Costo has rolled out a new initiative to crack down on membership card-sharing, now requiring shoppers to scan their cards at the entrance of the store in order to gain access.

Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting is now on her way to the gold medal boxing match after a storm of gender-related controversy took over most of her 2024 Olympics experience. 

Apparently, driving around Paris in a bus with a sign on it that says “Stop attacks on Christians” will get you arrested. On the other hand, if you’re a Muslim migrant attacking Christians in Paris, you might get arrested, but probably only if you kill someone.  h/t Nita

By Joan Swirsky There’s a good reason I wrote about the media’s prostitutes a few years ago, actually, seven years ago, with a preface that apologized to legitimate prostitutes who made an honest living. What I reported then was based on the formidable work of ace journalist Ashley Lutz, who scrupulously documented her findings in a Business Insider […] The post The Media Still Turn Tricks for The Democrat Party appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Tim Walz, a former public school teacher who has called for putting tampons in boys’ bathrooms, has vehemently attacked school choice, calling actions to support such policies “schemes.” One year ago, in August 2023, Walz traveled to Iowa, where he ripped GOP Governor Kim Reynolds’ school choice program, Alpha News reported. “Whenever you come up with one of these schemes — and that’s exactly what they are — to transfer wealth to folks on the backs of these students, we already know that we’re going to underfund public schools that are already underfunded,” Walz snapped. “And we know that about 70% of those students that are going to receive those vouchers or whatever they’re calling them are already attending those schools. What we end up doing is subsidizing folks who are already attending private, religious schools, whatever it may be, or homeschooling, and it leaves our teachers in the short.” “We know these (nonpublic) schools don’t have to take everyone and they’ll send kids back,” Walz claimed, then said there was “no data to support that those students are doing any better, that those schools are achieving any better.” WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI “Unlike their public counterparts whose academic scores have returned to that of 30 plus years ago, Catholic schools have not experienced such a decline over the same time period, with student academic performance post-COVID still higher than it was in the 1990s, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Long-Term Trend assessments,” American Experiment, a Minnesota think tank, noted in July 2023. “Regents examination scores recently obtained by The Jewish Press under a Freedom Of Information Law request. These scores reveal that New York yeshiva students are outperforming their public school peers in the four core subjects of English, math, science, and history – by far. They show, for example, yeshivas earning 19 of the top 20 average private school scores in New York’s English Language Arts exam,” the Jewish Press reported in 2018. “You don’t want your child or your student to do something, then don’t let them do that, but don’t take away my freedom, don’t take away my child’s freedom,” Walz declared. “Don’t enforce your views on all of us. And let’s be very clear about this. This entire agenda, this entire voucher agenda, is exactly about that, about not wanting to teach that, because I’m sure at these schools we may not hear the whole history of how things are happening. We may hear that it is OK to discriminate against some of our students.”

The World Federation of Advertisers has disbanded a group that worked to ensure companies only advertise with “responsible” media outlets, hours after it was sued by X and Rumble. WFA chief executive Stephan Loerke wrote to members on Thursday that the “discontinuing” of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative was “not made lightly,” Business Insider reported. His letter added that he believes GARM will prevail against the lawsuits. The shuttering comes weeks after Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro testified to Congress about evidence that GARM targeted conservative news outlets. GARM counted almost all advertising companies as members, and used that membership as leverage to bully tech platforms into censoring more content. To qualify for membership, advertising firms had to pledge not to place advertisements alongside “harmful” content like “misinformation.” But internal emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee suggested that the advertising officials were using claims of “misinformation” as a pretext to withhold ad dollars from conservative outlets. GARM told members not to advertise with X, formerly Twitter, after Elon Musk purchased the company, Musk’s lawsuit said. Emails show GARM chief Rob Rakowitz rejoicing that Twitter’s revenue was 80 percent below forecasts. Emails show that Unilever, a member of GARM’s “steer team,” was angry at Musk’s views on the Hunter Biden laptop story — a reference to Musk’s opposition to Twitter’s prior ownership censoring a story harmful to Joe Biden before the election. Unilever called Musk “overly partisan.” Will Gilroy, a WFA spokesman, did not provide comment on the shutdown to The Daily Wire, except to say that a statement would be forthcoming on its website. The partisanship baked into GARM may still be present in its parent group. Top articles on the WFA home page are headlined “Scared to speak up about DEI or sustainability in the current environment? Don’t be: fortune favors the bold” and “Inclusion is the future for brand growth.” In recent press releases, the group has announced a “framework to measure media’s carbon emissions” and discussed “setting targets on DEI.” Emails show that Rakowitz consulted with advertising mega-firm and GARM member GroupM about The Daily Wire. A GroupM “brand safety” executive, Joe Barone — in an email replete with a rainbow and the phrase “black lives matter” — said, “Fyi we have Daily Wire on our Global High Risk exclusion list, categorized as Conspiracy Theories…” Another GroupM “brand safety” executive, John Montgomery, said there was “an interesting parallel here with Breitbart.” “As much as we hated their ideology and bullsh—, we couldn’t really justify blocking them for misguided opinion. We watched them very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line — but it was a useful academic lesson,” he wrote. GroupM CEO Christian Juhl was replaced after he struggled to explain the emails to Congress while testifying opposite Shapiro. The X and Rumble lawsuits say that GARM broke antitrust laws by facilitating collusion between companies that otherwise would be competitors. Emails show that the companies fretted that withdrawing advertising from X, a major platform, would be contrary to their interests — unless they had assurances that their competitors would do the same thing. In November 2022, Orsted, a company on GARM’s “steer team,” wrote to GARM, “I’m reaching out to you to ask you if it’s possible to arrange a meeting and hear more about your perspectives about the Twitter situation and a possible boycott from many companies…we are about to make a recommendation to management about actions and when we need to consider whether we should continue promotion on the platform or find alternatives.” Orsted ultimately removed all advertising from X “due to brand safety concerns.” At least 18 GARM members did the same, and others removed almost all their advertising, the suit said. In March 2023, Orsted wrote to GARM, “some time has passed, and I am curious to know what you would advise us to do. And what are other global advertisers doing – have they come back to the platform, or are they still off?” “In a competitive market, advertising agencies would compete with one another on their ability to place their customers’ ads according to their customers’ individual preferences and marketing plans,” Musk’s lawsuit said. Instead, “GARM uses the market power of its members and their clients to force platforms to submit to GARM’s demands.”

During a tense interview in which she sought answers about how a crisis of confidence led to a massive shakeup in the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential ticket, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) candidly admitted that she has “never been that impressed” with President Joe Biden‘s “political operation.” The swipe came as The New Yorker editor David Remnick asked Pelosi about her much-discussed appearance last month on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in which Pelosi insisted she would support whatever decision Biden made about his political future — even though Biden was already saying at the time he would not leave the race. Remnick noted that people around Pelosi said her “Morning Joe” appearance gave them “space” to call on Biden to end his 2024 bid after a fumbling debate performance. Although more than 14 million people voted for Biden during the primaries, the president eventually dropped out amid a growing pressure campaign led by his own allies. His vice president, Kamala Harris, has since become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. “When I pressed Pelosi to talk in greater detail about her language on ‘Morning Joe,’ she looked at me silently, unblinking,” Remnick wrote in a story published on Thursday. “Finally, as the silence expanded past the boundary of awkward, I said, ‘You’re looking at me and waiting for this moment to pass.'” “Yeah, but I’m trying to think of why you’re even asking it, because, you know, I’m not going to answer it the way that you want,” Pelosi said. “I didn’t plan to do that on [‘Morning Joe.’] In fact, if I did, I probably would’ve worn a different suit or something, because I didn’t look too professional.” Remnick wrote that he told Pelosi, “It was like you felt his pain.” In the moments that followed, “Pelosi dropped her calculated reserve,” according to Remnick’s write-up of his conversation. “I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation,” Pelosi said. “They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The president has to make the decision for that to happen. People were calling. I never called one person. I kept true to my word. Any conversation I had, it was just going to be with him. I never made one call.” WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI The response appeared to add more context to Pelosi’s comments in a recent interview for CBS. Journalist Lesley Stahl told Pelosi it had been said that Biden was “furious” with her, ostensibly for not having the president’s back. Pelosi denied she was “a leader of any pressure party,” and insisted she “did not call one person.” Also during the CBS interview that aired last weekend, Pelosi suggested Biden’s face should be added to Mount Rushmore. A number of Democrats had been publicly urging Biden to end his campaign by the time he stepped aside. Pelosi was not one of them, though she did tell Biden in private that polls showed he could not defeat former President Donald Trump in the 2024 contest and warned the president he could hurt other Democrats in down-ticket races if he did not bow out, according to CNN. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) similarly did not publicly break with Biden but reportedly used a meeting to discourage the president from staying in the race. “They said I was burning up the lines, I was talking to Chuck [Schumer]. I didn’t talk to Chuck at all,” Pelosi told Remnick during their conversation. “I never called one person, but people were calling me saying that there was a challenge there. So there had to be a change in the leadership of the campaign, or what would come next.” Remnick wrote that Pelosi acknowledged she had not been in contact with Biden since the Sunday on which he announced his exit from the 2024 contest via a letter posted to X. Asked whether her relationship with Biden would survive, Pelosi did not appear certain. “I hope so,” she said. “I pray so. I cry so.” Pelosi claimed she had lost sleep on it. She said her goal was simply to make sure Trump “would never set foot in the White House again.”