WITH FEW ABLE AND FEWER WILLING, U.S. MILITARY CAN’T FIND RECRUITS:
The local Army recruiting station was empty. The normally reliable recruiting grounds at the nearby Walmart were a bust. With the Army still thousands of soldiers short of its recruiting goal, the station commander, Sgt. First Class James Pulliam, dressed head to toe in camouflage, scanned a strip-mall parking lot for targets. He spotted a young woman getting out of a car, and put on his best salesman smile. “Hey, how’d you know I was going to be here today!” the sergeant said with an affable Carolina drawl, as if greeting an old friend. “I’m going to help put you in the Army!”
These are tough times for military recruiting. Almost across the board, the armed forces are experiencing large shortfalls in enlistments this year – a deficit of thousands of entry-level troops that is on pace to be worse than any since just after the Vietnam War. It threatens to throw a wrench into the military’s machinery, leaving critical jobs unfilled and some platoons with too few people to function.
Superhero Fatigue:
Some 29 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies have premiered since 2008 – an average of almost two per year. In those 14 years, critics predicted that audiences would eventually get tired of superhero movies. In The Times, one media analyst warned of “superhero fatigue” in 2011. Asked about it last year, a quarter of U.S. adults said they enjoyed superhero movies but were getting tired of them.
But that sentiment is not reflected at the box office. Thor: Love and Thunder opened last weekend and earned $302 million worldwide, grossing more in its U.S. debut than previous Thor movies. Earlier this year, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness made $954 million worldwide. And 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home finished its run at $1.9 billion.
Next up: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever this November. Its 2018 predecessor made $1.3 billion.
Delayed Retirement:
The average retirement age of American men has risen three years since 1990, to 64.7 years. (The average is the age at which labor force participation falls below 50%.) But a new paper by Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, concludes that the five factors that delayed men’s retirement over the past three decades “are no longer having a substantial impact and are unlikely to increase the average retirement age going forward.”
Changes in Social Security such as the increase in the normal retirement age are complete, there is unlikely to be much more of a shift to defined-contribution retirement plans from defined-benefit pensions, gains in educational attainment at older ages have flattened out, as have improvements in health, and the shift away from retiree health benefits is nearly complete, Munnell writes. She concludes, “The major drivers for the gains to date appear to have played themselves out.”
Examiner – Lens:
Dabbing, a method of inhaling highly concentrated THC, has become increasingly popular among teenagers.
Ohio 10-year-old’s Alleged Rapist Is Guatemalan Illegal Immigrant:
The man charged with the rape of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio is a Guatemalan illegal immigrant, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) source confirmed. The Columbus Dispatch first reported that Gerson Fuentes was arrested after police said he confessed to raping a child on multiple occasions. He has been charged with rape, and the outlet reported that he was possibly in the country illegally. The source told Fox that Fuentes is a Guatemalan national in the country illegally and that ICE has placed a detainer on Fuentes, which is a request he eventually be handed over to the agency for removal proceedings.
Old Friends Appreciate When People Reach Out More Than We Think:
Do phone calls from long-lost friends really excite you? You’re not alone. A new study finds people often underestimate how much their old friends will appreciate receiving a call from them out of the blue. Researchers found that participants who called, texted, or emailed someone in their social circle just to say hello consistently underrated how much their friend would value hearing from them. Meanwhile, the friend receiving the message placed a much higher value on the surprise social interaction. “People are fundamentally social beings and enjoy connecting with others,” explains lead author Peggy Liu, PhD, from the University of Pittsburgh, in a media release. “There is much research showing that maintaining social connections is good for our mental and physical health. However, despite the importance and enjoyment of social connection, our research suggests that people significantly underestimate how much others will appreciate being reached out to.”
Examiner – Lens:
Angel Olsen Sees Your Pain. On her new album, “Big Time,” the musician transfigures harrowing grief – and an unexpected new love – into songs of survival. In her performances, it can feel like Olsen is channeling something extraterrestrial.
Examiner – Commentary by Nellie Bowles:
** Stock markets have had their worst six months since 1970: There are two sure-fire ways to ruin your day: fill up your gas tank or check your Vanguard account. We haven’t had a six-month fall like this for 50 years. And there’s one major cause: Inflation. California has a plan to fix the problem: The inflation that was caused by our government handing out too much cash can be fixed with – you guessed it – the government handing out more cash. California is spending $17 billion on an “inflation relief package,” including sending millions of Californians $1,050 in cash. Meanwhile, Biden claimed … that “inflation is higher in almost every other country.” That’s false. Inflation is significantly lower in, to name a few other rich countries: France, Switzerland, Australia, and Japan. Let’s all hold our breath for the fact checks. I’ve never understood the mentality that allows for Venezuela to become Venezuela. But really it’s very simple: You just keep handing out tons of cash and then say it’s all quite complicated. Here’s the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell … “We now understand better how little we understand about inflation.” He said that from a lovely conference in a charming town in Portugal. As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, we are seeing an unprecedented spike in mortgage rates. And Biden keeps on trucking with the phrases ultra-MAGA and Putin’s Price Hike, though other Dems are realizing the terms are “lame,” according to Politico’s Alex Thompson (a really great White House reporter to follow).
** January 6 committee getting ahead of their skis: In the midst of real grievances about the riot on the Capitol have been a lot of absurd ones, which, at least for me, undermine the hearings. For example: Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, claimed that Trump wanted to go join the riot, tried to grab a steering wheel from his secret service driver, and then in a struggle tried to choke the guy. For a few hours this was the big news, even though Hutchinson said she’d heard it second-hand. It was a new Pee Tape! The same day: Secret Service agent Bobby Engel – the lead agent and the guy who drives the president’s car – said he’d be happy to go under oath and deny this account outright. And, poof, the whole thing disappears.
** Cops solve vanishingly few murders now: In 1965, police reported solving 83% of murders. In 2020, that number dropped to 51%. Half of the murders in America go unsolved! I had no idea how easy it was to do a murder and not be caught, but it’s always good to know. It’s especially surprising because you would think it’s a lot easier to solve a murder now thanks to cell phones that track our motion and the proliferation of home security cameras.
** Democrats for MAGAs: Democrat donors are funding extremist Republican candidates in primaries against moderate Republicans in an effort to throw the races, according to a really smart new investigation by The National Journal. For example, in Maryland, the Democratic Governors Association is planning to spend over $1 million “to boost Trump-endorsed Republican Daniel Cox over [current governor Larry] Hogan-endorsed candidate Kelly Schulz.”
** No worries about the fentanyl, see you soon! Two men arrested for attempting to transport 150,000 fentanyl pills from Mexico through California and to Washington state were quickly released without bail. They seem like good guys who will do the right thing and make their court date.
** West Hollywood votes to defund their police: If you love chaos, you’re going to love the new West Hollywood. While national Democrats are pretending they’ve never met the defund movement, liberal strongholds in the middle of cities are still gaining traction with ousting their cops. … West Hollywood’s City Council voted to modestly defund their police force, eliminating four deputies. The money will be spent on hiring 30 unarmed “security ambassadors” to walk around the neighborhood and also on making the sidewalk gay decorations more “inclusive.” Plus: $50,000 will go to rescue the city’s Russian Culture festival, which is in a tricky situation given the invasion of Ukraine and so will not actually celebrate Russia this year. True story: I was in West Hollywood recently in the middle of the day, and a nice man ran up to me and said you gotta go, there’s a dude with a machete heading toward us. And there was! So I ran! Right into a cafe for a cappuccino. I’m certainly not in charge of tackling the machete man. Can’t wait for an unarmed community ambassador to handle it.
“Intel for Influencers” – Who Reads the LBN Examiner?
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Examiner – (Notable) Remarks:
** Virtue signaling is not virtuous; it’s posturing. —- Dennis Prager
** Our whole civilization is based on the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that tradition is under sustained attack by increasingly militant secular forces. —- Bill Barr, former U.S. Attorney General
** “The U.S. Chamber is a lost cause,” Alfredo Ortiz, chief executive of the Job Creators Network, said in written statement for this article. “The chamber is not an advocate for small businesses or the private sector. It regularly supports big government and ‘woke’ policies that small businesses oppose.” —- Peter Coy, New York Times
** “Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian religious tradition.” —- Peter Singer, father of the animal-rights movements (and professor at Princeton University)
** In a review of the scientific literature on probiotics published in January 2019, researchers concluded that “the benefits and feasibility of probiotic consumption in healthy adults remain uncertain.” Recent research has raised questions about how well probiotics are tested for safety, too. —- Melinda Wenner Moyer, New York Times
** We live in a rule-bound era of high vigilance. It’s a time of emergency measures and vast decrees, of curbs on expression, behavior, and even movement. They are portrayed as serving the common good and some people obey them in this spirit, others so they can be seen obeying them. Fun, with its little anarchies, is suspect. It’s regarded as selfish, wasteful, perhaps unsanitary. To some degree, it always has been this way here, at least since the frowning pilgrims came ashore. “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy,” wrote the cigar-sucking cynic HL Mencken. How else to explain the mentality of leaders who thought to combat a respiratory virus by dumping tons of sand from front-end loaders into a seaside California skate park? —- Walter Kirn
Examiner – Lens:
Sophie Freud, critic of her grandfather’s gospel, recently died at 97. Sigmund Freud’s last surviving grandchild, she fled the Nazis in Vienna, became a professor in America and argued that psychoanalysis was a “narcissistic indulgence.”
Examiner – Watch:
** The gadgets and gears Google Street View uses to map the world. WATCH
** Why and how parrots can speak like humans. WATCH
** Foreign words that have no English equivalent. WATCH
‘A Very Dangerous Situation’:
The most advanced category of mass-produced semiconductors – used in smartphones, military technology and much more – is known as 5 nm. A single company in Taiwan, known as TSMC, makes about 90% of them. U.S. factories make none.
Examiner – Lens:
Isa Slish of Oklahoma is the latest winner of the Gerber Photo Search contest.
Examiner – Readers Speak:
OVER 90% of LBN Examiner readers would prefer to have dinner with Elon Musk than with President Biden by an overwhelming landslide (92% of Examiner readers in all 50 United States and 26 foreign countries).
EXAMINER – INVESTIGATES:
** Unidentified hacker group claims to have stolen sensitive personal information of up to 1 billion Chinese residents after accessing Shanghai National Police systems. READ
** Above the Fight – The fighting in Ukraine is the latest example demonstrating how cheap drones are revolutionizing modern warfare. READ
** Mapping America’s pandemic population shift. READ
** A record-breaking pole vaulter in stunning slow-motion. READ
** New study suggests many insects have the molecular mechanisms and other physiological components that allow them to experience the subjective feeling of pain. READ
** The Mysteries of Human Hibernation – A multiyear search attempts to explain one of the most extreme cases of superhuman survival: A fallen mountain climber who comes back to life after 24 days of hypothermia. READ
Examiner – Lens:
In his first year leading Amazon, Andy Jassy has made more changes than many expected.
Examiner – Humankind:
** Good Samaritan ambushed by kitten platoon. READ
Megan Euker Wins Coveted Award, San Rocco Therapeutics (SRT) Announces:
Megan Euker, acclaimed Project Manager, received the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Sicily for Work with SRTs’ Gene Therapy Development for Sickle Cell Disease and Beta Thalassemia. Fulbright alumni include 60 Nobel Prize laureates, 88 Pulitzer Prize recipients, and 39 who have served as a head of state or government. San Rocco Therapeutics, founded in 1993, has collaborated with Megan Euker since 2016. Euker is additionally affiliated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of South Florida. She will conduct research and teach at MADE in Siracusa, Sicily, as part of her project.
www.sanroccotherapeutics.com
Examiner – Cartoon:
“Today’s top story: nobody did anything about anything that you wanted them to do something about.”
READERS REBEL – HATE “BIASED” NEWS – EXAMINER CONTINUES TO GROW!
Fewer Americans are paying attention to national news now than at any time since early 2018. In December 2021, a third of Americans (33%) said they pay “a great deal” of attention to national news. This percentage is the lowest in Gallup/Knight Foundation’s trend and a substantial drop from the 54% of Americans who said they paid a great deal of attention to national news in November of 2020. This finding echoes the recent trend reported by Axios that overall news engagement is down compared to 2020, citing a decline in interest in news about COVID-19 and politics. The recent drop in attention seen in the Gallup/Knight Foundation trend holds across most demographic groups but has been disproportionately pronounced among Democrats younger than 55 years of age. These findings are from a survey of 4,221 U.S. adults fielded Nov. 23-Dec. 3, 2021, who are members of Gallup’s probability-based national panel.
The reason is clear, say numerous media experts: “There is no trust.” People want to find independent news sources without biases and here is where the mainstream media has miserably failed. The www.LBNExaminer.com, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary having been formed in 2002, continues to grow with readers now in all 50 of the United States and in 26 foreign countries.
To sign up to receive the LBN Examiner, go to: www.LBNExaminer.com. The LBN Examiner is now considered one of the world’s most “fearlessly independent” and “unbiased” news and information sources on the web with an incredible influencer readership including three Nobel Prize winners, 12 members of the White House staff, and over 100 Academy Award winners.
Examiner – Reader Poll:
SHOULD ABORTION POLICY BE LEFT TO THE STATES?
Send your reply to: LBNExaminer@TimeWire.net
Examiner – 20 Years – A Look At 2002
The LBN Examiner was founded on June 1, 2002, an incredible 20 years ago. Let’s take a look back at what was going on in 2002:
** On July 22, Israel assassinated Salah Shahade, the Commander-in-Chief of Hamas’s military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, along with 14 civilians.
** On July 24, James Traficant was expelled from the United States House of Representatives by a vote of 420 to 1.
Examiner – A Different View:…
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