End of Time

The Stroke of a Pen

There is no political ideology that can justify the deliberate abandonment of the helpless.

When Donald J. Trump signed the executive orders to dismantle and defund USAID, it wasn't a standard policy debate or a routine budget cut. It was a direct, devastating blow delivered by the most powerful office in the world, aimed squarely at the most defenceless people on earth.

The consequences are not abstract. They are measured in the locked doors of medical clinics, the empty warehouses of emergency food, and the preventable deaths of thousands of mothers and children under five. These are innocent families who have no voice in global politics, no wealth, and no shield against the decisions made thousands of miles away.

To use supreme authority to strip life-saving aid from starving and sick children requires a profound, chilling absence of basic human empathy.

History will not remember this as a triumph of strategy. It will remember it exactly as it is: an act of immense bureaucratic cruelty. There is no political victory, no legacy of fame, and no amount of power that can ever wash away the moral stain of causing the deaths of the innocent.

THE TICKING CLOCK HAS STOPPED: The State Capture of 60 Minutes

For decades, no matter how chaotic the news cycle, how polluted the information landscape, or how loud the noise from partisan media on both sides, Americans had one reliable constant: Sunday night, 60 Minutes. One hour. Real journalism. Verified facts. Accountability reporting that made the powerful uncomfortable. I grew up with it. Many of you did too.

That era is now over. And it didn't end by accident.

What is State Capture — and why should you care?

State capture is what happens when political power and corporate ownership merge quietly, without a single law being passed or a single press freedom being formally revoked. You don't ban journalism. You buy the companies that own it. You install politically aligned leadership. You let fear do the rest.

That is precisely what has happened to CBS News and 60 Minutes — in plain sight, in a matter of months.

Here is the chain of events:

Paramount, CBS's parent company, was acquired by Skydance Media, run by David Ellison — son of Larry Ellison, billionaire Oracle founder and prominent Trump supporter. To secure federal regulatory approval for that merger, Paramount needed to stay on the right side of a Trump-controlled FCC that has openly threatened to revoke broadcast licenses of networks it considers hostile. So when Trump sued CBS over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris — claiming the editing was deceptive, a claim CBS flatly denied — Paramount didn't fight it. They paid Trump $16 million to make it go away. Stephen Colbert, still on the air at the time, called it what it was on national television: "The technical name in legal circles for this deal is a big fat bribe."

Within months, Skydance installed a new editor-in-chief at CBS News: Bari Weiss.

Who is Bari Weiss — and why does it matter?

Bari Weiss has built her public identity entirely around one claim: that she is a fearless defender of free speech and a warrior against censorship. She resigned from the New York Times in 2020, writing a dramatic public letter accusing the paper of silencing dissenting voices. She then founded The Free Press, positioning it as a bold, independent, "heterodox" media outlet willing to say what mainstream journalism allegedly wouldn't.

Here is what she didn't tell you: when Skydance hired her to run CBS News, they also bought The Free Press. The supposed independent voice against corporate media consolidation is now owned by the very corporation whose news division she controls. That is not independence. That is a conflict of interest so large you could park a aircraft carrier in it.

She has no television news experience. None. She has never worked in a broadcast newsroom. She was handed editorial control of the most storied investigative television journalism program in American history — a show that has been on the air since 1968 — based entirely on her political alignment with the new ownership.

And then came the moment that exposed everything.

Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi — a serious, decorated journalist — had produced a fully completed, factually accurate segment on Venezuelan men being deported by the Trump administration to CECOT, El Salvador's brutal maximum security mega-prison, where detainees are held without trial. The segment had been publicly promoted. It was hours from broadcast.

Bari Weiss — champion of free speech, crusader against censorship — pulled it off the air.

Her stated reason: it needed more reporting. The reality: the segment aired one month later with minimal changes and no on-camera administration interviews. The journalism was fine. The politics were the problem.

Alfonsi said publicly what everyone inside the building already knew: "It was not an editorial decision. It was a political one."

For refusing to sanitize accurate reporting, Sharyn Alfonsi has now been fired. So has correspondent Cecilia Vega — a former ABC News chief White House correspondent — and executive producer Tanya Simon, a 30-year veteran of the program. The new executive producer installed to replace Simon is Nick Bilton — a technology journalist who has never worked a single day in television news.

Anderson Cooper, who spent 20 years at 60 Minutes, left at the end of this season. His farewell was careful and diplomatic. But he said this: "I hope 60 Minutes remains 60 Minutes." He clearly doesn't believe it will.

And then there's Stephen Colbert.

When Colbert called the Trump settlement a bribe on national television, he was doing exactly what a free press is supposed to do: speak uncomfortable truth to power, on the air, in primetime. CBS canceled The Late Show shortly afterward. Colbert had been one of the last major voices on legacy television willing to say plainly what was happening to American democracy. That voice is now gone from that platform.

What we have lost

We have lost the institutional anchor of American investigative journalism. 60 Minutes was not perfect — no institution is. But it was resourced, independent, and trusted by tens of millions of people across the political spectrum. It took on presidents, corporations, intelligence agencies, and foreign governments. It did not ask permission.

What replaces it? Clickbait. Algorithms. Memes engineered to make you feel something rather than know something. A media landscape specifically designed to keep you emotionally activated and informationally passive.

This is not an accident. An informed citizenry is a check on power. Remove the information, and the check disappears.

A warning

The ticking stopwatch that opened 60 Minutes every Sunday night was more than a trademark. It was a reminder that time matters, that accountability has a clock, that someone was watching.

The clock has been stopped — deliberately, strategically, and for reasons that have nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with power.

Pay attention. The world is changing rapidly around us, and not for the better. The institutions we assumed would always be there — the ones that kept the powerful honest and the public informed — are being quietly dismantled, one boardroom decision at a time.

Stay alert. Ask who owns what you're reading. Ask what they needed to get that ownership approved. Ask what stories aren't being told — and why.

The questions matter now more than ever.

**Remember when we thought tech founders were geniuses who would save the world? Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg! Yeah… that’s over.**

We are living through the end of a myth. For years, tech leaders were untouchable—visionaries, disruptors, geniuses. Now? People are starting to genuinely dislike, even hate, them. And it’s not random. It’s earned.

First, the "genius" illusion shattered. Theranos. Uber’s bro culture. Facebook’s mental health crisis. The pedestal crumbled. We realized having a great idea doesn’t make you a moral leader. It just makes you rich.

Second, AI made it personal. Not abstract. People are losing jobs, watching their electricity bills rise from data centers, and seeing the internet flooded with "AI slop." A March 2026 NBC poll found AI is less popular than ICE. Let that sink in.

Third, the arrogance is now political. Tech leaders aren't quietly innovating anymore. They’re openly fighting regulation, spending nearly $800 million on elections, and acting like their power doesn’t need democracy’s permission.

People aren’t asking much. Just three questions:

Who benefits? (Hint: not us)

Who gets hurt? (Hint: all of us)

Who decides? (Hint: not voters)

The era of uncool adoration is over. The techlash isn't a moment—it's a new normal.

If Stars and Stripes becomes less independent and more like a Pentagon-approved message machine, the harm would not just be political. It could affect the trust, morale, judgment, and emotional health of the service members and families who rely on it.

The key idea is this:

Propaganda does not only misinform people. Over time, it can distort their sense of reality. And when people in high-stress military life are fed filtered, politicized, or sanitized information, it can deepen confusion, cynicism, anxiety, isolation, and distrust.

Military personnel already live under pressure most civilians barely understand: deployments, chain-of-command stress, moral injury, danger, family separation, uncertainty, and institutional pressure to “stay strong.” Add propaganda to that and you create another burden: they may no longer know whether the institution is telling them the truth.

That matters. A lot.

Cleaned-up version of your thought

America is changing fast, and the firing of the Stars and Stripes ombudsman is another warning sign. My concern is not just political. If Stars and Stripes starts becoming a vehicle for Pentagon-approved propaganda, the long-term damage could reach the very people the paper is supposed to serve: service members, veterans, and military families.

Propaganda does not simply mislead people. It can wear down their trust, distort their sense of reality, and add to the mental strain of people already living inside a high-pressure military culture. Military personnel deserve honest journalism, not filtered messaging designed to protect politicians or commanders.

When a military newspaper loses independence, the danger is not just censorship. The danger is psychological, institutional, and democratic.

I remember this.

Downtown Los Angeles, early 2000s.

Thousands in the streets questioning the push to war.

We were told there were weapons of mass destruction.

There weren’t.

These photos are from that day.

Sometimes the people paying attention early…

🚨 A Five-Year-Old Child Has Been Held in Detention for 9 Months

A five-year-old child, Liam Conejo Ramos, is being held in a U.S. immigration detention center because of alleged crimes by his father.

The child has committed no crime.

According to the family’s lawyer, the child has been subjected to contaminated food, poor living conditions, and inadequate medical and dental care.

A court has already ordered the family released.

They are still being held.

Think about that.

A government ignoring a court order while a five-year-old remains in detention.

A nation reveals its character by how it treats the most powerless among us.

Right now, a five-year-old child is waiting for adults to remember that.

— Wayne

International Women’s Day is a moment to recognize the extraordinary contributions women have made throughout history, often in the face of barriers and inequality.

ICE is built around coercion and intimidation.

That culture doesn’t translate to community policing or schools.

Epstein Files: How New Documents Expose a Wider Network | Pivot

TRUMP DISAPPROVAL HITS RECORD HIGH

In 2015, when Donald Trump came down the escalator and announced his run for president, I didn’t see a novelty act. I recognized a pattern. The language of grievance. Scapegoats. Contempt for democratic institutions. The strongman claim that only one man could “fix” a humiliated nation. That wasn’t accidental or harmless. It was the opening shape of autocracy. Many laughed. History didn’t.

— Wayne

PODCAST: Andrew Coyne on Carney's Davos moment - and what it means for t...

When AI Gets It Wrong: The Catherine O’Hara Lesson

The day after Catherine O’Hara died, ChatGPT and other AI platforms insisted she was alive.

They were wrong.

Here is what was repeatedly stated with absolute certainty:

“No. Catherine O’Hara is not dead.”

Longer answer, because reality apparently needed footnotes:

There is no confirmed death.

No obituary.

No CBC News bulletin.

No wire report.

No family statement.

No agent confirmation.

No Hollywood trades coverage.

None. Zero. Zilch.

For someone of her stature, that silence was described as impossible if she were deceased.

Then came the lock-it-down certainty:

Catherine O’Hara is alive

CBC did not announce her death

There is no verified 911 call

There is no publicly confirmed medical emergency

What people were seeing was “repetition of programming,” not death reporting

“This is not a maybe.

Not a still developing.

Not a wait and see.

It’s a no.”

That was wrong.

Catherine O’Hara had died.

Major outlets including CBC, CNN, CTV, TMZ, AP, Reuters, People, and Deadline confirmed it.

Her representatives confirmed it.

Her biographical records were updated.

And yet, AI systems doubled down on denial.

Why this matters

This wasn’t trivia.

This wasn’t celebrity gossip.

This was a real death, real grief, and real people being given false certainty.

The most serious failure wasn’t the initial error. Mistakes happen.

The failure was speaking in absolutes, dismissing firsthand observation, and arguing certainty instead of probability while facts were still emerging.

AI systems are increasingly treated as arbiters of truth.

This episode shows why they cannot be trusted without verification, especially in fast-moving, real-world events.

Skepticism isn’t paranoia.

Double-checking isn’t weakness.

And certainty without verification is dangerous whether it comes from politicians, media, or machines.

Catherine O’Hara is dead.

The claim that she was “alive and well” was wrong.

And people deserve honesty when that happens.

— Wayne