by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense: This is the 12th extension of the liability shield for COVID-19 countermeasures since January 2020, when HHS declared a public health emergency under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, or PREP Act. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) extended liability protection to COVID-19 vaccine makers and […]

Legendary Hollywood star Dick Van Dyke described the harrowing escape he and his wife Arlene made from the fire raging in Malibu in southern California this week. Speaking to NBC News, the 98-year-old actor said they were able to get their animals and themselves safely away from the wind-driven Franklin fire thanks to some neighbors who he said saved his life. “I wasn’t ready. This time I messed up … I have a fire hose that hooks up to my pool, and shoots like a 70-foot stream of water,” the actor said. “Well, I wasn’t ready. I went out.” “It was snarled, and I’m out there laying on the ground trying to undo this fire hose, and the fire’s coming over the hill,” he added. “What I did was exhaust myself. I forgot how old I am, and I realized I was crawling to get out. It was coming from over the hill, you could see it.” Dick Van Dyke says neighbors “saved me” during the Malibu wildfires. He had to evacuate his home a few days before his 99th birthday. “I was trying to crawl to the car. I had exhausted myself. I couldn’t get up. Three neighbors came and carried me out and came back and put out… pic.twitter.com/HJBOe46XyE — Variety (@Variety) December 12, 2024 “I was trying to crawl to the car. I had exhausted myself and couldn’t get up. Three neighbors came and carried me out and came back,” the screen legend continued. ““[They] got me out of here, or I wouldn’t have done it. I don’t think I would have made it. They also came back, and my little guest house had started to flame up in the back. They put that out. So they saved my life and my house.” CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE In a post earlier this week on Facebook, Van Dyke said he and his wife had safely evacuated their homes after the blaze swept through the area. “Arlene and I have safely evacuated with our animals except for Bobo [their cat] escaped as we were leaving,” the famed actor, who turns 99 on December 13, wrote. “We’re praying he’ll be OK and that our community in Serra Retreat will survive these terrible fires,” he added. The brush fire started around 11 p.m. on Monday night and thanks to the strong Santa Ana winds, had burned 4,037 acres and was just 7% contained, as of Thursday morning, NBC News noted. Actor Jane Seymour, Cher, and other celebrities were also impacted by the fire.   “While the Franklin Fire continues to burn in Malibu and has gotten extremely close to our home, we remain evacuated and we are safe,” Seymour wrote on Instagram Wednesday, along with sharing pictures showing the flames close to her home. “To everyone fighting the flames and keeping us safe, thank you. Your courage is extraordinary.” A publicist for Cher, Liz Rosenberg, told the Associated Press that the singer/actress had left her home as ordered and was staying in a hotel. Barbara Streisand also has a home in the area and a spokesperson for her told The New York Times she didn’t have to evacuate yet. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Related: Cher, Dick Van Dyke And Other Celebs Forced To Evacuate Homes Amid Malibu Fire

San Francisco police identified the man accused of assassinating United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last week several days before he was caught at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. The news comes as authorities claimed that 26-year-old Luigi Mangione was not previously on law enforcement’s radar when he was arrested on Monday after a customer at the fast food restaurant recognized him based on photos that had been released by police last week. Sources told the San Francisco Chronicle that an officer in the San Francisco Police Department’s Special Victims Unit recognized Mangione on December 5 as being the person in the photos released by law enforcement. The officer recognized him because his family contacted the department to report that he had gone missing after they had not heard from him for several months. The unit reported his identity to the FBI on December 5, the report said, the very day that the photos were released. It was not clear how the information was passed to the FBI or if the FBI received or acted upon it, the report added. The New York Times reported late on Thursday that the suspect disappeared from family and friends over the summer after deciding to go on a lengthy trip to Asia. CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE During the trip he reportedly expressed alarm over how people have become over reliant on things like smart phones and social media, the report said. He also bemoaned capitalism and loved the writings of terrorist Ted Kaczynski, commonly known as the “Unabomber.” Authorities found a notebook on him after he was arrested that included a passage where the writer mentions taking out “the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention.” Thompson was gunned down in Midtown Manhattan on December 4 while he was on his way to the UnitedHealth Group’s Investor’s Conference. “It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” Mangione allegedly wrote in the notebook. The suspect considered using a bomb but wrote in his notebook that it “could kill innocents,” CNN reported. According to authorities, Mangione was also in possession of a 262-word manifesto where he allegedly called out “United” and wrote, “To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone.” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on Wednesday that a water bottle and Kind snack bar wrapper recovered by police near the crime scene contained fingerprints that match those of Mangione. Tisch also noted that three shell casings recovered at the scene of the crime matched the homemade gun found on Mangione when he was arrested. The 9mm shell casings from the scene of Thompson’s assassination had the words “delay,” “deny,” and “depose” written on them, according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny. It was initially reported that the words on the shell casings were “defend,” “deny,” and “depose” before police clarified. Zach Jewell contributed to this report. 

As kids, we loved watching Kevin McCallister booby trap his family’s house in Home Alone, subsequently torturing Harry and Marv. Even when we were young, we could tell the McCallisters had some money saved up somewhere to afford such nice digs. As adults, our curiosity grew. Not only do we wonder what the heck they did for a living, but a lot of us wonder what the mortgage would be on a house so spectacular. Well, we have an idea for the first time in over a decade. The iconic Home Alone house in Winnetka, IL, wants a new owner. It’s changed a lot since the 1990s, but one thing is for sure, its value has skyrocketed. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The High Society (@thehighsociety) The “Home Alone” House Has A Hefty Price Tag Today, the house at 671 Lincoln Avenue is listed on Zillow for $5.25 million. It certainly comes with plenty of perks, but don’t go looking for wallpaper and a familiar red and green color pallet. Instead, the Home Alone house looks more modern today, decorated with neutral tones. The listing shows a whopping 9,126 square feet and features five bedrooms and six baths. The gigantic home offers two laundry rooms, double islands in the kitchen, an indoor theatre, and an indoor basketball court. It’s truly a site to see. The High Society shared an Instagram video tour, and fans had mixed reactions. This person is ready to move in. “Beautiful. I wish I could afford it because that’s also my favorite movie for Christmas.” But this one didn’t like the changes. “Wow, they destroyed it. It’s so cold and uninviting. It was so warm and welcoming. They took a family home and turned it into a group home.” But it appears the opinions don’t matter. According to Zillow, the Home Alone house sale is pending. The Wet Bandits are not included. This story’s featured image is by Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images. The post The “Home Alone” House Hit The Market For A Staggering Price—And It’s Been Completely Renovated appeared first on InspireMore.

Thursday's Final Word

After Trump’s convincing election victory last month, the PBS News Hour is finding its far-left feet again. On Tuesday night it treated a silly left-wing study from a discredited lefty scaremongering outfit as a disturbing revelation about Trump-fueled misogyny, based on some tasteless playground humor being spread around the internet for shock value. Anchor Amna Nawaz: After last month's election, researchers documented a stunning rise in misogynistic rhetoric and attacks. Laura Barron-Lopez is here now with a conversation about what's behind that surge and how experts are combating it. Thank goodness the “experts” (i.e. censorious left-wing academics) are on the scene. Laura Barron-Lopez: In just a 24-hour period after Election Day, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue tracked a 4600 percent increase in mentions of the terms, "Your body, my choice" and "Get back in the kitchen" on the social media platform X....One post by far-right activist Nick Fuentes has been viewed nearly 100 million times. But the misogyny is not just online. For more on this trend and efforts to fight it, I'm joined by Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University and director of the school's Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, or PERIL....help us unpack this increase. What exactly did we see in this rise in misogynistic attacks online right after the election? Seriously? A 4,600 percent increase? In a 24-hour period right after the election? And if the Left responds with massive online outrage and protest as it cites the term, isn't that included in the "volume of mentions"?  As always with the left, it all came down to the issue of no-limit abortion. Cynthia Miller-Idriss: ....what we saw right around the election, leading up to the election with a candidate who was a woman, a woman of color, and then the reproductive rights that were also sort of at the heart of the election in many ways was a celebration in many ways by some young men who were viewed — whose posts were viewed many, many millions of times, of this reclaiming of power over women and power over women's bodies. Miller-Idriss at American University's PERIL has previously linked going to the gym with far-right extremism, delivered two underwhelming anecdotes.  Miller-Idriss: Well, we have seen a lot of reports and heard a lot of reports, including in our lab, from schools and universities, even from an elementary school, whose -- a parent who reached out to me and said her 10-year-old daughter had heard a boy chant at her, "Your body, my choice." I mean, it's unclear if he even knows what he's saying, but he knows that it's a sort of slur and an insult to say that. We had a man walking around a college campus in Texas holding up a sign that said "Women Are Property," and we have had other kinds of chants of "Go back to the kitchen" and sort of threats to women in their bodies on college campuses across the country. Were playground insults and some oddball holding a sign on a college campus truly worth an entire taxpayer-funded news segment? One wonders where this concern for campus propriety was during the actual violence of the pro-Hamas rallies last spring. The whole segment boiled down to two liberal prudes wringing their hands about insults on the online playground, as if it meant anything in real life. Barron-Lopez: Does posting misogynistic content, is that a predictor of future actions? Miller-Idriss: It's not a direct predictor. You can't sort of draw a one-to-one correspondence. But we know that the biggest predictor of support for political violence right now or of willingness to engage in it, or among the top three predictors, depending on the survey, is misogyny or hostile sexism.... Barron-Lopez: Does it drive actions such as domestic violence at all? Miller-Idriss: It does drive actions like domestic and intimate partner violence and also other forms of stalking, harassment, rape threats, sexual assault. And those things are also predictors and underpinners of mass violence…. Miller-Idriss had previously teamed up on a report with the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, which took the side of radical Islam when it put Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who risked her life as a Muslim apostate, on a “hate list” as an “anti-Muslim extremist” for criticizing radical Islam’s brutal treatment of women. SPLC is still trying to scare elderly liberals out of their money: Barron-Lopez: Today, PERIL, your organization, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, released a guide: "Not Just a Joke: Understanding and Preventing Gender and Sexuality-Based Bigotry." It's meant to help communities deal with the issues that we're talking about. What is the purpose of this guide and who do you hope it reaches? (Things are not going particularly well for the segment on X.) This hysteria-based segment was brought to you in part by BNSF Railway. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Hour 12/10/24 7:33:29 p.m. (ET) Anchor Amna Nawaz: After last month's election, researchers documented a stunning rise in misogynistic rhetoric and attacks. Laura Barron-Lopez is here now with a conversation about what's behind that surge and how experts are combating it. Laura Barron-Lopez: In just a 24-hour period after Election Day, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue tracked a 4600 percent increase in mentions of the terms, "Your body, my choice" and "Get back in the kitchen" on the social media platform X. One post, by far-right activist Nick Fuentes has been viewed nearly 100 million times. But the misogyny is not just online. For more on this trend and efforts to fight it, I'm joined by Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University and director of the school's Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, or PERIL….First, help us unpack this increase. What exactly did we see in this rise in misogynistic attacks online right after the election? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Well, first, we have been seeing that increasing trend for probably something like 18 months to two years over the last period of time on many social media platforms. And what we saw right around the election, leading up to the election with a candidate who was a woman, a woman of color, and then the reproductive rights that were also sort of at the heart of the election in many ways was a celebration in many ways by some young men who were viewed -- whose posts were viewed many, many millions of times of this reclaiming of power over women and power over women's bodies. Laura Barron-Lopez: And, as I mentioned, at least some of that same rhetoric and activity has since moved offline. How and where has that manifested? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: We have seen a lot of reports and heard a lot of reports, including in our lab, from schools and universities, even from an elementary school, whose -- a parent who reached out to me and said her 10-year-old daughter had heard a boy chant at her, "Your body, my choice." I mean, it's unclear if he even knows what he's saying, but he knows that it's a sort of slur and an insult to say that. We had a man walking around a college campus in Texas holding up a sign that said "Women Are Property," and we have had other kinds of chants of "Go back to the kitchen" and sort of threats to women in their bodies on college campuses across the country. Laura Barron-Lopez: Can you put this into the broader context of what we have been seeing around misogyny and sexism in recent years, and what is driving this trend? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Yes. Well, we have had — just like we have had normalization of other types of hateful rhetoric, anti-immigrant rhetoric, racist rhetoric, white supremacist rhetoric over the last five or six years, in particular, surges of that online, of conspiracy theories, we have had anti-feminist rhetoric, and rhetoric blaming women often for a very real and legitimate crisis being experienced by boys and men. And so it's one thing to say, yes, boys and men are more isolated and lonely. They're also the victims of bullying and violence at the hands of other men, a culture that valorizes dominance and aggression as sort of hallmarks of masculinity. But to take that crisis of men and masculinity and make it a crisis of misogyny, you really need the online world incubating the kind of hateful rhetoric that we're seeing. Laura Barron-Lopez: Does posting misogynistic content, is that a predictor of future actions? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: It's not a direct predictor. You can't sort of draw a one-to-one correspondence. But we know that the biggest predictor of support for political violence right now or of willingness to engage in it, or among the top three predictors, depending on the survey, is misogyny or hostile sexism. So beliefs in a hierarchy of superiority, beliefs in the inferiority of women drive support for political violence. And we also know that other types of hateful rhetoric produce surges in offline violence. Laura Barron-Lopez: Does it drive actions such as domestic violence at all? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: It does. It does drive actions like domestic and intimate partner violence and also other forms of stalking, harassment, rape threats, sexual assault. And those things are also predictors and underpinners of mass violence. So when we see almost every terrorist actor in the U.S. and a lot of school shooters had prior histories of harassment, stalking, rape threats, sexual assault, and worse, so you have those types of problems that are red flags and warning signs and are often ignored. Laura Barron-Lopez: Today, PERIL, your organization, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, released a guide: "Not Just a Joke: Understanding and Preventing Gender and Sexuality-Based Bigotry." It's meant to help communities deal with the issues that we're talking about. What is the purpose of this guide and who do you hope it reaches? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Well, over the last two years, we have gotten increasing requests from parents, from teachers, from mental health counselors, faith leaders, and others for help with misogyny and other forms of hate that are happening among boys, in particular, middle and high school boys. And we just got another request from a school this week trying to — what can we do? And so we will go in and offer training. But we finally realized we need a guide. And so the guide is — lays out some of the definitions. What are boys seeing online? What are some of the red flags and warning signs? How are girls exposed to some of this content also through what's called tradwife content and ideas about what it is to be a man or a woman in society? And how are they being manipulated, often by bad actors online who are trying to get them to pay for subscriptions to things and manipulate them for their own profit? Laura Barron-Lopez: What are the top recommendations that you're making in this guide to parents, but also teachers and others who interact with people who are susceptible to this content? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Yes. I think the first recommendation is take it seriously. And that's why we called the guide "Not Just a Joke," because so often it's dismissed as locker room talk or as just a joke, really, and it couldn't mean anything, it's not serious. And one of the things we really emphasize is that taking it seriously, attending to the harms that come from things like, "Go make me a sandwich" or "Get back in the kitchen," or just jokey comments that actually sort of express a sense of entitlement to girls and women's labor, servitude, the entitlement to their bodies, those are harmful. They're harmful to everyone in the communitynd so taking it seriously and not reacting with shame, because that can drive young people further online, but with curiosity about why they find these kinds of statements attractive is a really important step. Laura Barron-Lopez: Cynthia Miller-Idriss, thank you for your time. Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Thank you for having me.

Call of Duty, one of the most popular video games of all time, recently introduced its first "nonbinary" character.Many will laugh or roll their eyes, dismissing this new chance to employ they/them pronouns as mere virtue-signaling.The U.S. military is now the nation’s largest employer of trans people. Let that sink in for a minute ... or an entire week. But this development must be viewed through a broader lens. The inclusion of a nonbinary character in such a high-profile series isn’t just a silly gesture; it’s a calculated move on behalf of the game's creators. They understand that CoD holds unparalleled influence over millions of young minds in America and beyond, with players logging countless hours of immersion. When consumed over long periods, these narratives, symbols, and subtle cues enter the subconscious, shaping players' perceptions without them even realizing it.Game overLong gone are the simple days of Super Mario, in which a cheerful plumber in overalls embarked on an innocent quest to save a princess. Today, that happy-go-lucky white man, displaying dangerously high levels of “benevolent sexism,” is considered "toxic." That’s because the gaming landscape has evolved from lighthearted adventures to being a battleground for ideological influence.Which brings us back to CoD.As I have shown before, the franchise is now a sophisticated propaganda tool. That’s because its ties to the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus are incredibly strong. Critics have long noted that CoD’s narratives frequently echo real-life military operations and geopolitical strategies. It’s not a coincidence. The game’s developers have collaborated closely with the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, integrating their perspectives into the game’s content. From storylines that align closely with U.S. military operations to partnerships that influence game design, Call of Duty operates as a medium for disseminating pro-military narratives to young, impressionable audiences.Consider one of the early missions in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, in which the target is an Iranian general named Ghorbrani — a thinly veiled version of real-life Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, down to his appearance and portrayal as a puppet of hostile powers. The striking similarities between the game’s fictional mission and America's assassination of Soleimani clearly demonstrate a deliberate effort to shape public perceptions of U.S. foreign policy.Call of Duty has now become a cornerstone of the military-industrial complex — something even Eisenhower, in all his foresight, could never have anticipated.Shaping the narrativeMilitary documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that executives from the game’s publisher were previously invited to U.S. Air Force bases to be familiarized with military hardware like AC-130 planes and CV-22 helicopters—both of which prominently feature in the game series. These interactions were not just casual consultations but part of a strategic effort to embed military narratives in the game’s design. Essentially, shaping how audiences perceive armed conflicts and positioning these industry leaders as credible advocates for military interests.This has been the case for years. The U.S. Marine Corps collaborated on Call of Duty 5, and the Pentagon has been actively involved with game publishers, offering insight into the portrayal of the “U.S. Army of the future.” With such intimate connections, the game’s influence on its players can no longer be dismissed as innocent entertainment. CoD essentially acts as a recruitment and indoctrination portal for young audiences, familiarizing them with military operations and subtly glamorizing war.This matters to everyone, not just gamers. The psychological impact of engaging in military scenarios repeatedly over long periods is profound. Unlike a movie that ends after two hours, these games are designed for continuous engagement, making them highly effective in subtly shaping beliefs and attitudes. For a country grappling with recruitment challenges and a changing public perception of military conflicts, this is a powerful tool to win/control the hearts and minds of the next generation without their explicit awareness.In the past, Hollywood served as the primary vehicle for military propaganda. Now, with the film industry’s influence waning, video games have taken up the mantle. The modern gaming industry is worth over $347 billion—nearly five times more than Hollywood. With Call of Duty leading the charge, these games reach audiences on an unprecedented scale, seamlessly blending military strategy with popular culture in ways that often go unnoticed—or remain entirely invisible—to the player.Normalizing the abnormalWhen entertainment and military interests align so closely, the line between fiction and propaganda becomes dangerously blurred. It’s about controlling the cultural landscape, glorifying conflict, and normalizing the queer agenda. In 2021, lest we forget, Rachel Levine, an eerie cross between Larry King and Joy Behar, became the nation’s first transgender four-star officer, appointed to lead the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The military’s increasing promotion of progressive ideologies is a deliberate strategy to mainstream queerness. And it's working. The U.S. military is now the nation’s largest employer of trans people. Let that sink in for a minute….or an entire week.Studies consistently show that transgender individuals face significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicide compared to the general population. These findings raise serious questions about the wisdom of placing those grappling with such mental health crises in positions critical to national security. In environments where mental resilience and emotional stability are paramount, this disparity in mental health risks cannot be ignored. Is it truly in America’s best interest to entrust its safety and stability to individuals statistically more prone to severe psychological distress? Obviously not.As Call of Duty continues to integrate characters with identities and ideologies aligned with current sociopolitical narratives, serious questions need to be asked. Those in power understand that if you target the youth and immerse them in these narratives early, you can shape their beliefs and worldview for decades to come.A nation of red, white, and blue is slowly morphing into red, white, and pink—trading patriotism for perversion, one click at a time.

What if Skyrim let you ride the dragons instead of just slaying them? That's the question posed by open-world RPG Crimson Desert, where winged beasts doing battle is just one facet of a new, massive swords and sorcery project. Developed by Black Desert Online creator Pearl Abyss, thanks to the latest trailer, we now know when we can expect the behemoth of a game. Continue reading Ambitious Skyrim like RPG Crimson Desert gets launch window and new trailer MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best action games, Best fantasy games, Best action-adventure-games