains, adding, “We’re obviously very pleased with our outcome.” Wheeler is impressed. “I know some of the lawyers that worked for you; almost every smart, conservative attorney that works in media and politics was part of this, which is to say a lot of very impressive people were part of this,” she says. Want more from Liz Wheeler?To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

A student at a California high school said female athletes were stabbed in the back by their administrators when they expressed concerns over boys being in their change room.During a board meeting for the Riverside Unified School District in California, an unnamed 16-year-old girl spoke out about a male athlete competing on the girls cross-country team."I run on the cross country team. So I'm constantly affected by these actions that have taken place this season," the young girl began. "I have been around the females and just my team in general who have felt almost silenced to speak out about it because the whole LGBTQ is shoved down our throats; it is put in our face."Martin Luther King High School and the school district were recently sued by two female athletes who accused them of violating Title IX along with their First and 14th Amendment rights.The girls said they were told by school officials that wearing a shirt that read "Save Girls' Sports" on the front was akin to wearing a swastika.After saying that it feels "almost impossible" for girls to speak out on this topic, the 16-year-old told the district that the school's athletic director has completely failed the students who were brave enough to say something."I went myself to have a discussion with the athletic director when nobody really felt comfortable enough to speak out. ... To see the athletic director turn around and tell my teammates that their shirts that say 'Save Girls' Sports' be compared to a swastika, that is not okay."The student continued, "These girls feel silenced. They felt silenced. And when they finally spoke out and did something to go against it and speak out, not directed towards a single person at all, they were completely stabbed in the back by the person that we were told would support us and be able to help us through this." — (@) The two girls named in the lawsuit, known by their first names Kaitlyn and Taylor, were protesting a male athlete who bumped one of the girls from their cross-country team."There's a transgender student on the team. Why am I getting displaced when I worked so hard and gone to all of the practices, and this student has only attended a few of the practices?" Taylor asked.The girls alleged that their athletic officials told them to remove or conceal their shirts and said they are creating a "hostile" environment. The athletic director was also accused of saying that wearing the shirts around a transgender student was like wearing a swastika around a Jewish student.On the school's website, the athletic director is listed as Amanda Chann; however, Chann is listed in the broader school directory as the assistant principal.Blaze News has asked the school administrators if it was indeed Chann who made the statement or if it was made by any staff member at all. At the time of this publication there had been no response from any staff member, including the principal and Chann. 'It is not okay that I have to be in a position where I'm going to practice and having to see a male in booty shorts.'During the school board meeting, the young athlete said it felt like her school and the district were "choosing to support one person instead of the whole team and the whole school.""It's not okay," she reiterated.She went on to say that Kaitlyn and Taylor were two of the nicest people she had "ever met" and that the girls have all been put in an unsafe environment."It is not okay that I have to be in a position where I'm going to practice and having to see a male in booty shorts and having to see that around me. As a 16-year-old girl, I don't find that as a safe environment. I don't at all."She added that she doesn't find it safe for her to be "seeing males" in the school locker room and bathroom. "I'm a 16-year-old girl. There's girls around me where we do not feel safe having boys in our environment, and it isn't okay. It isn't okay to have them on our team. ... It's the genetics."This article will be updated with any applicable responses from the Martin Luther King High School administrators.Neither the Riverside Unified School District nor Martin Luther King High School responded to Fox News' requests for comment earlier in the week.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

NFL Hall of Fame member Michael Irvin called the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match a "lie" that had no intentions of being a real fight.The former Dallas Cowboy sat in the second row of the Netflix-promoted event and said that in his opinion, Tyson was holding back and didn't deliver his signature uppercuts on purpose."That fight was a lie," Irvin claimed. "Everybody's lying. ... They had no intentions to really strap it on. If you look through that, I didn't see one patented uppercut by Mike Tyson. What did Mike Tyson win on? Uppercut."Irvin told the hosts of the "It Is What It Is" podcast that he had heard that Tyson agreed to a contract stipulating he couldn't hit Paul in the body and then follow it with an uppercut."Then I heard some people talking about they couldn't put that in the contract. He couldn't body and then uppercut. Like, how can you put that in a fight contract?" Irvin said.The confusing points perplexed host Mason Betha, also known as the rapper Mase, who often smiled or simply said, "Hmm ...," throughout Irvin's theory."Mike, how do you know that wasn't in the contract?" Betha said, bursting into laughter."No, it was in the contract!" Irvin replied."Who's your resource?" Betha continued, "Cite your source," he laughed."You got all these people out here, and [Tyson] couldn't body him and do that patented uppercut. Mike Tyson is not Mike Tyson anyway, and now you're taking away Mike Tyson's best gift, which is that uppercut. Man, that's a big lie to me."'If they take that away, you ain't that dude anymore.'Irvin then compared taking away Tyson's uppercut to his football days, saying that if he was forced to play a game without running a slant or deep out route, he wouldn't be able to play at his best."If they take that away, you ain't that dude anymore, and they took that away," Irvin added.Co-host Cam'ron Giles, who simply goes by Cam'ron, said his interpretation of the fight was that Tyson was getting beaten so badly he didn't want to watch it anymore."I walked out around round four," Cam'ron said, saying he was trying to avoid seeing Tyson get knocked out. "I just went to my car and smoked." Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images for Netflix © 2024Irvin, however, had another theory up his sleeve. "Somebody asked Mike why he kept biting his glove," the former wide receiver began. "I think he was trying not to kill the dude. That's what crazy people do," Irvin claimed."It's a tick ... he never threw the uppercut."Irvin has seemingly already been disproven on this topic, though. Not only did Netflix announcer Mauro Ranallo cite during the broadcast that Tyson has a history of biting his glove, Tyson also claimed after the fight that he has a "biting fixation."The latter is a hilarious reference to when he bit boxer Evander Holyfield's ear in 1997.At the same time, there exists video evidence of Tyson doing the same glove bite as far back as at least 2020 against Roy Jones Jr. However, one could allege the same claim as Irvin about that fight, since that fight was an exhibition, as well."I'm happy he got every dime, or whatever it is. I want him to get his money. I just wanted him to free the beast," Irvin concluded.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Baldur's Gate 3 proved that what was once old can be made new again, as Larain's follow-up to the beloved RPG series quickly took over Steam and continues to thrive over a year post-launch. Dark Souls, meanwhile, proved that challenge, and how that puts players through immense hurdles, can work in favor of a game's design instead of against it. Put those two games together, and you've got Alaloth. This RPG might look like the classics on the surface, but underneath there's so much more to it. Best of all, it just launched into Steam 1.0 with a sale, and there's more planned for 2025. Continue reading Dark Souls meets Baldur’s Gate in Alaloth, as the RPG finally comes to 1.0 MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best soulslike games, Best RPGs, Best old games

Half-Life, Counter-Strike 2, and Fallout. These are slower-paced shooters, where you need to count your bullets, watch your step, and take down enemies methodically and cautiously. I like this kind of high-pressure, knife-edge action, but sometimes you just want to cut loose. Doom Eternal is a great, relatively recent example. Embellishing the spirit of id Software’s peerless original, it’s all about speed and aggression, a boiling, bloody ballet that challenges you to kill fast and kill lots. Such is the style of one of 2024’s best-loved Steam FPS games. You may not have heard of it, but it’s got almost spotless reviews and a new, free expansion that adds nine fresh levels. This is I Am Your Beast. Continue reading Brutal, 99% rated Steam FPS game gets huge free expansion with nine new levels MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best FPS games, Best indie games, Best PC games