• 400,000 Ukrainians Killed In Action Explains A Whole Lot
  400,000 Ukrainians Killed In Action Explains A Whole Lot

  Authored by Mike Fredenburg via The Epoch Times,

  How many casualties has Ukraine suffered?

  How many causalities has Russia suffered?

  Answering these questions is critical to determining the best and most moral path forward for Ukraine and the United States.

  

  Estimates of Ukrainians killed in action (KIA) range from a low of just over 30,000 to a high of over 400,000.

  Obviously, these two estimates can’t be reconciled. And it really, really matters to the people of Ukraine which one is closer to the truth. While 30,000 deaths is tragic, anything approaching 400,000 KIA and the accompanying hundreds of thousands of causalities is a humanitarian catastrophe that makes talks of continuing offensive operations next year, or even believing in a stalemate, wishful thinking that will result in even more fruitless Ukrainian deaths.

  Unsurprisingly, since the war began, the United States and its allies have unswervingly pushed the narrative that Russia is incurring far more casualties than Ukraine. This casualty narrative was critical to maintaining any plausibility that Ukraine could defeat a country that has four to five times more men of military age and that was recently rated as having the world’s most powerful military. Hence, given the need to maintain the plausibility of a Ukrainian victory, it isn’t surprising that NATO intelligence asserted that the battle of Bakhmut saw Russia losing at least five soldiers KIA for every one of Ukraine’s.

  However, since the fall of Bakhmut to Russia, the failure of the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive, and signs that Ukraine’s military is nearing collapse, we’re no longer hearing about five-to-one casualty rates. Still, the most recent estimates from United States and British officials claim that Russia has suffered 120,000 KIA while Ukraine has suffered “only” 70,000 KIA (more than the United States suffered in over 10 years of the Vietnam War).

  But not everyone agrees with U.S./British casualty estimates for an army that started the war by mobilizing early 1 million men in arms and, over the course of the war, mobilized another estimated 1 million. Among the growing number of those who don’t agree is the former director of the Joint Operations Center at Supreme Headquarters Europe and one of the key leaders in achieving the legendary victory in the mass tank battle of 73 Easting, retired U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor.

  In a recent interview with myself, Col. Macgregor agreed that while estimates putting Russian KIA at as high as 50,000 to 60,000 are defensible, most estimates for Ukrainian KIAs are not.

  In what many will undoubtedly find shocking given the countless stories disparaging Russia’s military skills and capabilities while uncritically fawning over Ukraine’s military prowess, Col. Macgregor puts Ukrainian KIA at over 400,000 out of the 2 million Ukraine has mobilized.

  Col. Macgregor arrived at this shocking number using a wide variety of sources, including contacts within U.S. intelligence and contacts on the ground in Ukraine and Poland who have intimate knowledge of what’s really happening in Ukraine.

  In particular, he noted that his U.S. intelligence contacts have expressed shock as to just how far from reality the narrative being pushed by the Biden administration is from what’s happening in Ukraine and its real war losses.

  Likewise, Col. Macgregor’s Ukraine contacts relayed to him accounts of thousands of wounded Ukrainians being left to die on the battlefield, growing numbers of Ukrainian commanders and troops refusing orders to conduct suicide attacks against heavily fortified Russian positions, Ukrainian soldiers surrendering en masse to Russia, hospitals overflowing with Ukrainian wounded, and many other accounts that testify to horrendous casualty rates that contradict the narrative pushed by Western media.

  Additionally, Col. Macgregor’s contacts have analyzed satellite imagery showing a massive expansion of Ukrainian cemeteries and countless tens of thousands of fresh graves. Other open-source intelligence analysis has also documented in detail Ukraine’s massive expansion of cemeteries that will soon allow Ukraine to reportedly bury 1.5 million more people. And a Russian analyst using death notices and other open-source intelligence has come up with Ukrainian KIA estimates of over 300,000.

  But for Col. Macgregor, it’s the totality of the reports he has seen, his understanding of historical casualty rates, his personal military experience, and information from his sources that has brought him to the conclusion that Ukraine’s KIA is a magnitude greater than what’s commonly being reported.

  These numbers, coupled with the fact the war could have been avoided had President Volodymyr Zelenskyy been knowledgeable and wise enough to understand that U.S./NATO promises of victory were completely unrealistic and couldn’t be relied upon, have led Col. Macgregor, who has fond memories of growing up in a Ukrainian immigrant neighborhood, to believe that the war is an absolute disaster for Ukraine that could have and should have been avoided.

  “In humanitarian terms, this tragedy has resulted in the Ukrainian nation being destroyed in a war that never needed to be fought,” Col. Macgregor said.

  While Col. Macgregor isn’t alone in calling out the war as being a total disaster for Ukraine, he’s one of just a few Western military experts willing to buck a narrative whose zealotry has assumed religious overtones. But is there evidence we can look at that lends support to his assessment? In short, the answer is “Yes!”

  First and foremost, history tells us artillery-centric wars such as World War I and the Ukraine-Russia war produce massive amounts of casualties and KIA. Indeed, during the short period of time America fought the Germans in World War I, it suffered 318,000 casualties, including 53,000 KIA over a period of 120 days, and another 60,000 who died due to disease and accidents. Consequently, given the advances in real-time battlefield intelligence that have been made since World War I, very high casualty rates from artillery should be expected.

  And because Russia not only started the war with up to a 10 to 1 advantage in artillery power, but continues to maintain its artillery advantage while producing up to seven times more artillery shells than all other NATO nations combined, it’s Russia that one would expect to be far ahead in terms of casualty ratios. Russia’s advantage in long-range strike capability, drone warfare, and electronic warfare only add to its ability to inflict disproportionate casualties.

  While the above bespeaks of Russia’s potential to deal out disproportionate casualties, the average age of Ukrainian soldiers increasing over time from roughly 32.5 years to 43 years provides concrete evidence that Ukraine has suffered catastrophic casualties over the course of the war. From a statistical perspective, this huge increase in average age fits better with Col. Macgregor’s KIA numbers than those being commonly reported by Western media. Only with very large numbers of KIA or permanently wounded can you get such a large increase in the average age of active-duty Ukrainian soldiers.

  Another ominous trend highlighting the desperation of President Zelenskyy’s government is the plan to radically increase the number of women serving in the military, despite the fact that women are at a severe disadvantage to men when it comes to close combat.

  Then you have stories and anecdotes describing the life expectancy at the frontlines of Bakhmut being  hours and poorly trained Ukrainian troops being rushed into combat. These kinds of stories are legion, especially in independent or non-Western media. Combined with all the other signs, this makes a strong case that Col. Macgregor’s numbers aren’t only plausible, but also help explain why Ukrainian government actions are looking increasingly desperate.

  Of course, Col. Macgregor recognizes that coming up with accurate casualty numbers in the middle of a war is extremely tough, and that his estimates could be off by many thousands.

  Given the strong evidence that Ukraine is suffering country-destroying casualties, talk of a stalemate, much less of successful offensive territory-gaining operations, is more about face-saving than any realistic chance of Ukraine avoiding losing.

  Hence, the only moral path forward for the United States is to tell President Zelenskyy it’s well past the time to sue for peace and that he must accept neutrality and the loss of the regions that seceded from Ukraine in 2014.

  This is a bitter pill to swallow for Ukrainian nationalists and those in the United States who hoped Ukraine would do far more damage to Russia, but the alternative is accelerating Ukraine’s diminishing chances of remaining a viable nation-state, a whole lot more fruitless Ukrainian deaths, and peace terms substantially worse than those that can be negotiated today.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 23:40

• Breitbart Exposes Security Gaps: Migrants Board Planes Without IDs At Tucson Airport
  Breitbart Exposes Security Gaps: Migrants Board Planes Without IDs At Tucson Airport

  A recent investigation conducted by Breitbart Texas at Tucson International Airport, Arizona, has brought to light significant concerns regarding border security and migrant processing. While the rest of us have to wait in endless lines – and will definitely miss our flight if we’ve forgotten ID, migrants released by the Border Patrol were observed boarding U.S. flights without the standard identification required for most travelers.

  

  Special TSA Screening for Migrants

  The outlet reported that on a Friday afternoon at Tucson International Airport, migrants, having been released from Border Patrol custody, were seen in a “special” security line set up by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This line catered exclusively to migrants, many of whom lacked any form of identification, a requirement typically enforced for U.S. citizens and legal international travelers.

  

  These migrants carried manila envelopes containing a Notice to Appear, signifying their release from federal custody. Notably, these documents did not include photo identification, a standard requirement under TSA regulations for air travel.

  According to Breitbart’s findings, while TSA regulations generally mandate government-issued photo ID cards for travel, there is a provision for “acceptable alternate identification for use in special circumstances at the checkpoint,” which appears to be the basis for the special line.

  Increased Migrant Arrivals and Processing Challenges

  The report highlights that the surge of migrants crossing into the United States has led to a flood of illegal migrants being released into the country to pursue asylum claims. The influx has overwhelmed Border Patrol facilities in Tucson, with numbers exceeding their designated holding capacity. The situation has obvious national security implications associated with the rapid processing and release of migrants.

  

  According to a DHS Office of the Inspector General report cited in Breitbart’s investigation, in one case a migrant on the Terrorist Watch List was mistakenly released by the Border Patrol in Yuma, Arizona.

  The source says capacity issues facing the Border Patrol and the need to quickly release the migrants pose a significant risk to national security. According to an investigative report by the DHS Office of the Inspector General, in April 2022, one migrant on the Terrorist Watch List was released by the Border Patrol in Yuma, Arizona. The report noted a series of failures by multiple DHS agencies resulted in the failure to conclusively determine that the migrant was on the Terrorist Watchlist, resulting in the release from custody.

  The migrant and family members were later encountered attempting to board an aircraft by TSA security screening personnel at the Palm Springs International Airport. Despite the second encounter by DHS personnel, the migrant was ultimately able to travel to Tampa, Florida, and was not rearrested by ICE for more than two weeks. -Breitbart

  Approximately 190,000 migrants were apprehended in November trying to enter the United States illegally.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 23:20

• Turley: What If Jack Smith Held A Trial And No One Came?
  Turley: What If Jack Smith Held A Trial And No One Came?

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  In 1966, Charlotte E. Keyes wrote a famous article for McCall’s magazine titled “Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came.” Special Counsel Jack Smith may be contemplating the same fate.

  Putting the tongue-in-cheek title aside, the odds are that some people will come to any trial of President Donald Trump. After all, a lot of people have to come from the judge to the jurors and counsel. However, Smith has had an ominous week that could severely complicate his plans for convicting Donald Trump before the election. Moreover, a trial after the election could mean no trial at all.

  

  Before this week, Smith found himself on the losing end of the schedule in Florida in his prosecution of Trump for his retention of classified documents.

  Judge Aileen Cannon has scheduled a trial for May 20, 2024, but that could easily move with additional delays or appeals in the case.

  I have always viewed that case to be the strongest against Trump, but the huge number of classified documents have (as predicted) slowed the prosecution. Despite Smith’s pushing for a pre-election trial, his structuring of the charges undermined that schedule.

  Smith then pushed hard for a pre-election trial in the January 6th case in Washington where he seemed to have a supportive judge in Judge Tanya Chutkan who shoehorned the start just before the Super Tuesday elections.

  Now, however, Judge Chutkan has been forced to stay the case indefinitely pending the appeal of the presidential immunity claim made by Trump. The matter is now before both the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court gave Trump until December 20th to respond to Smith’s request for an expedited review — leapfrogging over the D.C. Circuit.

  Smith’s filing conveys priority, if not a necessity, in trying Trump before the election. The Supreme Court may not share that sense of urgency. Traditionally, the Supreme Court has preferred to wait to allow appellate courts to render decisions. Since a conviction will not make Trump ineligible to run for the presidency, the question is why the March date should short circuit the review process.

  If the Supreme Court ultimately does not rule on the merits, the period for review would easily supplant the trial schedule since an appeal could be taken to the entire D.C. Circuit (en banc) and then to the Supreme Court.

  That did not change the March 4 trial date, but it could well make that date unworkable if the appeals drag on.

  Then to make the week complete, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in United States v. Fischer.  That case turns on the proper interpretation of the obstruction provision under Section 1512(c)(2).

  Fischer was charged with obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and based solely on his trespass in the Capitol.

  A ruling in his favor could effectively cut away half of the case against Donald Trump. Among the four counts brought by Smith, Trump is charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k) (Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding) (Count Two) and  18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(2), 2 (Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding) (Count Three).

  If those two counts fell to the wayside, Smith would be left with a count on conspiracy to defraud the United States (Count One) and conspiracy against rights (Count 4). Those counts contain other challengeable elements which would have to be appealed after any conviction.

  At some point, the mad rush for a March trial will look illogical and gratuitous if key legal issues remain unresolved  and pre-trial motions and discovery remain incomplete in February.

  The problem for Smith is that a trial after the election could mean no trial at all. If Trump is elected, he could give himself a preemptive self-pardon, though some disagree with this view. Moreover, the new Attorney General could scuttle or undermine the prosecution.

  In other words, it is possible that Jack Smith might never see a jury in either case.

  That would still leave the New York and Georgia cases, which are not subject to presidential pardons. However, those cases (particularly the one in New York) have their own challengeable elements.

  None of this means that Trump is out of the woods. He will continue to face a daunting daisy-chain of civil and criminal cases around the country. Moreover, it is not clear how the schedule will shake out with both the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court giving expedited attention to the immunity question. He could still face at least one federal trial before election day.

  However, Smith must be wondering if, assuming the schedule breaks in favor of Trump, he would be holding an empty sack come January 2024.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 23:00

• Russia Warns If NATO Bases Used For Ukrainian Jets They Could Be Targeted
  Russia Warns If NATO Bases Used For Ukrainian Jets They Could Be Targeted

  With the Russia-Ukraine war now approaching the two year mark (in February), Americans might need reminding that the conflict remains a highly dangerous situation which could at any moment escalate into a WW3 scenario. 

  Zelensky’s visit to Washington this week was lackluster, and he left without securing what Kiev is hoping for – that Congress would quickly pass Biden’s $106 billion war funding request, which also includes defense funds for Israel. Of course, at this point Zelensky has complained publicly that the crisis in Gaza has taken the world’s focus off the need to defend Ukraine from Russia’s onslaught. 

  Though headlines in the West barely took notice, Russia early Wednesday launched a significant ballistic missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, which authorities said injured at least 53 people, including six children, with severe damage to a number of buildings. 

  

  But with Zelensky in Washington, making the rounds to the Oval office and the halls of Congress, the Kremlin issued a fresh warning saying that if Ukraine’s military is granted access to NATO airbases for sorties using western-made planes, in would respond while deeming Ukraine’s external allies as direct participants in the war.

  The fresh warning was announced by Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the Russian delegation to the military security and arms control talks in Vienna:

  “We already hear comments that, amid the significant destruction of Ukraine’s airstrip infrastructure, the F-16s handed over to Ukraine may carry out their missions from airbases in Poland, Romania and Slovakia,” he said during the OSCE Forum meeting on cooperation in security.

  According to the diplomat, Moscow will view this as these countries’ participation in the conflict and will force Russia to resort to “response measures.”

  Even though certain eastern European allies pledged F-16s long ago, it could still be a lengthy amount of time before Ukrainian pilots are fully trained, enough to be deployed in combat on the US-made warplane. 

  Western officials have in recent months admitted that Russia has the upper hand, and that Ukraine’s summer offensive failed, but everyone is now putting in place their ‘long war’ strategies. The Kremlin’s new warning and threat also seems part of this longer term planning from Moscow’s perspective. 

  1. Stoltenberg’s idiocy always proudly on display. NATO’s deployment of a missile defense system in Poland is of course purely “defensive.” Then he remembers himself. No, NATO isn’t planning on fighting a nuclear war with Russia on the European continent. https://t.co/xUNQSps26h pic.twitter.com/Sv1yYbiwIv

  — George Szamuely (@GeorgeSzamuely) December 14, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Russia has been taking notice of the US moving its F-16s to places like Romania, where its entirely possible they could eventually be used by Ukrainian pilots. This is what Russia fears, and it’s putting Washington on notice. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 22:40

• NRA Sounds Alarm On New ATF Rule Targeting Gun Buyers And Sellers
  NRA Sounds Alarm On New ATF Rule Targeting Gun Buyers And Sellers

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The National Rifle Association (NRA) sounded the alarm on a gun-control proposal from a federal regulatory agency that could “unjustly criminalize” Americans from selling a firearm.

  

  In a statement Tuesday, the largest U.S. guns-rights group flagged that a rule proposed earlier this year by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosive (ATF) known as ATF2022R-17, which proposed amending and broadening the definition of when a person is deemed to have been “engaged in the business” of being a firearms dealer other than a gunsmith or pawn-broker.

  It would expand the definition of a firearms “dealer” to anyone who “sells or offers for sale firearms, and also represents to potential buyers or otherwise demonstrates a willingness and ability to purchase and sell additional firearms,” according to the rule proposal. It would also include the definition would be broadened to include people who sell guns for services, property, or anything other than cash.

  The proposal would create a “stand-alone definition of ‘terrorism,'” and would “clarif[y] what it means for a person to be ‘engaged in the business’ of dealing in firearms, and to have the intent to ‘predominantly earn a profit’ from the sale or disposition of firearms,” the rule’s summary stated on the Federal Register. The public comment period on the rule ended last week.

  An NRA official, Randy Kozuch, told Fox News Tuesday that the rule would be “just another attempt to demolish our Second Amendment rights, with the potential to unjustly criminalize everyday Americans for engaging in lawful firearm transactions.”

  “This rule blatantly disregards the recent NRA-backed Bruen ruling on the Second Amendment,” Mr. Kozuch added. “It also creates serious confusion among lawful gun owners who buy and sell firearms legally for various purposes, from collecting to self-defense.”

  The NRA, in an earlier statement, said that the ATF doesn’t have “the resources nor the intent of handling the massive increase in” Federal Firearms Licenses that the proposed rule “would result if its terms were adopted.”

  “Instead, the proposal is a transparent attempt to strong-arm Internet service providers, gun shows, technology platforms, and other facilitators to abandon any involvement in private gun sales with vague threats of ‘administrative action’ for non-compliance,” the statement added. “Meanwhile, the cartels, gang members, firearm smugglers, and violent sociopaths Congress had in mind when passing the law that supposedly enables the proposal will be entirely unaffected.”

  “If the Biden administration were truly committed to combating crime, they would focus on enforcing existing laws and reform their soft-on-crime policies, targeting actual criminals instead of law-abiding American gun owners,” Mr. Kozuch continued.

  On Dec. 7, a coalition of Republican attorneys general led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen wrote a letter to the ATF, saying the rule is unconstitutional and violates the Second Amendment.

  “The proposed rule is unconstitutional, violating the Second Amendment by making any individual who sells a firearm without a federal license liable to civil, administrative, or even criminal penalties,” said a news release from Mr. Knudsen’s office.

  The ATF has not publicly commented on the NRA’s recent critical statement. The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of Justice (DOJ), which oversees the ATF, for comment on Tuesday.

  The ATF’s rule was proposed in August and was open to a comment period that lasted from Sept. 9 to Dec. 7. More than 350,000 people posted public comments on the Regulations.gov website.

  Some people claimed that the rule would spark confusion for gun owners, namely those who collect firearms and competitive shooters.

  Notably, a number of comments that supported the proposed ATF rule appeared to be the same text that was copied and pasted, albeit with different names attached. The Epoch Times has reached out to the Regulations.gov website, which is run by the U.S. General Services Administration, for comment on whether the repetitive comments will be accepted.

  In June 2022, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was backed by gun-control groups after a mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas, that left about two dozen people dead.

  When he signed it into law, the president said that “while this bill doesn’t do everything I want, it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives.”

  Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who backed the measure, said that the measure will also “save thousands of lives without violating anyone’s Second Amendment rights.” The NRA and similar groups, however, disputed that statement at the time.

  The law was signed as the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 landmark decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, that said there is a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense purposes. At the same time, they struck down a longstanding New York state law that restricted the concealed carrying of firearms.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 22:20

• PBOC Injects Record Liquidity As China Retail Sales Disappoint, Investment Slows
  PBOC Injects Record Liquidity As China Retail Sales Disappoint, Investment Slows

  On the back of mixed PMI and trade data, deeper price deflation, and slightly weaker-than-expected credit data, November activity data painted a mixed picture for the Chinese economy, as a rebound from restrictive Zero-COVID policies continues to be weaker than expected (exacerbated by a deepening property crisis).

  Earlier in the month, China’s CPI showed a greater deflation than expected (the largest deflation since the GFC)…

  

  Then, last night saw November’s new RMB loans and TSF data came in below expectations, and the composition of loans data showed soft credit demand…

  

  Bill financing continued to grow faster than corporates’ medium to long term loans. Households’ medium to long term loan growth also slowed in November from October on the back of weak property transactions.

  Which brings us to tonight’s macro data smorgesbord of good, bad, and ugly data.

  • China Nov. Industrial Output Rises 6.6% Y/Y; Est. 5.7% – BEAT

  • China Nov. Retail Sales Rise 10.1% Y/Y; Est. 12.5% – MISS

  • China Jan.-Nov. Fixed Investment Rises 2.9% Y/Y; Est. 3% – MISS

  • China Jan.-Nov. Property Dev. Investment -9.4% Y/Y, Down from -9.3% Y/Y

  • China’s surveyed jobless rate ticks along at 5.0% (low/strong – the same as in October) while the country refuses to disclose the youth unemployment rate (which had soared to a record over 20% before the data was banned).

  

  As Bloomberg notes, there are a lot of questions about how comprehensive and accurate the jobless data is, with alternative data showing the situation is actually getting worse.

  

  So, industrial output growth was stronger than expected in November, but housing worsened – residential property sales shrank 4.3% for the first 11 months of the year.

  

  Finally, the NBS also released home price data today, which showed no improvement.

  Second-hand home prices were down 0.79% in November from October, while new home prices in the top 70 cities were down 0.37% – the sixth straight month of falls.

  

  All of which combined is perhaps why China’s central bank decided to inject the most cash via one-year policy loans on record.

  PBOC offered commercial lenders 1.45 trillion yuan ($204 billion) via its medium-term lending facility (that is a net 800 billion yuan more than the expected maturity this month).

  “MLF injection is much larger than expected, so it suggests continued easy monetary policy,” said Becky Liu, head of China macro strategy at Standard Chartered.

  

  This likely means China won’t cut the reserve-requirement ratio for banks anytime soon.

  China appears to believe discussing the weakness in its economy is a PsyOp as the Ministry of State Security said, in a post this morning on its official WeChat account ahead of the data:

  “Clichés intended to undermine China’s economy are essentially aimed at constructing a ‘discourse trap’ and ‘cognitive trap’ about the false narrative that China is in decline, so as to attack and negate the socialist system to contain and suppress China.”

  In the post, the ministry also went on to criticize some people “with ulterior motives” for fabricating false narratives such as China is “replacing development with security,” “squeezing out foreign investment” and “suppressing private enterprises,” saying their purpose is to disrupt market expectations and order to block good momentum for China’s economic growth.

  You mean like “bidenomics” being awesome except for the collapse in consumer confidence and Biden’s approval rating?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 22:13

• Transgender Teachers In Florida Sue Over Pronoun Law
  Transgender Teachers In Florida Sue Over Pronoun Law

  Two teachers in Florida and one former educator filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Education on Wednesday, challenging a new law restricting transgender teachers from using pronouns that match their chosen gender identity.

  

  The law, which took effect on July 1, “pushed one plaintiff out of their teaching career and threatens to do the same for the other plaintiffs — and for the other transgender and nonbinary teachers like them across Florida,” according to the filing reported by Axios.

  “Florida’s goal behind these laws is to stigmatize and demonize transgender and nonbinary people and relegate them from public life altogether,” it continues.

  The suit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in federal court on behalf of Katie Wood, a teacher at Lennard High in Ruskin, around 25 miles south of Tampa, as well as former Florida online school teacher AV Schwandes, and one Lee County teacher who went under Jane Doe. Wood and Doe are transgender, while Schwandes is nonbinary.

  It specifically challenges a section of Florida law that holds that a school employee “may not provide to a student his or her preferred personal title or pronouns if such preferred personal title or pronouns do not correspond to his or her sex.”

  According to the complaint, that section violates Supreme Court precedent as well as other recently adopted laws, and “sends the state-sanctioned, invidious, and false message that transgender and nonbinary people and their identities are inherently dangerous.”

  Teachers who violate the law risk revocation or suspension of their teaching license.

  “Those who support and enforce this law are trying to take my voice away and bury my existence. But they will not,” Wood said in a statement to the outlet.

  More via Axios.

  Before its passage, LGBTQ+ advocates derided the legislation as “Don’t Say They,” playing on the “Don’t Say Gay” nickname given to the 2022 law that restricts classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation.

  • DeSantis signed the bill into law in May, one of several bills that critics dubbed a “slate of hate” laws discriminating against the LGBTQ+ community and denying the existence of transgender people.

  • It rejects a distinction between sex and gender identity, saying that “a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex.”

  Since the law went into effect, Wood, a math teacher, was told that he could only go by Mr., Teacher, or Coach. He opted for Teacher, which felt ‘awkward,’ and was reportedly distracting to students, many of whom continued to use “Ms.,” according to the lawsuit. 

  All three plaintiffs have also filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as well.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 22:00

• After Affirmative Action Win Over Harvard, Group Takes On West Point
  After Affirmative Action Win Over Harvard, Group Takes On West Point

  Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The group that triumphed in a landmark Supreme Court case that struck down affirmative action policies at Harvard University earlier this year hopes to build on the victory with a lawsuit targeting similar policies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

  

  Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed the lawsuit on Sept. 19 with high hopes, but the organization has strayed into a legal and political minefield as the academy and the Biden administration try to block the lawsuit on the grounds that an institution training military officers isn’t subject to the same rules as private universities and that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies help, rather than hinder, effectiveness in combat.

  Largely as a result of the perceived disparity between those standards that apply to private colleges and universities and those applicable to entities under federal oversight, the SFFA faces one of the most formidable legal challenges, the outcome of which will have implications for every school and academy in the nation.

  Since President Joe Biden took office, a marked cultural shift has been underway in virtually all branches of the military.

  The Biden administration has forced through policies that promote DEI at the expense of the traditional criteria of combat readiness and the minimization of U.S. casualties, experts have told The Epoch Times.

  President Biden has revised rules put in place by the Obama administration to remake the military even more boldly in accordance with DEI principles and has relied on executive orders, often without public discussion, to force through this agenda.

  In December 2022, revisions to the Obama-era Department of Defense (DOD) Instruction 1300.28 altered official DOD vocabulary regarding transgender recruits, made officers more directly liable for perceived offenses against such persons, and gave official approval to cross-dressing on military bases, among other changes.

  President Biden’s general DEI stance makes the SFFA litigation one of the most impactful lawsuits so far undertaken against a military institution in modern history.

  DOD officials and representatives for West Point didn’t respond to a request for comment.

  

  From Triumph to Trial

  The Supreme Court handed down its ruling on June 29 in the closely watched legal case of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, finding that affirmative action policies at Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  The court issued a similar ruling in the matter of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina (UNC) on the same day.

  In a footnote to its opinion in the Harvard case, the majority explained that its ruling didn’t apply to military institutions such as West Point, stating that no military academies were a party in the case.

  The court acknowledged a U.S. government brief that contended that “race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s military academies.”

  SFFA’s founder, Edward Mr. Blum, now sees an opportunity to redress what he sees as a glaring omission in the Supreme Court’s June rulings.

  

  “The SFFA cases have energized the legal community to challenge longstanding policies that have always been illegal. That is happening especially in the employment arena,” he told The Epoch Times.

  In the case of West Point, the legal issues are fundamentally the same, Mr. Blum believes—as is the opposing argument from those who want to preserve affirmative action.

  “It is the same failed argument that the government made about ‘leadership’ and ‘diversity’ in the Harvard and UNC cases,” he told The Epoch Times.

  But West Point and the Biden administration don’t see matters that way.

  In a Nov. 22 memorandum filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams and colleagues set forth a number of defenses of West Point’s admissions policies.

  They charge that the plaintiff, in extending the reasoning from the Harvard and UNC cases to this one, “ignores critical differences between civilian and military universities” and has failed to establish legal standing to weigh in on a matter that falls under federal jurisdiction.

  The government lawyers also argue that the Army’s “operational interests” require the training of officers who can build a “cohesive rapport with subordinates,” and that, in “an increasingly diverse nation,” that goal isn’t achievable without affirmative action.

  But it isn’t clear if arguments in court will even get far enough to consider that last issue.

  

  Clearing the Standing Bar

  During hearings set to take place early in 2024, defense lawyers for West Point will attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiff lacks standing under Article III of the Constitution.

  The article sets the bar high for proving actual or imminent injury as grounds for a party to pursue legal action touching on matters that would normally fall under federal jurisdiction, as military matters generally do.

  The highest court has been moving toward an ever-stricter interpretation of what such standing requires.

  Pursuant to its ruling in the 2021 case of TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the Supreme Court now requires evidence of “concrete harm” to qualify for Article III standing.

  “That’s an important issue. You’ve got to clear the standing hurdle before you get in the courthouse,” lawyer William Woodruff, former chief of the U.S. Army’s litigation division and former Department of Justice trial attorney, told The Epoch Times.

  The new legal standard has evolved to the point in which establishing Article III standing will be hard for any plaintiff, he said.

  “You’ve got to have direct injury. So the question is: What is your injury, and is that direct enough?” Mr. Woodruff said.

  “The government’s main defense is that this is military policy, national security, and the Constitution invests that authority in the government and not in the courts. The courts should stay out of it, we’re the ones responsible for the defense of the nation.”

  He said that, as an Army lawyer defending the service from lawsuits, he made that very argument regularly in courts around the country, with the goal of keeping the courts from meddling in Army policy.

  “And it’s a valid argument, except that now, we’ve got the SFFA and Harvard/UNC cases, which sort of cracked open the door on that and shed some new light,” Mr. Woodruff said.

  “In the unique situation of the military, how does this apply and how much deference should we extend?”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 21:40

• Sullivan Tells Netanyahu To Wrap Up 'High Intensity' Gaza Fighting Within Weeks
  Sullivan Tells Netanyahu To Wrap Up ‘High Intensity’ Gaza Fighting Within Weeks

  For the first time this week, the White House has begun putting rare pressure on the Netanyahu government – after Biden earlier offered the criticism that “indiscriminate” bombing in Gaza could turn the world against Israel. National security advisor Jake Sullivan is currently in Tel Aviv meeting with Israel’s war cabinet, and it appears he too is delivering a message of pushback (or at least the appearance).

  Sullivan reportedly conveyed that Israel’s military needs to wrap of the current “high intensity” phase of its offensive “within weeks”. This according to Israeli officials who spoke to the Times of Israel. 

  

  Apparently Sullivan went so far as to express that the US desires for this phase to stop by year’s end, which is only two weeks away. “A second Israeli official says the US has pushed for the current phase to wrap up by the end of 2023,” the TOI report said. 

  The US wants a “major roll back” in fighting within that period, the Israeli source was cited as saying. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby appeared to confirm the report in a press briefing when asked about it, but was light on the details.

  He said that Sullivan “did talk about the possible transitioning from what we would call high intensity operations — which is what we’re seeing them do now — to lower intensity operations sometime in the near future.”

  “But I don’t want to put a timestamp on that. The last thing we want to do is telegraph to Hamas what they’re likely to face in the coming weeks and months,” Kirby added. So clearly the administration wasn’t willing to say publicly that a timeline of “weeks” had been supposedly attached to the request. 

  However, going into Sullivan’s meeting with the war cabinet, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made clear to the US side in public remarks that the war to eradicate Hamas in Gaza will take “more than several months.” He also didn’t specify whether Israel is also approaching this in “phases”.

  .@PhilipWegmann: “I wanted to follow up on your comments about the Palestinian Authority remaining in governance…[A]s Congress puts together an aid package for Ukraine & Israel, does [Biden] want to see the Taylor Force Act remain in effect or is he open to U.S. aid going… pic.twitter.com/9oPqIl5JW3

  — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 14, 2023

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  Local Israeli media is also making clear the Israeli officials are still pushing for the establishment of an international peacekeeping force to administer Gaza for the ‘day after’ Hamas.

  The two allies are still publicly at odds over Washington’s desire to see the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Mahmoud Abbas step in and rule Gaza. The Netanyahu has made clear it doesn’t want that scenario, putting it on a collision course with Washington.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 21:20

• COVID-19 Can Remain Undetected In Lungs For 18 Months: Study
  COVID-19 Can Remain Undetected In Lungs For 18 Months: Study

  Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The COVID-19 virus can remain in the lungs for months after an individual has been infected—even though it may be undetected by over-the-counter (OTC) tests, a new study finds.

  

  The findings, established by a research team from the Institut Pasteur in France and published in Nature Immunology, indicate that the virus can live in the lungs for up to 18 months after infection in what scientists call “viral reservoirs.”

  The research team discovered these so-called viral reservoirs by analyzing samples from non-human primate models infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. Preliminary results of the study showed the virus was found in the lungs of some animal models six to 18 months after infection, even though the virus went undetected in the blood or upper respiratory tract, such as the nose, throat, or voice box.

  The researchers believe these viral reservoirs act almost like dormant geysers that could erupt at any time, especially when activated by some type of stimulus. Whether the virus reactivates may also depend on an individual’s innate immunity, the immunity someone is born with.

  To understand how innate immunity works against viral reservoirs, the Institut Pasteur team studied how macrophages and natural killer cells worked against the COVID-19 virus, looking for clues in the formation of viral reservoirs.

  Macrophages and natural killer cells are types of white blood cells. While a natural killer cell is responsible for destroying infected or diseased cells, macrophages are responsible for removing dying or dead cells and cellular debris. When it comes to COVID-19, macrophages are responsible for the majority of the work in the lungs, the research team indicated, as they comprise 7o percent of the white blood cell count in the lungs.

  Also called lymphocytes, natural killer cells are a major building block of a person’s innate immunity system. In some individuals in the study, natural killer cells could adapt and control the viral reservoirs; in essence, the cells worked to dry up the reservoir. Researchers noted as natural killer cells increased in the blood, the viral load declined. The natural killer cells could not adapt in other cases, enabling the reservoir to swell. Therefore, the lower the natural killer cell count, the more likely an individual is to have persistent COVID-19 virus or experience a relapse in symptoms, researchers reasoned.

  A Clue About Long COVID

  Discovery of the viral reservoirs could be a clue as to why some individuals experience long COVID, Michaela Müller-Trutwin, head of the Institut Pasteur’s HIV, Inflammation and Persistence Unit, noted in a press release.

  Before the publication of the Institut Pasteur study, researchers believed that the reactivation of a dormant COVID-19 virus caused long COVID. The concept of viral reservoirs confirms this previous research. Furthermore, the new research confirms previous thought that long COVID could be caused by overactive immune cells releasing high levels of inflammatory substances into the body.

  A January 2023 KFF poll showed that 28 percent of individuals who previously had COVID-19 reported having long COVID. The percentage declined from the first time KFF polled Americans in June 2022, during which 35 percent of Americans with COVID reported having long COVID.

  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) reported the risk factors associated with developing long COVID. Individuals who were hospitalized due to the virus, have underlying conditions, are unvaccinated, or have multisystem inflammatory syndrome are likely at a higher risk of developing long COVID, according to the agency.

  While most people diagnosed with COVID-19 recover in a few days to a few weeks after infection, some may experience symptoms for four weeks or longer after the initial infection. Individuals with long COVID experience an array of symptoms, but the most common include tiredness or fatigue that interferes with daily life, symptoms that worsen after physical or mental exertion, and fever. A person may also experience multiple respiratory, heart, neurological, and digestive symptoms. The KFF poll reported that long COVID puts significant limitations on an individual’s day, with 79 percent of people reporting their daily activity as limited.

  There is no cure or specific treatment for long COVID. Treatment plans vary from person to person based on an individual’s symptoms.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 21:00

• Vista Outdoors Warns "Global Shortage Of Gunpowder" Will Set Ammo Prices On Fire 
  Vista Outdoors Warns “Global Shortage Of Gunpowder” Will Set Ammo Prices On Fire 

  US sporting and outdoor products group Vista Outdoor warned in a letter to customers that ammunition prices are set to surge due to “an anticipated global shortage of gunpowder.”

  Vista Outdoor confirmed the authenticity of the letter to Newsweek days ago. The increase of ammo and gunpowder prices is expected on Jan. 1. 

  “Due to world events our suppliers have notified us of unprecedented demand for and an anticipated global shortage of gunpowder, and thus has increased our prices substantially,” Vice President of Sales, Sporting Products Brett Nelson said in the letter.

  Nelson continued, “We must, therefore, raise our pricing to help offset those increases.”

  Ammo and powder prices at Remington, Alliant Powder, CCI, Federal, SEVI-Shot, and Speer are set to rise in the coming weeks:

  • Shotshell: 1-7 percent

  • Rifle: 1-7 percent

  • Handgun: 1-5 percent

  • 22LR/Shorts: 1-5 percent

  • WMR/HMR: 1-7 percent

  • Primers: 5 percent

  • Alliant Powder: 10 percent (limited availability).

  The rise in demand for ammo and gunpowder comes as the Russia-Ukraine war nears the two-year mark while Israel is 1.5 months into a large-scale ground war with Hamas in Gaza. 

  Here are the current retail prices for ammo scrapped off firearm websites by AmmoPricesNow:

  9mm

  

  22LR

  

  .223

  

  7.62×39

  

  Is Vista Outdoor’s Nelson hyping up an ammo shortage to drive sales, or does his statement hold some truth?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 20:40

• Economic Angst In The Heartland
  Economic Angst In The Heartland

  Authored by Steve Cortes via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Bidenomics is failing America, infecting the land with a persistent and intensifying cynicism, despite attempts by the White House and a partisan press to impose misleading narratives on the electorate.

  

  For example, the media rushed to heap praise upon last week’s modestly constructive jobs report. The actual numbers reveal a mixed bag – not a terrible report, but certainly not a parade-worthy one, either.

  The 199,000 jobs added in November sits below the average for the year 2023, and far off the prior levels of 2021 and 2022. Regarding jobs added since Biden took office, the easy part is over, meaning the task of regaining the lost jobs resulting from the COVID panic is largely complete – and now net new job creation languishes.

  Moreover, a sector analysis of this latest jobs report shows that 70% of the jobs were in either healthcare or government positions. More productive private sector jobs continue to lag, with manufacturing payrolls still flat in 2023.

  In addition, even modestly positive economic data points cannot compensate for the harm inflicted upon workers for most of Biden’s tenure. Specifically, real wages – incomes adjusted for inflation – declined for a record 24 straight months, and recent small recoveries in real wages cannot come close to making workers whole.

  The reality, as revealed by the data, proves that workers have toiled harder to get poorer under Biden, in real world terms – and they know it.

  My organization, the League of American Workers, has commissioned a series of battleground state polls conducted by North Star Opinion Research. The most recent survey of Wisconsin canvassed an evenly split sampling of Biden and Trump 2020 voters in that Heartland swing state.

  The crisis of confidence pervades the upper Midwest, where only 22% of Wisconsin likely voters think America is on the right track, and the clear main culprit for the despondency is the economy.

  The economy remains the primary concern of battleground voters, regardless of partisan affiliation. For example, approval of Biden on the economy shows the president badly underwater, with only 17% strong approval vs. a whopping 47% strong disapproval. But among the independent Midwest voters we sampled, the results are just about as dismal, with a mere 19% strong approval for Biden on the economy among non-partisans. Even among self-described liberals, 23% disapprove of Biden on the economy.

  Despite this widespread dissatisfaction, the president and his team insist on promoting the term “Bidenomics” to defend their radical agenda. Despite those efforts by the Democrats and a complicit legacy media, 37% of Wisconsin voters have not even heard the term. Among those who have, just 9% of voters in the state have a very favorable view of the phrase.

  Reflecting the stressed budgets of parents grappling to deal with high inflation, only 5% of parents in Wisconsin with school-age children have a very favorable view of Bidenomics, vs. 40% with a very unfavorable view.

  Swing state voters consistently blame the administration for this stifling inflation. On energy, for example, only 5% of Wisconsin citizens believe Biden’s agenda has lowered gasoline prices, while 51% blame his policies for raising prices at the pump.

  These numbers reflect a bracing economic reality in America under Biden: Only the very top end of the economic ladder is doing well. For instance, a JP Morgan research report last week detailed that 80% of Americans have already burned through their increased savings from the lockdowns and government support payments.

  Given current trends, by mid-year 2024, JP Morgan economist Marko Kolanovic projects “it is likely that only the top 1% of consumers by income will be better off than before the pandemic.”

  So, there it is.

  Great news for the top 1%, per usual from the supposed “progressives,” but a slog for everyone else. Americans are stressed, polarized, and losing faith in society’s future, even in the Heartland. A big driver of this pessimism flows from an economy that works only for a crony, credentialed ruling class.

  Accordingly, into 2024, the candidates and activists who address this anxiety and propose workable populist conservative solutions to fix our economic woes will win hearts, minds … and votes.

  This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

  Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Trump, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group.  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 20:20

• Oklahoma Governor Signs Executive Order Effectively Banning DEI In All State Institutions
  Oklahoma Governor Signs Executive Order Effectively Banning DEI In All State Institutions

  Following the meltdown on Capitol Hill by “Ivy League” Presidents from Harvard, MIT and Penn, on Wednesday of this week Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed Executive Order 2023-31, effectively banning diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies in state institutions.

  Standing in front of a podium which read “DEFUNDING DISCRIMINATION”, Stitt announced: “In Oklahoma, we’re going to encourage equal opportunity, rather than promising equal outcomes.”

  “Encouraging our workforce, economy, and education systems to flourish means shifting focus away from exclusivity and discrimination, and toward opportunity and merit. We’re taking politics out of education and focusing on preparing students for the workforce,” he said at a press conference.

  

  According to the Governor’s office, the order says that state agencies and institutions for higher education shall not utilize state funds, property, or resources to:

  1. Grant or support diversity, equity, and inclusion positions, departments, activities, procedures, or programs to the extent they grant preferential treatment based on one person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another’s;

  2. mandate any person to participate in, listen to, or receive any education, training, activities, procedures, or programming to the extent such education, training, activity, or procedure grants preferences based on one person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another’s;

  3. mandate any person swear, certify, or agree to any loyalty oath that favors or prefers one particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another;

  4. mandate any person to certify or declare agreement with, recognition of, or adherence to, any particular political, philosophical, religious, or other ideological viewpoint;

  5. mandate any applicant for employment provide a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement or give any applicant for employment preferential consideration based on the provision of such a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement; or

  6. mandate any person to disclose their pronouns.

  Patrice Onwuka, director of Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Economic Opportunity, commented: “As a nation, we strive for equality of opportunity to give every young person a chance at achieving their American Dream. Race, ethnicity, gender, and heritage should not be used to discriminate against any person. Yet, discriminatory DEI programming has done damage on college campuses—fomenting division between students, eroding free speech rights, threatening academic freedom, and bloating school bureaucracies, which in turn drives up tuition costs.”

  Onwuka continued: “Furthermore, these efforts do not prepare young women and men for the diverse workforce that values aptitude, grit, and skill, not a sense of entitlement driven by victimhood. We applaud Governor Stitt and the state for taking leadership on removing discriminatory and divisive race-based programming and staffing from Oklahoma colleges and universities. Every student deserves a campus free from discrimination. Thankfully, legal protections already outlaw race-and sex-based discrimination, but this executive order guards against efforts to bypass those protections.”

  David Safavian, general counsel for the American Conservative Union, commented: “For years, universities and government agencies, even those in red states, have become increasingly beholden to a coercive liberal agenda, often framed under the banner of DEI.”

  He continued: “The transformation of these institutions has been exposed following the response by major universities in the aftermath of the October 7th terror attack by Hamas. Especially with that in mind, CPAC applauds Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt for acting through executive order today to take down DEI in all of Oklahoma’s government. Abolishing DEI bureaucracies and ending mandatory ‘diversity’ training and DEI hiring statements will ensure Oklahoma’s institutions can focus on the diversity of ideas, rather than shame-based political activism. Oklahomans can take pride in knowing that the content of their character will matter more than the color of their skin.”

  Following the release, public universities reacted accordingly:

  WINNING: Oklahoma @GovStitt has signed an executive order abolishing the DEI bureaucracy in all public universities. That makes Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma. And we are just getting started. pic.twitter.com/fYXphLMQJ2

  — Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) December 13, 2023

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  Executive Order 2023-31 can be read in full here. To rewatch the press conference, click here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 20:00

• Behind The Biggest Nursing Exodus In 40 Years
  Behind The Biggest Nursing Exodus In 40 Years

  Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A 40-year record high of 100,000 nurses left their jobs in 2021, according to a study published in Health Affairs Forefront in April 2022.

  

  The study noted that the exiting nurses were primarily younger, rather than the expected age group of above 50.

  “A sustained reduction in the number of younger age [nurses] would raise ominous implications for the future workforce,” the study stated.

  A report by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing published in October 2022 blames the losses on general trends such as retirement, a lack of education and training for replacements, and the rapid growth of an aging population that requires health care services.

  Several nurses who spoke to The Epoch Times largely blame the exodus on the corporatization of health care and the vaccine mandates imposed on nurses.

  The nursing shortage had long been a problem before COVID-19. When hospitals began operating like corporations instead of as a refuge for the sick, nurses became disillusioned with the occupation, nurse Irene Ricks told The Epoch Times.

  Then, came the pandemic and, with it, a slew of new requirements.

  “Not only were nurses having to take on a huge load of patients, but they were also being told to do things that they didn’t feel right about,” Ms. Ricks said. 

  “Then, they were being told they had to be vaccinated or they would lose their job.”

  The vaccine mandate “was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Ms. Ricks said. 

  “It made nurses quit or retire in droves.”

  A 2023 report by AMN Healthcare, which is the result of a January survey of 18,000 registered nurses nationwide, found that 30 percent of nurses said they’re likely to leave their careers because of the pandemic, up 7 percentage points from 2021. 

  “The movement of nurses away from hospital employment may be the most damaging health care workplace impact of the pandemic,” the report states. 

  A full 94 percent of respondents said there’s a “severe or moderate shortage of nurses” in their area.

  

  “Nurses forever have gone into difficult places with deadly diseases, and people were happy and amazed at their sacrificial attitude to help people,” nurse Twila Brase, co-founder of the Minnesota-based Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom and founder of The Wedge of Health Freedom, told The Epoch Times.

  “Yet, suddenly, the entire health care system turned on its head and said, ‘The biggest thing is to not take care of people but to comply. And we are willing to put patients at risk because if you don’t comply, you’re going to be terminated.’”

  The nurses who were celebrated as heroes at the beginning of the pandemic were suddenly considered pariahs if they didn’t take the vaccine.

  Some hospital systems imposed their own vaccine mandates, such as Houston Methodist in Texas, which announced a mandate in March 2021 and gave employees until June of that year to be fully vaccinated. By June 22, 2021, 153 employees either resigned or were fired.

  A total of 1,400 employees at New York-based Northwell Health either resigned or were terminated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Becker’s Hospital Review, a website tracking the termination of health care workers over the vaccine. The website includes a list of 55 hospitals and facilities that have fired more than 7,000 health care workers since 2021.

  

  Ms. Brase said the vaccine mandate imposed on health care workers demonstrated the callousness of the corporate system.

  “Nurses were essentially being forced to make life-or-death decisions as patients were reporting to them firsthand unusual symptoms that began after they took the injection,” Ms. Brase said.

  “And yet hospitals wanted to get rid of them if they didn’t take this vaccine. It’s unreasonable. It’s unscientific.”

  Noticing the reluctance within the health care industry to take the vaccine, the Biden administration imposed a vaccine mandate on health care workers on Nov. 5, 2021. 

  Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, stated that “in order to receive Medicare and Medicaid funding, participating facilities must ensure that their staff—unless exempt for medical or religious reasons—are vaccinated against COVID-19.”

  The Supreme Court upheld the mandate in a 5–4 decision issued in January 2022. The decision meant that health care workers were given until March 15, 2022, to get fully vaccinated. 

  In 2022, North Carolina nurse practitioner Staci Kay revealed to The Epoch Times what she believed to be vaccine injuries.

  “I saw brain bleeds, seizures out of nowhere, cancer that just spread like wildfire, ischemic strokes, and I saw one person die horrifically from myocarditis,” Ms. Kay said at the time, noting that the issues “went unacknowledged by our physicians.”

  On the outpatient side, she reported conditions such as brain fog, cognitive decline, joint pain, gastrointestinal issues, and neuropathy.

  Ms. Kay started her own telemedicine practice after being fired for not submitting to what she described as illogical testing requirements for those who weren’t vaccinated.

  Ms. Ricks said she suffered an injury after taking the first two doses of the vaccine. She said she didn’t make the connection to the vaccine until she discussed her symptoms with a co-worker, who said he was suffering the same symptoms.

  “That’s when I knew something was going on,” Ms. Ricks told The Epoch Times. She predicts she’ll be suffering the side effects for the rest of my life.

  

  In June this year, the Biden administration announced its plan to withdraw the vaccine mandate for health care workers. 

  On Nov. 13, without comment, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lawsuit filed in 2022 by four New Jersey-based nurses who challenged the constitutionality of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s executive order requiring the vaccines.

  Nurse Sandy Gardner wrote in an article published by the American Bar Association in July 2022 that “it’s difficult to ascertain exactly how much the vaccine mandate has affected the nursing shortage.”

  “Nurses and other staff are also quitting their jobs due to burnout, COVID-19 safety concerns, and other reasons,” she said.

  However, she supports the mandate for health care workers. 

  “Vaccine mandates have proven over time that they work, as evidenced by requirements that school-aged children be vaccinated for certain diseases prior to enrolling in school,” Ms. Gardner wrote. 

  “For the most part, the COVID vaccine mandate is working as time goes on. The longer the vaccine is out and is gaining a track record, the more people will get vaccinated.”

  Most media outlets defended the mandates imposed on health care workers by stating that the proportion of nurses being fired or quitting was small in comparison to the nurses who took the vaccine. 

  Business Model

  When the pandemic first began and hospitals were overwhelmed, the requirements for travel nurses were relaxed.

  Formerly, a nurse had to practice for a year before being eligible, but that was reduced to six months, which resulted in nurses with little experience but higher salaries working in community hospitals where local nurses were paid less.

  “There were travel nurses getting paid up to $6,000 to $10,000 a week, which was upsetting the staff, who would themselves quit and go become a travel nurse,” Ms. Ricks said.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 19:40

• Dem Senator Blocks GOP Bill For 35% Tax On University Endowments
  Dem Senator Blocks GOP Bill For 35% Tax On University Endowments

  In the wake of various recent scandals at ‘elite’ universities, attention has turned to their massive, largely untaxed endowments.

  

  On Thursday morning Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) introduced a bill which would tax the largest university endowments at 35%.

  “The endowments at Penn, Harvard & MIT have a combined $95B+ in assets – yet only pay a 1.4% tax rate on net investment income,” Vance posted on X. “Then they use these funds to push DEI and woke insanity.”

  “My bill would tax the largest endowments at 35% – it’s going to the Senate floor right now.“

  The endowments at Penn, Harvard & MIT have a combined $95B+ in assets – yet only pay a 1.4% tax rate on net investment income.

  Then they use these funds to push DEI and woke insanity.

  My bill would tax the largest endowments at 35% – it’s going to the Senate floor right now. pic.twitter.com/NtSuUtzluL

  — J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) December 14, 2023

  Vance then tried to pass the bill by unanimous consent, only to be blocked by Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who suggested that lawmakers should instead look at the bill before passing it (oh?), and then slammed billionaire tax loopholes created by Congress in the first place.

  Sen. Vance tried to pass this bill by unanimous consent but it was blocked on the Senate floor by Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden from Oregon.

  Democrats finally found billions of dollars that they don’t wish to tax. https://t.co/Scv9uMFEKM pic.twitter.com/RqvFCwG1Mc

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 14, 2023

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  As journalist Greg Price notes above, “Democrats finally found billions of dollars that they don’t wish to tax.”
   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 19:20

• Reports Of White Lung Syndrome Emerge In The US
  Reports Of White Lung Syndrome Emerge In The US

  Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Reports of a mysterious respiratory illness in China are sparking fears of a potential new pandemic.

  Cases of what some are dubbing “white lung syndrome” have already been reported in several U.S. states, evoking chilling memories of the early days of COVID-19.

  Health officials are racing to determine if this is simply the expected winter uptick of seasonal illnesses or if it could be a dangerous new pathogen. If the latter, the implications could be profound. Is history repeating itself? How quickly could this spread? How can you protect yourself?

  

  Spike in Pediatric Pneumonia in China Hints at Possible New Contagion

  Chinese media described overwhelmed children’s hospitals in Beijing and Liaoning Province (Northern China) in late November, according to a recent post on the International Society for Infectious Diseases’ online reporting system, ProMed.

  Reported symptoms are high fever without cough, with some children developing lung nodules that can indicate bacterial infections like pneumonia.

  Per the post, the Beijing Children’s Hospital lobby remained crowded with parents seeking treatment for their children’s pneumonia.

  According to the post, the situation in Liaoning Province is “serious,” with the lobby of Dalian Children’s Hospital filled with sick children receiving intravenous drips. A Dalian Central Hospital staff member reportedly said that patients were waiting in line for two hours, and “we are all in the emergency department, and there are no general outpatient clinics.”

  While only recently known, infectious disease website FluTrackers has logged reports of overwhelmed pediatric hospitals and cases of Mycoplasma pneumonia, caused by bacteria that often causes upper respiratory tract infections and pneumonia, in China since August.

  China could be seeing a surge in respiratory infections as other countries did their first winter after COVID-19 lockdowns were lifted, Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease physician with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Emergencies Program, said on X. “They have already reported surge of #Mycoplasma pneumonia but this could be anything – let’s gather data,” she wrote.

  Outbreak in Ohio Started in August

  Ohio’s Warren County Health District (WCHD) reported an “extremely high number” of pediatric pneumonia cases this fall. The roughly 145 cases reported since August alone exceed average numbers and meet the state outbreak definition.

  “We do not think this is a novel/new respiratory disease but rather a large uptick in the number of pneumonia cases normally seen at one time,” the WCHD said.

  A parent questionnaire identified the most common symptoms as cough, fever, and fatigue. Detected pathogens include Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Streptococcus pneumoniae (strep), and adenovirus. Some media refer to the condition as “white lung syndrome” due to how infected lungs can appear under X-rays.

  Evidence suggests a mix of the same pathogens causing illness in China, Dr. Christopher Calandrella, chair of emergency medicine at Northwell Long Island Jewish Forest Hills in New York, told The Epoch Times.

  “Additionally, China recently lifted its pandemic restrictions, and as the population begins socializing more, it may contribute to an increase in cases, similar to what was experienced here in the United States last fall,” he said.

  CDC Highlights New Vaccine Options

  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently stated on its website that it is “monitoring reports of increased respiratory illness around the world,” including in China and Europe. However, the agency emphasized that pediatric pneumonia and other respiratory diseases typically rise each fall and winter.

  The CDC also pointed out that, for the first time, there are now available “safe and effective immunizations” for three major viral respiratory illnesses: flu, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), an infectious virus that affects the lungs and airways and that can cause pneumonia.

  China approved five new COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use amidst its current respiratory disease outbreak.

  Currently, no data suggest these infections have different virulence or infectivity than U.S. pathogens, according to Dr. Calandrella, so there is no reason for alarm, he emphasized.

  COVID-19 provided many critical lessons, including the vital role of hand hygiene, vaccines, and masks, “which can significantly reduce the risk of infections in general,” Dr. Calandrella added.

  COVID-19 Shots Linked to Pneumonia

  A little-discussed factor is whether these respiratory outbreaks may in some way be associated with COVID-19 vaccination.

  A list of adverse events associated with Pfizer’s mRNA shot was released due to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and according to the document, “atypical pneumonia” is one among hundreds of potential adverse reactions to receiving the gene-therapy-based drug, along with Mycoplasmal bronchitis, cardio-respiratory arrest, cardio-respiratory distress, and cough.

  A 2022 Respirology Case Reports study presented the first organizing pneumonia case, a rare lung condition affecting the airways and air sacs, related to COVID-19 vaccination. A 78-year-old woman developed cough and breathing difficulty 10 days after her Pfizer shot.

  Other research has found that vaccinated individuals’ immune function eight months post-second dose is lower than that of unvaccinated individuals. “As a safety measure, further booster vaccinations should be discontinued,” the study authors wrote.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 19:00

• Israeli Soldiers Spark Muslim Outrage By Singing Hanukkah Song Over Jenin Mosque Loudspeaker
  Israeli Soldiers Spark Muslim Outrage By Singing Hanukkah Song Over Jenin Mosque Loudspeaker

  West Bank violence has been continuous since Oct.7 and Israel’s major Gaza offensive, but there are fears that clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces and settlers are about to escalate further.

  Ultra-provocative footage is now widely circulating online showing an Israeli soldier singing a Jewish Hanukkah song through a loudspeaker at a mosque in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank. A clip was reportedly even shared by Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

  Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir shares video of soldiers performing Jewish rituals inside mosque in West Bank city of Jenin https://t.co/Lic8B5wY6s pic.twitter.com/yJVBeeUK2J

  — Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) December 14, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Muslims use loudspeakers attached to mosque minarets for their traditional “call to prayer” several times a day. Thus Israel Defense Forces taking over a mosque to then blare Jewish prayers over a Muslim-dominant town is certainly a big provocation.

  At least one of the widely circulating videos has been verified as authentic by Haaretz which said one of the songs sung by a soldier was the Hanukkah song “We Came to Banish the Darkness.”

  One video reviewed by Haaretz showed an IDF soldier mocking the Islamic call to prayer by saying the words, “In the name of God, the merciful. Here is the spokesperson of the IDF.”

  “For the residents of the camp, the story is over, we will not allow the presence of armed men inside the camp,” the soldier said according to a translation. “The future will be clean, we want you to live with dignity in the camp, there is no power beyond the power of Allah.”

  The Israeli army itself appeared to verify the videos, and that they happened recently, telling local media that the offending soldiers had been removed from day. 

  A statement said “the soldiers were removed from operational duty immediately, after receiving the videos and an initial inspection of the incident by the commanders.

  

  “The behavior of the soldiers in the videos is serious and stands in complete opposition to the values of the IDF. The soldiers will be disciplined accordingly,” the spokesperson said.

  The IDF likely doesn’t want to unnecessarily inflame tensions further, after already more than 270 Palestinians have died as a result of clashes in the West Bank. In some cases Israeli troops have been fired upon by small arms during security raids, as Jenin remains under total military-imposed lockdown.

  Another deadly operation has been reported in The New York Times Thursday as follows:

  A three-day Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin appeared to end on Thursday; the Palestinian Health Ministry said that during the raid, Israeli forces killed at least 12 people and wounded 34 others.

  Residents reported seeing Israeli military vehicles leaving the city on Thursday afternoon, signaling an end to the unusually long operation inside Jenin and its refugee camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed resistance in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on Thursday.

  חיילי צה”ל שרים בכריזה של מואזין בג’נין pic.twitter.com/VD822DSOPs

  — הארץ חדשות (@haaretznewsv) December 14, 2023

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  The IDF has said over 900 Palestinians have been detained from Jenin alone for suspected attacks or terror related activity. Thursday’s raid saw another 100 added to that, as the raids intensify and become more aggressive, according to local eyewitnesses.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 18:40

• Apple Quietly Changes Policy, Search Warrant Now Required To Send Certain Customer Data To Law Enforcement
  Apple Quietly Changes Policy, Search Warrant Now Required To Send Certain Customer Data To Law Enforcement

  Authored by Stephen Katte via The Epoch Times,

  Apple has quietly changed its legal guidelines to now require U.S. law enforcement agencies to obtain a court order if they want access to specific aspects of the tech giant’s customer data.

  

  In Apple’s updated guidelines, the tech giant will now only share customer data about push notifications with law enforcement “in response to a search warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause, or customer consent.” In the past, the company accepted a subpoena to hand over customer data.

  The critical difference between the two is that a subpoena compels the company to act in response to a request for information. In contrast, a search warrant is far more aggressive and authorizes a legal authority to take action to retrieve the information.

  Push notification data is considered especially sensitive because the alerts inform the smartphone user about breaking news, weather bulletins, and other everyday content. At the same time, the data can reveal a great deal about users’ online activities.

  For requests about other types of data, such as information related to device registration or customer service, Apple has kept its initial guidelines and will comply with law enforcement if presented with “a subpoena or greater legal process.”

  According to Apple’s guidelines, the company can also decide to share customer data with law enforcement in cases of emergency, when there is no time to go through the proper legal channels if it is believed lives are in danger or national security is at immediate risk. However, Apple says not all requests are granted. Each one is considered by its team of legal experts and can still face rejection.

  “A trained team in our legal department reviews and evaluates all requests received, and requests which Apple determines to have no valid legal basis or considers to be unclear, inappropriate, or over-broad are objected, challenged, or rejected,” the guidelines state.

  Cause of Policy Shift Unknown

  The tech giant didn’t formally announce the policy shift, and what sparked the change is unclear. Some competitors in the tech space, such as Google, already require a court order for law enforcement to get push notification-related data.

  Last week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote to the Department of Justice, warning he received a tip that foreign governments had requested Apple and Google to hand over records of smartphone notifications. He didn’t provide any extra details about which governments had made the request.

  “Apple and Google should be permitted to be transparent about the legal demands they receive, particularly from foreign governments, just as the companies regularly notify users about other types of government demands for data,” Sen. Wyden said in his letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

  “These companies should be permitted to generally reveal whether they have been compelled to facilitate this surveillance practice, to publish aggregate statistics about the number of demands they receive, and unless temporarily gagged by a court, to notify specific customers about demands for their data.”

  It’s not publicly known if the scrutiny sparked by Sen. Wyden’s letter had any bearing on Apple’s policy change or if the shift was already planned and the timing was just a coincidence.

  The Epoch Times has contacted Apple and Sen. Ron Wyden for further comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 18:20

• Washington Lawmaker Wants To Toss People In Jail For Using Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers Because They "Contribute To Climate Change"
  Washington Lawmaker Wants To Toss People In Jail For Using Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers Because They “Contribute To Climate Change”

  Democrat lawmakers in Washington State want to jail residents for using gas-powered landscaping tools such as leaf blowers and edgers.

  

  State Rep. Amy Walen (D-Kirkland) has pre-filed legislation which would radically alter the state’s Clean Air Act, according to Jason Rantz of MyNorthwest, who reports that HB 1868 would ban “gasoline-powered and diesel-powered landscaping and other outdoor power equipment” for “contributing to climate change.”

  As Rantz further explains, the bill contains a laundry list of unintended health consequences tied to the tools as well, including a claim that they cause asthma.

  The bill gets to the ban by empowering the Department of Ecology to “adopt rules to prohibit engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new outdoor power equipment” by either January 1, 2026 or sooner, if the state determines it’s feasible to do so earlier. Washingtonians are expected to upgrade their equipment to zero-emission alternatives. Government work, however, is partly exempt.

  To make the transition more palatable, the zero-emission alternatives would not be subject to a sales tax. But it would still be prohibitively expensive for many small businesses. -MyNorthwest

  If a resident violates the law, they could face up to a year in jail and/or a hefty fine.

  Of course, as Rantz further notes, the new law wouldn’t apply to government agencies or contractors working for the government under emergency circumstances.

  We’ll give the last word to Rantz, who suggests that the legislation will harm minorities the most;

  What happened to equity?

  Though Democrats argue their legislation should be viewed through an equity lens, this ban has a disproportionate impact on Latino and black business owners. Nationwide data stated 22.8% of landscaping companies are owned by Hispanics and 14.7% are owned by blacks.

  The cost to transition to zero-emission alternatives is burdensome, too, even with financial assistance provided in the bill. For some businesses, it could still be prohibitively expensive. This financial burden could disproportionately affect minority-owned businesses, potentially leading to a reduction in diversity within the industry, if Democrat talking points are to be believed.

  This ban is also anti-business, of course. Not only will it take landscapers significantly more time to do the same amount of work, thanks to inefficient battery-powered tools, it can be very expensive. Writing in the Orange County Register, Brooke Staggs notes the strain this can put on small businesses: “Commercial-grade electric-powered gear can cost anywhere from 15% to 300% more upfront, before factoring in the cost of batteries, chargers and potential electrical upgrades needed to keep them running all day.”

  Larger companies can more easily absorb the cost of transitioning to electric equipment, but the smaller businesses, which represent the majority of the industry, will struggle. It’s also worth considering the current limitations of electric landscaping equipment, such as battery life and power, which can’t meet the demands of larger or more intensive landscaping projects. Even with tax credits, will they last long enough to cover the constant need to upgrade to better and more efficient technology?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/14/2023 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Signatories Of Hunter Biden Laptop Letter Now Demand Greater Domestic Surveillance
  Signatories Of Hunter Biden Laptop Letter Now Demand Greater Domestic Surveillance

  Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

  A handful of the 51 signatories of the debunked letter which falsely called Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation” are now calling on Congress to expand the scope of domestic surveillance in the United States…

  

  As reported by the Daily Caller, the letter to House lawmakers on Tuesday was signed by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Deputy Director for the National Security Agency (NSA) Richard Ledgett, former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell, former CIA Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash, and former NSA General Counsel Glenn Gerstell. All five men had previously signed the controversial letter in 2020 claiming, without evidence, that information found on the recently-unearthed laptop of Hunter Biden was all “Russian propaganda” meant to influence the 2020 election.

  In their new letter, the former intelligence community officials voiced their opposition to a bill that would reduce the ability of intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without a warrant. At the same time, they offered up praise for a bill that would allow surveillance of any location where internet access is provided.

  “We cannot hamstring the U.S. Intelligence Community either by failing to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or by limiting it in ways that would make it difficult for the government to protect Americans,” the letter reads in part.

  “To be clear, Section 702 saves American lives and helps keep Americans safe from international terrorist attacks, foreign cyberattacks, overseas fentanyl suppliers, and other threats to our national security. There’s no substitute for it.”

  In recent weeks, the House Judiciary Committee has been working on possible reforms to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the controversial provision which ultimately allowed the intelligence agencies to spy on then-candidate Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, under the false pretenses that he was “colluding” with Russia.

  “Reasonable minds might disagree on the details of the various reforms that might be needed, even as included in the [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] bill,” they add.

  “But it presents a rigorous approach to the challenges and attempts in a responsible way to balance privacy protections and our nation’s safety.”

  Despite the claims in their 2020 letter, numerous mainstream media outlets eventually verified the authenticity of Hunter’s laptop and all of the information contained on it, which included details about Hunter’s numerous foreign business deals, his efforts to sell access to his father while he was Vice President, as well as his frequent drug use and solicitation of prostitutes, among other scandalous revelations.

  It has since been revealed that the letter was orchestrated by the Biden campaign, under the direction of then-campaign advisor Antony Blinken, who now serves as Biden’s Secretary of State.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 23:40

• Trump Demands Action After 20% Of Mail-in Voters Admit To Fraud In 2020 Election Survey
  Trump Demands Action After 20% Of Mail-in Voters Admit To Fraud In 2020 Election Survey

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former President Donald Trump issued an urgent call for action to his fellow Republicans over what he called “the biggest story of the year,” namely a survey showing that 20 percent of mail-in voters admitted to committing at least one kind of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

  

  The Heartland/Rasmussen poll, released on Dec. 12, suggests concerning levels of voter fraud in the 2020 election, bolstering President Trump’s longstanding claim that he was cheated out of a victory amid an explosion in mail-in ballots combined with state-level moves by the courts that made it easier to cheat.

  The new survey shows 17 percent of mail-in voters admitting to voting in a state where they are no longer permanent residents; 21 percent filling out ballots for others; 17 percent signing ballots for family members without consent, and 8 percent reporting offers of “pay” or “reward” for their vote.

  What’s more, 10 percent of all respondents to the survey (carried on a representative sample of 1,085 likely voters) said they know a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who admitted to casting a mail-in ballot fraudulently.

  Over 43 percent of 2020 votes were cast by mail, which is the highest percentage in U.S. history.

  “Taken together, the results of these survey questions appear to show that voter fraud was widespread in the 2020 election, especially among those who cast mail-in ballots,” the Heartland Institute, a conservative and libertarian public policy think tank, said in a statement.

  ‘Biggest Story of The Year’

  President Trump, who is the frontrunner for the GOP nomination in the 2024 race for the White House, took to social media to call on Republicans to take action in response to the survey’s shocking results.

  “This is the biggest story of the year, and Republicans must do something about it,” the former president wrote. Further, he suggested that unless something is done quickly to address the problem of voter fraud, the issue will cast a pall over the 2024 election.

  “Have to make a move now,” President Trump continued. “Get tough, get smart. Our country is being stolen!“

  While Democrats and their allies claim that election fraud is little more than a myth, President Trump has said for years that voter fraud is a pervasive problem in U.S. politics —and insists he was robbed of a win in the 2020 election.

  In a recent interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the former president spoke about what went into his decision to challenge the results.

  “I was listening to different people. And when I added it all up, the election was rigged,” he said, adding that it was his choice to contest the results because “I won the election.”

  ‘Nothing Short of Stunning’

  While Democrats and their allies, along with some in the scientific community, argue that voter fraud was so small in the 2020 elections as to be negligible, the findings of the Heartland/Rasmussen survey bolster President Trump’s claims that he was robbed of victory.

  Justin Haskins, the director of Heartland’s Socialism Research Center and primary author of the Heartland/Rasmussen survey, said in a statement that the results of the poll are “nothing short of stunning.”

  “For the past three years, Americans have repeatedly been told that the 2020 election was the most secure in history. But if this poll’s findings are reflective of reality, the exact opposite is true,” Mr. Haskins said. “This conclusion isn’t based on conspiracy theories or suspect evidence, but rather from the responses made directly by the voters themselves.”

  Some progress has been made on election integrity measures in over a dozen states in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Mr. Haskins acknowledged. He insisted, however, that “much more” work is needed in most parts of the country to bolster the integrity of elections—and voter confidence that the results reflect the actual will of the people.

  “If America’s election laws do not improve soon, voters and politicians will continue to question the truthfulness and fairness of all future elections,” Mr. Haskins said.

  Some states have reformed their laws and procedures amid widespread vote integrity worries prompted by the 2020 presidential election controversy. However, according to conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, more needs to be done.

  The group’s Election Integrity Scorecard shows that not a single state in the country has a perfect score in a checklist of 12 possible problem spots, including voter ID, accuracy of voter registration lists, and absentee ballot management.

  Tennessee has the best election integrity procedures in the country, with a score of 88 (out of a possible 100), followed by Georgia at 84, Alabama at 82, and Missouri at 83.

  Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, recently wrote that “no state in the country has a perfect score of 100, which means everyone has some work to do.”

  In order to make elections more secure and build shore-up public confidence that the declared results are legitimate, states should ensure that election officials maintain current, accurate voter rolls, he argues.

  Further, they should require photo identification to cast a vote, both in person and absentee, according to Mr. Von Spakovsky, who also argues for a ban on partisan funding  of state and local election offices.

  He pointed to the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database as a constantly updated record of various cases of voter fraud from across the country.

  “In an era of razor-thin elections, guarding against this type of illegal behavior, as well as errors made by election officials, is especially important,” he wrote.

  “In 2024, it could prove critical.“

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 23:00

• NYC Finance Jobs Hit Twenty-Year High 
  NYC Finance Jobs Hit Twenty-Year High 

  A new report from the New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli reveals that the number of securities-industry workers in New York City has hit a twenty-year high – even as layoffs in the banking industry rise and deal activity continues to slide. 

  DiNapoli said the total headcount at securities firms in NYC increased to 195,100 (based on year-to-date data), the highest level in over 20 years. 

  He added, “Whether firms will retain these additional positions as profits return to normal remains to be seen. Lower profits have also resulted in smaller bonuses, with the bonus pool estimated to be down 21% yearly, meaning a decline in related income tax revenue for the City and State.” 

  Revenues from commissions and underwriting activities plunged by 46.8% over the last two years, as the high cost of credit triggered a massive slowdown in equity issuances, debt issuances, and mergers and acquisitions. 

  Global debt offerings fell from $10.3 trillion in 2021 to $8.3 trillion in 2022 to $4.7 trillion in the first half of 2023. 

  

  Equity insurances have also tumbled. 

  

  Global M&A activity has crashed. 

  

  “These are volatile times in America and globally, and Wall Street’s relatively stable profits and employment levels could change quickly,” DiNapoli said in a statement to Bloomberg. 

  A slide in deal flow has softened earnings and revenues for major banks, including Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, who have all trimmed their respective headcount. 

  He continued, “Further declines could weaken New York’s tax revenue from the securities industry and have repercussions for our state and city budgets.”

  While markets have expected the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates at elevated levels for an extended period, it appears the Fed has signaled a major dovish shift on Wednesday, with rates markets pricing in more than five cuts next year. 

  

  The current freeze in M&A activity could thaw in 2024. 

  Fed is frontloading rate cuts into the 2024 election year, at the expense of post-election 2025. https://t.co/NUY2GAjWyE

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 13, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Will 2025 be another bust year for Wall Street? 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 22:40

• Biden Scores Win As Supreme Court Throws Out Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Cases
  Biden Scores Win As Supreme Court Throws Out Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Cases

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Supreme Court on Dec. 11 threw out three cases involving federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates, handing a win to President Joe Biden and his administration.

  

  In unsigned rulings, the justices said that rulings against mandates imposed by President Biden and the U.S. military have been vacated.

  They also remanded the cases back to lower courts with instructions for the courts to vacate preliminary injunctions that had been in place against the administration as moot.

  The decisions mean that the rulings won’t act as precedent in future vaccine mandate cases.

  “We believe the United States Constitution clearly does not permit the federal government to force federal workers—or any law abiding citizen—to inject their bodies with something against their will. In fact, the freedom to control your own body and your own medical information is so basic that, without those liberties, it is impossible to truly be ‘free’ at all,” Marcus Thornton, president of Feds for Freedom, said in a statement. “We are disappointed that the Supreme Court dodged these important Constitutional arguments and instead chose to vacate our case on technicalities.“

  One case was brought by Feds for Freedom and involved President Biden’s mandate for federal employees. The mandate was imposed in 2021, with the president claiming that vaccination was the “best way to slow the spread of COVID-19” and that requiring vaccination would “promote the health and safety of the federal workforce and the efficiency of the civil service.”

  An appeals court this year reinforced a preliminary injunction entered by a lower court, ruling that the court system—not a board composed of people appointed by the president—has jurisdiction over the case.

  U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown had ruled previously that the president lacked the authority to impose the vaccine mandate.

  Another case was brought by a federal worker who recovered from COVID-19 and thus enjoyed some protection against the illness but was still being forced to receive a vaccination under President Biden’s mandate because the government refused to formally recognize the post-infection protection. Jason Payne, the worker, said the mandate exceeded President Biden’s authority.

  In the third case, federal judges ruled that the U.S. Air Force’s handling of its mandate was illegal, and prevented the branch from taking disciplinary action against members who had requested religious exemptions.

  Government lawyers urged the Supreme Court to rule the decisions in these cases as moot, given that the vaccine mandates were ended.

  “Consistent with this court’s ordinary practice under such circumstances, the court should grant the petition for a writ of certiorari, vacate the judgment below, and remand with instructions to direct the district court to dismiss its order granting a preliminary injunction as moot,” the lawyers wrote in one petition to the court.

  Mr. Payne’s lawyers also asked for the decisions to be ruled as moot, after two courts ruled against him and following the rescinding of the mandate that affected him.

  Lawyers for the other federal workers and for the military members opposed the request.

  The government was asking the Supreme Court to endorse a “heads we win, tails you get vacated” version of a previous court decision, United States v. Munsingwear, lawyers for the federal workers wrote in one brief. If granted, the government would be able to “litigate to the hilt in both district and circuit court and—only if they lose—then decline to seek substantive review from this court and instead moot the case and ask this court to erase the circuit court loss from the books,” according to the brief.

  Lawyers for the military members noted that Congress forced the military to rescind its mandate, but that the legislation didn’t prevent the Department of Defense from issuing another mandate.

  Government lawyers said the mandates were rescinded because the pandemic situation had changed, not because they were challenged. They also argued that the mandates “cannot be reasonably expected to recur.”

  Lawyers for the military members said that the claim was “in serious tension” with the demand to vacate the rulings under the Munsingwear precedent, given that the purpose of such a move “is to clear the path for future re-litigation without res judicata concerns.”

  None of the Supreme Court justices except for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed by President Biden, explained their decisions on the cases.

  “Although I would require that the party seeking vacatur establish equitable entitlement to that remedy, I accede to vacatur here based on the court’s established practice when the mootness occurs through the unilateral action of the party that prevailed in the lower court,” she said in regard to Mr. Payne’s case.

  In the two other cases, Justice Jackson said that the government hadn’t “established equitable entitlement” to vacatur, but that she concurred with the overall judgment from her colleagues.

  She cited a Dec. 5 decision in which the court ruled against a civil rights activist who sought a ruling that would force hotels to make information for disabled people publicly available.

  Justice Jackson sided with the majority in that ruling but contested the majority’s decision to vacate a lower court ruling, arguing that vacatur—or the setting aside of the judgment—shouldn’t be granted automatically.

  “Automatic vacatur plainly flouts the requirement of an individualized, circumstance-driven fairness evaluation, which, as I have explained, is the hallmark of an equitable remedy,” she wrote.

  It’s also “flatly inconsistent with our common-law tradition of case-by-case adjudication, which ‘assumes that judicial decisions are valuable and should not be cast aside lightly,'” Justice Jackson said, quoting from yet another ruling.

  “As a general matter, I believe that a party who claims equitable entitlement to vacatur must explain what harm—other than having to accept the law as the lower court stated it—flows from the inability to appeal the lower court decision.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 22:20

• "Most Of The World Was Against Me": Djokovic Says He's Not Anti-Vaccine, But 'Pro-Freedom To Choose'
  “Most Of The World Was Against Me”: Djokovic Says He’s Not Anti-Vaccine, But ‘Pro-Freedom To Choose’

  The world’s #1 tennis player Novak Djokovic says that he’s not against vaccination – he’s for people’s right to choose for themselves.

  

  Djokovic, who faced significant backlash for his vaccination status, especially in Australia, told 60 Minutes about the ordeal, saying he was “basically declared as a villain of the world,” after refusing to take the Covid-19 vaccine in early 2022. While he initially received a vaccine exemption to play in the Australian Open, public outcry led to Australian immigration minister Alex Hawke revoking his visa, barring him from competition, and then deporting the tennis pro on the grounds that he was a “high-profile unvaccinated individual” who could influence public sentiment about vaccination.

  “People tried to, you know, declare me as an anti-vax. I’m not anti-vax. Nor I am pro-vax. I’m pro-freedom to choose,” he said.

  NEW – Tennis champion Novak Djokovic: “I’m not anti-vax. Nor I am pro-vax. I’m pro-freedom to choose.”pic.twitter.com/rqBMsmr3Xj

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) December 9, 2023

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  “Most of the world [was] against me. I had that kind of experience on the tennis court with crowds that were not maybe cheering me on. But I never had this particular experience before in my life,” he continued.

  This decision, which led to Djokovic’s exclusion from the Australian Open and subsequent U.S. Open, was met with a mix of criticism and support, while the legal battle that ensued raised questions about the role of public figures in influencing health decisions.

  Djokovic’s lawyers argued that his presence was not a risk to public health and that the visa cancellation could actually fuel anti-vaccination sentiment. However, the court sided with the minister, suggesting Djokovic’s choices could indeed foster anti-vaccination views.

  Greg Barns S.C., spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, described the visa ban as “troubling” in a free society. Yet, the Australian government later overturned the ban, allowing Djokovic to participate in the 2023 Australian Open.

  Djokovic made a perfectly reasonable personal health decision that had no impact on the spread of COVID, but because he contradicted the (incorrect) public health/media industrial complex consensus, he was declared a villain

  One of the most embarrassing time periods in history https://t.co/tlpRxZv2Yb

  — Ian Miller (@ianmSC) December 11, 2023

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  Amidst this controversy, a broader conversation emerged about vaccinating athletes. A letter by cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough and structural biologist Panagis Polykretis revealed a startling number of cardiac arrests and major medical issues in vaccinated athletes, raising concerns about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in high-performance sports.

  “Important reminder that Djokovic has NEVER said he was against vaccines. He even confirmed that he had all the vaccines as a child but when it came to the brand new Covid vaccine he was an advocate of freedom of choice and that everyone should be free to make their own decisions,” said Pavvy G, a tennis blogger, in a Dec. 9 post on X, the Epoch Times reports.

  Moderna, a key player in vaccine development, reportedly placed Djokovic on a “vaccine misinformation” watch list. His victory at the Moderna-sponsored U.S. Open was seen by some as a challenge to vaccine mandates, with social media users highlighting the irony of his unvaccinated status in a tournament sponsored by a leading vaccine manufacturer.

  The pharma company claimed that unvaccinated people were celebrating his win, with social media users “mockingly” pointing out that Moderna was the sponsor of the competition. The firm said that the “optics of Djokovic” bolster “anti-vaccine claims that vaccines—and mandates—are unnecessary.” -Epoch Times

  Bravo for standing your ground, Novak.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 22:00

• Florida High School Fined For Letting Boy Play On Female Sports Team
  Florida High School Fined For Letting Boy Play On Female Sports Team

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A Florida high school has been fined for letting a boy who claims he’s a girl play on a female sports team.

  

  Allowing the transgender student to play volleyball with girls was violative of state law and Florida High School Athletic Association policy, the association informed Monarch High School in a Dec. 12 letter.

  The association’s policy states that boys may not participate on female sports teams “if the school’s overall boys’ athletic program equals or exceeds the girls’ overall athletic program.”

  A Florida law passed in 2021 and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, bars males who identify as females from participating in women’s sports. The law was upheld recently by a federal court.

  Broward County officials reported to the athletic association that a male had played on the girls’ volleyball team, prompting an investigation.

  The investigation resulted in the determination that the school violated the law and association policy, and the association levied a $16,500 fine, Justin Harrison, an associate executive director with the association, informed the school and county in the new letter.

  The fine is based on the number of games the volleyball team played in recent years.

  The association is also formally reprimanding the school, which means the school will have an official censure on its record; placing it on administrative probation through November 2024; requiring school representatives to attend a compliance seminar; and requiring the school to host association staff for a compliance workshop.

  Dorian Norton, the boy who says he’s a girl, is also not eligible to participate in sports at any schools that are a member of the association. The boy participated in two seasons of volleyball.

  “Thanks to the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida passed legislation to protect girls’ sports and we will not tolerate any school that violates this law,” Manny Diaz Jr., Florida’s education commissioner, told The Epoch Times via email. “We applaud the swift action taken by the Florida High School Athletic Association to ensure there are serious consequences for this illegal behavior.”

  The Florida Department of Education previously said in a statement: “Under Governor DeSantis, boys will never be allowed to play girls’ sports. It’s that simple.“

  Mr. DeSantis said when signing the law, “We believe in the state of Florida protecting the fairness and integrity of women’s athletics.”

  The letter was first reported by the Daily Signal.

  Moira Sweeting-Miller, the principal of Monarch High School, and Broward County Superintendent Peter Licata did not respond to requests for comment.

  Broward County Public Schools has a policy that transgender students should play on the sports team that corresponds with their gender identity. But Mr. Licata told reporters in November that, moving forward, the district would make sure students were “eligible for the sport they’re playing … in accordance with state law” and association policy.

  Court Ruling

  Dorian and Dorian’s parents brought a legal case against the law, arguing it illegally discriminated against transgender females in violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal law.

  Title IX says, for instance, that no person in the United States “shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity, receiving Federal financial assistance.”

  Broward County receives federal assistance, as does the athletic association either directly or indirectly, the suit stated.

  “Under Title IX, excluding transgender individuals from school programs or athletic opportunities within schools is discrimination on the basis of sex,” it alleged.

  U.S. District Judge Roy Altman disagreed, ruling against the plaintiffs.

  The law “simply provides that, consistent with the inherent biological differences between the sexes, biological boys (of whatever gender identity) cannot play on girls’ sports teams,” said Judge Altman, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump.

  He noted that under the law, Dorian can still play on boys’ teams or coed teams.

  Dorian and his parents had accused state legislators of animus against trangender people, including state Sen. Kelli Stargel, who said at a press briefing that “men are stronger than women.”

  The judge said the legislators were merely emphasizing “the inherent biological differences between men and women in a way that comports with [the law’s] express interest in giving female athletes an opportunity ‘to demonstrate their strength, skills, and athletic abilities,’—without having to compete with biological men.”

  Dorian’s family says Dorian identified as a girl from a very young age when the boy Dorian was 5 or 6, his parents “realized based on D.N.’s behavior and statements, that their daughter was transgender.”

  Dorian was diagnosed with gender dysphoria at 7 and shortly after began using a girl’s name, the family said.

  At age 11, Dorian took puberty blockers, and recently started taking estrogen and will continue to do so for the rest of his life, the suit stated.

  Making Dorian participate on boys’ teams would open him up to “an invasion of privacy” because he identifies as a girl, he and his parents said. “It is not an option for her to be on the boys’ team, because she is not a boy,” they said.

  Losing the ability to participate on female teams would lead the boy to stop playing sports altogether, the family said.

  Some students spoke out in support of letting the student play.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 21:40

• Tech Bros Fight Back Against Democrat Socialist Who Blames "Capitalism" For Poop-Covered San Fran Streets 
  Tech Bros Fight Back Against Democrat Socialist Who Blames “Capitalism” For Poop-Covered San Fran Streets 

  The CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator, a registered Democrat, has had enough of radical progressive lawmakers in his own political party who have done nothing more than transform San Francisco into a crime-ridden hellhole with shit-covered streets. 

  The San Francisco Standard has described Garry Tan as the metro area’s “preeminent political pitbull, an attack dog with a taste for progressives.” This is because Tan, along with other tech bros, have been funding campaigns to rid the city of awful progressives, such as former Soros-backed District Attorney of San Fran Chesa Boudin. 

  Tan’s latest post on X quoted a New York Post article about San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston’s claim the city’s collapse into turmoil is a direct result of “capitalism.” 

  “You understand why I donated $50K this year just to get this guy out of office, right?” Tan wrote. 

  You understand why I donated $50K this year just to get this guy out of office right? https://t.co/j5085bZfQe

  — Garry Tan 陈嘉兴 — e/acc (@garrytan) December 13, 2023

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  Elon Musk commented on Tan’s post, “Wow.” 

  Wow

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 13, 2023

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  Preston’s District 5 includes the Tenderloin District, a part of the town with shit-covered streets, open-air drug markets, a huge homeless population, and violent crime.

  The Democratic Socialist blamed his district’s woes on capitalism:

  “I think what you’re seeing in the Tenderloin is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people at the bottom rungs.” 

  The socialist continued: 

  “The biggest driver of why folks are on the street is because they lost their jobs, income or were evicted from their homes, usually for not being able to pay the rent. So you have major landlords literally causing folks to lose their homes, and real estate speculation making it impossible for folks to find an affordable place to live.” 

  Preston has been an advocate for disastrous social justice policies and continues to call for defunding the police. He noted:

  “I think we have a very, very bloated police budget. All kinds of waste in the police department. I could cut $100 million out of the department.” 

  Musk has called for Preston to be fired:

  “He is arguably the person most responsible for the destruction of San Francisco.” 

  We must add that capitalism in the metro area worked fine until radical leftists took control of City Hall and implemented one failed public policy after another for more than a decade. 

  X users expressed similar sentiments:

  These people live in an upside down world. Just absolutely broken worldviews. Not just wrong about things – completely opposite of the truth is what they believe.

  — tyler hogge (@thogge) December 13, 2023

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  We’ve had capitalism for over a century. The only thing that changed were certain people making bad public policy decisions over the past decade.

  — namsh!k (@namshik) December 13, 2023

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  I absolutely appreciate your honesty on this subject. Enabling addicts is a recipe for disaster, I really hope SF gets it together soon, I’ve always loved that area. It’s sad to see it in such a state of decline.

  — Jenna (@determinedbatch) December 13, 2023

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  that bro’s brain-wormed philosophy and policies are responsible for so many unnecessary deaths and misery

  the dude is evil

  — Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) December 13, 2023

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  At least Mayor London Breed recognized the shifting winds and made a gigantic U-Turn this past summer to refund the police as her 2024 re-election bid remains murky due to a failed crime plan. 

  Oddly enough, Democrats decided to clean up the homeless, open-air drug markets, and shit-covered streets (only temporarily) when Chinese President Xi Jinping came into the town for a major economic conference last month. This leads us to believe that crime-ridden streets, a by-product of failed progressive public policies, are a manufactured crisis with sinister intentions. 

  At least now, Silicon Valley tech bros are fighting back against rogue Democrats to save the city. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 21:20

• 70% Of Deaths From Pfizer Vaccine In Japan Reported Within 10 Days Of Jab: Study
  70% Of Deaths From Pfizer Vaccine In Japan Reported Within 10 Days Of Jab: Study

  Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Around 70 percent of people who died in Japan after receiving a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine lost their lives in the first 10 days following the jab, according to a recent study.

  

  The peer-reviewed Japanese study, published in the Cureus journal on Dec. 7, looked at the association between Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination and deaths within 10 days of vaccination.

  The risk period was defined as within 10 days of vaccination, with vaccination day being Day 1, and the control period defined as 11 to 180 days after vaccination.

  The analysis was divided into two groups: Group 1 representing individuals aged 65 and above and Group 2, which included people aged 64 and below.

  The researcher identified 1,311 deaths in Group 1, which included 662 males and 649 females. In Group 2, the team identified 247 deaths—155 males and 92 females.

  “The percentage of reported cases that experienced death within 10 days after vaccination was 71 percent in Group 1 and 70 percent in Group 2,” said the study results.

  Over-65s

  In Group 1, more women than men died overall from various medical conditions in the first 10 days of vaccination. Following the 10 days, there were more deaths reported of men.

  Most of the post-vaccine deaths happened on the second day, followed by the third and fourth days.

  Other than “unexplained deaths,” the biggest cause of death in this group was ischemic heart disease (119 deaths), followed by heart failure (92), and aspiration pneumonia/asphyxia (72). Autopsies were performed in eight of the 239 unexplained death cases.

  Group 2

  In Group 2, over two times more men died than women from various medical conditions during the first 10 days of vaccination. Overall deaths after the initial 10 days were only slightly higher among men.

  The highest number of post vaccination deaths were registered on the third day, followed by the fourth, second, and fifth days.

  After “unexplained deaths,” the biggest cause of death in this group was ischemic heart disease (27 deaths), cardiac arrhythmias (24), subarachnoid hemorrhage (20), and myocarditis/pericarditis (17). Autopsies were conducted in nine out of the 51 unexplained deaths.

  There was an outsized difference in male–female deaths owing to myocarditis/pericarditis during the “risk period,” with eight men dying compared to just one woman. Heart failure resulted in the deaths of nine men compared to two women.

  “Some myocarditis/pericarditis cases may be included within the unexplained deaths category. Myocarditis is a complication of vaccination, especially in young adults and adolescent males,” said the study.

  One contributing factor for higher deaths of men during the first 10 days is “thought to be the high number of myocarditis/pericarditis deaths including undiagnosed cases.”

  For both groups, the other death causes were: cardiac arrhythmias, aortic aneurysm/dissection, intracerebral hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, cerebral infarction, respiratory failure, interstitial lung diseases, pulmonary embolism, pneumonia, sepsis, anaphylaxis, thrombocytopenia, and marasmus.

  In short, many more older Japanese women and men below 64 faced a higher risk of death immediately within the first 10 days of Pfizer vaccination.

  Male–Female Differences, Study Limitations

  The author, Yasusi Suzumura, calculated sex ratios for all-cause deaths and each outcome by dividing the number of males by that of females and multiplying by 100. That is, the higher the sex ratio, the greater the number of male deaths.

  The author found notable differences between the number of deaths of men and women in both groups, impacting the study’s sex ratio.

  “If there is no effect on the occurrence of death, there should be no difference in sex ratios by period. Thus, this finding indicates that vaccination may influence the occurrence of death during the risk period and might be associated with death,” the study stated.

  The data on death numbers for the study were sourced from Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (MHLW).

  Specifically, cases involving only the BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) mRNA vaccination reported between Feb. 17, 2021, and March 12, 2023, were included.

  The study does not directly link the deaths with the vaccinations. “The results indicate that the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination may influence the occurrence of death during the risk period,” said the study.

  The author pointed to some of the limitations of the study including that the number of days from vaccination to death may vary depending on treatment, and that the study did not consider the effects of the vaccination after 11 days.

  Besides this, the author said the sex-based reporting could have only been performed by a few doctors, and that the mortality rates could not be calculated because the analysis was performed only for deaths after vaccination.

  The study had a limited sample size, and hence should be “carefully” interpreted. “Finally, the analysis results should be carefully interpreted because not all deaths reported to the MHLW were related to vaccination. Incidental deaths may be included in the reported deaths.”

  The study author stressed that since vaccines are administered to mostly healthy individuals, it should have a “higher level of safety than pharmaceuticals used for treatment and should have an exceptionally low vaccination mortality rate.”

  Therefore, even when the vaccination mortality rate is exceptionally low, vaccine safety must be analyzed with statistical methods.

  “On this occasion, it is difficult to determine whether a post-vaccination death is incidental or vaccine-related,” said the study. However, the author concluded that this approach can offer valuable insights into assessing vaccine safety.

  The Epoch Times reached out to Pfizer for comment.

  ‘Similar to Vaccine Deaths in US’

  Commenting on the study, cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said that the data on “COVID-19 vaccination and death in Japan is very similar to vaccine deaths in US/Domestic cases in VAERS,” according to a Dec. 9 X post. “Strongly supports causality for the nearly 1150 immediate deaths observed.”

  VAERS has reported 18,188 deaths from COVID-19 vaccination through Sept. 29, 2023, with 1,150 deaths occurring on the same day as the vaccination.

  In addition, 2,040 miscarriages, 9,053 heart attacks, 17,433 permanent disabilities, 5,057 myocarditis/pericarditis cases, and 36,184 severe allergic reactions were also reported.

  The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons also shared the Japanese study on X.

  The study author clarified that they have received “no financial support” from any organization for their submitted work.

  Multiple other studies have also linked COVID-19 vaccines with higher mortality rates. A Sept. 17 report by Correlation Research in the Public Interest found that in the 17 nations analyzed, all-cause mortality increased when COVID-19 vaccines were distributed.

  Nine out of these 17 nations had no detectable excess deaths following the March 2020 WHO declaration of the pandemic. Excess deaths only began with the vaccination campaign.

  In 15 of the 17 nations, there were unprecedented peaks in all-cause mortality in January and February 2022, which coincided with or followed the rollout of booster shots.

  The study estimated 1.74 million excess deaths in the 17 nations during the vaccination period, which comes to roughly 1 per 800 injections.

  Meanwhile, Japan has approved the world’s first self-amplifying mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, although the manufacturer has not published safety or efficacy data for the shot.

  The latest iteration of the mRNA vaccine is even more potent than the present version, as it generates more spike proteins in the human body.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 21:00

• DC Transit Could Become "Unrecognizable" With Drastic Service Cuts, Layoffs Amid Deficit
  DC Transit Could Become “Unrecognizable” With Drastic Service Cuts, Layoffs Amid Deficit

  Millions of metro riders in crime-ridden Washington, DC, could face hellish commutes in the coming months as the district’s public transportation system head warned of potential dramatic service and job cuts to close a $750 million budget gap. 

  It’s “no secret we have massive budget challenges,” Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority general manager and CEO Randy Clarke said during a briefing Monday. 

  WMATA plans to reduce its 12,000-person workforce by nearly 20% or approximately 2,300 people. The reduction will lead to reliability issues across the metro’s network, a decline in safety, and dirtier stations. 

  

  During the presentation, a slide was shown depicting WMATA’s bleak outlook: “Balancing Budget with Severe Service Cuts Would Make Metro Unrecognizable.”

  Clarke pointed out the level of proposed service cuts “is hard to imagine.” 

  This also includes reducing or eliminating service on 108 of its 135 bus lines. The rail system will have its midnight hours reduced by 2 hours and cease operations at 10 pm. 

  Furthermore, Clarke’s budget calls for increased ticket prices on trains and busses, upwards of 20%. This means a regular Metrorail fare could cost $7.20 per trip. 

  Here’s an overview of the potential changes to WMATA’s services if the budget gap is not filled (list courtesy of NBC Washington): 

  Metrorail

  • All stations would close at 10 pm. Currently, the earliest Metro normally closes is midnight.
  • Ten stations would be shut down completely. WMATA has not decided which stations would close, but the final decision would be based on ridership numbers.
  • Metro frequency would be reduced. Right now, the majority of Metro trains arrive every six minutes or less, but without a funding fix come July of next year, the percentage of trains with six-minute service or better would drop to just 10%.

  Metrobus

  • Metro could eliminate nearly half of its bus lines. Under the proposed budget, 67 of the existing 135 lines would be eliminated. Another 41 lines would see service reductions.
  • A third of bus service would be cut across D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

  Fare increases

  • Metro warned of a 20% increase in fares and parking fees. For example, the max fare on Metrorail right now is $6. Under the proposed budget, a Metrorail fare would be capped at $7.20.

  Job cuts

  • In January 2024, Metro plans to freeze salary and wage increases.
  • In July 2024, 2,286 employees would be laid off.

  The potential service cuts would only hurt the working poor because an increasing number of them have been forced to rely solely on public transportation in an era of failed ‘Bidenomics.’ 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 20:40

• Peter Schiff: Joe Biden Doesn't Have Anything To Take Credit For
  Peter Schiff: Joe Biden Doesn’t Have Anything To Take Credit For

  Via SchiffGold.com,

  Most mainstream pundits characterized the November jobs report as a “Goldilocks” report. Job growth was strong enough to support the “soft landing” narrative but not so strong it might scare the Fed into raising interest rates again.

  

  President Joe Biden used the report to boast about his economic achievements. But according to Peter Schiff, Biden doesn’t have anything to boast about. He talked about it during a recent interview on the Capitol Report on NTD News.

  After the jobs report came out, Biden released a statement bragging, “On my watch, we have achieved better growth and lower inflation than any other advanced country. A year ago, forecasters said it couldn’t be done.”

  As far as Biden taking credit for the strong economy, Peter said he doesn’t think there is anything for the president to take credit for.

  First of all, the job numbers – sure, it was better than expected. But we’ll probably end up revising it to ‘worse than expected’ next month. That’s pretty much what they do. They come out with a number and then the following month they revise it lower.”

  Peter pointed out that 24% of the “new jobs” were striking auto workers and motion picture workers going back to jobs they already had.

  That’s not really job creation.”

  And 82% of the remaining jobs created were in the government and healthcare sectors.

  These are not the productive jobs that are producing goods that we need, that we can consume, that we can export. And all these government workers have to be paid for by the private sector. That means the government has to run even bigger deficits. That means they have to create more inflation to pay their salaries. That puts more upward pressure on prices. I don’t think we have a strong labor market.”

  Meanwhile, the economy is creating a lot of part-time, low-wage jobs.

  People are taking second and third jobs because the economy is so weak that you can’t get by on one job anymore. So, most people need multiple jobs.”

  The NTD anchor noted that gold hit a record high prior to the jobs report. What does that say about the state of the economy?

  Peter said he thinks if people understood how bad things really are, and how much worse it will likely get, they would be buying even more gold. For one thing, despite Biden bragging about “lower inflation” Peter said it’s a huge problem that’s going to get worse.

  The talk of the Fed successfully returning inflation to 2% — that’s all talk. It’s not going to happen. The genie is out of the bottle. There’s no putting it back in.”

  Peter said in the meantime, we’re heading toward a severe recession.

  I think we’re going to have a worse financial crisis than the one we had in 2008. In fact, we’d already be in it if it wasn’t for the bailouts of the banks earlier in the year, back in March. But that has a short shelf-life. I think the problems underlying the banking system are building. The entire banking system is insolvent based on more than 10 years of zero percent rates. They’ve loaded up on long-term, low-yielding bonds. They’re underwater in those positions. Meanwhile, I think the real economy is weakening. The deficits are skyrocketing.”

  And as the national debt surges upward, the interest expense on the debt is rising. Interest expense rose by 23% to $879 billion in fiscal 2023.

  This is a fiscal time bomb that’s going to blow, and I think people would be buying more gold if they understood how short this fuse was.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 20:20

• Ford CEO Says Video Of Stuck Cybertruck Was Not Intentionally Staged For PR Purposes 
  Ford CEO Says Video Of Stuck Cybertruck Was Not Intentionally Staged For PR Purposes 

  Ford CEO Jim Farley made an odd comment on ‘free speech’ social media platform X, stating that the video of a Tesla Cybertruck getting stuck on a snow-covered grassy hill and winched up by a Super Duty truck was “NOT advertising.”

  “Just to be clear… this is a Super Duty and NOT advertising. Glad a @Ford owner was there to help,” Farley wrote on X. 

  Just to be clear… this is a Super Duty and NOT advertising. Glad a @Ford owner was there to help. https://t.co/Rr78EY9k2T

  — Jim Farley (@jimfarley98) December 13, 2023

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  This isn’t the first instance where the rival Cybertruck has been compared with a Ford truck. Last month, the CEO posted a video showing the F-150 Lightning climbing the same off-roading trail where a Cybertruck seemed to have difficulty just a few weeks early. Farley captioned the video with “F-150 Lightning does it all.” 

  Or does it?

  BREAKING: Ford Lightning stuck in snow on flat ground, but nobody cares since it’s not a Tesla Cybertruck. “yikes” “the AWD software is so bad” pic.twitter.com/tmOCALq1CJ

  — TSLA CHASE (@TESLAenjoyer) December 12, 2023

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  Meanwhile, demand for F-150 Lightnings has plunged as the legacy automaker plans a 2024 production capacity of 150,000 Lightnings a year, or about 3,200 per week. That means its production target for next year will be halved.

  It’s unclear whether the Cybertruck incident was intentionally staged to portray Tesla negatively and highlight Super Duty’s capabilities.

  What is particularly noteworthy is the unusual comment made by the CEO of Ford.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 20:00

• Final Batch Of Pfizer Documents Released By FDA
  Final Batch Of Pfizer Documents Released By FDA

  Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  The FDA released the final batch of documents it relied upon in licensing Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine for ages 16 and up—more than 800 days after the agency approved the shot.

  The documents are “finally in the hands of the public, where they belong,” the Informed Consent Action Network said in a press release. “Now, independent scientists and researchers can see everything FDA saw when it made its decision that this vaccine was ‘safe and effective.’”

  The recent documents disclosed as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) show the agency knew its safety monitoring system was “not sufficient” for assessing the risk of heart conditions associated with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine when it licensed the company’s “Comirnaty” vaccine.

  Advertisement – Story continues below

  Documents also reveal numerous manufacturing problems in Pfizer batches released to the public and show the FDA knew about a phenomenon known as vaccine-associated enhanced disease (VAED) in those vaccinated who experience breakthrough COVID-19.

  FDA Knew Safety Monitoring System Was ‘Not Sufficient’

  Federal health agencies claim COVID-19 vaccines are part of the “most intensive vaccine safety monitoring effort in U.S. history,” with “continuous” and “robust” safety monitoring that helps ensure that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh any risks. Yet the final documents released from Pfizer’s biologic product file reveal the agency knew its safety monitoring program was not sufficient to assess the serious risks of myocarditis and pericarditis associated with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

  An FDA memo in the 51,893 pages of disclosures specifically addressed the agency’s CBER Sentinel Initiative and its ability to evaluate the risk for myocarditis and pericarditis following COVID-19 vaccination. The Sentinel program is the FDA’s national electronic system used to monitor the “safety of its regulated products” and is a “major part” of the agency’s mission to “protect public health.”

  The memo states:

  “The CBER Sentinel Program is NOT sufficient to assess the serious risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, and subclinical myocarditis associated with COMIRNATY (BNT162b2) in lieu of PMR safety studies under FDAAA [Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act].

  “At the time of BLA [Biologics License Application] approval, the data sources in the CBER Sentinel Program are not sufficient to identify the outcomes due to lack of sufficient power to assess the magnitude of risk in patients 12-30 years of age. In addition, CBER Sentinel Program is not sufficient to follow up cases for recovery status and long-term sequelae, or for identification and characterization of subclinical myocarditis cases.”

  Cardiac Disorders Higher in Vaccine Trial Group

  According to an Aug. 23, 2021, BLA Clinical Review Memorandum, there were more cardiac disorders in trial participants who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine compared to the placebo group and more instances of tachycardia in the younger vaccinated age group.

  Cardiac conditions were reported as the cause of death in nine participants 25 to 128 days after having received at least one dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, including seven cases of cardiac arrest, one case of cardiovascular disease, and one case of congestive heart failure.

  Five cardiac-related deaths in the placebo group occurred 15 to 81 days after having received a placebo, including two cases of myocardial infarction, one aortic rupture, and two cardiac arrests.

  “Because COVID-19 mRNA and its Spike protein are found in the human heart at autopsy causing inflammation and heart damage, it is incontrovertible that the COVID-19 vaccines are cardiotoxic,” cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told The Epoch Times in an email.

  “Younger individuals with healthy hearts take up more of the damaging vaccine into the cardiac tissue resulting in symptoms of chest pain, palpitations, fluctuations in blood pressure, dizziness, and sadly, some, end up with cardiac arrest either during exercise or in the early morning waking hours. At both time periods, an internal surge of adrenalin appears to be the trigger for the fatal arrhythmia in those with COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis,” he added.

  Despite nearly double the number of reported cardiac events in vaccine recipients versus placebo recipients, the FDA concluded the deaths were “unlikely to be related to vaccination.”

  “As a cardiologist, these serious adverse events are unacceptable,” Dr. McCullough said. “I have called for all COVID-19 vaccines to be removed from the market with an urgent push for research strategies to prevent cardiac death after injection.”

  Vaccines Released Despite Manufacturing Issues

  According to the Pfizer Andover Response to Form FDA 483 included in the released documents, numerous manufacturing issues and inadequacies in quality oversight were also identified. Several batches of COVID-19 vaccines were flagged for deviating from product quality standards, yet the affected batches were released to the public in various lots, the numbers of which were redacted.

  In November 2021, whistleblower Brook Jackson, who worked as a regional director at testing sites by Pfizer contractor Ventavia, told the British Medical Journal that Pfizer’s trial was riddled with issues. Ms. Jackson said the company “falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial.”

  Ms. Jackson, a trained clinical trial auditor with more than 15 years of experience in clinical research coordination and management, emailed a complaint to the FDA and was fired later that day. She subsequently filed a lawsuit against Ventavia and Pfizer, alleging Pfizer had defrauded the government while developing its COVID-19 vaccine.

  FDA Acknowledges Vaccine-Associated Enhanced Disease

  In its Pharmacovigilance Plan Review Memorandum, the FDA referenced a condition called “vaccine-associated enhanced disease.” According to the journal Vaccine, VAED is the modified presentation of a clinical infection affecting individuals exposed to the wild-type pathogen after having received a vaccine for the same pathogen.

  In its memo, the FDA stated there are reported deaths in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in patients reported to be fully vaccinated. Although the agency said that passive surveillance and spontaneous adverse event reporting generally cannot be used to conclude vaccine effectiveness because of the lack of a control group, reporter bias, and underreporting, “severe manifestations and death from COVID-19” increase the possibility of developing VAED, which has “overlapping clinical manifestations with natural SARS-CoV-2 infection, making it difficult to differentiate VAED from severe COVID-19 disease in individual VAERS reports.”

  The FDA said Pfizer was assessing the condition in its continuation of Phase 3 clinical studies and active surveillance studies. VAED has been observed in other vaccine trials involving the dengue virus, respiratory syncytial virus, and measles.

  FDA Took Over 800 Days to Release Data

  The Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, a nonprofit consisting of public health and medical professionals, scientists, and journalists, filed a FOIA lawsuit against the FDA in September 2021 to force the release of hundreds of thousands of documents relied upon by the agency in licensing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for individuals age 16 and older.

  Even though the FDA said in a news release it was committed to “ensuring full transparency, dialogue and efficiency” regarding COVID-19 vaccines and reiterated its commitment to full transparency when it licensed Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine, they wanted 75 years to produce an estimated 451,000 documents at a rate of 500 pages per month. It previously estimated it had 329,000 pages of responsive records and wanted 55 years to release them to the public.

  Attorney Aaron Siri, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the group, said the federal government was shielding Pfizer from liability, gave it billions of dollars, and forced Americans to get vaccinated while preventing the safety and efficacy data supporting the licensure of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine from being released until the year 2076. Yet it only took 108 days from when Pfizer started producing records to the agency for the FDA to license its vaccine.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 19:40

• Pentagon Seeks EMP Weapon To Eliminate Drone Swarms 
  Pentagon Seeks EMP Weapon To Eliminate Drone Swarms 

  Faced with the reality that drones are reshaping the modern battlefields in Ukraine and Gaza, the Pentagon has been tasked with finding a budget-friendly solution to eliminate these ‘flying IEDs.’ While missiles are too expensive, and laser beams are a distant dream, the next best cost-effective weapon US military officials are eyeing up could be electromagnetic pulse weapons to counter drone swarms.

  According to the System for Award Management (SAM.gov) website, the US Air Force has published a contract opportunity for private industry titled “Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Defense Against Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).” 

  

  The service outlined the drone-killing features of the new EMP weapon it is seeking:

  “The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/RI) is conducting market research to seek information from industry on the landscape of research and development (R&D) for available Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) solutions towards countering multiple Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). EMP solutions could be ground and/or aerial based that provide effective mitigation against Department of Defense (DoD) UAS groups 1, 2, and smaller group 3 aircraft.” 

  As for an aerial-based EMP weapon, the service explained: 

  “Any EMP solutions hosted on air vehicles will have to be determined to be air-worthy by the Government. DoD must comply with the following general restrictions on UAS: 1. The air vehicle must be based on or derived from US components and electronics. 2. The air vehicle must have sufficient flight hours and reliability data.” 

  The proposed EMP weapon would be able to neutralize drones with a directed EMP blast to damage the electronic parts – this is a much cheaper solution than missiles that cost tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands, a piece. 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 19:20

• How Tax-Exempt Nonprofits Skirt U.S. Law To Turn Out The Democrat Base In Elections
  How Tax-Exempt Nonprofits Skirt U.S. Law To Turn Out The Democrat Base In Elections

  Authored by Steve Miller via RealClear Wire,

  Even as Democrats such as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse warn of “right-wing dark-money network seeking to undermine the future of democratic elections in the United States,” progressives have far outstripped Republicans in harnessing the power of putatively non-partisan, nonprofit organizations that push the boundaries to win elections.

  

  More than 150 progressive nonprofits spent $1.35 billion on political activities in 2021 and 2022, according to data compiled by Restoration of America, a conservative political action committee. Although there are no readily available estimates of comparable conservative efforts, observers say they are overmatched.

  “The liberal nonprofit sector is much bigger than the conservative nonprofit in the political arena,” said Bradley Smith, a former commissioner with the Federal Election Commission and founder of the conservative Institute for Free Speech.

  The progressive nonprofits include faith-based groups, ethnic activist operatives, and colleges and universities, which have taken on an outsized part of the Democratic party’s election strategy.

  The groups work around legal restrictions on nonprofits that accept tax-deductible donations by selectively engaging in nonpartisan efforts including boosting voter education and participation.

  But, like the estimated $332 million that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated to public elections offices to help run the 2020 elections, much of it winds up in the hands of groups that operate in liberal strongholds and work with reliably Democratic constituencies.

  This is in part how two influential groups, the Voter Participation Center and its partner group, the Center for Voter Information, increase Democratic turnout.

  Both have the stated mission of encouraging people in specified demographics – “young people, people of color and unmarried women” – to vote. All three groups are part of the Democratic Party’s base. Voters in these groups are up to two-and-a-half times more likely to vote when engaged by a nonprofit, according to research from Nonprofit Vote, an advocacy group for tax-exempt activist groups.

  The value of these groups was underscored when the Biden administration prepared to compose his executive order directing federal agencies to “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote.” In July 2021 officials met with leading progressive operators, including Democracy Fund, Fair Elections Center, FairVote, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and the George Soros-backed Open Society Policy Center, according to an internal administration email obtained by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative nonprofit that is suing the administration to obtain records related to the executive order.

  The Democratic Party’s stance on issues, from climate change to voting procedures, is also echoed by their nonprofit allies. The Fair Elections Center, for example, calls those who questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential race “election deniers” who oppose the right to vote. Their stance echoes President Biden, who said last year that there were “more than 300 election deniers on the ballot” for the midterms, adding that “It’s damaging, it’s corrosive, and it’s destructive.”

  Significant funding for these and other voting activist operations flows from the same sources that put millions of dollars into Democratic and progressive campaigns.

  Among them:

  • The Tides Foundation, with $1 billion in revenue in 2020, funds the moveon.org PAC while also giving to the Voter Registration Project, League of Women Voters, and Project Vote. The foundation is one of several Tides nonprofits that operate in the charity world of progressive funding, giving to groups that advocate for abortion rights, gun control, and “equity” causes. Tides is also a partner of Black Lives Matter.
  • New Venture Fund, formed in 2006 as Arabella Legacy Fund, lobbies for progressive causes, including election laws, in 41 states, and in 2020, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed by a former employee, “disbursed nearly $500 million to address progressive issues such as racial justice.” The lawsuit contends New Venture engaged in prohibited partisan political activity, which is disputed by New Venture. New Venture is also a key financial supporter of progressive voting groups American Votes, NAACP National Voter Fund, and Fair Elections Center.
  • The Silicon Valley Community Foundation since 2020 has given $106 million in grants to nonprofits for voter education and turnout. It was the primary conduit of Zuckerberg’s millions in grants that went to public elections offices around the U.S. in 2020 and has donated money to Planned Parenthood and Democracy Now, while its employees have donated exclusively to Democratic candidates.

  The number and funding of electorally active progressive nonprofits have increased dramatically during the past decade. Their get-out-the-vote efforts are replacing those of political campaigns, which traditionally relied on their own staffers to engage voters.

  Much of the switch from party and campaign activity to nonprofits stems from a changing political landscape, which de-emphasizes the short-term goals of candidates (winning elections) to a longer-term vision for party dominance, said Sasha Issenberg, author of “The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.” His 2012 book chronicled this shift through the increasing use of micro-analytics and social science in voter targeting, a strategy first dominated by Republicans, then updated and refined by Democrats. That refinement was carried out by younger individuals who were comfortable with a collectivist mindset, he said.

  A “historical volunteer culture” set the table for a blossoming of the nonprofit base of the left, Issenberg told RealClearInvestigations. “When you had this era of innovation on the left, it set upon a culture that was already in place and wanted to perfect this idea.”

  The progressive voter groups adroitly navigate tax rules that allow 501(c)(3) nonprofits to engage in voter participation and get-out-the -vote drives provided the effort is not aimed to benefit a political party.

  These groups have access to solid voter and other demographic data, along with large teams of experienced community organizers, said Erick Kaardal, a Minneapolis-based attorney who has filed dozens of election-related lawsuits, some in connection with his role as special counsel for the conservative Thomas More Society.

  “These groups are very good at legal compliance,” Kaardal said. When conservative nonprofits violate the rules, their liberal opponents “justly file complaints.” But Republicans, he said, “are novices … and [conservative nonprofits] also lack the resources [progressives] have. It’s not unfair; they have paid big money to have this well-oiled machine and to keep it legal it takes those resources.”

  Today, tax-exempt entities drive the efforts to get out votes and register voters while engaging in advocacy that virtually copies the platforms of leading elected Democratic officials.

  Under the guise of civic engagement or voter advocacy, the advocacy nonprofits pepper email inboxes with fund-raising pitches while alleging that efforts to reform or stem practices that lead to ballot fraud are tantamount to voter suppression. “In a crucial state that decided control of the U.S. Senate in the last two elections, Georgia voters are no stranger to voter suppression schemes,” reads an email sent to constituents by Vote.org, seeking to raise money to combat voter integrity measures passed by Republican lawmakers in 2021.

  Vote.org describes itself as the largest “nonpartisan voting registration and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) technology platform in America,” while its correspondence often echoes statements made by Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams of Georgia, and President Biden. “Threats to democracy” and voter “suppression” are a common term in Vote.org’s press releases and in social media posts. The organization largely embraces the Democratic party’s position that voter integrity measures backed by Republicans – including voter ID laws and restrictions on mail-in ballots – are almost always aimed at voter suppression. Voter.org also focuses on areas and groups that may be less likely to vote, which tends to include young and minority voters that Democrats count on.

  “The overall upshot of how we make the selections is based on where voter turnout isn’t matching the demographics of the area,” said Nick Hutchins, a spokesman for Vote.org. “We want the vote to be accessible to everyone.”

  A Leftward Disparate Impact

  As a result, seemingly neutral efforts have a disparate impact that helps Democrats far more than Republicans.

  “There’s a line of administration and politicking here, and unless you hit every constituent in the same way, it will have disproportionate effects,” said Ryan Williamson, co-author of the book, “Nationalized Politics: Evaluating Electoral Politics Across Time.”

  The charities that fund voter registration have been created by an activist league with roots in community organizing from Barak Obama’s 2008 presidential candidacy.

  “The proliferation of these nonprofits has accelerated in the last few years, and it was engineered by the Obama campaign in 2008,” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told RCI.

  That was the same year the nonprofit Arabella Legacy Fund was founded by former Clinton administration appointee Eric Kessler with a stated mission of “environmental preservation and protection.” Arabella’s application cited Bible verses to support its proposed environmental advocacy. In 2009 the group became the New Venture Fund, which has provided millions of dollars to voting nonprofits. Arabella became the for-profit Arabella Advisors, which handles strategy and management for New Venture and a host of other, similarly partisan nonprofit enterprises.

  Courting, creating, and funding nonprofits by progressives is now a core Democratic Party strategy, one that has proven successful as Democrats have prevailed or outperformed historical expectations in national elections.

  “They are after a new American majority, and that includes people of color, women, students, LGBT, and [progressives] have a strategy for each group,” said Ned Jones, deputy director of the conservative Election Integrity Network. “It’s all about registering voters and getting a ballot in their hands, and they know what they’re doing,”

  Republicans, he said, are far behind. “The opposing team doesn’t have the funding, the structure or the system to do what progressives are doing.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 19:00

• Could This Supreme Court Case End Government Overreach By Three-Letter Agencies?
  Could This Supreme Court Case End Government Overreach By Three-Letter Agencies?

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  What do fishing, Three Letter Agencies, and gun rights all have in common?

  Well, thanks to a little-known case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, commercial fishing and gun rights are intrinsically tied together. The outcome of this case could change the legal landscape of the entire country when it comes to the ability of three-letter agencies such as ATF to make regulations.

  To understand the scope and effect of the Raimondo case, we’ll need to first look at two different things. The first is the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The second is a legal principle called Chevron Deference.

  Let’s start with the Fishery Act, as that’s the basis for this case.

  

  In 1976, Congress passed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act into law. The law provides for the management of marine fisheries in US waters.

  The MSA was enacted to assert control over foreign fisheries that were operating within 200 miles of the US coast. However, a provision of the law is that the National Marine Fisheries Service may require private fishing boats to carry federal monitors on board to enforce the agency’s regulations.

  This is where the problems start.

  In the years since the passage of the MSA, the budget for the National Marine Fisheries Service started to fall, but the need for monitor coverage was growing. The Fisheries service was put in a bind. They couldn’t afford to pay for the increased coverage needed to maintain their surveys and studies.

  Well, to fix the problem, they did what all Government agencies seem to do these days: administrative rulemaking.

  In doing so, they identified an area in the law that did not explicitly say that the government couldn’t make the private companies pay the salaries of the federal monitors. 

  So, in February 2020, the National Marine Fisheries Service published its final rule establishing a standardized process that would require industry-funded monitoring.

  In response, Loper Bright Enterprises, a family-owned herring fishing company, sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in the United States District Court for the District of Colombia.

  Loper Bright’s argument was that the Magnuson-Stevens Act did not authorize the Fisheries Service to force private companies to pay federal monitors.

  You’d think that the Court would see this and agree with Loper Bright. Well, you’d be wrong. The Court sided with the National Marine Fisheries Service by using a legal doctrine called Chevron Deference.

  So, what’s the Chevron Deference?

  The Chevron in Chevron Deference refers to a landmark 1984 decision in Chevron USA Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council Inc. 

  Chevron is considered to be one of the most important decisions in US administrative law. It has been cited in thousands of cases since the decision.

  But how does it work?

  If a law is ambiguous, Chevron’s doctrine requires the court to evaluate if the agency’s interpretation of the law is reasonable or permissible. If the agency’s interpretation is deemed to be reasonable or permissible, the court must accept the agency’s interpretation of the law.

  In practice, administrative agencies like ATF can essentially govern as lawmakers. They create “rules” and “regulations” based on existing law, then use Chevron to affirm their rule change as “reasonable.”

  Administrative agencies face fewer steps in rulemaking, sometimes only involving those inside the current administration. In the case of bump stocks—which is an attachment for a rifle—the reversal of agency policy was not the result of any new factual findings or thoughtful re-examination of the statute, but instead was ordered by one person—President Trump.

  Even when agencies don’t apply Chevron to their argument, sometimes Judges will do it anyway, because it allows them to defer to an authority instead of making a decision, taking the easy way out of complex cases.

  But it goes deeper. Chevron has seriously distorted how the political branches operate. Thanks to Chevron, Congress does less, and the executive branch does more, as Congress can count on the executive branch to tackle controversial issues via executive orders without the need for compromise.

  This creates a dynamic where the “law” on important and divisive issues radically changes with every presidential administration. 

  For example, the Chevron doctrine is what “allows” the ATF to claim that pistol braces are legal for years, then, on a dime, suddenly change course and change the legal status of 40 million pistols overnight.

  There’s a reason that GOA has submitted an amicus curiae supporting Loper Bright. 

  So, back to the case at hand. By using Chevron, the lower court in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo determined that the Fisheries Service “reasonably interpreted the law” as there was no clear language about the cost of at sea monitoring in the law.

  On Nov. 10, 2022, Loper Bright petitioned the Supreme Court to hear its case. In the petition, Loper Bright asked two questions. The first asked the court to rule on whether the lower court properly applied Chevron when granting the Fisheries Service the power to force private enterprises to pay for monitors.

  Secondly, they asked the court to rule on whether Chevron should be overruled outright or limited in scope.

  The Supreme Court granted the petition but limited it to only the Second question.

  Seems like the Supreme Court may have an issue with Chevron.

  This is evidenced in 2022 when Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “Chevron deserves a tombstone no one can miss.”

  Justice Clarance Thomas has said similar things as well. In 2015, Thomas wrote that Chevron “wrestles from courts the ultimate interpretive authority to ‘say what law is’ and hands it over to the executive branch.”

  Interestingly, Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson heard the case at the circuit level right before being nominated to replace Justice Steven Breyer on the Supreme Court. She has recused herself from the case accordingly.

  We’ll have to wait and see what happens with the oral arguments, but it looks like the Supreme Court might actually be ready to put Chevron to bed.

  Watch: What do fishing, Three Letter Agencies, and gun rights all have in common?

  This case is important not just for gun owners but anyone who’s been a victim of federal overreach.

  *   *   *

  We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 18:40

• Let The Games Begin: Biden Impeachment Inquiry Authorized By House
  Let The Games Begin: Biden Impeachment Inquiry Authorized By House

  The House on Wednesday approved the launch of a formal impeachment probe into President Biden, just hours after Hunter Biden ditched Congressional testimony on Capitol Hill.

  

  The 221-212 vote was along party lines, with Republicans formalizing a processes which began weeks ago, and Democrats criticizing the vote as a political stunt for retribution over the impeachments of former President Donald Trump – who was impeached for asking Ukraine about obvious Biden corruption, and his alleged role in the Jan. 6 riot.

  Formalizing the impeachment process will grant Congress additional power by improving the likelihood that a court will authorize access to grand jury materials, as well as boosting the chances that Republicans will be able to overcome objections such as executive privilege, the Wall Street Journal reports.

  The White House several weeks ago challenged House subpoenas and demands for transcribed interviews with Biden family members on the grounds that the existing impeachment probe, launched by GOP leaders in September, wasn’t valid because the House didn’t vote to authorize it.

  “The impeachment inquiry is necessary now,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) told reporters this week, “because we’ve come to this impasse where following the facts where they lead is hitting a stone wall because the White House is impeding that investigation.” –WSJ

  The inquiry has so far been two-pronged, with the House Oversight Committee focusing on the Biden family’s financial malarkey, and the House Judiciary Committee focusing on on the weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI.

  “This vote will allow the House Judiciary, Oversight and Ways and Means committees to continue their investigations. The evidence mounting against the president cannot be ignored,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer in Wednesday comments to reporters.

  “We know Joe Biden has lied to or misled the American people about his knowledge of his son’s business dealings over and over again, and it is very likely that he was involved in and benefited from his family’s corrupt business dealings as well.”

  Democrats tantrum

  “No amount of evidence could convince Republicans that Joe Biden did nothing wrong because they’re not looking for truth, they’re looking for revenge,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the top Democrat on the House Rules committee, ahead of the vote.

  Earlier Wednesday, Hunter Biden defied a subpoena to appear before the House to testify about his family’s dealings, instead saying in a Capitol Hill speech: “Let me state as clearly as I can: My father was not financially involved in my business.”

  The younger Biden has faced congressional and legal scrutiny regarding his overseas business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere as well as alleged tax evasion, and Republicans have sought to show links between Hunter’s work and his father.

  While Hunter Biden said he was willing to testify publicly, he rebuffed a subpoena from House Republicans to answer questions behind closed doors on alleged links between his foreign business dealings and his father. “I’m here today to make sure that the House committee’s illegitimate investigations of my family do not proceed on distortions, manipulated evidence and lies,” he said.

  The younger Biden had previously said he was only willing to testify publicly so that Republicans couldn’t selectively leak portions of his statements. House leaders said the president’s son couldn’t dictate the terms of his testimony and said they would now initiate contempt of Congress proceedings against Hunter Biden. -WSJ

  “He was just across the way at the Capitol, you’d think he could’ve come here and sat for questions,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH).

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 18:20

• US Blocks Transfer Of Over 20,000 Rifles To Israel Over Settler Violence
  US Blocks Transfer Of Over 20,000 Rifles To Israel Over Settler Violence

  There’s been some serious mixed messaging and contradictory signals coming from the White House of late regarding Israel and the Gaza War. President Biden on Tuesday had for the first time offered criticism of Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza – even while keeping the massive defense aid flowing to Israel’s military on an unconditional basis. He said Israel risks losing the world’s support.

  But even as it hands over 2,000-pound bombs and other heavy munitions, the US administration has ironically enough temporarily blocked a shipment of more than 20,000 rifles on fears the small arms could fuel more Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Most or all of the rifle shipments appear to be M-16s.

  

  These military-grade assault rifles had been requested by the Netanyahu government from within the first week of the war, in the wake of Oct.7.

  Axios writes in a fresh report, “The Israeli request was treated with caution by the Biden administration because of concerns Itamar Ben Gvir, the ultra-nationalist minister of national security who oversees the police, would distribute the rifles to extremist settlers in the West Bank, according to U.S. officials.”

  A US official told the publication, “This deal isn’t moving anywhere at the moment. We need more assurances from Israel about the steps it is going to take to curb attacks by violent settlers and to make sure no new U.S. weapons will reach settlers in the West Bank.”

  This week, Turkish media correspondents documented the following incident in the West Bank:

  Israeli settlers on Monday confronted olive pickers in the town of Aqraba, southern Nablus, firing live rounds to intimidate and force them to leave their lands, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.

  Israeli occupation forces and settlers have carried out a total of 333 attacks against olive pickers since the beginning of the season in October, the agency said, citing the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission.

  Last week, the US administration unveiled rare sanctions on Israeli settlers involved in attacks on Palestinians, which bans them from traveling to the United States.

  The US government has not sanctioned Israeli settlers going all the way back to the Clinton administration, but Washington has consistently condemned settler expansion in the West Bank, at least as far as public policy and rhetoric goes.

  Video shows how Israeli settlers, escorted by Israeli forces, steal crops from Palestinian-owned olive trees and cut down several trees outside of Awarta, occupied West Bank. pic.twitter.com/QYRFfDW6Vn

  — In Context (@incontextmedia) December 11, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The conflict centered on Gaza has received by far most international media attention, but there’s been a parallel war raging in the West Bank. Nablus, for example, has been declared a closed military zone and is under blockade by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). An estimated more than 270 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have died in clashes with police and settlers since Oct.7.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 18:00

• The Trojan Horse That Would Force Your Barista To Spy On You
  The Trojan Horse That Would Force Your Barista To Spy On You

  Authored by Gene Schaerr via RealClear Wire,

  It was T.S. Eliot who coined the phrase “wilderness of mirrors” in his poem, “Gerontion.” It was the saga of the CIA’s James Jesus Angleton’s betrayal by Soviet double-agent Kim Philby that made the phrase a byword in the shadowy world of intelligence.

  

  In that world, deception, deceit, and disinformation are just tools of the trade. These are, no doubt, useful tools when dealing with all manner of criminals and agents of despotic powers. But this culture of deception seems to have infected the ability of the intelligence community – and a few of their champions on Capitol Hill – to play it straight with Congress and their constituents, the people intelligence agencies are meant to serve.

  That culture of deception even seems to infect the so-called FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act, proposed this week by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a bill that represents the wish-list of the intelligence community.

  First, the bill’s marquee “reform” is the prohibition of only a handful of searches or “queries” of information about Americans under Section 702, the authority enacted by Congress to enable foreign surveillance but often used by the government for domestic spying. The type of search the bill would prohibit is “evidence-of-a-crime only” queries. But in 2022, out of over 200,000 queries of Americans’ data, there were only two instances of the FBI accessing Section 702 data under this rubric. And even if that prohibition were in place, the FBI could easily evade it simply by claiming in every instance that agents were looking for some (hypothetical) terror threat in addition to possible crimes. The bill’s non-reform “reform” would thus do nothing to stop the routine snooping on Americans, from 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, to a House member and a \senator, a judge, and numerous protesters of the left and right. Nor would this “reform” prevent known abuses, such as the NSA agents who used this powerful search program to check out online dating prospects and potential tenants.

  Even more outrageous is a problematic provision tucked away in this “reform” bill but not so much as mentioned in the committee’s report. Section 504 of the House Intelligence bill requires that those who have access to the “equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store such communications” shall be treated as “electronic communication service providers” and thus subject to Section 702’s general requirement to (secretly) disclose our data to the government.

  Let us unpack this: Under current law, electronic communication service providers include Internet service providers such as Google, Facebook/Meta, and Microsoft. It also includes telecom providers such as AT&T and Verizon. Under the law, these big companies are routinely compelled to hand over billions of foreign communications in addition to vast amounts of Americans’ communications that are “incidentally” caught up in this surveillance net.

  But the House Intelligence bill’s expansion to include “equipment” would cover, for example, any small or medium-sized business that simply provides Wi-Fi or stores data. This means that your business landlord, Airbnb host, hotel manager, or coffee shop barista will have a legal obligation to give the government any of your emails, texts, or phone metadata that ran through their equipment. Larger entities, such as data centers, would also be enlisted in spying on Americans.

  To call the expansion of government-mandated spying to baristas and landlords “reform” shows the contempt the intelligence community has for Congress and the very idea of oversight. It is nothing less than a Trojan horse buried in the House Intelligence bill.

  The good news, to quote the poet again, is that “every moment is a fresh beginning.” Now that these tricks have been spotted in the House Intelligence bill, House members will have a chance to toss out that bill and vote instead for the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act, which passed the House Judiciary Committee with overwhelming support. That bill likewise reauthorizes Section 702, but also imposes real reforms that will better protect Americans’ privacy from our nation’s overgrown and (sometimes) deceptive intelligence apparatus.

  Gene Schaerr, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney and former associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, serves as general counsel to the non-partisan Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 17:40

• Boston Boondoggle: Sanctuary City May Grant Voting Rights To Noncitizens For Local Elections
  Boston Boondoggle: Sanctuary City May Grant Voting Rights To Noncitizens For Local Elections

  In a controversy-sparking move, Boston, a self-proclaimed sanctuary city, is weighing a resolution to allow immigrants with “legal status” to vote in local elections. This proposal, which has reportedly gained the backing of the majority of Boston city councilors, was a central topic in a council meeting last week.

  

  The resolution, introduced by Councilor Kendra Lara, would allow immigrants who have “worked, sacrificed, and invested in their neighborhoods,” to provide these residents a voice in local governance, despite their lack of citizenship.

  The Boston debate echoes a similar policy shift in Takoma Park, Maryland, where city clerk Jessie Carpenter gave Boston lawmakers insights from her experience. Takoma Park, which has allowed noncitizens to vote for 30 years “regardless of their legal status.”

  In Takoma Park, “nearly one-third of the residents are foreign-born,” according to Fox News, which adds that a significant portion of registered noncitizen voters actively engage in the electoral process.

  Boston, with a population exceeding 650,000, presents a stark contrast to the much smaller town of 17,000, suggesting that the number of potential immigrant voters could be significantly higher. According to Carpenter, immigrant voters are only required to show proof of identity and city residency, without any inquiry into their legal status.

  Elections Commissioner Eneida Tavares said a similar policy change could prove logistically challenging for the much larger city of Boston, telling city councilors Tuesday that the Boston Election Department would need to evaluate whether it had the capabilities to maintain two separate databases “without causing any confusion.” 

  “Our preferred method would be to use the secretary of state’s database because it’s just one place where we can house everything,” Tavares said. “It’s easier to update voting, voter information, give voter history to voters and everything of that nature.”

  Tavares also told councilors that the city would likely not be able to keep an individual’s immigration status private if their public voting information were requested for a court proceeding. –Fox News

  Amidst these discussions, concerns were raised about the possibility of noncitizens mistakenly voting in state or federal elections, which could jeopardize their path to citizenship. City Councilor Liz Breadon underscored the potential risks, stressing the need to avoid any errors that might impact an immigrant’s journey towards citizenship.

  The broader context of this proposal is Massachusetts’ struggle with the recent influx of migrants from the southern border. Democratic Gov. Maura Healey has declared a state of emergency, with the National Guard activated to manage the crisis. FEMA also granted the city $1.9 million over the summer to help migrants with shelter and transportation.

  

  Meanwhile, House Democrats in the Massachusetts state legislature recently pushed a $2.8 billion spending bill, allocating substantial funds to shelter vulnerable families, including migrants. This bill comes as the state’s emergency shelters face increasing pressure from a surge in migrant and homeless families.

  Republicans in the state have voiced strong opposition, criticizing the lack of formal debate on the bill and challenging the actions of the Democratic majority as a “one-party monopoly.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 12/13/2023 – 17:20

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• These Amendments Would Open The Door To A Dangerous Global Health Bureaucracy
  These Amendments Would Open The Door To A Dangerous Global Health Bureaucracy

  Authored by David Thunder via The Brownstone Institute,

  The Covid pandemic gave the World Health Organisation and its partners unprecedented visibility and a tremendous amount of “soft” power to shape public health law and policies across the world. Over the past year or so, the WHO has been pushing hard to consolidate and expand its power to declare and manage public health emergencies on a global scale.

  

  The primary instruments for this consolidation are a WHO Pandemic Accord and a series of far-reaching amendments to existing International Health Regulations (IHR). The target date for finalising both the IHR Amendments and the new Pandemic Accord is May 2024.

  The net effect of the proposed text for the pandemic accord and the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, would be to create a legal and financial basis for the emergence of an elaborate, internationally coordinated bio-surveillance regime and significantly strengthen the authority of the World Health Organisation to direct and coordinate the international response to global and regional public health threats.

  It is not entirely clear why the WHO decided to negotiate a separate pandemic treaty that overlaps in significant ways with the proposed IHR amendments. In any case, most of the far-reaching changes to global health regulations are already contained within the IHR amendments, so that is what we will focus on here.

  Even if the WHO failed to get a new pandemic treaty passed, the proposed amendments to International Health Regulations would be sufficient by themselves to confer unprecedented power on the WHO to direct international health and vaccination policies in circumstances deemed by the WHO to be a “public health emergency of international concern.”

  The WHO wants the IHR amendments to be finalised on time for next year’s World Health Assembly, scheduled for 27 May – 1 June 2024. Assuming the amendments are approved by a simple majority of the delegates, they will be considered fully ratified 12 months after that, unless heads of State formally reject them within the designated opt-out period, which has been reduced from 18 to 10 months.

  If ratified, they will come into effect two years after their announcement at the May 2024 World Health Assembly (i.e., around June 2026), as stipulated in the annex to Amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) agreed to on 28th May 2022.

  In other words, revisions to the International Health Regulations will pass by default rather than by formal acceptance by heads of State. The silence of heads of State will be construed as consent. This makes it all the easier for the revised IHR to pass without proper legislative scrutiny and without a public debate in the States that are subject to the new legal framework.

  To get a flavour of how these changes in international law are likely to impact the policies of governments and citizens’ lives more broadly, it is sufficient to review a selection of the proposed amendments. While we do not know which of the amendments will survive the negotiation process, the direction of travel is alarming.

  Taken together, these amendments to International Health Regulations would push us in the direction of a global public health bureaucracy with limited democratic accountability, glaring conflicts of interest, and significant potential for systematic harm to the health and liberties of citizens.

  The amendments discussed below are drawn from a 46-page document hosted on the WHO webpage entitled “Article-by-Article Compilation of Proposed Amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) submitted in accordance with decision WHA75(9) (2022).” Because these changes are being negotiated largely outside the frame of national electoral politics, the average citizens is barely aware of them.

  Should these amendments come into force, States will be bound by international law, in the event of a public health emergency (as defined by WHO) to follow the playbook of health policies determined by the WHO and its “emergency committee” of “experts,” leaving far less scope for national parliaments and governments to set policies that diverge from WHO recommendations.

  Insofar as national States formally consent to the IHR amendments, their sovereignty would remain intact, from a legal perspective. But insofar as they are binding themselves to dance to the tune of political actors outside the scope of national politics, they would clearly lose their freedom to set their own policies in this domain, and health policy “gurus,” instead of representing their fellow citizens, would represent a global health regime transcending national politics and operating above national law.

  Under a globally coordinated public health regime, activated by an international public health emergency declared by the WHO, citizens would be vulnerable to errors committed by WHO-nominated “experts” sitting in Geneva or New York, errors which could replicate themselves through a global health system with little resistance from national governments.

  Citizens have a right to know that the amended regulations as they stand would give unprecedented power to a WHO-led global health regime and, by implication, its most influential financial and political stakeholders like the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, all of which are largely beyond the reach of national voters and legislators.

  There are dozens of proposed amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations. Here, I will highlight eight changes that are of special concern because of their implications for the independence of national health regimes and for the rights of citizens:

  States Bind Themselves to Follow WHO’s Advice as “The Guidance and Coordinating Authority” During an International Public Health Emergency

  One of the amendments to IHR (International Health Regulations) reads, “States Parties recognize WHO as the guidance and coordinating authority of international public health response during public health Emergency of International Concern and undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations in their international public health responses.” Like many other treaty “undertakings,” the means for other parties to IHR to enforce this “undertaking” are limited.

  Nevertheless, States party to the new regulations would be legally binding themselves to adhere to WHO recommendations and may lose credibility or suffer politically for failing to follow through on their international treaty commitments. This may seem “toothless” to some, but the reality is that this sort of “soft power” is what drives a good deal of compliance with international law.

  Removal of “Non-Binding” Language

  In the previous version of Article 1, WHO “recommendations” were defined as “non-binding advice.” In the new version, they are defined simply as “advice.” The only reasonable interpretation of this change is that the author wished to remove the impression that States were at liberty to disregard WHO recommendations. Insofar as signatories do “undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations in their international public health responses,” it would indeed appear that such “advice” becomes legally “binding” under the new regulations, making it legally difficult for States to dissent from WHO recommendations.

  Removal of Reference to “Dignity, Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”

  One of the most extraordinary and disturbing aspects of the proposed amendments to IHR is the removal of an important clause requiring that the implementation of the regulations be “with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons.”

  In its place, the new clause reads that the implementation of the regulations shall be “based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence and in accordance with their (the?) common but differentiated responsibilities of the States Parties, taking into consideration their social and economic development.” It is hard to know how any sane and responsible adult could justify removing “dignity, human rights, and fundamental freedoms” from International Health Regulations.

  Expansion of Scope of International Health Regulations

  In the revised version of Article 2, the scope of IHR includes not only public health risks, but “all risks with a potential to impact public health.” Under this amendment, International Health Regulations, and their main coordinating body, the WHO, would be concerned not only with public health risks, but with every conceivable societal risk that might “impact” public health. Workplace stress? Vaccine hesitancy? Disinformation? Misinformation? Availability of pharmaceutical products? Low GDP? The basis for WHO intervention and guidance could be expanded indefinitely.

  Consolidation of a Global Health Bureaucracy

  Each State should nominate a “National IHR Focal Point” for “the implementation of health measures under these regulations.” These “focal points” could avail of WHO “capacity building” and “technical assistance.” IHR Focal Points, presumably manned by unelected bureaucrats and “experts,” would be essentially nodes in a new WHO-led global health bureaucracy.

  Other important aspects of this new global health bureaucracy would be the WHO’s role in developing global “allocation plans for health products” (including vaccines), the WHO’s role as an information hub for expanded disease surveillance and research units across the world, and the WHO’s role as a a lead player in an international network of actors devoted to combatting “false and unreliable information” about public health events and anti-epidemic measures.

  Expansion of WHO Emergency Powers

  Under the revised regulations, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, “based on the opinion/advice of the Emergency Committee,” may designate an event as “having the potential to develop into a public health emergency of international concern, (and) communicate this and the recommended measures to State parties…” The introduction of the concept of a “potential” public health emergency, along with the idea of an “intermediate” emergency, also to be found among the proposed amendments, gives the WHO much wider leeway to set in motion emergency protocols and recommendations. For who knows what a “potential” or “intermediate” emergency amounts to?

  Entrenchment and Legitimation of an International Bio-Surveillance Regime

  The old Article 23, “Health Measures on arrival and departure,” authorises States to require that travellers produce certain medical credentials prior to travel, including “a non-invasive medical examination which is the least intrusive examination that could achieve the public health objective.” In the new version of Article 23, travellers may be required to produce “documents containing information…on a laboratory test for a pathogen and/or information on vaccination against a disease.”

  These documents may include WHO-validated digital health certificates. Essentially, this reaffirms and legally validates the vaccine passport regime that imposed prohibitive testing costs on unvaccinated citizens in 2021-23, and resulted in thousands and probably tens of thousands of people vaccinating just for the convenience of travelling, rather than based on health considerations.

  Global Initiatives for Combating “False and Unreliable Information”

  Both WHO and States bound by IHR, under the revised draft of IHR, “shall collaborate” in “countering the dissemination of false and unreliable information about public health events, preventive and anti-epidemic measures and activities in the media, social networks, and other ways of disseminating such information.” Clearly the misinformation/disinformation amendments entail a propaganda and censorship regime.

  There is no other plausible way to interpret “countering the dissemination of false and unreliable information,” and this is exactly how anti-disinformation measures have been interpreted since the Covid pandemic was announced in 2020 – measures, it may be added, that suppressed sound scientific contributions concerning vaccine risks, lab origins of the novel coronavirus, and efficacy of community masking.

  The joint effect of these and other proposed changes to International Health Regulations would be to enthrone the WHO and its director-general at the head of an elaborate global health bureaucracy beholden to the special interests of WHO patrons, a bureaucracy that would be operated largely with the cooperation of State officials and agencies implementing “advice” and “recommendations” issued by the WHO, which State parties have legally undertaken to follow.

  While it is true that international treaties cannot be coercively enforced, this does not mean that international law is inconsequential. Under the newly amended regulations, a highly centralised public health bureaucracy would be propped up by lavish funding mechanisms and protected by international law. A bureaucracy of this sort would inevitably become entrenched and intertwined with national bureaucracies, and would become an important element of the policymaking architecture of pandemic planning and responses.

  Though national States could, theoretically, bypass this bureaucracy and renege on their legal undertakings under IHR, taking a different path to that recommended by WHO, this would be rather strange, given that they themselves would have both approved and financed the regime they are boycotting.

  In the face of opposition from one or more signatory States, the WHO and its partners could pressure such a State into complying with its edicts by shaming it into upholding its legal commitments, or else other States may reprimand “renegade” states for putting international health in jeopardy, and apply political, financial and diplomatic pressure to secure compliance. Thus, while IHR would operate upon State officials in a softer way than national, police-backed regulations, it would certainly not be powerless or politically inconsequential.

  The impact of the new global health bureaucracy on the lives of ordinary citizens may be quite dramatic: it would erect a global censorship regime legitimated by international law, making challenges to officially sanctioned information harder than ever; and it would make international public health responses even more slavishly dependent on WHO directives than they were before, discouraging independent, dissenting responses such as that of Sweden during the Covid pandemic.

  Last but not least, the new global health bureaucracy would put the fate of ordinary citizens – our national and international mobility, our right to informed consent to medication, our bodily integrity, and ultimately, our health – in the hands of public health officials acting in lockstep with WHO “recommendations.”

  Apart from the fact that policy diversification and experimentation is essential to a robust healthcare system, and is crushed by a highly centralised response to health emergencies, the WHO is already riddled with internal conflicts of interest and a track record of catastrophically unsound judgments, making them singularly unqualified to reliably identify a global health emergency or coordinate the response to it.

  To start with, the WHO’s income stream depends on individuals like Bill Gates who have significant financial stakes in the pharmaceutical industry. How can we possibly expect the WHO to make impartial, disinterested recommendations about, say, the safety and efficacy of vaccines, when its own donors are financially invested in the success of specific pharmaceutical products, including vaccines?

  Secondly, to allow the WHO to declare an international public health emergency is to create an obvious perverse incentive: given that a large part of the raison d’être of a WHO-led global health bureaucracy is to prevent, monitor, and respond to public health emergencies, and the activation of the WHO’s emergency powers depends on the presence of an actual or potential “public health emergency of international concern,” the WHO’s Director-General has an obvious professional and institutional interest in declaring potential or actual public health emergencies.

  Third, the WHO wasted no time in praising China’s brutal and ultimately unsuccessful lockdowns, continues to support the censorship of their critics, repeatedly recommended community masking in the absence of plausible evidence of efficacy, failed to warn the public in a timely manner about the serious risks of mRNA vaccines, and has entered into a partnership with the European Union to extend the discriminatory and coercive Covid vaccine certificate system globally. These are certainly not people I would trust as custodians of my bodily integrity, health, informed consent, or mobility.

  Republished from the author’s Substack

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 23:25

• Lack Of New China Stimulus Will Favor Bonds, Drag Stocks
  Lack Of New China Stimulus Will Favor Bonds, Drag Stocks

  By George Lei, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

  Chinese leaders wrapped up a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday with no major surprises in public statements. Given that the the meeting was meant to set next year’s course for the world’s second-largest economy, the lack of emphasis on fixing real estate woes or stimulating domestic demand sent an ominous signal. Chinese stocks will likely extend their underperformance for the rest of 2023 and possibly into next year. Weak economic fundamentals, on the other hand, should keep supporting government bonds.

  While macro policy is likely to continue the accommodative stance observed in 2H 2023, “the probability of bolstered stimulus is low,” JPMorgan analysts led by Chief China Economist Haibin Zhu wrote in a research report on Tuesday after the Central Economic Work Conference. They noted there was little extra news on tackling property-market risks or the potential spillover to local government debt in the readout, only a summary of recent policy announcements.

  President Xi Jinping only attended the first half of the Dec. 11-12 meeting before heading to Hanoi for a visit on Tuesday, which might have explained the dearth of fresh initiatives. Most China observers, including Bloomberg Economics, now expect Beijing to stick with its “around 5%” GDP target set for 2023. There could, however, still be disappointments when the actual growth objective is unveiled in the first quarter.

  The frequency of the phrase “high-quality development” in Tuesday’s readout more than doubled from a year ago, which reflects China’s focus on “hard technologies critical to lifting productivity, climbing the value chain and grabbing global market share,” Neo Wang, Lead China Macro Analyst at Evercore ISI told Bloomberg. “We expect 4.5%, instead of 5%, to be the anchor point of Beijing’s 2024 real GDP growth target,” he added.

  

  The latest growth messages weren’t received enthusiastically by stock markets. The readout was released after equity trading closed on the mainland and in Hong Kong, and the FTSE China A50 Index futures initially jumped on the headlines before gains petered out. The Nasdaq Golden Dragon Index, which tracks US-traded Chinese companies, rose about 0.4% on Tuesday, lagging advances in the broader Nasdaq gauge.

  The onshore benchmark CSI 300 index closed Tuesday about 2.4% above its 2023 low reached on Monday, and could revisit the bottom in the coming days and weeks as this year’s downtrend in equities appears far from over. Historically, the gauge tended to worsen a week after the release of the readouts, data complied by Bloomberg showed.

  Status quo, however, favors Chinese government bonds. The 10-year yield on CGBs has fallen almost 20 basis points so far this year to around 2.65% and more declines are expected in 2024. The yield could drop toward a low of 2.3%-2.4% next year amid weak economic fundamentals and loose liquidity conditions, analysts at Guosheng Securities wrote in a report on Monday.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 23:05

• How Venezuelan Invasion Of Guyana Could Impact Tanker Shipping
  How Venezuelan Invasion Of Guyana Could Impact Tanker Shipping

  By Greg Miller of FreightWaves,

  Shipping already faces fallout from two wars: trade shifts due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and vessel attacks off Yemen in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

  

  Could there be a third simultaneous war — and even more trade complications for shipping?

  Venezuela is threatening to invade Guyana and annex Guyana’s oil-rich Essequibo region, claiming the jungle territory and its offshore areas were stolen from Venezuela in 1899. Essequibo comprises around two-thirds of Guyana.

  Guyana has been a bright spot for crude tankers. Since offshore production began in 2019, crude exports have risen to 400,000 barrels per day (b/d), with projections for volumes to double by the end of 2025 and top 1 million b/d by 2027.

  “In the unlikely event that Venezuela decides to go further than rhetoric and actually moves into Guyana, the oil production and exports from both countries will likely suffer,” said Erik Broekhuizen, manager of marine research and consulting at Poten & Partners, in a report on Saturday.

  “Sanctions [on Venezuela] will be reimposed — and probably tightened — and international oil companies will move their assets out of Guyana, crippling the country’s production.”

  Invasion would reduce Atlantic Basin exports

  The positive spin for tankers on production cuts by OPEC is that these cuts reduce Middle East-to-Asia volume, which is replaced by Atlantic Basin-to-Asia volume. This increases tanker demand measured in ton-miles (volume multiplied by distance).

  “I’m tempted to say it’s flat out positive,” said Lars Barstad, CEO of tanker owner Frontline (NYSE: FRO), on his company’s Nov.  30 conference call, referring to the latest round of OPEC cuts and the positive ton-mile effect.

  “We’re seeing refinery capacity built up and continuing to be built up east of Suez. New oil production is coming from west of Suez. We’ve seen Brazil increasing production and new production coming out of Guyana. We’ve seen Venezuelan exports increasing,” he said, adding that OPEC cuts are also “great news for U.S. fracking and great news for U.S. production.”

  In the Americas region, U.S. exports are averaging 4 million b/d this year, according to Kpler. The International Energy Agency put Brazilian exports at 1.8 million b/d. Colombia is at 400,000 b/d, according to Colombian oil company Ecopetrol. Venezuela is exporting 300,000-400,000 b/d, according to Frontline.

  To the extent Atlantic Basin exports are being touted as a tanker-demand positive in light of OPEC cuts, a Venezuela-Guyana conflict would be a negative, potentially impacting around 11% of regional exports.

  As Venezuela flounders, Guyana rises

  “The oil industries of Venezuela and Guyana are a study in contrasts,” said Broekhuizen. “Venezuela boasts one of the largest oil reserves in the world, but its industry … is in bad shape after decades of mismanagement and corruption and — in recent years — ever-tightening sanctions.” Current Venezuelan production is less than a third of 2009 levels.

  “In contrast to developments in Venezuela, Guyana’s oil industry has been a success story,” said Broekhuizen, adding that “the future for Guyana appears bright.”

  Current output is via two floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels, the Liza Destiny and Liza Unity, with a third FPSO, the Prosperity, now ramping up.

  Production is being handled by a consortium led by Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM), with a 45% stake, together with partners Hess (NYSE: HES), with 30%, and China’s CNOOC, with 25%. Hess is in the process of being acquired by Chevron (NYSE: CVX). Guyana awarded exploration rights to eight additional offshore blocs in October.

  Data from Vortexa cited by Poten & Partners shows that almost all of Guyana’s current exports are staying within the Atlantic Basin, with very little headed long-haul to Asia, at least so far.

  Top buyers are Panama, the Netherlands and the U.S.

  

  The destination of Venezuelan exports has changed significantly as a result of the temporary relaxation of U.S. sanctions.

  Previously, most Venezuelan crude was shipped to China using tankers in the so-called “shadow fleet” — vessels outside the Western financial and insurance systems.

  In more recent months, with U.S. sanctions temporarily suspended, the U.S. has replaced China as the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude.

  

  Double negative for tanker demand

  Frontline’s Barstad predicted that Venezuelan exports would increase to 600,000-700,000 b/d if sanctions are not reinstated. “One would assume that most of this Venezuelan oil will move short-haul on Aframaxes and potentially Suezmaxes to the U.S.” (Aframaxes carry 750,000 barrels, Aframaxes 1 million barrels).

  But there is also an effect on demand for very large crude carriers (VLCCs, tankers with capacity of 2 million barrels).

  “What we’ve seen recently is VLCC cargoes being built up, and some of them are pointing toward India,” said Barstad. He reported four to six VLCC loadings scheduled in Venezuela in late November through December. 

  “These are vessels that are then not available for U.S. exports, so we believe this will actually tighten up the Atlantic market.”

  An invasion of Guyana by Venezuela would be a double negative for mainstream tanker demand. It would derail burgeoning exports from Guyana and inevitably lead to renewed U.S. sanctions, pushing Venezuelan cargoes back to the shadow fleet.

  The caveat is that Venezuelan and Guyanese exports are much less important to crude tanker demand than U.S. and Brazilian exports, so downside would be limited. The potential shipping impact of a third simultaneous war would be much less significant than the consequences of the first two.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 22:45

• Better Parents Equals Healthier Teens
  Better Parents Equals Healthier Teens

  Authored by Timothy S. Goeglein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Earlier this year, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued a statement on the alarming state of adolescent mental health—a crisis that was occurring even before the COVID-19 pandemic and has only gotten worse since.

  

  Citing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the APA wrote, “In the 10 years leading up to the pandemic, feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness—as well as suicidal thoughts and behaviors—increased by about 40% among young people.”

  There are many factors that have played a part in this increasing depression among America’s youth, but one of the primary ones that is agreed upon across the board is family disruption—particularly through divorce—and the lack of connection with parents. Unfortunately, academic studies often just demand more funding for adolescent mental health services, while never addressing the root cause of the problem: family breakdown and the need for children to have proper boundaries governing their lives.

  Last month, the Institute for Family Studies issued an interesting report that provides further proof of the important role parents play in their child’s mental health. Jonathan Rothwell, who works for Gallup and is the author of the report, writes: “The most important factor in the mental health of adolescent children is the quality of the relationship with their caregivers. This, in turn, is strongly related to parenting practices—with the best results coming from warm, responsive, and rule-bound, disciplined parenting.”

  He concludes, “Even though there are biological and genetic risk-factors for every disease, even mental health conditions, years of research have established that parenting—and the parent-child relationship—is of paramount importance to the well-being and psychological functioning of adolescents.”

  And who are the parents who provide such a healthy environment for their teenage children? Not rich parents with the financial resources to give a teenager everything they want, but instead conservative parents who display affection and care for their children, while administering proper discipline to keep them on track when needed.

  This shouldn’t be a surprise. Even former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, hardly a conservative by any means, recognizes the importance of providing children with proper boundaries, stating: “Our kids need a structure in their lives. And I say this as a father, and I’ve seen it with young men and women that come to my office, and we talk. They need a structure.”

  It’s often conservative parents who provide that structure, along with the institutions to which they belong, which are often churches and other strong civic associations in their communities. This structure provides a safe cocoon for many teenagers away from the pernicious influences of social media (which 51 percent of teenagers report takes up nearly five hours of their day, according to a Gallup survey), negative peer pressure, and a culture that tells them “if it feels good, just do it” or “you do you,” regardless of the consequences.

  The Gallup Familial and Adolescent Survey, 2023, which Mr. Rothwell cites, bears this out. According to the parents surveyed, more than 60 percent or more of very conservative and nearly 60 percent of conservative parents have a higher quality relationship with their adolescent children. Conversely, only 50 percent of liberal parents and approximately 55 percent of very liberal parents do.

  But there’s also another factor at play: Adolescents whose parents have strong, healthy marriages—which provides them with stability and trust—are more likely to be emotionally healthy as well. Nearly 65 percent of married couples who have a strong relationship with their spouse report they have good relationships with their teenagers, compared to a little over 40 percent who don’t have a high-quality relationship with their marital partner.

  So, what’s the takeaway? Despite what the culture says, teenagers want a strong, loving relationship with their parents, and a relationship that provides the guardrails they need to successfully navigate the minefields of adolescence. Secondly, “the kids aren’t alright” when their parents aren’t either. No amount of money or any government program can heal a troubled heart.

  If values are “caught” and not “taught,” as it has been said, so is happiness and security. And it’s conservative homes, with their strong emphasis on the importance of faith and familial ties, that allow adolescents to prosper. That is an important reminder to us all if we want to solve the teenage mental health crisis that our nation presently faces.

  Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 22:05

• At Grocery Stores, Customer Marketing Data Is Becoming The Product
  At Grocery Stores, Customer Marketing Data Is Becoming The Product

  For years we have been writing about how hedge funds have been buying any type of data they can get their hands on to try and anticipate moves in the American consumer and, by proxy, the market. 

  And now the latest spot they could be buying their data from could wind up being your grocery store. Everybody knows that we are now accustomed to putting our phone numbers or email addresses into a computer almost literally every time we buy something – but few people know why they really do it and even fewer feel they have control over what retail establishments do with such data. 

  Consumers feel powerless about the data-grab. A new study from the University of Pennsylvania showed that “79% of Americans feel they have little control over what marketers can find out about them”, according to CNBC.

  The same survey found that over half of adults in the United States, approximately 56%, are unclear about the meaning of “privacy policy.” A common misconception among these individuals is that such policies assure that a company will not distribute their personal data to third parties unless consent is explicitly given.

  Lead researcher Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Media Systems & Industries at the Annenberg School for Communication said: “People don’t feel that they have the ability to protect their data online — even if they want to.” 

  

  Among other things, the Penn survey revealed:

  • Only around 1 in 3 Americans knows it is legal for an online store to charge people different prices depending on where they are located. 
  • More than 8 in 10 Americans believe, incorrectly, that the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) stops apps from selling data collected about app users’ health to marketers.
  • Fewer than one in three Americans know that price-comparison travel sites such as Expedia or Orbitz are not obligated to display the lowest airline prices.
  • Fewer than half of Americans know that Facebook’s user privacy settings allow users to limit some of the information about them shared with advertisers.

  R.J. Cross, director of Public Interest Research Group’s Don’t Sell My Data campaign, told CNBC: “Retailers today are doing just about everything they can to get as much information about you as possible, because that’s a whole new revenue stream for them.”

  “Almost every single company that you’re shopping at today is in the business of selling your data, and you and your data are their latest product,” Cross continued. 

  And the market for data on what you buy is growing exponentially. 

  As of 2021, the data brokerage industry was estimated to be worth around $319 billion, with projections suggesting it could exceed $545 billion by 2028, CNBC wrote.

  Traditionally, retailers relied on purchasing information from data brokers to understand consumer behavior. However, in a shift towards greater efficiency, these retailers are now bypassing intermediaries and are gathering consumer data firsthand through various methods, including loyalty schemes, location tracking, mobile app usage, and digital receipt analysis.

  Refive founder and CEO Mitul Jain concluded: “My face is part of the data that’s being captured, my behavior, and all of that gives off many more pieces of information about me, my age, my gender, my ethnicity. And all of these pieces of information can then again be combined together with all these other little tidbits that I’ve been leaving behind from my shopping journey.“

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 21:45

• Are Hordes Of Military-Age Chinese Men Being Brought Into The US In An Attempt To Destabilize Our Society?
  Are Hordes Of Military-Age Chinese Men Being Brought Into The US In An Attempt To Destabilize Our Society?

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

  Over the past couple of years, vast numbers of illegal immigrants from China have been pouring over our southern border.  Most of them are military-age men.  So why has there been such a dramatic spike?  Is some sort of a coordinated effort going on that we don’t know about?  In this article, I am going to try to make some connections.  Taken on their own, some of the stories that I am about to share with you may not seem that significant.  But when you step back and take a look at the bigger picture, it becomes clear that something very unusual is happening.  Could it be possible that hordes of military-age Chinese men are being brought into this country in an attempt to destabilize our nation?

  

  Let’s start by taking a look at an incident that just happened in Michigan.  A “Chinese national” was arrested after he “spray-painted swastikas on Hanukkah decorations”…

  On Thursday, 27-year-old Jaifeng Chen was arrested in Arizona after he allegedly spray-painted swastikas on Hanukkah decorations and the wall outside of the Chabad of Kalamazoo in Michigan.

  The Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety said that the FBI worked in coordination with other law enforcement agencies in Arizona to locate and ultimately arrest the Chinese national. He was also booked on an unrelated charge on Nov. 27, according to WTVB. Chen is now in federal custody.

  Needless to say, this is the sort of thing that can greatly inflame racial tensions in our current political environment.

  So why was a Chinese national doing this?

  Was he directed to do so by whoever he is working for?

  In California, a “Chinese national” was just arrested for being involved in a large scale gift card scam…

  Buyers of gift cards from retail locations are being warned to pay attention to their purchases.

  Sacramento County Sheriff’s “Operation Bad Elf” has led to over 250 arrests for felonies and misdemeanors involved with big retail locations.

  One of those arrested was a Chinese National Ningning Sun who had in his possession thousands of Target and Apple gift cards. Some of those he had stolen from a Sacramento Target store.

  The investigators involved in Operation Bad Elf saw Sun take the gift cards off the shelf and put them in his coat. Then he put a replacement set of cards back on the racks.

  Was this “Chinese national” acting alone, or was he a part of a larger network?

  If he was part of a larger network, who was directing it?

  Speaking of large networks, it is being reported that hundreds of “illegal Chinese-owned marijuana growing operations” have been popping up all over the state of Maine in recent years…

  Hundreds of illegal Chinese-owned marijuana growing operations have been popping up across Maine over the past three years.

  On Tuesday, Nov. 28, local law enforcement shut down an illegal marijuana grow that was being operated in a building located behind a licensed marijuana cultivation facility in Franklin County.

  Officers from the Wilton Police Department were assisting investigators from the Maine Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP) during a routine follow-up inspection of a licensed facility in Wilton when they raided the illegal operation, authorities said in a press release posted on social media.

  Is there some common denominator that connects all of these growing operations?

  And where did the funding for all of these “Chinese-owned” growing operations come from?

  I would really love to get answers to those two questions.

  Let me give you another example.  Do you remember that secret bio-lab in the Sacramento area that was shut down by authorities earlier this year?  At that time we were told that it had been run by a Chinese company, and now a Chinese national that has several different identities has been arrested.  The following comes from the official website of the U.S. Justice Department…

  Jia Bei Zhu, aka Jesse Zhu, aka Qiang He, aka David He, 62, a citizen of China who formerly resided in Clovis, was arrested today on a criminal complaint for manufacturing and distributing misbranded medical devices in violation of the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) and for making false statements to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced.

  “As part of his scheme, the defendant changed his name, the names of his companies, and their locations,” U.S. Attorney Talbert said. “The disarray at the Reedley lab led to the glare of publicity he was trying to avoid, and the ensuing investigation unraveled his efforts to circumvent the requirements that are designed to ensure that medical devices are safe and effective.”

  If you don’t remember this particular case, a secret bio-lab in the Sacramento area had been conducting unauthorized experiments involving COVID, HIV, hepatitis, herpes and a whole bunch of other infectious diseases…

  “Certain rooms of the warehouse were found to contain several vessels of liquid and various apparatus,” court documents said. “Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.”

  Hundreds of mice at the warehouse were kept in inhumane conditions, court documents said. The city took possession of the animals in April, euthanizing 773 of them; more than 175 were found dead.

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the substances and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes, according to a Health and Human Services letter dated June 6.

  Was this just a single rogue bio-lab?

  Or is there a network of them around the nation?

  And who is ultimately behind these efforts?

  There are so many unanswered questions.

  But what we do know is that large groups of Chinese nationals are regularly intercepted as they attempt to cross into the United States.  One recent video of this phenomenon received quite a bit of attention on social media…

  And it also appears that these migration efforts are highly coordinated.

  In fact, a Muckraker reporter recently discovered a hotel in Colombia that functions as a central hub for Chinese migration activity…

  An unbelievable report out of Colombia reveals Chinese military-age men using a hotel as a dedicated migration hub ahead of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border en masse.

  A Muckraker reporter explained that the Cabańas Rio Mayo Hotel in Pasto is brimming with Chinese foreign nationals preparing to journey through the Darién Gap to America as part of a sophisticated “migration network.”

  The reporter dispelled the notion that this is simply a coincidental gathering of Chinese nationals by pointing out the signs posted around the hotel come with a Chinese translation, indicating this is a common meeting hub for the Chinese migrants.

  Additionally, the reporter described that WhatsApp directives by smugglers to the Chinese nationals specifically mention Pasto as a safe staging area ahead of their trek to America’s southern border.

  Muckraker also interviewed one of the Chinese migrants who revealed that the Chinese Communist Party has embedded “plainclothes” secret police throughout the U.S. to facilitate and monitor the Chinese nationals entering the country.

  This is super suspicious.

  At a time when rumors of a coming war with China are reaching a crescendo, efforts are being made to bring military-age Chinese men into this country on an industrial scale.

  Secret Chinese Hotel Exposed – MILITARY AGED US-BOUND CHINESE STAGING AT COLOMBIAN HOTEL, CHINESE POLICE IN AMERICA

  In Pasto, Colombia, Muckraker found a hotel packed to the brim with military-aged Chinese nationals who were headed to the United States.

  During our stay at the… pic.twitter.com/1cWS1otfkZ

  — Muckraker.com (@realmuckraker) December 5, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Ultimately, it is difficult to prove that all of the things that I have discussed in this article are connected.

  Yes, military-age Chinese men are coming into this country in far larger numbers than ever before.

  And yes, military-age Chinese men are being caught committing illegal acts all over the nation.

  Is all of this evidence of some sort of a giant plot to destabilize the United States?

  After reviewing the evidence, many will come to that conclusion, but I can’t prove it 100 percent.

  But without a doubt, conflict with China is coming.

  And when war with China finally erupts, the Chinese will already have thousands upon thousands of military-age men pre-positioned inside the United States ready to cause chaos.

  *  *  *

  Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 21:25

• "There Is No More Money": Milei Announces 54% Devaluation Of Argentina Peso As "Shock Therapy" Plan Begins
  “There Is No More Money”: Milei Announces 54% Devaluation Of Argentina Peso As “Shock Therapy” Plan Begins

  How does a modern country climb out of an insurmountable debt hole, especially if it is already in debt to the IMF and a technical default is not an option (especially since said country has already defaulted nine times).Well, in the case of Argentina which check all of the above boxes, and it has already tried hyperinflation multiple times (like right now for example), the only other option is currency devaluation. Which is precisely what the country’s new president, Javier Milei, announced as the first step of his shock therapy to rescue the insolvent south American nation.

  As Bloomberg reports, the new administration weakened the official exchange rate to 800 pesos per dollar, a 54% devaluation, Economy Minister Luis Caputo said in a televised address after the close of local markets on Tuesday. That compares with a 366.5-per-dollar level before the address.

  

   “There is no more money,” Caputo said repeatedly in the recorded video, adding that Argentina needs to solve its “addiction” to fiscal deficits. If only domestic, US addicts to fiscal deficits were watching.

  Other measures announced including halving the number of ministries, cutting transfers to provinces and suspending public works. The government will also reduce subsidies on transport and energy sectors, among others. At the same time, Argentina will boost certain social welfare programs, which in a few years time will surely grow to become the biggest fiscal addiction in the country under whoever is president then.

  The dramatic first steps follow a somber inauguration speech on Sunday, when Milei warned that Argentines will have to endure months of pain while he works to pull the country from the economic crisis inherited from his predecessor.  The devaluation is a necessary step since hyperinflation alone won’t fix the country’s debt problem: inflation is already running at more than 140% annually, and prices are expected to jump between 20% and 40% in the months to come, the president said.

  The government had closed Argentina’s export registry Monday, a technical step that often foreshadows a currency devaluation or major policy change. The central bank also announced Monday the official currency market would operate with limited transactions — a restriction it said it will lift on Wednesday.

  To be sure, nobody was surprised by the announcement, as a devaluation was long seen as inevitable. In the run-up to Milei’s inauguration, markets were signaling a currency drop of about 27% in the first week of the new government, while investment banks like JPMorgan and local private advisory firms suggested it could weaken about 44% . Grocers had already increased prices and banks were offering sharply weaker retail exchange rates hours before the Tuesday announcement. The question now is how many more times the currency will be devalued, and if Venezuela is any indication of what to expect, the answer is “lots.”

  Argentina’s previously administrations had for years slowed the peso’s decline in the official market through  currency controls and import restrictions in an attempt to protect dwindling reserves. That hodgepodge of capital controls has spurred at least a dozen exchange rates, hampering business and restricting investment in South America’s second-largest economy. On the campaign trail, Milei pledged to scrap the currency altogether, replacing it with the US dollar, however it now appears that that will be one of the many campaign promises he renegs on.

  On Dec. 7, the prior administration had let the peso slip by about 5%, while simultaneously limiting the amount of greenbacks banks could hold in order to prevent them from hoarding dollars. The government had been burning reserves to keep the currency largely steady at 350 per dollar since the August primary vote, when Milei’s surprise showing sent markets into a tailspin. In parallel markets, that rate is about 1,000.

  Since being spooked by his emergence in the August primary, investors have changed tack on the firebrand libertarian, cheering on his first steps as president-elect — namely, his decision to pick Wall Street veterans for some of the main cabinet positions while distancing himself from more radical proposals including dollarizing the economy and shuttering the central bank. In many ways, so far Milei is signaling that life under the libertarian will be “more of the same” only this time it will be even more painful (but at least the people have been warned). In any case, as he begins his four-year term, the rally will be put to the test.

  And speaking of regime continuity, economy minister Caputo previously served as finance chief in the administration of Mauricio Macri, when he negotiated a $16.5 billion deal with holdout bondholders, allowing Argentina to return to international capital markets (if only for a very brief period of time). During the currency run in 2018, Macri tapped him to take over at the central bank, but he only served for a few months before unexpectedly stepping down amid tensions with the International Monetary Fund.

  Finally, for those who are wondering who is really calling the shots in Argentina, Caputo has tapped longtime colleague Santiago Bausili, a Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan veteran, to run Argentina’s central bank.

  Like we said, more of the same.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 21:05

• Last Rights: The Death Of American Liberty
  Last Rights: The Death Of American Liberty

  Authored by James Bovard,

  This is the first chapter of James Bovard’s new book: “Last Rights: The Deeath of American Liberty”

  

  CHAPTER ONE: TYRANNY COMES TO MAIN STREET

  Americans today have the “freedom” to be fleeced, groped, wiretapped, injected, censored, injected, ticketed, disarmed, beaten, vilified, detained, and maybe shot by government agents. Politicians are hell-bent on protecting citizens against everything except Uncle Sam. Is America becoming a Cage Keeper Democracy where voters merely ratify the latest demolition of their rights and liberties?

  “We live in a world in which everything has been criminalized,” warned Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. There are now more than 5,200 separate federal criminal offenses, a 36% increase since the 1990s, along with tens of thousands of state and local crimes. More laws mean more violators who can be harshly punished on command, resulting in the arrests of more than 10 million Americans each year. Thanks to the Supreme Court, police can lock up anyone accused of “even a very minor criminal offense” such as an unbuckled seatbelt.

  The Founding Fathers saw property rights as “the guardian of every other right.” But today’s politicians never lack a pretext for plundering private citizens. Despite being charged with no crime, half a million Americans have been robbed by government agents on the nation’s sidewalks, highways, and airports in recent decades. Federal law enforcement agencies arbitrarily confiscate more property from Americans each year than all the burglars steal nationwide. The IRS pilfered more cash from private bank accounts because of alleged paperwork errors than the total looted by bank robbers nationwide. Federal bureaucrats blocked landowners from farming or building on a hundred million acres of their own property because of puddles, ditches, or other suspected wet spots.

  Police have killed more than 25,000 citizens since the turn of the century, but the federal government does not even bother compiling a body count. SWAT teams use battering rams and flash-bang grenades to attack 50,000 homes a year, routinely terrorizing people suspected of dastardly crimes like spraying graffiti or running poker games. Cops in many cities have been caught planting guns on hapless targets, while corrupt police labs fabricated tens of thousands of bogus drug convictions. Police unions have more sway over government policy than anyone on the wrong end of a baton or Taser. Despite perpetual promises of reform, most police who brutalize private citizens still automatically receive legal immunity. Federal Judge Don Willett derided the “Constitution-free zone” courts created where “individuals whose constitutional rights are violated at the hands of federal officers are essentially remedy-less.”

  Gun owners are America’s fastest-growing criminal class. One state after another is enacting “Show us the gun and we’ll find the crime” laws. Judges and politicians are justifying mass disarmament in the name of “freedom from fear” — as if no one will be safe until government controls every trigger. Federal agencies consider all 20+ million marijuana users who own firearms to be felons (unless their last name is Biden). Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden both retroactively outlawed widely-owned firearm accessories, creating new legions of potential jailbirds. At the same time many federal agencies are stockpiling automatic weapons, Biden calls for banning semiautomatic pistols and rifles owned by 50 million Americans.

  Politicians and bureaucrats exploited the COVID‑19 pandemic to forbid any activities they chose, from going to church to buying garden seeds. Governors in most states effectively banned hundreds of millions of citizens from leaving their homes. Shutting down entire states was the equivalent of sacrificing virgins to appease angry viral gods. In Los Angeles, citizens were prohibited from going outside for a walk or bike ride. Tens of thousands of small businesses were bankrupted by shutdown orders, while federal “relief” spurred a $600 billion worldwide fraud stampede. Most Americans suffered COVID infections despite government decrees that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito labeled “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty.” Government officials endlessly invoked “science and data” to sanctify their power. But many pandemic policies were simply Political Science 101, using deceit and demagoguery to domineer humanity.

  Government decrees are blighting more lives than ever before. Vague laws convert bureaucrats into czars who dictate as they please. More than a thousand occupations have been closed to anyone who fails to kowtow to absurd state licensing requirements, from fortune tellers in Massachusetts to anyone rubbing feet in Arizona. Tens of thousands of drivers have been injured and hundreds killed thanks to red light traffic ticket cameras notorious for multiplying collisions. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission made it a federal crime to refuse to hire ex-convicts. The Americans with Disabilities Act has spurred half a million “discrimination” lawsuits, including by narcoleptics who fell asleep on the job and by a deaf guy outraged about missing captions on porn videos.

  Schoolchildren are being sacrificed on an altar of social justice. From No Child Left Behind to Common Core, federal dictates have subverted academic standards and squandered billions of hours of kids’ lives. Teacher unions have worked to destroy local control of education, prevent teacher accountability, deny parents any voice in their children’s education, and pointlessly shut down schools during the pandemic. In lieu of literacy, government schools are redefining gender and indoctrinating kids with values that many parents detest. When mothers and fathers raised hell at school board meetings, the Biden administration and the FBI labeled them as terrorist suspects.

  Politicians are increasingly dividing Americans into two classes — those who work for a living and those who vote for a living. Subsidy programs have multiplied even faster than congressional ethics scandals. Federal aid propelled college tuition increases that turned ex-students into a new debtor class endlessly clamoring for relief. Farm subsidies wreak chaos in markets while providing a gravy train for affluent landowners. Federal mortgage policies have been “wrecking ball benevolence,” whipsawing the housing market and spawning the 2007–08 collapse that reduced the net worth of black and Hispanic households by 50%. The number of handout recipients has more than doubled since 1983, and the feds are now feeding more than 100 million Americans. Government grants are eventually followed by government restrictions, and dependence often turns into submission. The ultimate victim of handouts could be democracy itself: politicians cannot undermine self-reliance without subverting self-government.

  While politicians boast of bestowing freebies, taxes have become a financial Grim Reaper. The Internal Revenue Service is Washington’s ultimate sacred cow because it delivers trillions of dollars to allow politicians to work miracles (or at least get re-elected). Americans are forced to pay more in taxes than their total spending on food, clothing, and housing. Tax codes have become inscrutable at the same time the IRS pummels people with ten times more penalties than in earlier decades. The Biden administration is racing to hire 87,000 new IRS agents and employees to squeeze far more money out of both rich and poor taxpayers. Inflation has become the cruelest tax as the dollar’s purchasing power fell 17% since Biden took office, fleecing any citizen with a savings account.

  The federal government is generating so many absurdities nowadays that even cynics cannot keep up. The Transportation Security Administration epitomizes Washington’s boneheaded command-and-control approach to modern perils. TSA’s Whole Body Scanners doused tens of millions of travelers with radiation while taking nude pictures of them. TSA’s groin-grabbing “enhanced pat-downs” spark thousands of sexual assault complaints from women every year. TSA terrorist profiles have warned of travelers who are either staring intently or avoiding eye contact, or who fidget, yawn, or sweat heavily; anyone who is whistling and/or staring at their feet; Boston blacks wearing backward baseball caps; and anyone who “expresses contempt” for TSA Security Theater antics.

  Federal surveillance leaves no refuge for dissent. Government agencies are secretly accumulating mountains of data that could be used for “blackmail, stalking, harassment and public shaming” of American citizens, according to a 2023 federal report. The National Security Agency has stalked Americans via their cellphones, covertly installed spyware onto personal computers, and treated anyone “searching the Web for suspicious stuff” like a terrorist suspect. The Patriot Act spurred the illegal seizure of personal and financial information from tens of millions of Americans. Customs agents can seize and copy the cellphones, laptop drives, and private papers of any American crossing the U.S. border. The Drug Enforcement Administration is building a secret nationwide network of license plate scanners to track every driver. Federally funded “fusion centers” are stockpiling Suspicious Activity Reports on tourists who photograph landmarks, “people who avoid eye contact,” and anyone “reverent of individual liberty.” The FBI’s “terrorist warning signs” include hotel guests using “Do Not Disturb” signs and the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.

  At the same time spying on citizens skyrocketed, Washington dropped an Iron Curtain around itself. The government is committing more crimes than citizens will ever know. Whistleblowers and journalists are hounded as if exposing official lies is a heresy against democracy. Every year, the federal government slaps a “secret” label on trillions of pages of information — enough to fill 20 million filing cabinets. Any document which is classified is treated like a holy relic that cannot be exposed without damning the nation. Self-government has been defined down to paying, obeying, and wearing a federal blindfold. There are plenty of laws to protect government secrets but no law to protect democracy from federal secrecy.

  The First Amendment is becoming a historic relic. Federal Judge Terry Doughty recently condemned the Biden administration for potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” That verdict was ratified in September 2023 by a federal appeals court ruling slamming the White House and federal agencies for actions that resulted in “suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.” Federal agencies pirouetted as a “Ministry of Truth,” according to the court rulings. Censorship converts citizens into captives. Federal censorship tainted the 2020 and 2022 elections, suppressing tens of millions of tweets, YouTube videos, and Facebook posts from conservatives and Republicans. White House officials even ordered Facebook to delete humorous memes, including a parody of a future television ad: “Did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled…”

  Rather than the Rule of Law, we have a government of threats, intimidation, and browbeating. “Government of the people” defaulted into “government for the people,” which degenerated into perennially punishing people for their own good. Twenty-five years ago, Supreme Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned against permitting federal agencies “the extraordinary authority… to manufacture crimes.” Entrapment schemes proliferate as G-men fabricate crimes to justify budget increases. The FBI, pretending that rosary beads could be extremist symbols, is targeting traditional Catholics across the nation because of their conservative moral values. The FBI entitles its legions of confidential informants to commit more than 5,000 crimes a year, dragging many unlucky bystanders to their legal doom. The number of inmates in federal prison increased 500% since 1980, and America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Politicians are more anxious to control citizens than to protect them. More people are busted each year for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined, while the futile War on Drugs causes more fatalities than ever before.

  Every recent administration has expanded and exploited the dictatorial potential of the presidency. Former President Richard Nixon shocked Americans in 1977 when he asserted during a television interview: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” But Nixon’s slogan is the Oval Office maxim for the new millennium. Presidents now only need to find a single federal lawyer who says, “Yes, Master!” President George W. Bush’s lawyers secretly decided that neither federal law nor the Constitution could limit the power of the president, who could declare martial law or authorize torture at his whim. President Barack Obama claimed a prerogative to assassinate Americans he labeled terrorist suspects. President Donald Trump boasted of “an absolute right to do what I want to with the Justice Department.” In 2022, President Biden proclaimed that “liberty is under assault.” But he was referring solely to a few court rulings he disapproved, not to the federal supremacy he championed for almost 50 years in the Senate and the White House.

  The authoritarian trendline in American political life is more important than the name or party of any officeholder. “One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it,” as Thomas Jefferson warned during the American Revolution. Unfortunately, there are a hundred precedents in favor of government now for each precedent in favor of liberty. There is a “No harm, no foul” attitude towards violating the Constitution, and Washington almost always hides the harm. The sheer power of federal agencies such as the FBI is becoming one of the gravest perils to American democracy.

  Elections are becoming demolition derbies that threaten to wreck the nation. Historian Henry Adams observed a century ago that politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” Nowadays, politics seems hell-bent on multiplying hatred. Enraged activists are increasingly tarring all their opponents as traitors. Many of the protestors who spent years vehemently denouncing Trump were not opposed to dictators per se; they simply wanted different dictates. More than half of Americans expect a civil war “in the next few years,” according to a recent survey.

  Americans are indoctrinated in public schools to presume that our national DNA guarantees that we will always be free. But few follies are more perilous than presuming that individual rights are safe in perpetuity. None of the arguments on why liberty is inevitable can explain why it is becoming an endangered species. Yet many people believe that liberty will inevitably triumph because of some “law of history” never enacted by God, a convocation of cardinals, or even the Arkansas state legislature. Presuming that freedom is our destiny lulls people against political predators.

  Federal Judge Learned Hand warned in 1944: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.” But Americans are more likely to encounter liberty in history books instead of their own lives. Many young people are unaware of bygone eras when Americans could travel without being groped, buy a beer or smoke a cigar without committing a federal offense, or protest without being quarantined in an Orwellian “free-speech zone.” Is the spirit of liberty dead? Almost a third of young American adults support installing mandatory government surveillance cameras in private homes to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.”

  We have an Impunity Democracy in which government officials pay no price for their crimes. Americans today are more likely to believe in witches, ghosts, and astrology than to trust the federal government. Washington’s legitimacy is in tatters thanks to a long train of bipartisan perfidy. If government is lawless, elections merely designate the most dangerous criminals in the land.

  At a time when foreign democracies are collapsing like dominos, can America avoid becoming the “elective despotism” the Founding Fathers dreaded? The first step to reviving liberty is to recognize how far politicians have stretched their power. But nothing can safeguard freedom except the bravery of citizens who refuse to be shackled.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 20:45

• Chinese Spies Offer Pilot $15 Million To Steal US-Made Chinook Helicopter And Land On PLA Carrier
  Chinese Spies Offer Pilot $15 Million To Steal US-Made Chinook Helicopter And Land On PLA Carrier

  Chinese intelligence officials offered a Taiwanese army pilot millions of dollars to steal a US-made transport helicopter and land on a Chinese aircraft carrier. 

  The South China Morning Post reported Lieutenant Colonel “Hsieh” was offered $15 million by Chinese spies to steal a Boeing CH-47 Chinook and land on a People’s Liberation Army Navy aircraft carrier during a military drill near the self-ruled island.

  

  The plan to steal the Chinook came to an abrupt end when Taiwanese authorities arrested Hsieh in August for allegedly spying for Beijing. 

  In an indictment revealed by the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors Office on Monday, “Lieutenant Colonel Hsieh was asked to fly the helicopter at low altitude along the coastline to the Chinese Communist carrier which would be staging drills close to the waters 24 nautical miles [44km] off [Taiwan].” 

  

  According to prosecutors, the lieutenant colonel suggested that the PLA stage war drills near the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung so that he would not have to cross the Median line that separates the island and the mainland in the Taiwan Strait. The idea behind this would minimize any risk of the helicopter being intercepted by Taiwan’s Air Force jets. 

  The indictment also said Hsieh spoke with Chinese spies in July about the defection, including a plan to help his family immigrate to Thailand. 

  SCMP noted that prosecutors arrested Hsieh following a “tip” but did not explain further how he was caught. 

  “I feel pained, too, to have discovered a case like this, and those allegedly involved should be dealt with according to the law,” said Chiu Kuo-cheng, Taiwan’s defense chief, during a session with lawmakers in Taipei’s parliament on Monday.

  The good news is that the US hasn’t stationed fifth-generation F-35 stealth jets on the island, which, presumably, the communist regime would be eager to steal.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 20:25

• Canadian Medical Schools Asked To Shift From "Medical Expertise" To Anti-Racism & Social Justice Training
  Canadian Medical Schools Asked To Shift From “Medical Expertise” To Anti-Racism & Social Justice Training

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  There is a major controversy brewing in Canada over a proposal in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons that schools shift from emphasizing “medical expertise” in favor of teaching “anti-racism” and social justice values.

  An organization of physicians called Do No Harm is opposing the recommendation of the interim report by the college’s Anti-Racism Expert Working Group.

  

  The report states that the new emphasis should center around “values such as anti-oppression, anti-racism, and social justice, rather than medical expertise.”

  By “de-centering medical expertise,” the anti-racism experts suggest courses focusing on  “anti-racism,” “anti-oppression,” “social justice and equity,” “inclusive compassion,” and “decolonization.”

  That includes the perils of capitalism and other “power structures”:

  “Anti-racism is deeply rooted in anti-oppression, which analyzes the world through the lens of power, including the historical and ongoing structures of racism, white supremacy, settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and more. Anti-racism and antioppression call for action on the manifestations of oppression based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, immigration status and more. “

  In a separate report, the group has also opposed U.S. medical schools filtering out applicants who opposed DEI values.

  The group states that it found that “the admissions process at 50 of the top-ranked medical schools found that 36 asked applicants their views on, or experience in, DEI efforts” to “screen out dissenters.”

  Most U.S. medical schools currently have some DEI and diversity courses incorporated into their curriculums. Some now give an alternative hippocratic oath pledging social justice and anti-racist action.

  It is not clear how much of the traditional curriculum would be displaced under the recommendation in Canada.

  With a kid in his first-year of medical school at Georgetown, I am amazed at the overwhelming burden on these students in taking these medical courses. The first year curriculum seems an all-consuming effort to cover the basic medical jargon, training, and science. I cannot imagine shoe-horning other subjects into that dense coverage or what would be jettisoned to make room for the new emphasis.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 20:05

• IBM Slapped With Federal Civil Rights Complaint After Racist CEO's "Obviously Illegal" Hiring Practices Leak
  IBM Slapped With Federal Civil Rights Complaint After Racist CEO’s “Obviously Illegal” Hiring Practices Leak

  IBM has been hit with a federal civil rights complaint after James O’Keefe posted video leaked by an insider of CEO and Chairman Arvind Krishna outlining racist business practices.

  

  “On December 11, 2023, a tape of IBM Chief Executive Officer and Board Chairman Arvind Krishna was released on X.4 In the video, Krishna promises to fire, demote, or deny bonuses to corporate executives who either fail to meet the corporation’s racial and national origin hiring quotas or who hire too many Asian individuals,” reads a letter from America First Legal Foundation.

  BREAKING: A Federal civil rights complaint filed today against IBM for racial discrimination against white and Asian Americans and promising to fire, demote and deny bonuses to execs who fail to meet their illegal race, sex-based hiring decisions.

  LETTER: https://t.co/edEJBRuqR3 pic.twitter.com/j4RdzuEQdp

  — James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) December 12, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The letter references the below video of Krishna admitting to using coercion to fire people and reduce their bonuses if they don’t discriminate in the hiring process.

  “You got to move both forward by a percentage that leads to a plus on your bonus,” Krishna said, referring to hiring hispanics. “and by the way if you lose, you lose part of your bonus.“

  He also said that “Asians are not an underrepresented minority in tech in America…I’m not going to finess this, for blacks we should try to get towards 13 percent.”

  Meanwhile IBM subsidiary chairman Paul Cormier of Red Hat says in the recording that they’ve terminated people unwilling to engage in racial discrimination.

  All of this comes on the heels of IBM canceling advertising on @elonmusk X platform just weeks ago: “IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X”

  — James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) December 12, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  As an aside, this comes as Krishna, a racist, was Reelected as a Class B Director of the New York Fed.

  X owner Elon Musk said that the release was “Extremely concerning and obviously illegal,” to which O’Keefe replied: “Elon, this was an insider at IBM who came to me with the CEO recording inspired by what you said telling both IBM and Disney to F off.”

  Elon, this was an insider at IBM who came to me with the CEO recording inspired by what you said telling both IBM and Disney to F off.

  We should think about the best way to foster more whistleblowers and how to protect them if / when they lose their jobs. https://t.co/1mgeb4HBtf

  — James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) December 12, 2023

  IBM pulled their ads from X because they have “zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination.” And yet their internal practice is to penalize people who don’t discriminate enough. https://t.co/8wKvV9tibr

  — Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) December 12, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits IBM from discriminating against an employee or an applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; to limit, segregate, or classify employees or applicants in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” reads the letter from America First.

  O’Keefe encourages people fired from IBM or Red Hat in connection with this issue to contact him.

  Read the full letter below:

  December 12, 2023

  Timothy Riera, Director (acting)
  Jeffrey Burstein, Regional Attorney
  New York District Office
  U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
  33 Whitehall Street, 5th Floor
  New York, NY 10004

  Investigation Request: International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”)

  Dear Mr. Riera and Mr. Burstein:

  America First Legal Foundation (“AFL”) is a national nonprofit organization working to protect the rule of law, due process, and equal protection for all Americans. We write pursuant to 29 C.F.R. § 1601.6(a) seeking issuance of a Commissioner’s charge for an inquiry into individual or systemic discrimination by International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”). IBM is a publicly traded corporation headquartered at 1 New Orchard Road, Armonk, NY 10504.

  Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits IBM from discriminating against an employee or an applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; to limit, segregate, or classify employees or applicants in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in admission to or employment in any program established to provide apprenticeship or other training. However, the evidence is that IBM is knowingly, intentionally, and systematically engaging in such unlawful employment practices.

  On December 11, 2023, a tape of IBM Chief Executive Officer and Board Chairman Arvind Krishna was released on X. In the video, Krishna promises to fire, demote, or deny bonuses to corporate executives who either fail to meet the corporation’s racial and national origin hiring quotas or who hire too many Asian individuals. Also, Paul Cormier, the chairman of IBM subsidiary Red Hat, admits employees who failed to meet or comply with the corporation’s unlawful racial and national origin quotas were terminated.

  A Commissioner’s charge is particularly appropriate here because there is ample reason to believe that IBM has knowingly and intentionally violated federal law and intends to continue doing so. Krishna, Cormier, and others in management have embedded immoral and unlawful employment practices into the corporation’s culture. For example, IBM’s 2022 ESG report acknowledges that ‘A modifier for diversity results is included in the annual incentive program for our executives globally and is based on improvement in executive representation for women globally and U.S. underrepresented minority (URM) groups (specifically Black and Hispanic) for our executives in the U.S.’

  Discrimination based on immutable characteristics such as race, color, national origin, or sex ‘generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.’ More broadly, IBM’s employment practices foment contention and resentment–they are ‘odious and destructive.’ It truly ‘is a sordid business, this divvying us up’ by race or sex.

  Thank you in advance for your consideration. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

  Sincerely,

  /s/ Gene P. Hamilton
  Gene P. Hamilton
  America First Legal Foundation”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 19:45

• Portland Officials Propose To Re-Ban Public Drug Use, Governor To Declare "Fentanyl Emergency"
  Portland Officials Propose To Re-Ban Public Drug Use, Governor To Declare “Fentanyl Emergency”

  Authored by Stephen Katte via The Epoch Times,

  Portland’s Central City Task Force (PCCTF) has proposed to restore a ban on illicit drug use in public areas as part of the city’s long-term plan to solve its “most pressing challenges.”

  

  The PCCTF was launched in August to address issues like homelessness, public safety, drug use, and crime in Portland after the Oregon Health Authority warned in May that, on average, three residents are dying every day from an unintended drug overdose.

  Task force co-chairs Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and Dan McMillan, president and CEO of The Standard insurance company, recently released the task force’s action plan of ten priority recommendations for 2024, including banning controlled substances and reducing barriers to prosecuting large drug trades.

  The task force said that state lawmakers should restore law enforcement’s ability to prosecute for attempting to deliver illicit drugs to another party based on the amount.

  More police and increased “law enforcement responses around the Central City” are also suggested.

  Portland passed measure 110, the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, in November 2020 with 58 percent voter support. After becoming law, illicit drugs such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, and heroin were decriminalized, allowing small amounts to be carried for personal use.

  The city has since been grappling with increased homelessness and substance abuse, both of which critics contend have been exacerbated by Measure 110 and the decriminalization of hard drugs. Portland City Council voted unanimously on Sept. 6 to ban substances such as fentanyl and heroin from being used in public amid the ongoing opioid and public health crisis.

  Authorities in Oregon seized tens of thousands of fentanyl pills in Multnomah County back in August, marking the largest illegal drug bust in county history, according to officials. Upon closer inspection of the seized drugs, authorities found 58,000 individual fentanyl pills and 16 pounds of fentanyl powder. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, can prove deadly as it is many times more potent than heroin, elevating overdose risk.

  Other proposals from the PCCTF to combat the spiraling drug issues facing the city include ramping up existing infrastructure for effective and speedy implementation of a drug public use ban, while also declaring a tri-government fentanyl emergency for Oregon, Multnomah County, and the City of Portland. As part of the proposal, these areas would declare a 90-day emergency on fentanyl and establish a command center led by the state to deal with the ongoing fentanyl crisis.

  Gov. Kotek, a Democrat, announced on Dec. 11, after the action plan by the PCCTF was released, that she will declare a statewide fentanyl emergency and expects leaders in both Portland and Multnomah County to do the same, saying that “Times of crisis can lead to a desire for drastic change.”

  Between 2020 to 2021, the number of unintentional fentanyl deaths across the state more than doubled from 226 to 508, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Overdoses in the state continued to increase between November 2021 to November 2022, when deaths surpassed the national average by sevenfold, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  Ms. Kotek said that confronting the challenges facing the city and the broader state will require “the hope and fortitude of an entire community.”

  “We have a set of concrete recommendations, some the first of their kind, others that tap into Portland’s strengths in innovation, collaboration, art, and culture,” she said.

  “The reward for a strong start is more work. I am committed to this effort and excited to see this work unfold,” the governor added.

  Mr. McMillan also believes solving ongoing issues in the region will require a united effort, an idea that he says the task force has been discussing since day one.

  “When the Governor and I convened the task force in late summer, it was under the theory that Portland’s challenges don’t solely rest on the shoulders of government, community, or business and that you need diverse, and sometimes unlikely, partnerships to get big things done,” Mr. McMillan said.

  Among the other recommendations by the PCCTF are increasing homeless shelter capacity and deploying more counseling and direct support services for unhoused people. Cosmetic changes are also on the agenda, such as removing plywood barriers and fences erected around federal buildings to protect them from vandalism during the waves of social justice protests that erupted after the in-custody death of George Floyd. Ms. Kotek and McMillan said the use of barriers “sends the wrong signal to visitors.”

  A moratorium on new taxes and targeted tax relief has been suggested as well. The PCCTF said that “Portland is the second highest taxed city in the nation; we trail New York City by only a fraction.”

  To reduce the tax pressure on residents, the task force is proposing that elected officials agree to a three-year pause, through 2026, on any new taxes and fees.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 19:25

• McLayoffs Incoming: McDonalds Embracing Google's AI For Online Ordering
  McLayoffs Incoming: McDonalds Embracing Google’s AI For Online Ordering

  The American worker’s plan to phase themselves out of the job market once and for all is almost complete. At least, that’s what the case looks to be like at McDonald’s. The fast food restaurant, which has already adopted self-serve kiosks in store, is now tapping Google’s AI for its online ordering experience.

  In a press release out late last week, McDonald’s said the partnership “is a significant step for McDonald’s in advancing its restaurant technology platform to become the most sophisticated and productive in the industry.”

  Because that’s what you look for when you want a hamburger…

  Brian Rice, McDonald’s Executive Vice President and Global Chief Information Officer, commented: “We see tremendous opportunity for growth in our digital business and our partnership with Google Cloud allows us to capitalize on this by leveraging our size and scale to build capabilities and implement solutions at unmatched speeds.”

  He added: “Connecting our restaurants worldwide to millions of datapoints across our digital ecosystem means tools get sharper, models get smarter, restaurants become easier to operate, and most importantly, the overall experience for our customers and crew gets even better.”

  Yeah, and the less minimum wage-making human meat suits we have littering the floors of our kitchen, the more efficient and cheaper things get. After all, AI doesn’t even have to take bathroom breaks! 

  

  The chain says the partnership will help it roll out “significant advancements to its restaurant and customer platforms”. 

  ” With a consistent approach, McDonald’s expects to deploy innovations with much greater speed and agility. McDonald’s will use edge computing from Google Cloud to power these new platforms, bringing information storage and high powered computing into individual restaurants,” the press release says.

  Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “Through this wide-ranging partnership, Google Cloud will help McDonald’s seize on new opportunities to transform its business and customer experiences, empowering restaurants worldwide with the latest technologies for near-term impact.”

  “Pairing the iconic brand, size and scale of McDonald’s with Google Cloud’s deep history in AI and technology innovation will redefine how this industry works and what people expect when they dine out,” he continued. 

  All of that is nice, but all we’ve been looking for over the last 3 decades is to get no onions on our burger when we specifically ask for no onions. Has AI solved that problem yet?

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 19:05

• How Did The US Government Become So Big?
  How Did The US Government Become So Big?

  Authored by John Carroll via The Mises Institute,

  How big is the federal government?

  Two measures are the number of civilian employees (nearly two million) and the number of agencies (now exceeding 440).

  These numbers barely hint at their massive meddling into business activities and the personal lives of Americans.

  

  While government was relatively small and less intrusive during its first hundred years, the Constitution held defects. In part, they resulted from the unavoidable compromises of consensus. The founders knew this, and some had anticipated civil war decades before the first shots were fired. Many other problems emerged during the great expansion of the nineteenth century due to the industrial revolution, the growth of America’s land area, and several political factors, mostly unanticipated. As population grew from about five million in 1800 to more than seventy-six million in 1900, government gained accordingly.

  It was during the early twentieth century that the government acquired many extraconstitutional powers to intervene in our lives. This was accompanied by a great expansion of its jurisdiction and cost: new agencies, more government workers, more taxes. To give you a hint of this growth, here is an excerpt from the Congressional testimony of Doctor Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute in 2005:

  We come, then, to the nub of the matter. Search the Constitution as you will, you will find no authority for Congress to appropriate and spend federal funds on education, agriculture, disaster relief, retirement programs, housing, healthcare, day care, the arts, public broadcasting—the list is endless. That is what I meant at the outset when I said that most of what the federal government is doing today is unconstitutional because it is done without constitutional authority. Reducing that point to its essence, the Constitution says, in effect, that everything that is not authorized—to the government, by the people, through the Constitution—is forbidden. Progressives turned that on its head: Everything that is not forbidden is authorized.

  Almost fourteen years have elapsed since Doctor Pilon’s testimony. Today, the federal government is far larger and more intrusive, having enlisted the support of Big Tech, Big Pharma, academia, the legacy media, and others. But still, how did the government grow so large?

  A Fateful Error

  It actually began during America’s founding, according to Professor Randy Barnett of George Mason University. In his most recent book, Our Republican Constitution, he cites the principal-agent dilemma that arose after the 1787 constitution was ratified: The adoption effectively dissolved the Articles of Confederation and the Continental Congress. In turn, this deprived the states of an active forum to oversee the new government. Furthermore, there was no provision in the Constitution for an independent plenary tribunal to adjudicate disputes concerning federalism. No wonder then that several delegates refused to sign the final draft. In his last work, The Rise and Fall of Society, Frank Chodorov wrote this about the charter’s signers:

  “The ink was hardly dry on the Constitution before its authors, now in position of authority, began to rewrite it by interpretation, to the end that its bonds would loosen . . . to extend the power of the central government.”

  Some readers might respond that the states now had the Senate as their forum for overseeing legislation. Although members of the Senate were to be appointed by their respective state legislatures, and the Senate body held veto power over bills, the small states were outnumbered. Importantly, Senate bills were subject to defeat by the House of Representatives, in which a few densely populated commercial states reigned supreme.

  Exploiting the Stealth Clauses

  Federalist delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention openly stated their desire for a strong central government. In private communications with these colleagues, Alexander Hamilton expressed hope that the new government would eventually consolidate, with the states losing power and importance over time.

  It should not be surprising then that the final draft Constitution held expressions that were capable of more than one interpretation. I shall refer to these as stealth clauses because they have been employed by federal courts to produce outcomes that were clearly unintended using customary meanings at the time of founding. Let us examine a few cases and consider their consequences.

  How the Courts Boost Federal Power

  First of all, courts do not base their decisions exclusively on the text of the Constitution with its amendments. No, instead they refer to the Constitution Annotated, a publication weighing many pounds. The Constitution Annotated is comprised of an amended Constitution annotated with analyses of all federal Court decisions since the federal judiciary opened for business. Constitutional lawyers depend on this publication to employ the rule of stare decisis, which serves to honor judicial precedents of like cases.

  Murray Rothbard discussed the issue at length in his work Anatomy of the State. In the chapter “How the State Transcends Its Limits,” he quotes from The People and the Court by Professor Charles L. Black Jr.:

  The prime and most necessary function of the [Supreme] Court has been that of validation, not that of invalidation. What a government of limited powers needs, at the beginning and forever, is some means of satisfying the people that it has taken all steps humanly possible to stay within its powers. This is the condition of its legitimacy, and its legitimacy, in the long run, is the condition of its life. The court, through its history, has acted as the legitimation of the government.

  It should be noted that the court is biased to favor Congress (the justices call it deference) in these cases. This is common knowledge and is openly conceded by judicial appointees and by justices in their official opinions. Indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts provided the key defense for the Affordable Care Act, even though that law was opposed by twenty-six attorneys general during a court challenge.

  The earliest event that my research uncovered was not a court case but a dispute between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton was promoting his ambitious plan to improve the new nation’s financial condition; it would require Congress to charter a bank modeled after the Bank of England. Jefferson believed this was unconstitutional; the Constitution did not even mention banks.

  But Hamilton convinced President George Washington that the Constitution was not meant to cover everything the nation might need in the future, and to meet this need, Article I, Section 8 ended by granting power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” (emphasis mine) the enumerated federal powers granted by the Constitution. So, the “bank law” was passed by Congress and signed into law, creating the First Bank of the United States.

  Of all stealth clauses, the commerce clause was almost the last to be exploited. Article I, Section 8 states that “Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce among the several states.”

  In the case Wickard v. Filburn, a poor Ohio farmer was fined $117 for planting more wheat than his allotted 111 acres under a New Deal law. The government claimed his infraction “affected” market prices of wheat, even though he planted it just for family use. The false principal established after the Supreme Court upheld this case had a profound outcome. Almost all federal agencies could be disbanded if the case were overturned.

  In a case under the New Deal’s National Recovery Act, a poor immigrant operated his dry-cleaning shop in New Jersey. He was fined one hundred dollars for charging five cents less than was allowed by the National Recovery Act to dry-clean a garment. He was jailed for a second infraction, while his family struggled to pay the fine.

  In both of these cases, the government claimed that the violations affected interstate commerce, even though that was patently false. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court upheld both cases. Clearly, government inspectors chose to prosecute the innocent citizens to serve as examples and create fear in others.

  The Constitution refers to general welfare in two places, the preamble and the taxing and spending clause. These references have been used as justification for a number of measures that were surely not envisioned by the framers. One example was adoption of the prohibition amendment. Another was the Social Security Act and countless other measures passed for the “general welfare.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 18:45

• NObamacare? Americans Are Skipping Doctor Visits Due To Costs
  NObamacare? Americans Are Skipping Doctor Visits Due To Costs

  Twenty-eight percent of U.S. adults were forced to skip or delay medical care in 2022 because they could not afford to pay for it, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Board.

  

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, this is an increase from the 24 percent in 2021 and the highest share of U.S. adults since before the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, was introduced back in 2014.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Dental care was the most frequently missed form of healthcare, having been skipped due to costs by 21 percent of respondents in the prior 12 months to the survey. It was followed by seeing a doctor or specialist (16 percent), forgoing prescription medicine (10 percent), follow-up care (10 percent), mental health care or counseling (10 percent). Respondents could select multiple answers to this question.

  According to the FRB, the increase in the share of people delaying or avoiding medical care is likely at least partly due to high inflation in the U.S., as patients tried to find ways to cut back on expenses. This matches up to the data in the report, which shows that those with a higher family income and more of a buffer zone were less likely to have skipped or delayed medical care. For those with a family income of less than $25,000, 38 percent of adults went without some form of medical care because of the costs, versus just 11 percent of adults making $100,000 or more.

  Similarly, family income seems to correlate with reported levels of health. The FRB explains that for those with an income at $25,000 per year or less, 75 percent of respondents said they were in good health. For those earning $100,000 plus, the figure was 91 percent.

  Other surveys tell the same tale. For example, Gallup researchers found that there had been a 12 percentage point increase in the share of Americans reporting that they or a family member had postponed medical treatment between 2022 and the year before, bringing the latest figure to 38 percent – the highest level since 2001. In this study, lower-income adults, younger adults and women in the U.S. were more likely than other respondents to say they or someone in their family have delayed care for a serious medical condition. Meanwhile, a 2023 survey by the Commonwealth Fund found that 46 percent of those with low or average incomes had skipped or delayed needed care because of the cost.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 18:25

• China's Promise Of Reform Yet To Impress Traders
  China’s Promise Of Reform Yet To Impress Traders

  Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

  Stock index futures in the FTSE China A50 are so far up a little (amid some volatility) as the 2023 Central Economic Work Conference takes place in China.

  

  Like many government announcements – in China or elsewhere – they’re just talk, and not all may work as intended, or even be properly followed through.

  That’s why watching the hard data is key to know for sure that any promulgated reforms are actually working.

  One of the best in China is real M1 growth, a broad measure of money supply.

  It leads the economy, and has caught most of the cyclical ups and downs in China over the last two decades.

  It has yet to show a convincing sign of turning up, but when it does it will be much surer sign reforms in China working.

  

  Obviously the stock market may bottom before that, which is why looking for signs of capitulation in breadth, collectively a group of indicators that show how broad index gains are distributed, is equally as important for investors as tracking potential reforms and following the money.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 18:05

• Ready To Rumble: Lawsuits Against Censorship-Industrial Complex Heat Up After Musk Kicks Open The Floodgates
  Ready To Rumble: Lawsuits Against Censorship-Industrial Complex Heat Up After Musk Kicks Open The Floodgates

  It took the richest man in the world to begin dismantling the censorship-industrial complex; a tightly connected network of government agencies, think tanks, private media platforms, and activist organizations whose goal is to censor, control, and bankrupt free speech platforms under the guise of battling ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation’ that run counter to prevailing establishment narratives.

  

  One of these entities, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, is a dark money organization run by an alleged former British intelligence operative.

  We know all this because just over a year ago, X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk disseminated the “Twitter Files” to a small group of independent journalists, from which we learned that the Biden administration collaborated with Twitter to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, ban Donald Trump, and that the FBI essentially had its entire arm up Twitter’s ass in order to shape and control narratives.

  Here we go!! 🍿🍿 https://t.co/eILK9f3bAm

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022

  We also learned about the aforementioned relationships between the censorship-industrial complex.

  Let the games begin!

  In August, Musk kicked off what has become several lawsuits against anti-free speech advocates, filing a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which X has accused of “actively working to assert false and misleading claims encouraging advertisers to pause investment on the platform.”

  

  “X is a free public service funded largely by advertisers,” according to a Twitter blog entry. “Through the CCDH’s scare campaign and its ongoing pressure on brands to prevent the public’s access to free expression, the CCDH is actively working to prevent public dialogue.”

  In October, Consortium News sued NewsGuard – a company which assigns scores to websites alleging to rank their credibility, for “acting jointly or in concert with the United States to coerce news organizations to alter viewpoints” regarding Ukraine, Russia and Syria, and has impsed a form of “censorship and repression of views” that diverge from US policies and those of its allies. The Biden administration was also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

  Then in November, X filed a lawsuit against Media Matters, after threatening to file a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against the left-leaning activist group “and all those who colluded” with them in a disinformation campaign and advertiser boycott against the social media platform.

  The lawsuit, just filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Fort Worth Division, alleges the organization’s tactics were manipulative and deceptive.

  The suit claims:

  Media Matters has opted for new tactics in its campaign to drive advertisers from X. Media Matters has manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content, leaving the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they actually are: manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare.

  Media Matters executed this plot in multiple steps, as X’s internal investigations have revealed.

  Following the lawsuit, Texas AG Ken Paxton announced an investigation into Media Matters for potential fraudulent activity.

  Last week, the state of Texas, the Daily Wire and The Federalist sued the US State Department for conspiring with Newsguard to censor American media companies, and that the government agency funded censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets which have disfavored political opinions. Read the 67-page complaint here.

  

  Congress authorized creation of the Global Engagement Center expressly to counter foreign propaganda and misinformation. Instead, the agency weaponized this authority to violate the First Amendment and suppress Americans’ constitutionally-protected speech.

  — Texas Attorney General (@TXAG) December 6, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Let’s get ready to Rumble…

  On Nov. 30, streaming video platform Rumble sued two liberal activists who they allege worked in conjunction with Media Matters to lie about their source of ad revenues, thereby causing material damage to their reputation, as well as the destruction of more than $185 million from their market cap – despite the fact that Rumble notified them that they were incorrect.

  Nandini Jammi (@nandoodles), Claire Atkin (@catthekin) – founders of “Check My Ads,” and nine anonymous individuals who work for Media Matters and Dewey Square, a “hyper-partisan public affairs agency.”

  

  For example, Jammi was salivating over the opportunity to further demonetize X before Musk’s decision to reinstate Alex Jones to the platform.

  I was part of the effort to get Alex Jones kicked off every major tech and marketing platform in 2018. Even @Apple won’t fuck with him.

  If Elon brings him back, I can’t emphasize how *easy* it’s going to be to convince the last of X’s advertisers to drop him. https://t.co/1XL9ggcfra

  — Nandini Jammi (@nandoodles) December 11, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And now, Rumble is suing…

  So, Janni publicly decried that they were shifting their sights to Rumble. They despise what Rumble stands for. If this isn’t evidence of malicious intent I am not sure what is. As per the complaint, they launched a disinformation campaign to demonetize Rumble and they bragged… pic.twitter.com/yDFri4F7zR

  — Tracy Beanz (@tracybeanz) December 12, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Interestingly, Media Matters is accused of similar manipulation as the X lawsuit, namely that they manipulated Rumble’s platform to show Netflix ads next to a user-generated video expressing antisemitic views, which Media Matters staff ‘repeatedly refreshed,’ which caused ‘Rumble’s advertising system to serve different advertisements until Media Matters found one that it could use as fodder for its public pressure campaign.”

  “As it turned out, the Media Matters employee engaging in this tactic was the only one to actually view the Netflix ad on the video.”

  

  

  And so, as the lawsuits against the censorship complex begin to fly, one can’t help but feel that the tide may actually be turning – or at least, said censors will think twice before spouting defamatory claims about platforms that allow divergent opinions.

  Rumble suing @nandoodles.

  First @elonmusk suing @CCDHate and @mmfa, then Consortium news suing @NewsGuardRating, then Texas suing Biden State Department, now Rumble suing @nandoodles and her liberal echo chamber

  The tide is turning against the censorship industrial complex https://t.co/b2n9NL0Axs

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 12, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 17:45

• Trump Predicts He Can Win Deep Blue State
  Trump Predicts He Can Win Deep Blue State

  Authored by Catherine Yang and Eva Fu via Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former President Donald Trump headlined the New York Young Republican Club’s annual Gala on the evening of Dec. 9, telling the cheering audience that so many people had come out to support him that he had seen the spillover crowd on his drive to the Wall Street location.

  

  “It is great to be back in New York, and it’s a true honor to address the oldest and largest Young Republican Club in the United States,” he said.

  “I want to express my tremendous gratitude to all of you for being one of the very first organizations in the entire nation to endorse my 2024 [run]. It’s happening, it’s happening. You shouldn’t have had to wait this long. But you know, things like that happen.

  “I’m telling you, this is a place that can be won.“

  He revealed that his optimism stemmed from the fact that the majority of his supporters are average Americans. According to President Trump, the bulk of his campaign funds hasn’t come from megadonors but from regular people and families who give an average of $61, adding up to “millions and millions of dollars each week.”

  “We’re taking in numbers that nobody’s ever seen before,” President Trump said.

  “And if we win New York … then we win the election very, very easily.

  “If we win New York and we’ll counter all of the cheating that will go on, because we have to catch them.”

  Contrasting Campaigns

  The former president made several references to alleged election fraud during the 2020 general election and then noted that he initially hadn’t planned to make President Joe Biden a major campaign point. But then “once I got indicted, the first time, and then the second, third, fourth … what’s happened is, since they’ve done it, the gloves are off.”

  President Trump ran through his campaign, contrasting it to the Biden administration’s policies.

  He touted his record on foreign policy and said he would end the wars in Ukraine and Israel without sending U.S. soldiers into war. The former president also touted his border plans, which had gotten him elected in 2016, and said he would reinstate travel bans and add ideological screening in the immigration process.

  “If you want to abolish Israel, if you want to sympathize with jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country, and you are not getting in,” President Trump said.

  He also criticized President Biden’s economic and energy agendas, which he said have put the country on the brink of a depression.

  “While Biden is devastating opportunities for young Americans, I will fight for young Americans like no president has ever fought before,” the former president said.

  President Trump mocked his political opponent’s speech wherein President Biden said “MAGA extremists” needed to be stopped, using a popular abbreviation for “Make America Great Again,” a campaign slogan of President Trump’s.

  “Yeah, I’m extreme about making America great again,” he said.

  President Trump also criticized the establishment media, which he said have taken part in “waging an all-out war on American democracy … with one hoax, witch hunt, and abuse of power after another,” pushing back on recent reports and commentary in several media outlets that have pushed a narrative that President Trump would threaten democracy.

  “No, I’m not a threat; I will save democracy,” he said. “I’m running to liberate America. We want to liberate America, because we’re the country that’s in a lot of pain. … This is a righteous crusade to rescue our nation from a very corrupt political class.”

  Lawsuits

  Speakers also included Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). President Trump at length thanked his supporters and allies in the audience, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who’s President Trump’s codefendant in a racketeering case that accuses both of them of interfering with the 2020 election in Georgia.

  “He’d go to the different legislatures and talk to legislators, and they all agreed with him,” he said. “But then the courts would hold them back, because judges didn’t have the courage to do what they should have done. But Rudy is a warrior, he’s a brave guy, and he’s a brilliant man.”

  President Trump faces a total of 91 criminal charges in four separate jurisdictions and dozens more civil lawsuits on top of that.

  In New York, he’s currently on trial for fraud. On the afternoon of Dec. 10, he announced that he was no longer planning to testify before the defense rests its case the coming week.

  New York Attorney General Letitia James had brought the civil suit against President Trump and his Trump Organization, claiming that he defrauded the state by artificially inflating his net worth and depriving banks of some $250 million in interest.

  New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, presiding over a bench trial, found President Trump guilty a week ahead of the trial and ordered the dissolution of the president’s holding companies. An appeals court has since paused that order, and the defense is expected to be mounting an appeal as they streamline their case for trial to end it quickly.

  “The whole world is watching my trial where I’ve been proven innocent every day,” President Trump said at the gala. “The case going on right now in New York State Supreme Court is a ridiculous, never-brought-before case.”

  He suggested that the several cases against him didn’t present unwinnable odds, noting that his poll numbers rise whenever new legal action against him is announced and that he’s faced greater odds before.

  In October 2016, President Trump said his chances had looked bad, and he called on nearly a dozen advisers to ask what he should do. Every single person—with the exception of Steve Bannon, who told him that he would win “100 percent”—told him to resign, even though he was the party nominee, he said.

  “If we lose, we lose,” President Trump said that he thought. “It’s horrible, but it’s not historic. … I didn’t like the concept of that.

  Advertisement – Story continues below

  “Nobody felt we could win. … and now they’re starting to say that we can.

  “So we’re going to give it a shot. I’ll tell you what, I’ve never seen enthusiasm like I’m seeing right now.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 17:25

• Zelensky Dubiously Pledges 'Victory' While Biden Says 'Don't Give Up Hope'
  Zelensky Dubiously Pledges ‘Victory’ While Biden Says ‘Don’t Give Up Hope’

  (Update1710ET): Simply judging by the below somewhat chaotic scene of Zelensky at the White House, the Ukrainian leader is no longer the star of the show as he was in the war’s first year. Gone are the days of the press pool fawning over him or being in awe at his presence. Instead the press primarily peppered Biden with questions.

  Even Biden’s words struck a more dour tone than previous meetings with Zelensky: “I don’t want you giving up hope,” the US President told Zelensky. “We’re going to stay at your side.” This after Zelensky dubiously tried to push a message of “Ukraine can win” – a narrative which as the Financial Times noted Ukrainian citizens themselves are in increasing disbelief of. Biden still gave out another $200 million of what’s left before DoD funding runs dry for the year…

  BIDEN TO REPORTERS: “Hush up, OK?! I got one more thing to say. I’ve just signed another $200 million drawdown from the Department of Defense for Ukraine…”

  pic.twitter.com/QEwzGDOJ1X

  — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) December 12, 2023

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  Perhaps not having much left that’s original to say at this point, as the Russia-Ukraine war grinds on approaching the end of a second full year, Biden said that if Congress fails to approve his defense funding package it would be a “Christmas gift” to Putin. He also said that Russia has failed to subjugate Ukraine. Further, the following statements were issued:

  • BIDEN: WE ARE COMING TO THE END OF OUR ABILITY TO HELP UKRAINE
  • BIDEN: PUTIN IS BANKING ON THE US FAILING TO DELIVER FOR UKRAINE

  GOP SPEAKER: THE US AND UKRAINE DO NOT HAVE A STRATEGY TO WIN WAR pic.twitter.com/9oPokZRPkF

  — The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) December 12, 2023

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  During the Q&A in the post-meeting presser, both Zelensky and Biden rejected the idea of Ukraine ceding territory for the sake of achieving permanent ceasefire and peace. Notably, Zelensky went so far as to call this “insane”.

  More from their meeting in the Oval Office:

  * * *

  Amid ongoing meetings between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and lawmakers and US defense officials on Capitol Hill Tuesday, one thing is becoming clear: no breakthrough is expected in terms of GOP Congressmen being swayed to push through Biden’s $106 billion defense aid package. 

  Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) was among those that are unmoved. He said after senators heard Zelensky’s appeal: “It is striking to me that we’re in this place in this last week here and we’re hearing from the president of Ukraine again but we’ve yet to hear from our own president about the border, our border,” Schmitt said.

  

  “The Democrats are not interested in engaging on this in any meaningful way and the issue’s not going away” – and he emphasized further, “nothing changes. The fact that he’s here, it’s the same old stuff, there’s nothing new that came out of that.”

  “I just think if you listen to the people back home, they’re not interested in a blank check for Ukraine when they see 12,000 people coming across our open southern border,” Schmitt said.

  Zelensky called it “friendly and candid conversation” – which also suggests there was no particular breakthrough. He continued on X, “I informed members of the U.S. Senate about Ukraine’s current military and economic situation, the significance of sustaining vital U.S. support, and answered their questions.”

  Both Senate leaders Chuck Schumer (D) and Mitch McConnell (R) accompanied him in the meeting, as both have been on record as strongly advocating for more urgent Ukraine aid. Additionally, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut held out hope that a border security deal could be completed by Christmas. “I will stay here as long as it’s necessary to get to get this done,” he said in a statement to The New York Times. “I think we can finish this in the Senate and get a bill to the House before Christmas.”

  He claimed that Democrats have “stretched” themselves toward making legitimate compromises “that are outside of the Democratic comfort zone.”

  Senator J.D. Vance is also among Republican Senators pushing back hard…

  WATCH: @JDVance1 SLAMS Zelensky’s bid for more aid

  “Zelensky comes to town and demands that the taxpayer give him another $61 billion, and by the way, if you want to secure your border first, you are actually a ‘Putin puppet.’ I think it’s disgraceful. I think it’s grotesque.”🔥 pic.twitter.com/OrL0PyP8ZH

  — Senator Vance Press Office (@SenVancePress) December 12, 2023

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  Zelensky emphasized his recent theme of ‘support us or we lose to Putin and Europe is threatened’ message to senators. He and his officials have been sounding a note of desperation of late. He even reportedly told the US lawmakers that Ukraine is considering conscription of men over 40, according to Bloomberg.

  Schumer, in a post-meeting press conference said that Zelensky “made clear, and we all made clear, that if we lose, Putin wins, and this will be very, very dangerous for the United States.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 12/12/2023 – 17:10

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• Niall Ferguson: The Treason Of The Intellectuals
  Niall Ferguson: The Treason Of The Intellectuals

  Authored by Niall Ferguson via The Free Press,

  In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published La trahison des clercs—“The Treason of the Intellectuals”—which condemned the descent of European intellectuals into extreme nationalism and racism. By that point, although Benito Mussolini had been in power in Italy for five years, Adolf Hitler was still six years away from power in Germany and 13 years away from victory over France. But already Benda could see the pernicious role that many European academics were playing in politics. 

  Those who were meant to pursue the life of the mind, he wrote, had ushered in “the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” And those hatreds were already moving from the realm of the ideas into the realm of violence—with results that would be catastrophic for all of Europe.

  A century later, American academia has gone in the opposite political direction—leftward instead of rightward—but has ended up in much the same place. The question is whether we—unlike the Germans—can do something about it.

  

  Students at a public speaking school in the lecture hall of Berlin’s Humboldt University, c. 1931. (Photo by bpk/Salomon/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

  For nearly ten years, rather like Benda, I have marveled at the treason of my fellow intellectuals. I have also witnessed the willingness of trustees, donors, and alumni to tolerate the politicization of American universities by an illiberal coalition of “woke” progressives, adherents of “critical race theory,” and apologists for Islamist extremism. 

  Throughout that period, friends assured me that I was exaggerating. Who could possibly object to more diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus? In any case, weren’t American universities always left-leaning? Were my concerns perhaps just another sign that I was the kind of conservative who had no real future in the academy?

  Such arguments fell apart after October 7, as the response of “radical” students and professors to the Hamas atrocities against Israel revealed the realities of contemporary campus life. That hostility to Israeli policy in Gaza regularly slides into antisemitism is now impossible to deny. 

  I cannot stop thinking of the son of a Jewish friend of mine, who is a graduate student at one of the Ivy League colleges. Just this week, he went to the desk assigned to him to find, carefully placed under his computer keyboard, a note with the words “ZIONIST KIKE!!!” in red and green letters.

  Just as disturbing as such incidents—and there are too many to recount—has been the dismally confused responses of university leaders. 

  Testifying before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last week, Harvard President Claudine Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill showed that they had been well-briefed by the lawyers their universities retain for such occasions.

  They gave technically correct explanations of how First Amendment rules apply on their campuses—if they did apply. Yes, context matters. If all students did was chant “From the river to the sea,” that speech is protected, so long as there was no threat of violence or “discriminatory harassment.” 

  But the reason Claudine Gay’s carefully phrased answers on Tuesday infuriated her critics is not that they were technically incorrect, but that they were so clearly at odds with her record—specifically her record as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the years 2018–2022, when Harvard was sliding to the very bottom of the rankings for free speech at colleges. 

  The killing of George Floyd happened when Gay was dean. Six days after Floyd’s death, she published a statement on the subject that suggests she felt personally threatened by events in distant Minneapolis. Floyd’s death, she wrote, illustrated “the brutality of racist violence in this country” and gave her an “acute sense of vulnerability.” She was “reminded, again, how even our [i.e., black Americans’] most mundane activities, like running. . . can carry inordinate risk. At a moment when all I want to do is gather my teenage son into my arms, I am painfully aware of how little shelter that provides.” In nothing that Gay said last Tuesday did she seem aware that Jewish students might have felt the same way after October 7.

  In a memorandum to faculty on August 20, 2020, she wrote: “The calls for racial justice heard on our streets also echo on our campus, as we reckon with our individual and institutional shortcomings and with our Faculty’s shared responsibility to bring truth to bear on the pernicious effects of structural inequality.” Gay continued: “This moment offers a profound opportunity for institutional change that should not and cannot be squandered. . . . I write today to share my personal commitment to this transformational project and the first steps the FAS will take to advance this important agenda in the coming year.”

  As the great German sociologist Max Weber rightly argued in his 1917 essay on “Science as a Vocation,” political activism should not be permissible in a lecture hall “because the prophet and the demagogue do not belong on the academic platform.” This was also the argument of the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report that universities must “maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.”

  This separation between scholarship and politics has been entirely disregarded at the major American universities in recent years. Instead, our most elite schools have embraced the kind of “institutional change” that Gay has championed. Look where it has led us.

  *  *  *

  It might be thought extraordinary that the most prestigious universities in the world should have been infected so rapidly with a politics imbued with antisemitism. Yet exactly the same thing has happened before.

  A hundred years ago, in the 1920s, by far the best universities in the world were in Germany. By comparison with Heidelberg and Tübingen, Harvard and Yale were gentlemen’s clubs, where students paid more attention to football than to physics. More than a quarter of all the Nobel prizes awarded in the sciences between 1901 and 1940 were awarded to Germans; only 11 percent went to Americans. Albert Einstein reached the pinnacle of his profession not in 1933, when he moved to Princeton, but from 1914 to 1917, when he was appointed professor at the University of Berlin, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, and as a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Even the finest scientists produced by Cambridge felt obliged to do a tour of duty in Germany.  

  Yet the German professoriat had a fatal weakness. For reasons that may be traced back to the foundation of the Bismarckian Reich or perhaps even further into Prussian history, academically educated Germans were unusually ready to prostrate themselves before a charismatic leader, in the belief that only such a leader could preserve the purity of the German nationalist project. 

  Today’s progressives engage in racism in the name of diversity. The nationalist academics of interwar Germany were at least overt about their desire for homogeneity and exclusion. 

  Marianne Weber recalled how, in the wake of the 1918 Revolution, her husband Max had explained his theory of democracy to the former supreme military commander, General Erich Ludendorff: 

  Weber: Do you think that I regard the Schweinerei that we now have as democracy?

  Ludendorff: What is your idea of a democracy, then?

  Weber: In a democracy, the people choose a leader whom they trust. Then the chosen man says, “Now shut your mouths and obey me.” The people and the parties are no longer free to interfere in the leader’s business.

  Ludendorff: I should like such a “democracy.”

  Weber: Later, the people can sit in judgment. If the leader has made mistakes—to the gallows with him!

  Rudy Koshar’s study of the university town of Marburg in Hesse illustrates the way this culture led German academia toward the Nazis. The mainly Protestant student fraternities already excluded Jews from membership before World War I. In March 1920, in the turbulent aftermath of the revolution that had overthrown the imperial regime and established the Weimar Republic, a student paramilitary group was involved in a murderous attack on Communist workers. In the national elections held four years later, the Völkisch-Sozialer Bloc—of which the early Nazi Party (the NSDAP) was a key part—won 17.7 percent of the Marburg vote.

  Lawyers and doctors, all credentialed with university degrees, were substantially overrepresented within the NSDAP, as were university students (then a far narrower section of society than today). To middle-aged lawyers, Hitler was the heir to Bismarck. For their sons, he was the Wagnerian hero Rienzi, the demagogue who unites the people of Rome. 

  Even a man who considered himself a liberal, as Max Weber surely did, was susceptible to the allure of charismatic leadership when the fledgling democracy seemed so weak. Three years after Weber’s death in 1920, Germany was plunged into disastrous hyperinflation. For many German academics, Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January 1933 was a moment of national salvation.

  “Right down to the last, deepest fiber in myself, I belong to the Führer and his wonderful movement,” wrote the Nazi lawyer Hans Frank in his diary after a concert he had attended with Hitler on February 10, 1937. “We are in truth God’s tool for the annihilation of the bad forces of the earth. We fight in God’s name against Jews and their Bolshevism. God protect us!” Such thoughts helped him and many other lawyers to come to terms with the systematic illegality that characterized the regime from the very outset.

  German academics acted as Hitler’s think tank, putting policy flesh on the bones of his racist ideology. As early as 1920, the jurist Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche published their Permission for the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life, which sought to extrapolate from the annual cost of maintaining one “idiot” “the massive capital. . . being subtracted from the national product for entirely unproductive purposes.”

  There is a clear line of continuity from this kind of analysis to the document found at the Schloss Hartheim asylum in 1945, which calculated that by 1951 the economic benefit of killing 70,273 mental patients—assuming an average daily outlay of 3.50 Reichsmarks and a life expectancy of ten years—would be 885,439,800 Reichsmarks. Many historians were little better, churning out tendentious historical justifications for German territorial claims in Eastern Europe that implied massive population displacement, if not genocide.

  

  Students of the University of Berlin arrive at a book burning rally, 1933. (Photo via Getty Images)

  A critical factor in the decline and fall of the German universities was precisely that so many senior academics were Jews. For some, Hitler’s antisemitism was therefore—not unlike woke intersectionality in our own time—a career opportunity.  

  For German academics of Jewish heritage, particularly those who had married gentiles and converted to Christianity, it was disorienting. 

  The case of Victor Klemperer, a convert to Christianity married to a gentile, is illustrative. A veteran of World War I, Klemperer was appointed Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Dresden University of Technology in 1920. “I am nothing but a German or German European,” Klemperer wrote in his diary, one of the most illuminating testaments of the German Jewish nightmare. Throughout the 1930s, he maintained that it was the Nazis who were “un-German.” “I. . . feel shame for Germany,” he wrote after Hitler had come to power. “I have truly always felt German.”  

  Yet the atmosphere at German universities grew steadily more toxic even for the most assimilated of Jews.

  In April 1933, under the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, all Jewish civil servants, including judges, were removed from office, followed a month later by university lecturers. Klemperer recorded his agonized reaction in his diary:

  March 10, 1933. . . . It is astounding how easily everything collapses. . . wild prohibitions and acts of violence. And with it, on streets and radio, never-ending propaganda. On Saturday. . . I heard a part of Hitler’s speech in Königsberg [the East Prussian university at which Immanuel Kant had spent his life]. . . I understood only a few words. But the tone! The unctuous bawling, truly bawling. . . . How long will I retain my professorship? 

  Klemperer managed to hang on to his chair for another two years. On May 2, 1935, however, the blow fell: 

  On Tuesday morning, without any previous notification—two sheets delivered by post. “On the basis of para 6 of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service I have. . . recommended your dismissal.”. . . At first, I felt alternately dumb and slightly romantic; now there is only bitterness and wretchedness. 

  Five months later, to add insult to injury, he was barred from the university library reading room “as a non-Aryan.” What followed was a kind of relentless whittling away of his rights as a citizen. 

  The Nazis’ antisemitism led, of course, to one of the greatest brain drains in history. Over 200 of the country’s 800 Jewish professors departed, of whom twenty were Nobel laureates. Albert Einstein had already left in 1933 in disgust at Nazi attacks on his “Jewish physics.” The exodus quickened after the pogrom known as the Night of Broken Glass in November 1938. The principal beneficiaries of the Jewish brain drain were, of course, the universities of the United States.

  Yet for Klemperer, emigration—least of all to Palestine, then a British “mandate” but also the location of the “national home for the Jewish people” promised by the British government in 1917—was out of the question. It would have been an admission that the Nazis were right: that he was in fact a Jew, not a German. As he put it: “If specifically Jewish states are now to be set up. . . that would be letting the Nazis throw us back thousands of years. . . . The solution to the Jewish question can be found only in deliverance from those who have invented it.”

  It was this kind of reasoning that persuaded him and many other Jews to remain in Germany until it was no longer possible to get out. Some chose suicide—for example, the Marburg linguist Hermann Jacobsohn, who threw himself under a train. In the end, Klemperer avoided deportation to the death camps only because of the Royal Air Force bombing raid on Dresden in February 1945, which allowed him to shed his yellow star and lie low until the German surrender. 

  He remained in Dresden after the occupation of eastern Germany. It was not long before he began to notice resemblances between the language of the new Soviet-backed German Democratic Republic and the Third Reich. Like Hannah Arendt and George Orwell, Klemperer understood that the totalitarianism of the right and the totalitarianism of the left had fundamentally similar characteristics. In particular, they loved to impose Newspeak on those they subjugated.

  *  *  *

  Non-Jewish German academia did not just follow Hitler down the path to hell. It led the way. A few examples will suffice. 

  SS Oberführer Konrad Meyer, a professor of agronomy at the University of Berlin, was one of the experts who helped devise Heinrich Himmler’s “General Plan East” (Generalplan Ost) which, in the expectation of victory over the Soviet Union, was supposed to extend German settlement as far as Archangel in the north and Astrakhan in the south. Meyer’s version proposed establishing three vast “marcher settlements” with around five million German settlers. The fate of the peoples currently living there would be either annihilation or ethnic cleansing.

  In 1940 a graduate student named Victor Scholz submitted a PhD thesis at the University of Breslau with the title “On the Possibilities of Recycling Gold from the Mouths of the Dead.”

  He had carried out his research under the supervision of Professor Herman Euler, dean of the Breslau Medical Faculty. 

  At Auschwitz, SS Gruppenführer Carl Clauberg, a professor of gynecology at Königsberg, sought to find the most efficient way to sterilize women.

  Among the techniques he experimented with was the injection, without anesthesia, of caustic substances into the uteruses of prisoners. 

  Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill ethical values has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich.

  A university degree, far from inoculating Germans against Nazism, made them more likely to embrace it. The fall from grace of the German universities was personified by the readiness of Martin Heidegger, the greatest German philosopher of his generation, to jump on the Nazi bandwagon, a swastika pin in his lapel. He was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 until 1945.

  Later, after it was all over, the historian Friedrich Meinecke tried to explain “the German catastrophe” by arguing that excessive technical specialization had caused some educated Germans (not him, needless to say) to lose sight of the humanistic values of Goethe and Schiller. As a result, they had been unable to resist Hitler’s “mass Machiavellianism.” 

  The novelist Thomas Mann—who, unlike Meinecke, chose exile over complicity—was unusual in being able to recognize even at the time that, in “Brother Hitler,” the German educated elite possessed a monstrous younger sibling, whose role was to articulate and authorize their darkest aspirations.

  

  A student at the University of Marburg, 1935. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

  The lesson of German history for American academia should by now be clear. In Germany, to use the legalistic language of 2023, “speech crossed into conduct.” The “final solution of the Jewish question” began as speech—to be precise, it began as lectures and monographs and scholarly articles. It began in the songs of student fraternities. With extraordinary speed after 1933, however, it crossed into conduct: first, systematic pseudo-legal discrimination and ultimately, a program of technocratic genocide.

  The Holocaust remains an exceptional historical crime—distinct from other acts of organized lethal violence directed against other minorities—precisely because it was perpetrated by a highly sophisticated nation-state that had within its borders the world’s finest universities. That is why American universities cannot regard antisemitism as just another expression of “hate,” no different from, say, Islamophobia—a neologism that should not be mentioned in the same breath. That is why Claudine Gay’s double standards—with their implication that African Americans are somehow more deserving of protection than Jews—are so indefensible. 

  That is why rational minds recoil from her argument that antisemitism on the Harvard campus is tolerable so long as genocide is not being perpetrated.

  *  *  *

  Well, the backlash against our contemporary treason of the intellectuals has finally arrived. 

  Donors such as the chief executive of Apollo, Marc Rowan (a Penn graduate), Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman (Harvard), and Stone Ridge founder Ross Stevens (Penn) have each made clear that their support will no longer be forthcoming for institutions run in this fashion.

  On Saturday, Penn president Liz Magill stepped down, along with the chair of the Penn board of trustees, Scott Bok. Perhaps others will follow. 

  Yet it will take a lot more than a few high-profile resignations to reform the culture of America’s elite universities. It is much too entrenched in multiple departments, all dominated by a tenured faculty, to say nothing of the armies of DEI and Title IX officers who seem, at some colleges, now to outnumber the undergraduates.

  In La trahison des clercs, Julien Benda accused the intellectuals of his time of dabbling in “the racial passions, class passions, and national passions. . . owing to which men rise up against other men.” Today’s academic leaders would never recognize themselves as the heirs of those Benda condemned, insisting that they are on the left, whereas Benda’s targets were on the right. And yet, as Victor Klemperer came to understand after 1945, totalitarianism comes in two flavors, though the ingredients are the same.

  Only if the once-great American universities can reestablish—throughout their fabric—the separation of Wissenschaft from Politik can they be sure of avoiding the fate of Marburg and Königsberg.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 23:20

• End Of Western Dominance And Rise Of A Polycentric World, Lavrov Declares At Doha Forum
  End Of Western Dominance And Rise Of A Polycentric World, Lavrov Declares At Doha Forum

  Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, outlined a potential scenario in which a “polycentric order” emerges, characterized by multiple centers of power, marking the end of the West’s five-century period of global dominance. 

  Lavrov addressed the Doha Forum through a video feed on Sunday, with RT reporting his remarks as follows:

  “But I assume that you were discussing the multipolar world, which is emerging after 500 years of domination of what we call the ‘collective West.'” 

  He said the West’s hegemonic rule has been “based on a diverse history, including ruthless exploitation of peoples and territories of other countries.” 

  

  The foreign minister explained that the West continues to use its centuries-old globalization model to maintain its global empire. He pointed out, “However, other countries, using exactly the principles and instruments of the Western globalization, managed to beat the West on its own turf, building the economies on the basis of national sovereignty, on the basis of balance of interests with other countries.” 

  A polycentric order is much different from a “multipolar’ system. It’s a highly competitive environment where major powers possess the freedom to exert dominance over their neighbors. The world is becoming more chaotic, and that is why countries are ramping up military spending and securing energy sources. 

  In August, Lavrov told South Africa’s Ubuntu Magazine that BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is becoming one of the pillars of a polycentric world order. 

  Back to Doha, where Lavrov said the emergence of a polycentric world order is “not the West’s liking.”

  Lavrov continued: “In order to suppress this kind of development,” the West has pivoted from globalization to a rules-based world order.

  “The rules were never published, were never even announced by anyone to anyone, and they are being applied depending on what exactly the West needs at a particular moment of modern history,” he noted.

  Lavrov added that “in various conflicts, which the West ignites all over the world,” including the one in Ukraine, it’s all about keeping the hegemony going. 

  “Is there a single place where the US intervened with military force, where life has become better? I think you know the answer,” Lavrov told the audience. 

  As the old order falls, the similarities between the late 1980s USSR and present-day USA are uncanny. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 23:00

• The Purges Are Ongoing
  The Purges Are Ongoing

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

  It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, peaceful and otherwise uneventful. Out of nowhere, the following people appeared on “Spaces,” an audible show on the app X (formerly Twitter). They are all speaking live with each other: Alex Jones, Elon Musk, Andrew Tate, Vivek Ramaswamy, Gen. Michael Flynn, with Robert Kennedy, Jr. and David Stockman listening in. Other people popped in and out.

  In real time, I saw 120K people listening, and millions total over two hours plus the archive.

  We keep hearing about the death of mainstream media and I’m starting to believe it. These people have all been targeted as enemies of the state and yet here they were, all having a civil conversation we could hear in all its raw authenticity.

  It was also a marvelous conversation. Mostly it revolved around how to defeat the globalist hegemon through free speech. Most of the people in this public room have been shut down, smeared, or otherwise silenced by the system. They are important people with huge followings and major impact but somebody somewhere decided that they cannot play a part in the formation of public life.

  And yet here they were speaking to hundreds of thousands of people in real time, apparently unannounced. They just showed up.

  Herein is the value of Elon’s platform that he purchased, not to make money but to give life to the idea of an open forum in times when the elites want anything but that. It was beautiful.

  I found Alex Jones particularly intriguing. I’ve never been a fan but that might be for cultural and aesthetic reasons more than anything else. In many ways, he has indeed been a prophet of our times. He has been forecasting the arrival of dark times for at least a decade.

  About five years ago when he was first shut down and censored, the comedian and podcaster Dave Rubin told me that we all know where this is headed. First they go after Alex Jones, who seems indefensible, but that is only to warm us all up to tolerating censorship. Next they go after others who we deem inadmissible to the public conversation. Eventually they come for us, and there is no one there to defend us.

  So he predicted and so it was.

  The purge of public life has been systematic and relentless for years now.

  

  There is always some excuse, some alleged infringement on the civic code of belief and conduct.

  The campaign begins and they are eventually burned at the stake like the witches at Salem. The puritanical impulse to drive the heretics from our lives to clean up the landscape still survives and thrives after all these years, despite every slogan about tolerance and diversity.

  Also over the weekend, I dealt with an unpleasant canceling myself.

  Brownstone Institute has a monthly supper club with speakers from many disciplines and points of view.

  For next month, we had invited Tiffany Justice, one of the founders of Moms for Liberty.

  

  Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Justice speaks at the Republican Party of Florida Freedom Summit, in Kissimmee, Fla., on Nov. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

  This is an organization born of lockdowns that opposes school closures and favors parental rights. For some reason, the organization came to be targeted as bad… or something.

  We use the service called Eventbrite to take our tickets. Over the weekend, the company sent me the following note:

  “We have determined that your event is not permitted on the Eventbrite marketplace as it violates our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, with which all users agree to comply. Specifically, we do not allow content or events that—through on- or off-platform activity—discriminate against, harass, disparage, threaten, incite violence against, or otherwise target individuals or groups based on their actual or perceived race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, veteran status, age, or disability. As a result, your event has been unpublished. Please be aware that severe or repeated violations of our guidelines may result in the suspension or termination of your Eventbrite account. We have refunded all attendees who purchased tickets to your event, if necessary.”

  Wow! Just like that, the service that claims to be for everyone has decided that our group cannot hear what Tiffany Justice has to say. It’s all crazy because ours is a very diverse supper club. I’ve never once polled people on their politics. So far as I know, it’s not even a topic of conversation. We are mostly interested in issues of science, civic life, community health, and so on. I invited Tiffany just to get her perspective. People are free to agree or disagree. That’s how the freedom of association works.

  But to Eventbrite, they seem to think we are all automatons who accept whatever we are told. We were about to listen to forbidden thoughts and so their platform had to intervene to protect us, as if we were children. It’s all so insulting and ridiculous. It’s also not good for their business, one might suppose.

  In any case, we scrambled overnight and implemented our own native system of taking tickets, so that we never have to rely on such third-party services again for this particular service. The meeting will go ahead, of course, without or without Eventbrite, so one wonders what the point of this particular purge really was.

  We have ample proof that most of these platforms are no longer independent actors. They are funded and controlled by third parties that respond to government priorities. I don’t have proof regarding Eventbrite but we’ve seen the same behavior from a dozen or more industry dominant platforms, so we can safely assume the same here.

  Fortunately, there is still something of a competitive marketplace out there, so we can exercise choice. But there’s no question that this too is on the chopping block. A point about industrial concentration is that it reduces the number of competitive options out there, allowing government a greater degree of control over commerce and therefore over individuals. It so happens that industry underwent an enormous consolidation over the last five years, to the point that the major government-connected firms control most of the market. This is true not just in digital commerce but also in groceries, home goods, and pharmaceuticals.

  Make no mistake: the goal is to continue the purge. It’s been ongoing since at least 2016. That was the point of the lockdowns, masks, and forced vaccination: to drive out of professional and media life those who dissent. It has only intensified since then. You are either with team Ruling Class or against it. Those on the team prove it through constant incantations of woke philosophy, while those against it are systematically smeared, canceled, and silenced.

  What can we do but resist? A major way is to use those platforms that tolerate dissent and eschew those that enforce the orthodoxy. This is the right of our times, and it is fundamentally about the right to disagree with the regime.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 22:40

• Mother Of Doomed Fetus Flees Texas For Abortion As State Supremes Rule Against Her
  Mother Of Doomed Fetus Flees Texas For Abortion As State Supremes Rule Against Her

  A pregnant woman in Texas whose child has a terminal birth defect has fled the state after a week of legal whiplash over whether she qualifies for an exception to the state’s abortion laws.

  

  Last Thursday, Kate Cox was granted permission to have an abortion by a state district court – the first time a pregnant woman has sought a court order for the procedure since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

  Hours later, however, Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) asked the state Supreme Court to immediately block the order. The Court agreed on an interim basis Friday night, followed by a 7-page ruling on Monday permanently denying Cox from having an abortion. Paxton went further following the Thursday ruling from District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, warning hospitals and physicians that the court’s order would not protect them from prosecution if they performed an abortion on Cox – a procedure which could carry up to a life sentence in prison.

  Their reasoning? While the Court acknowledged that Cox, 31, and her husband received “a tragic diagnosis,” Texas law only allows for an exception in the event that the mother “has a life-threatening physical condition,” making abortion necessary to save her life or to save her from “a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function” – which wasn’t asserted in her request.

  

  “The exception requires a doctor to decide whether Ms. Cox’s difficulties pose such risks,” the ruling continues. “(A doctor) asked a court to pre-authorize the abortion yet she could not, or at least did not, attest to the court that Ms. Cox’s condition poses the risks the exception requires.”

  The ruling also called on the state’s medical board to provide more guidance regarding the “medical emergency” exception at the heart of Cox’s case.

  Cox’s child, which is around 20 weeks old, was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, an almost always fatal chromosomal anomaly that leads to miscarriage, stillbirth or the death of the infant within hours, days or weeks after birth.

  On Monday, Nancy Northup – president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which has been representing Cox in the case, said that Cox has fled the state.

  “Kate’s case has shown the world that abortion bans are dangerous for pregnant people, and exceptions don’t work,” she said, adding “She desperately wanted to be able to get care where she lives and recover at home surrounded by family. While Kate had the ability to leave the state, most people do not, and a situation like this could be a death sentence.“

  “This past week of legal limbo has been hellish for Kate,” Northup continued. “Her health is on the line. She’s been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn’t wait any longer.

  “This is why judges and politicians should not be making health care decisions for pregnant people—they are not doctors.”

  The Center for Reproductive Rights is also representing a group of women and physicians before the Texas Supreme Court seeking clarity on the state’s law, while the state argues that it’s clear and adequate.

  Former President Donald Trump has warned that this issue will bite Republicans in the ass come 2024, and the optics of this one are a prime example.

  In September, Trump told an Iowa crowd:

  “In order to win in 2024, Republicans must learn how to properly talk about abortion,” he told an audience of some 2,000 potential voters, packed into a ballroom here.

  “This issue cost us unnecessarily but dearly in the midterms. It cost us dearly, really, and unnecessarily.”

  Trump said he would seek to bring together a bipartisan group to hear all sides of the debate. As Catherine Yang of the Epoch Times noted at the time;

  

  “We will agree to a number of weeks, which will be where both sides will be happy. We have to bring the country together on this issue.”

  15 Weeks?

  He claims the activists pushing for abortion on demand with no restrictions represent only an extreme view that even many pro-life Democrats are against.

  “Nobody wants to see five, six, seven, eight, nine months,” he said, adding that laws that allow mothers to terminate babies even after they have been delivered alive should be done away with.

  Asked whether he would sign a 15-week ban that made it to his desk, he said “no.”

  “Let me just tell you what I’d do. I’m going to come together with all groups, and we’re going to have something that’s acceptable,” he said. “What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months. You’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy. Because 92 percent of the Democrats don’t want to see abortion after a certain period of time.”

  He said many people have offered up the “15-week” period for a ban, which is early into the second trimester, but he wouldn’t consider legislation without bringing more people into the room first.

  “I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something, and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years,” he said, declining to say whether he would support a federal ban.

  “I’m not going to say I would or I wouldn’t,” he said, adding that he was proud of the overturning of Roe v. Wade because it gave the power back to the states.

  “For 52 years, people including Democrats wanted it to go back to states so the states could make the right,” he said. “I did something that nobody thought was possible, and Roe v. Wade was terminated, [it] was put back to the states. Now, people, pro-lifers, have the right to negotiate for the first time.”

  He clarified that the consensus he hoped to bring could result in state-level action instead of a federal ban.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 22:00

• Ford's "Test For EV Adoption" Fails: Carmaker Slashes Production Plans For Electric F-150 In Half
  Ford’s “Test For EV Adoption” Fails: Carmaker Slashes Production Plans For Electric F-150 In Half

  Less than a week after Elon Musk unveiled his apocalypse-surviving, Porsche-out-accelerating, bulletproof CyberTruck, Ford’s EV effort is crashing on the Biden-administration ignited fire of unaffordability and high costs.

  

  Having signaled in October during its Q3 earnings call plans to “adjust” production of its all-electric vehicles and delay about $12 billion in investments due to softening demand for higher-priced premium electric vehicles; a memo to suppliers – which was viewed and reported first tonight by Automotive News – indicated plans beginning in January to produce an average of about 1,600 Lightning trucks a week at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan.

  Ford had planned for an annual production capacity of 150,000 Lightnings a year, or about 3,200 a week.

  That means its production target for 2024 has been halved.

  

  “We’ll continue to match production with customer demand,” a Ford spokeswoman said Monday.

  In May 2021, during a flashy introduction, Ford CEO Jim Farley told reporters that the electric F-150 could serve as a proxy for how mainstream buyers will accept battery power.

  “I am looking at this vehicle as a test for adoption for electric vehicles,” Farley said.

  “We should all watch very carefully how this does in the market.”

  It would appear Ford failed that test.

  Obviously, while this could be an idiosyncratic F-150 issue, it does not bode well for overall EV adoption… and along with it, the Biden administration’s plans to save the world.

  It appears Stephen Moore’s grim prediction in early November is coming true.

  The senior economist at FreedomWorks and former senior economic adviser to President Trump told Fox News in an interview.

  “I’m here to tell you, if these trends continue, we’re going to see the EV market become the next big flop because car buyers don’t want them.“

  “The obvious lesson for the industry: you can’t bribe Americans to buy cars they don’t want. Given the all-in approach mentality for EVs at Ford and GM, it’s clear that Detroit never got this message,” he wrote.

  President Biden has set a goal of 50% of all new vehicles by 2030 being either EVs or plug-in hybrids.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 21:40

• It's Not Too Early To Name The Decade
  It’s Not Too Early To Name The Decade

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  The New Yorker is running a contest. What should we call our era? Some possible candidates: Terrible Twenties, the Age of Emergency, Cold War II, the Omnishambles, the Great Burning, and the Assholocene. 

  Try as I might, I cannot understand the last one. Regardless, it’s absolutely the case that there has been a dramatic turning of events and our lives. It’s not just national. It’s global and devastating. 

  I’m going with the Terrible Twenties. 

  

  Everyone seems to agree that this moniker applies, regardless of class or political leanings. You can take your pick of the symptoms: ill-health, inflation, political division, censorship, overweening state power, shabby political candidates, war, crime, homelessness, financial strain, dependency, learning loss, suicides, excess deaths, shortened lifespans, lack of trust, demographic upheaval, the purge of dissent, the threat of authoritarianism, mass incompetence, spread of crazy ideologies, lack of civility, fake science, corruption at all levels, middle class disappearance, and on and on ad infinitum. 

  Put it all together and you have terrible times. 

  We seek out diversions and find them in trips, movies, arts, liquor and other substances, religion, and meditation. No matter what we do, once we come back from the temporary respite, there is no denying the awful reality all around us. And the more the terrible multiplies, cascades, and entrenches itself, the less obvious are solutions. The center stopped holding a few years ago, and is ever less in view. We have to struggle to remember the good old days of 2019. They seem like a dim memory. 

  Memory and nostalgia seems to be all we have anymore. We watch The Gilded Age and Downton Abbey with winsome reflection. Oppenheimer, Barbie, Napoleon, anything historical will do. We smile just to know that Dolly Parton and Cher are still performing because it gives us comfort. There’s always reruns of Seinfeld to bring us delight. Our streaming music services can bring back the golden age of rock or country or classical with the push of a button. We can examine old family photos and marvel at their smiles and the source. We can reflect on the good lives of our parents and grandparents. 

  Regardless, it all seems to be in the past, which seems always to compare favorably with the present. More profoundly, the past compares favorably to any imagined future we can conjure up. The Carousel of Progress at Disney World is like a macabre joke now. Indeed, the prophets of our future seem only to come up with dystopias: owning nothing, eating bugs, doing without, bikes over gas-powered cars, surveillance, cancellation, 15-minute cities, shot after shot for weird infections, Zoom-based communications, and the absence of elegance in dress, food, and travel, except for of course the elites who live like District One in The Hunger Games. 

  That’s because this hell that has been visited upon us is far worse than anything even the pessimists predicted in March 2020. We looked at the extreme policies of the time and forecasted unemployment, growing population despair, loss of confidence in public health and experts, as well as a long period of economic disruption. But we could not have known then that the two weeks would turn to two months and then to two years and longer. It was like society-wide torture under the thumb of autocratic bureaucracies who were merely making things up as they went along and justifying it all with duplicitous science and smiles made for social media. 

  The fakeness of everything was suddenly revealed to us, and everything we once trusted suddenly seemed to be part of the system. Where were the mayors and judges? They were scared. Where were the pastors, priests, and rabbis? They said the same things as the TV anchors and NPR. Where were the academics? They were too worried about promotion, tenure, and grant money to speak out. Where were the civil libertarians? They vanished, fearing departing too far from the mainstream consensus, however manufactured. 

  Everywhere we go and anything we do now involves something digital, and mostly it is about verifying who we are. We are scanned, QRed, tracked, traced, facially and retinally recognized, monitored, and uploaded to some great database somewhere, which is then deployed for purposes of which we don’t approve. 

  We can’t go anywhere without our monitoring devices once called phones. We cannot travel or even mail packages without a RealID. Every once in a while the government sends a loud squawk to our pockets so that we remember who is in charge. The demarcation between public and private is gone, and that applies to the sectors too: we no longer know for sure what is commerce and what is government. 

  The strangest feature of it all is the lack of honesty about it. Yes, the terrible truth about our times is now widely admitted. But the source of all the problems? Who did this to us and why? That’s all still taboo. There has been no open discussion about the lockdowns, the masking hoax, the failed shots, and the surveillance. Still less has there been open talk about the people and powers behind the entire fiasco that shattered everything we once took for granted about our rights and freedoms. Is it any wonder, really, that civil strife and even war are the result?

  We want to know who or what broke the system, but for answers we have to depend on those least likely to provide them. This is because the people who might otherwise tell us the truth all went along with the lies. They can think of no other solution than to keep telling them until we forget that we are entitled to the truth. This seems to apply to the whole of mainstream media, government, and tech. The experts who were in on it are hardly the ones to get us out of it. 

  We try to find the workaround as best we can. For a while, the boycotts against bad guys worked, until there became too many to remember. Pfizer and Bud Light, sure, plus Target, but now it is WalMart, Amazon, Facebook, Google, CVS, Eventbrite, CNN, and who knows who else. Are we supposed to be against Home Depot and Kroger too? Hard to remember. We can’t boycott everyone. 

  Our victories over this brand or that, this policy or that, a good court decision that loses on appeal, are regarded by the plotters as nothing but temporary setbacks. The terrible is like a great ooze that keeps flowing and filling up the world no matter how much we scrub, clean, and bail. 

  We want to support local restaurants – they were so victimized throughout – but it is too expensive. So we’ve rediscovered home cooking but even that gives us sticker shock at the grocery store. Plus, during the good times, everyone developed some kind of eating eccentricity. No meat, no carbs, no gluten, no fish (mercury), no seed oils, no corn syrup, nothing inorganic, plus every manner of religious restriction, but that doesn’t leave much to eat at all. We would hold a dinner party but there’s no way to get a consensus and our cooking skills have atrophied in any case. Becoming a home-based short-order chef is out of the question. 

  Those with younger kids are at a loss. People under 18 years old have been socialized to believe that the nutty world in which we live – masking up, closed schools, Zoom class, social media addiction, anger all around – is just the way the world is. We struggle to explain otherwise but we cannot do so with confidence because, after all, maybe this is indeed how the world is. And yet we cannot shake the reality that they know next to nothing about anything: history, civics, literature, much less anything truly technical. They never read books. None of their peers care either. Their career aspirations are to become an influencer, which leaves parents in the awkward position of recommending otherwise in times that seem to have changed so dramatically from when we grew up. 

  Study hard, work hard, tell the truth, save money, obey the rules: these were the old principles that made for a successful life. We knew them and practiced them and they worked. But do they even apply anymore? Fairness and merit seem to have gone out the window, having been replaced by privilege, position, identity, and victimization as a pathway toward gaining a voice and a foothold. Decorum and humility are being swamped by brutalism and belligerence. 

  The new generation is being told daily that objective reality is not even a thing. After all, if men can change their gender identity on a whim, and even references to “womens’ sports” are seen as hopelessly binary, what can we really count on as authentic, unchanging, and indisputably true? Is there really such a thing as “civilization” or is that a racist concept? Can we admire any of the Founding Fathers or is the very phrase offensive? Is democracy really better than other systems? What after all do we really mean by free speech? It’s all been thrown wide open. 

  You can add your own observations here but it seems obvious that the collapse has gone far further than anything even the prophets of 2020 foresaw. When governments shut our schools, businesses, churches, and gyms, under the guise of mastering the microbial kingdom, we knew for sure that hard times were ahead. But we had no idea how bad it would get. 

  Such “public health” measures were not even within the range of possibility outside the worst dystopian fiction. And yet it all happened in a flash, all with the assurance that The Science demanded it. None of the institutions on which we relied to stop such crazed experiments worked to stop it. The courts were closed, the traditions of liberty forgotten, the leadership of our institutions lacking in courage, and everyone and everything lost in a fog of disorientation and confusion. 

  The Victorian-era liberals warned us that civilization (there’s that word) is more fragile than we know. We have to believe in it and fight for it; otherwise it can be taken away in an instant. Once gone it is not easily restored. We are discovering this for ourselves today. We cry from the depths but the hole only becomes deeper and the orderly lives we took for granted become defined more by anomie and frightening surprise of the unthinkable. 

  Where is the hope? Where is the way out of this mess? 

  The traditional answer to these questions all revolve around seeking and telling the truth. That is surely not asking too much and yet it is the last thing we are getting today. What prevents us from hearing it? Too many are too invested in the lie to allow it to get a fair hearing. 

  The times are terrible not because of some impersonal forces of history as Hegel might have it, but because a small minority decided to play dangerous games with fundamental rights, liberties, and law. They broke the world and are now pillaging what’s left. It promises to stay broken and looted so long as the same people either gain the courage to admit wrongdoing or, like the decrepit old men who ruled the Soviet empire in its last days, they finally perish from the earth. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 21:20

• Raytheon's Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle Defeats Ballistic Missile in Test Over Pacific
  Raytheon’s Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle Defeats Ballistic Missile in Test Over Pacific

  Raytheon has successfully tested its “Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle,” designed to defend the US by intercepting and neutralizing long-range ballistic missiles in low-Earth orbit. 

  The kinetic-force weapon successfully destroyed an intermediate-range ballistic missile during a test in the Pacific region by the US Missile Defense Agency and the US Northern Command on Monday. 

  

  “This test demonstrates that the US ballistic missile defense system is operational, reliable, and ready to protect the country,” said Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon.

  Kremer continued, “Raytheon kill vehicles have now successfully completed nearly 50 space intercepts, which underscores our expertise and ability to design and develop these systems to defeat the evolving threat.”

  Also known as “EKV,” the weapon is an intercept component of the Ground-Based Interceptor and part of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System. It uses multi-color sensors, advanced computers, and rocket motors that help it maneuver in space to neutralize the threat. 

  Raytheon said it is currently developing advanced ballistic missile interceptors and kill vehicles that will protect the US and allies with “more robust missile defense capability against current and future threats.”

  There was no word if EKV could defend the US and its allies from Russian and Chinese hypersonic threats. 

  The US lags behind in the hypersonic race while other superpowers rapidly add these new weapons to the modern battlefield. 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 21:00

• What In The World Has Happened To Our System Of Education?
  What In The World Has Happened To Our System Of Education?

  Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

  Our kids can’t really read very well. And it turns out that they aren’t very good at math either. 

  

  But those running our system of education continue to tell us that they are doing a wonderful job.  If they just had more funding, they insist, our test scores would go way up.  Of course that is complete and utter nonsense.  Our system of public eduction was a failure back when I was in school many years ago, and it is much worse now.  At this point, only about one-third of all U.S. students in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades are proficient in reading…

  In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that approximately one-third of students in fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades are proficient in reading. The situation even gets worse for certain groups such as people from a different race, older generations, and those who belong to low-income groups.

  So do you know what this means?

  It means that approximately two-thirds of all students in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades are not proficient in reading.

  Wow, that is really terrible.

  And it is also being reported that 40 percent of our students “are essentially nonreaders”…

  Biennial testing through NAEP consistently shows that two thirds of U.S. children are unable to read with proficiency. An astounding 40 percent are essentially nonreaders. Most are taught through phonics—a system of instruction based on sounding out letters that is mandated in at least 32 states and the District of Columbia. The phonics method of converting each letter to a particular sound is totally unsuited to the English language. As but one example, e, the most common letter in print, has 11 different pronunciations (end, eat, vein, eye, etc.), including its role as the much-taught “silent e” (tape, cute, fine, etc.). This failure has been endemic from the early days of the country when Benjamin Franklin fought against phonics. The steady expansion of this mode of instruction will not fix the situation.

  Isn’t that great?

  We are headed for a future where approximately 40 percent of the entire population cannot even function in society.

  In some areas of the country it is even worse.

  In Chicago, only about one-sixth of all third graders are able to read at grade level…

  About one-sixth of all third-grade students in Chicago Public Schools can read at grade level. For low-income and minority students, the share of proficient readers is even lower.

  They tax the living daylights out of us to fund these public schools.

  So where is all of that money going?

  One activist that was asked about the current state of affairs openly admitted that “the kids can’t read”…

  “The kids can’t read – nobody wants to just say that,” said Kareem Weaver, an activist with the NAACP in Oakland, California, who has framed literacy as a civil rights issue.

  This is a national disgrace.

  Of course our kids are not too good at math either.

  In fact, U.S. students just established another all-time record low on an international exam…

  American students scored an all-time low in math on a major international exam, which provided the first comparison of global achievement since the pandemic radically changed education around the world.

  According to data released Tuesday, American 15-year-olds had a 13 point plunge out of 1000 on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) exam, which was given last year to 620,000 students in 81 countries worldwide.

  Yay for our public schools!

  We are hitting levels that our students have never hit before!

  But even though our students can’t read, write or do math very well, they just keep getting moved through the system year after year.

  As long as you show up, you are going to pass.

  We have become a “participation trophy society” where nobody is ever supposed to fail or feel bad about themselves.

  This is true even at a formerly elite institution such as Yale University.  At this point, nearly 80 percent of the grades that are given to undergraduates at Yale fall within “the A-range”…

  A new report recently revealed that Yale University is apparently handing about grades in the A-range like they are candy. An estimated 78.97% of all the grades given to undergraduates at the prestigious university fell within the A-range.

  The surprising development has left both students and faculty alarmed that high grades appear to have lost their value, according to the New York Times. Shelly Kagan, a philosophy professor, said: “When we act as though virtually everything that gets turned in is some kind of A — where A is supposedly meaning ‘excellent work’ — we are simply being dishonest to our students.”

  The grade report was put together by economics professor Ray Fair, who noted that the increase in grades started during the COVID-19 pandemic. And it has continued to rise since then, with students averaging a 3.70 GPA, up from 3.60 in 2013-2014. The details of the study were first shared with the Yale Daily News.

  How bad do you have to be in order to get a “B” at Yale?

  I would honestly like to know.

  Of course this isn’t just happening at Yale.

  All over the nation, “good grades” have essentially become meaningless at our major colleges and universities.

  Our kids have come to expect that “success” will just be handed to them, and as a result our system is pumping out millions of young adults that are just like this guy…

  On an episode of Caleb Hammer’s YouTube show Financial Audit, 41-year-old Brent of Auston, Texas, reveals he has no steady job, no savings and relies on his parents to pay rent. But he refuses to accept work that’s “beneath” him.

  “You’re being a baby,” Hammer told him after he confessed he turned down a job at a fast food restaurant. “Why will you not accept the jobs that you feel are slightly beneath you?”

  Our system of education is theoretically supposed to be preparing our kids to face the real world, and that just isn’t happening.

  The real world is not pleasant.

  It does not hand out participation trophies.

  In fact, there are times when the real world will pick you up and knock the breath out of you.

  But now we have vast hordes of young people that cannot deal with the real world, and they are completely and utterly unprepared to deal with the extremely uncertain future that our society is now facing.

  We don’t do our kids any favors by coddling them.

  They need to be challenged, and unfortunately our absolutely pathetic system of education is not challenging them at all.

  *  *  *

  Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 20:40

• Shocking Video Reveals Democrats Stuffed Nearly 3,000 Illegals Into Chicago Warehouse 
  Shocking Video Reveals Democrats Stuffed Nearly 3,000 Illegals Into Chicago Warehouse 

  A new video has surfaced on X showing the location of a warehouse in the Chicago metro area where nearly 3,000 illegal migrants have been packed into. This comes as the US southern border continues to spiral out of control as disastrous open border policies by the Biden administration have flooded major metro areas with hundreds of thousands of illegals, if not more. 

  “I honestly couldn’t believe it when I first heard it. 2700 illegals being housed in a warehouse in south Chicago (2241 S. Halsted St),” Ben Bergquam, a reporter for Real America’s Voice News, said in a post on X. 

  Bergquam continued, “People have no idea how bad this is going to get! The truth about the Democrat’s illegal invasion: drugs, prostitution, child trafficking, and modern-day slavery.” 

  I honestly couldn’t believe it when I first heard it. 2700 illegals being housed in a warehouse in south Chicago (2241 S. Halsted St). And this is only one of over 56 locations being used. People have no idea how bad this is going to get! The truth about the democrats illegal… pic.twitter.com/aO33dQNoDX

  — Ben Bergquam – Real America’s Voice (RAV-TV) News (@BenBergquam) December 11, 2023

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  In late September, local media CBS 2 reported that the 2241 S. Halsted St. warehouse would house upwards of 400 families with children, with plans to expand to 1,000. If Bergquam’s figures are correct, the warehouse is quickly running out of room. 

  Just last week, sources with the Customs and Border Protection confirmed to Fox News that Tuesday was the largest single-day illegal migrant encounter ever on the US-Mexico border. 

  The invasion continues… the Democrats are desperate to get as many illegals into the country before they lose power. pic.twitter.com/NSWW9WyPUC

  — @amuse (@amuse) December 7, 2023

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  According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, since President Biden took office, there have been more than 9 million illegal entries into the US on the southern border. 

  Meanwhile, other failing progressive metro areas, like New York City, are being overrun by illegal migrants. 

  I’m in NYC this weekend, and seeing the illegal migrant crisis in person is absolutely ALARMING.

  They’re literally given THOUSANDS of dollars by taxpayers to just run amok through the city.

  BIDEN IS DOING NOTHING AT ALL TO FIX THIS! pic.twitter.com/iQXkT0wyJY

  — Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 9, 2023

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  As NYC’s asylum seeker crisis worsens, the mercury dips and new shelter deadlines approach for the arrivals, advocates are worried migrants could face a long, cold winter.

  “This becomes even more of a life-and-death issue as the weather gets cold.”https://t.co/kpKR5G9y5N

  — New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) December 10, 2023

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  It’s not hard to recognize why Democrats are welcoming illegals with open arms ahead of the 2024 election cycle:

  

  And this. 

  NY Lawmaker Claims “Smoking Gun” In NYC Migrant Voter Fraud Scheme https://t.co/C6PvZt4ofy

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 4, 2023

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  While Democrats lose the black vote… 

  Democrats are focused on a new voting base coming over the southern border. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 20:20

• Elon Musk Says He Would Rather "Go To Prison" Than Restrict Free Speech On X
  Elon Musk Says He Would Rather “Go To Prison” Than Restrict Free Speech On X

  Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

  X owner Elon Musk declared during a Spaces discussion that he will never restrict free speech on the platform, no matter what entities pressure him to do so, and asserted that he would rather “go to prison” than allow it to happen.

  

  Musk’s comments came during a Spaces discussion, also featuring Alex Jones who Musk reinstated on the platform Sunday.

  Human Events editor Jack Posobiec asked Musk what would happen if the FBI or DHS “come to X and say ‘these posts need to be censored , this information needs to be censored.”

  Musk responded that the platform will remain “as transparent as possible,” adding “Basically we will see everything that is happening on the system and nothing will be hidden, that is the goal.”

  Musk added that “frankly if I think a government agency is breaking the law in their demands in the platform I would be prepared to go to prison personally if I think they are the ones breaking the law.”

  EXCLUSIVE: @elonmusk just confirmed to Human Events’ @JackPosobiec that he would be willing to go to jail rather than illegally censor users on X on behalf of the federal government. pic.twitter.com/VDZqks37nO

  — Human Events (@HumanEvents) December 10, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Elsewhere during the discussion, Musk explained that he reinstated Alex Jones because as a free speech absolutist he will not censor anyone on X if they have not broken the law.

  Here it is in its entirety:

  The full version of the 𝕏 Spaces https://t.co/yotiFLz51q

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  *  *  *

  Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 20:00

• What Strong Consumer: Hasbro Lays Off 20% Of Company On Plunging Toy Sales
  What Strong Consumer: Hasbro Lays Off 20% Of Company On Plunging Toy Sales

  There is the myth that the US consumer is strong (strip away inflation and you are at pre 2019-levels)…

  

  … that holiday spending was stellar (online was indeed a record, foot-traffic however which is the bulk of retail sales declined again), and that spending – despite continued economic headwinds and record prices – is strong.

  And then there is the reality that parents can no longer afford to buy presents for what is (or should be) most precious to them: their children. Take the news just out of the WSJ that toymaking giant Hasbro is laying off 1,100 workers, with CEO Chris Cocks citing weak toy sales and games that persisted into the critical holiday shopping period.

  

  The layoffs, which account for nearly 20% of Hasbro’s workforce, were noted in a Monday memo Cocks sent to employees, which was viewed by the Wall Street Journal.  The slump in sales came after sales hit “historic, pandemic-driven highs” melted into holiday season challenges which are expected to continue into next year.

  “The market headwinds we anticipated have proven to be stronger and more persistent than planned,” reads the memo. “While we’re confident in the future of Hasbro, the current environment demands that we do more.”

  The cuts will be completed in the next 18-24 months.

  Shares for Hasbro and Mattel fell 4% and 3%, respectively, in after-hours trading. Hasbro shares are down 20% this year, while Mattel stock is up 5.4%.

  The announcement, just two weeks before Christmas, comes as toy companies enter their busiest time of the year. About half of toy companies’ yearly sales come in the weeks leading up to the holiday, according to analysts, making the period a make-or-break stretch for manufacturers. -WSJ

  According to the report, Hasbro warned in October that they expected to see a 15% slump in sales this year, after previously forecasting a 3% to 5% decline. This came on the heels of posting its fourth-consecutive quarterly loss thanks to a 10% drop in Q3 sales. 

  Notable Hasbro brands include; Power Rangers, PJ Masks, GI Joe, Monopoly, Play-Doh, and Transformers.

  

  Outlier Barbie

  Mattel, maker of Barbie, had an understandably awesome Q3 thanks to the runaway success of the “Barbie” movie. The California-based toymaker which also owns the Hot Wheels brand and Polly Pocket toys expects 2023 sales to be flat vs. 2022, bucking forecasts for an industry-wide decline which has toymakers scrambling to manage bloated toy inventories and softer demand thanks to inflation.

  Sales of Barbie toys surged in the third quarter after the Barbie movie roped in over $1.4 billion worldwide at cinemas, according to Box Office Mojo. 

  Hasbro unveiled over a year ago that it planned to cut costs across its business to grow its profit. An earlier round of layoffs and the departure of operating chief Eric Nyman followed shortly after. -WSJ

  In August, Hasbro said it would sell its eOne film and entertainment wing to Lions Gate entertainment for around $500 million.

  The layoffs are expected to save around $100 million in annual costs, while the company said it expects to incur $40 million in severance-related expenses. Hasbro also has plans to vacate its Providence, RI office at the end of January 2025 when its lease is up. Employees from that location will be transferred to the company’s nearby Pawtucket RI headquarters.

  * * *

  Finally, going back to the topic of just how healthy is the US consumer, he are sharing the following snapshot from Goldman’s consumer specialist, Scott Feiler laying out what he views as a “slight sentiment change.”

  Quick Take:  Most of my conversations with consumer specialists from the last 6 weeks have been from those more optimistic on the group (top-line in November and strong margins), with that view having been rewarded. However, there were the hints at a slight change this week, with a lot of inbounds asking if the trade will run out of steam, with trends post Black Friday likely to ease again (WOOF hinted trends have resumed to pre-holiday levels after a brief surge), valuations now at more normal levels (after having been cheap) and a view the next couple weeks of data could show more of a temporary lull.

  Feiler notes that the bank’s Prime Brokerage echo this more guarded tone when approaching the market, with 5th straight week of selling. However, consumer discretionary flows do not back up the more guarded tone from my inbounds, with the sector leading the buying at GS for the 2nd straight week.
   
  A few quick points from the Goldman trader:

  Is the consumer still fine? It seems like the answer is yes, as we heard from many corporates at the GS Fins conference this week.  Some highlights about low-income underperformance, but the overall tone was quite strong.

  However, there does seem like there could be interest in taking chips off the table. Mixed commentary as we moved past the peak “optimistic” data points from the start of the holiday season and those who were out of consensus positive are finally beginning to question if the trade slows from here. Trading and PB flows no not reflect that though.

  While cyclicals continue to move to fresh positioning lows, consumer has seen a real uptick in buying (exhibit 1).

  Single stocks were net sold on the GS PB book for a 5th straight week, with single stock short flow increasing for a record 17th week in a row. While this was led by cyclicals, this was Energy and Fins stocks, not consumer discretionary, which saw the largest buying of any sub-sector for a 2nd straight week (Exhibit 2).

  

  More available to pro subs in the usual place.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 19:40

• Hunter Biden Files To Dismiss Gun Charges, Arguing "Vindictive Prosecution" In 1 Of 4 Motions
  Hunter Biden Files To Dismiss Gun Charges, Arguing “Vindictive Prosecution” In 1 Of 4 Motions

  Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times,

  Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, filed four separate motions on Monday to dismiss a case charging him with three gun-related crimes.

  

  Attorneys for Mr. Biden are arguing that the now-defunct plea bargain presented this summer nulled his gun charges in exchange for a guilty plea on tax misdemeanors, that special counsel David Weiss was “unlawfully appointed” to his position, and that the gun charges are unconstitutional. Lastly, he argued to dismiss on the basis of a “selective and vindictive prosecution.”

  The defense also filed a motion for a hearing for discovery, to argue some of these issues.

  In addition to the three gun crimes, Mr. Biden has been charged with nine tax crimes in California.

  Plea Deal

  Earlier on Monday, Abbe David Lowell, legal counsel for Mr. Biden, told MSNBC he believes the prosecution was politically motivated.

  “Are you asking whether he should have accountability for the mistakes he made while he was addicted? Sure he should. And if the U.S. attorney had followed through, and continued on what was supposed to happen in June, there would have been accountability,” Mr. Lowell said.

  He said Mr. Weiss should have accepted the plea deal.

  “Hunter was in court that day to have accountability and to show remorse and to take responsibility for his conduct,” Mr. Lowell said, accusing the prosecutors of backtracking “after seeing the criticism.”

  The plea bargain had been widely panned as a sweetheart deal by House Republicans, including several overseeing investigations into the Biden family’s financial dealings. During Mr. Biden’s initial arraignment in Delaware, the federal judge had questioned both parties about the terms, and the deal fell apart within minutes.

  Mr. Weiss has since pulled the case and deal, which Mr. Lowell argues is a violation.

  “In exchange for Mr. Biden giving up various rights—including his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent by agreeing to the Statement of Facts drafted by the prosecution and numerous restrictions on his liberty—the prosecution agreed to provide him immunity for any offense concerning his purchase of a firearm (among other offenses),” the first motion to dismiss reads.

  Mr. Weiss had argued that the deal was never formally entered into and no longer holds.

  On MSNBC, Mr. Lowell did not refute the tax evasion allegations, nor his client’s drug addiction during the period when he bought and owned a gun.

  Special Counsel Status

  Defense attorneys are also arguing that because Congress has not appropriated funds for Mr. Weiss as special counsel, he was “unlawfully appointed.”

  During U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement of Mr. Weiss’s special counsel status, he said Mr. Weiss would “also continue to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware.”

  This additionally violates Department of Justice (DOJ) regulations that require special counsels to be selected from outside the U.S. government, Mr. Biden’s attorneys argue, adding that “the Attorney General did not even select a Special Counsel from outside his own agency.”

  “Accordingly, the Indictment should be dismissed as without proper authority to have been sought and brought,” the motion reads.

  Mr. Weiss’s authority in the case has been under scrutiny, as whistleblowers told Congress earlier this year that the DOJ had slow-walked the investigation into Mr. Biden for political reasons, including not granting Mr. Weiss special counsel status.

  In Mr. Weiss’s own testimony before Congress, he confirmed that he did not have the authority needed to bring charges against Mr. Biden in California or Washington, D.C., only Delaware, but not that there had been an incident where he requested special counsel status and was refused.

  “Whatever caused Special Counsel Weiss to renege on the agreement he reached in this case and to then bring charges beyond the agreement, he filed this Indictment as an improperly appointed and funded Special Counsel,” the new motion reads.

  Unconstitutional?

  Mr. Lowell previously stated that he believed the gun case could be won on the merits, because a court has already found similar statutes unconstitutional.

  In the new motion to dismiss, defense attorneys argue the government is using “a rarely used statute,” one that prohibits “an unlawful user of a controlled substance” from owning a firearm, which was struck down earlier this year in the Fifth Circuit.

  Therefore, the charge is “baseless,” and moots another charge against Mr. Biden for saying he was not a drug user on a form he filled out when purchasing the gun.

  “Because persons protected by the Second Amendment can no longer be denied gun ownership due simply to past drug use—a practice inconsistent with this nation’s historical tradition on firearm regulation—any false statement by Mr. Biden concerning his status as having used a controlled substance no longer concerns ‘any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale’ of a firearm,” the motion reads.

  The decision referenced found barring drug users from being able to own a firearm a violation of the Second Amendment.

  Certain behaviors while intoxicated could be prohibited by laws, such as drunk driving and assault, but the framers of the Second Amendment were “well aware of the problems caused by intoxication” and left no historical precedent favoring the prohibition of gun ownership by those with “any history of ingesting intoxication substances,” like alcoholics.

  After the Fifth Circuit’s decision, another federal district court, the Third Circuit, issued a similar ruling, striking down a statute that prohibited anyone with a felony conviction from owning a firearm.

  Defense attorneys argue “there is no reason to believe” and no historical precedent to show that the Supreme Court will find the statute used to charge Mr. Biden “constitutional.”

  ‘Foil’ to Trump Investigation

  In a lengthy filing, defense attorneys accused the prosecution of bias against Mr. Biden.

  “This Indictment reflects a selective and vindictive prosecution of Mr. Biden and a breach of separation of powers,” the motion reads, arguing that the “evidence is on steroids.”

  They argued that Mr. Weiss “waited until after five years of a thorough and what was and must continue to be a very expensive” investigation that resulted in a plea deal reneged on the deal because he “drew a sharp rebuke from former President Trump (who appointed Mr. Weiss), extremist House Republicans, and the far-right media.”

  “They made it clear that they wanted Mr. Weiss to keep this litigation alive through the presidential election (regardless of merit) and for him to bring more serious charges as a foil for the investigations and prosecutions of former President Trump,” the motion reads.

  Attorneys for Mr. Biden have been sticking to the defense that the past plea bargain grants him immunity that still stands, and efforts to dismiss that are politically motivated.

  The facts did not change, they argued, only the political circumstances. Mr. Biden was previously charged with two misdemeanors, and is now facing 12 counts, misdemeanors and felonies both.

  The defense has also called for a hearing during which they plan to present evidence that the prosecution is politically motivated.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 19:20

• "We're Raising A Generation Of Complete F**king Pu$$ies" – Kid Rock & Carlson Crush Cancel Culture & Corporate America's Political Correctness
  “We’re Raising A Generation Of Complete F**king Pu$$ies” – Kid Rock & Carlson Crush Cancel Culture & Corporate America’s Political Correctness

  Kid Rock has morphed over the past few years from a famous musician to a cultural icon, unapologetically pro-America (‘Fuck yeah!’) and pro-Trump and that makes him a fascinating character to sit down with Tucker Carlson to discuss everything from cancel culture to his friendship with former President Trump and his hopes for a better America.

  

  Tucker Carlson starts by mentioning Kid Rock’s infamous “fuck Bud Light and fuck Anheuser Busch” video where he executes cases of beer with a Carbine in response to the anti-‘bro’, transgender marketing plan, bringing up the fact this helped to force the beer-maker to effectively apologize, sign a $100 million deal with the UFC and say ‘we’re sorry, we will get better’.

  “That seems like a win to me,” says Carlson. “I think it could be,” replies Kid Rock, “they deserved a black eye, they got one, they made a mistake.”

  “I know who my consumer is… I was doing a little marketing to my folks,” he adds.

  “That was spot on for me, but also a fun excuse to get my machine gun out and have some fun but also to make a statement like hey a lot of us aren’t cool with this.”

  Kid Rock them delves deeper into what went on at Anheuser Busch noting that “this kind of started I think I thought about is they moved part of their Corporate Offices from St Louis to New York City.”

  “… then they start hiring these Ivy League Progressive you know people to work for him who don’t know shitabout working-class people or Middle America in this country.”

  But Kid Rock wants them to be redeemed, suggesting later in the conversation a blue hat: “Make Bud Light Great Again”.

  “I think they got the message like hopefully other companies get it too…

  …but at the end of the day I don’t think the punishment that they’ve been getting at this point fits the crime..

  …”it’s like I would like to see people get us back on board and become bigger because that’s the America I want to live in.”

  The conversation then pivots to Donald Trump with whom Kid Rock says he has a close relationship and mutual understanding. Recounting a story of betting on the outcome of a UFC fight together, Kid Rock says:

  “I’ve never seen anybody wants to win for this country like that guy I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it in our lifetime to me is the greatest president we’ve had.”

  Carlson asked about Trump’s state of mind amid the constant lawfare and media abuse.

  “Is he pissed off, sure,” Kid Rock says, slamming the cases against him, especially the New York (Mar-a-Lago valuation) case which he calls “a freaking joke… there’s no crime there.. anyone who can’t see they are just fucking with him is just blind.”

  The discussion shifts naturally to broader cultural issues, with Kid Rock lambasting cancel culture and political correctness. He expresses frustration with the current societal climate, advocating for more open and honest communication:

  “Whatever happened to Sticks and Stones… yeah, you know everyone’s like: he teased me, I’m going to cancel you, and sue you, and I’m going to tell on you…” Kid Rock exclaims, pardoning his french with his host, “we’re raising a generation of fucking pussies.”

  But this can’t go on forever, Carlson says inquisitively. Kid Rock replies with some optimism:

  “naah, the pendulum always swings back.”

  The discussion concludes by touching on his upcoming tour and personal life, including his band’s diversity and his approach to various social issues.

  “We have white people, Hillbillies, we have black people, we have gay people, we got it all,” adding that “we all love each other and always have we accept that we’re all different and we’re all just cool.“

  Carlson asked Kid Rock for advice he would give young people today:

  “well number one work your ass off; and be good at what you do, be the best at it.. and that takes a lot of time… surround yourself with good people don’t hang out with Knuckleheads.”

  A good lesson for all of us.

  Watch the full interview below:

  Ep. 48 The Tucker Carlson Encounter: Kid Rock pic.twitter.com/g9wLg1zlvu

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 11, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 19:00

• Universities Better Get Ahead Of Surging Anti-Woke Backlash…
  Universities Better Get Ahead Of Surging Anti-Woke Backlash…

  Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

  Universities better get ahead of surging anti-woke backlash. The University of Illinois should go first.

  The dam has finally burst.

  

  Most Americans of every political stripe gagged last week seeing three leading university presidents’ Congressional testimony on anti-semitism. After years of punishment and censorship of centrist and conservative viewpoints at their schools and others across America, none of the three could say that calls for genocide against Jews violated their schools’ codes of conduct.

  America saw through the hypocrisy — and many saw its root cause as well, which is the diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy dominating most schools. The left’s Fareed Zakaria, writing at CNN, was among them, putting it this way:

  People sense the transformation…. Having coddled so many student groups for so long, university administrators found themselves squirming…. What we saw in the House hearing this week was the inevitable result of decades of the politicization of universities. Out of this culture of diversity has grown the collection of ideas and practices that we have all now heard of — safe spaces, trigger warnings, and micro aggressions…. America’s top colleges are no longer seen as bastions of excellence but as partisan outfits, which means they will keep getting buffeted by these political storms as they emerge. 

  Universities face a reckoning. The University of Pennsylvania’s president already lost her job over it. Others likely will follow. The University of Wisconsin perhaps figured this out. On Friday, it announced a deal with critics that would freeze hiring for diversity positions through the end of 2026 and shift at least 43 diversity positions to focus on “student success.” The system also would eliminate any statements supporting diversity on student applications. However, the Board of Regents rejected the deal on Saturday.

  Perhaps most impactful, donors have revolted, and if anything gets the attention of university bureaucrats it’s money.

  It’s time for universities to do what’s right, which happens also happens to be in their own interest.

  Among Illinois schools, one maintains a policy that most conspicuously enforces the culture of DEI oppression Zakaria described. That’s the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with its mandatory DEI loyalty policy for faculty. It’s called Communication 9 and was finalized earlier this year. It’s summarized here and detailed here. Compliance is “optional” currently but becomes mandatory in two years.

  It’s particularly egregious because it goes further than demanding agreement with DEI principles: It mandates DEI work and requires annual statements demonstrating that work. Going forward evaluations, promotions and tenure decisions must be based in part on the adequacy of the DEI work performed, Communication 9 says. It doesn’t matter what field one is in; all faculty are bound by it.

  “Engage in DEI activism, or else.” That’s how The College Fix put it in their headline when Communication 9 was in draft last year.

  The policy even mandates use of woke language in the required personal DEI statements:

  “Candidates should be sensitive about the use of language that perpetuate prejudices and words that apply external value judgments that minimize the experiences, strengths, and contributions of individuals and/or groups historically marginalized and/or underrepresented in academia.”

  “It is important that candidates avoid statements that overgeneralize or make sweeping claims about a group of people,” says the policy.

  (It’s safe to assume, however, that wouldn’t apply to claims like “Whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity,” which we hear from DEI champions like Ingram X. Kendi.)

  Communication 9 begs for litigation as a violation of the First Amendment, as we wrote when it was in draft. It’s a classic example of unconstitutional “forced speech.” Two First Amendment experts we spoke to compared it to unconstitutional loyalty oaths required during the years of McCarthyism.

  Ending Communication 9 would also help cut some of the DEI administrative bloat that plagues U of I, which is among the worst on that count. It ranks seventh highest in the nation with 71 DEI staff, according to a Heritage Foundation study we reported on last year.

  “A review of salary data shows that the universities of Michigan, Maryland, Virginia and Illinois, plus Virginia Tech, boast some of the highest-paid DEI staffers at public universities,” said a Fox News column on that study.

  “These institutions’ top diversity employees earn salaries ranging from $329,000 to $430,000 – vastly eclipsing the average pay for the schools’ full-time tenured professors.” Sean C. Garrick, vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Illinois, earned nearly $330,000 annually, salary disclosures showed, according to the Fox column. But the average Illinois full-time professor salary hovers only around $152,000, Fox said.

  Many other universities require DEI statements and have bloated DEI staffs like UIUC on which they, too, should backtrack. But UIUC seems among the worst with its Communication 9, and it should lead.

  UIUC is a superb school in most other ways and an exceptionally valuable research institution. It, along with some of our other universities, are priceless Illinois assets.

  They better act before they face the wrath of unhappy donors and Americans fed up with DEI excess.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 18:40

• Watch Live: Matt Taibbi Fact-Checks Newsguard, Talks Burisma, Virality Project, And "Trump-Vermin" Switcheroo
  Watch Live: Matt Taibbi Fact-Checks Newsguard, Talks Burisma, Virality Project, And “Trump-Vermin” Switcheroo

  Matt Taibbi of Racket News has a new format he’s experimenting with top “get a lot of news out faster” with a new livestreamed format.

  

  Tonight, the award-winning journalist will introduce a new feature dubbed “Fact-Checking Newsguard,” and also plans to discuss various goings-on withe the censorious Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) / Virality Project, Burisma, and the “Trump-Vermin switcheroo.”

  Watch below:

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 18:20

• 1-In-5 Young Americans Say Holocaust Was A Myth, Twice As Many Democrats As Republicans
  1-In-5 Young Americans Say Holocaust Was A Myth, Twice As Many Democrats As Republicans

  A new poll sheds light on why so many college-aged Americans aren’t worried about expressing antisemitism: Twenty percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 believe the Holocaust is a myth.

  

  Specifically, as The College Fix reports, the YouGov/The Economist poll shows eight percent of that age group “strongly agrees” that the World War II Nazi  Jewish genocide program is bogus, while 12 percent “tend to agree.”

  Thirty percent neither agreed nor disagreed the Holocaust happened, The Hill reports.

  In addition, twenty-three percent said the Holocaust “has been exaggerated,” and 28 percent believe Jews “wield too much power” in the U.S.

  More blacks and Hispanics than whites agreed with the three statements, and the Holocaust “myth” results held steady across all education levels.

  In comparison, no Americans over age 65 said the Holocaust is a myth, only two percent “tend to agree” it’s exaggerated, and six percent believe Jews have too much power.

  

  “Why do some young Americans embrace such views?” The Economist asks.

  “Social media might play a role.”

  According to a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Centre, Americans under 30 are about as likely to trust information on social media as they are to trust national news organisations.

  More recently Pew found that 32% of those aged 18-29 get their news from TikTok. Social-media sites are rife with conspiracy theories, and research has found strong associations between rates of social-media use and beliefs in such theories. In one recent survey by Generation Lab, a data-intelligence company, young adults who used TikTok were more likely to hold antisemitic beliefs.

  Yesterday, senators introduced a bill to reauthorize federal funding for the Never Again [Holocaust] Education Act. The House put forth its own bill last month.

  Nevada Senator Jacky Rosen (D) said:

  “Failing to educate students about the gravity and scope of the Holocaust is a disservice to the memory of its victims and to our duty to prevent such atrocities in the future.”

  Other results from the poll (18-29 year-olds vs. those age 65+):

  • 36 vs. 13 percent believe “Israel exploits Holocaust victimhood for its own purposes.”

  • 33 vs. six percent say “people should boycott Israeli goods and products.”

  • 32 vs. 13 percent believe “Israel is an apartheid state.”

  • 40 vs. 18 percent say “Israel is deliberately trying to wipe out the Palestinian population.”

  • 51 vs. 88 percent believe “Israel has the right to exist.”

  Democrats are leading the charge when it comes to believing the Holocaust is a myth, a new survey by YouGov showed.

  Of those who answered the YouGov survey, 10% of Democrats believe the Holocaust is a myth. Conversely, 6% of Republicans also believe the Holocaust is a myth. 

  “Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to say hate crimes against Black, Muslim, and Arab people in the U.S. are serious problems. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say hate crimes against Christians and white people are serious,” Kathy Frankovic of YouGov wrote.

  [YouGov Survey] Top groups that believe the Holocaust didn’t happen:

  -Democrats: 10% (vs 5% of Republicans)
  -Black people: 13% (vs 5% white people)
  -City residents: 14% (vs 3% rural people)
  -Young people: 20% (vs 0% of age 65+)

  Jewish leftists are gonna have a really hard time… pic.twitter.com/P1uq0VHehD

  — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 8, 2023

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  Which may help explains why despite antisemitic attacks having risen dramatically across the US since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, more than 100 House Democrats refused Thursday to vote on a resolution condemning antisemitism.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 18:00

• David Stockman On Washington's Entrenched War Machine
  David Stockman On Washington’s Entrenched War Machine

  Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

  After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the death of the Soviet Union was confirmed two years later as Boris Yeltsin courageously stood down the Red Army tanks in front of Moscow’s White House, a dark era in human history came to an abrupt end.

  

  The world had descended into a “77-Years War”. It had incepted with the mobilization of the armies of old Europe in August 1914. If you want to count bodies, 150 million were killed by all the depredations that germinated in the Great War, its foolish aftermath at Versailles, and the march of history into World War II and the Cold War that followed inexorably thereupon.

  Upwards of 8% of the human race was wiped out during that span. The toll encompassed the madness of trench warfare during 1914-1918; the murderous regimes of Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism that rose from the ashes of the Great War and the follies of Versailles; and then the carnage of WWII and all the lesser (unnecessary) wars and invasions of the Cold War including Korea and Vietnam.

  At the end of the Cold War, therefore, the last embers of the fiery madness that had incepted with the guns of August 1914 had finally burned out. Peace was at hand. Yet 32 years later there is still no peace because Imperial Washington confounds it.

  The proof is plain as day. The unnecessary invasions and occupations of Iraq, the Washington-instigated shambles of Syria, the wanton destruction of Yemen, the regime change-cum barbarism that NATO inflicted upon Libya, the brutal sanctions and covert military war on Iran, the current unspeakable catastrophe financed by Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and countless more lessor depredations, tell you all you need to know.

  All of these misadventures bespeak the fact that the War Party is entrenched in the nation’s capital, where it is dedicated to economic interests and ideological perversions that guarantee perpetual war. These forces ensure endless waste on armaments; they cause the inestimable death and human suffering that stems from 21st-century high-tech warfare; and they inherently generate terrorist blow-back from those upon whom the War Party inflicts its violent hegemony.

  Worse still, Washington’s great war machine and teeming national security industry is its own agent of self-perpetuation. When it is not invading, occupying and regime changing, its vast apparatus of internal policy bureaus and outside contractors, lobbies, think tanks and NGOs is busy generating reasons for new imperial ventures.

  So there was a virulent threat to peace still lurking on the Potomac after the 77-Years War ended. The great general and President, Dwight Eisenhower, had called it the “military-industrial-congressional complex” in the draft of his farewell address. But that memorable phrase had been abbreviated by his speechwriters, who deleted the word “congressional” in a gesture of comity to the legislative branch.

  So restore Ike’s deleted reference to the pork barrels and Sunday-afternoon warriors of Capitol Hill and toss in the legions of Beltway busybodies who constituted the civilian branches of the Cold War Armada (CIA, State, AID, NED and the rest) and the circle would have been complete. It constituted the most awesome machine of warfare and imperial hegemony since the Roman legions bestrode most of the civilized world.

  In a word, the real threat to peace circa 1991 was that the American Imperium would not go away quietly into the good night.

  In fact, during the past 31 years Imperial Washington has lost all memory that peace was ever possible at the end of the Cold War. Today it is as feckless, misguided and bloodthirsty as were Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and London in August 1914.

  A few months after that horrendous slaughter had been unleashed 109 years ago, however, soldiers along the western front broke into spontaneous truces of Christmas celebration, song and even exchange of gifts. For a brief moment they wondered why they were juxtaposed in lethal combat along the jaws of hell.

  As Will Griggs once described it,

  A sudden cold snap had left the battlefield frozen, which was actually a relief for troops wallowing in sodden mire. Along the Front, troops extracted themselves from their trenches and dugouts, approaching each other warily, and then eagerly, across No Man’s Land. Greetings and handshakes were exchanged, as were gifts scavenged from care packages sent from home. German souvenirs that ordinarily would have been obtained only through bloodshed – such as spiked pickelhaube helmets, or Gott mit u9s belt buckles – were bartered for similar British trinkets. Carols were sung in German, English, and French. A few photographs were taken of British and German officers standing alongside each other, unarmed, in No Man’s Land.

  

  The truth is, there was no good reason for the Great War. The world had stumbled into war based on false narratives and the institutional imperatives of military mobilization plans, alliances and treaties arrayed into a doomsday machine and petty short-term diplomatic maneuvers and political calculus. Yet it took more than three-quarters of a century for all the consequential impacts and evils to be purged from the life of the planet.

  The peace that was lost last time has not been regained this time, however. And for the same reasons.

  *  *  *

  The amount of money the US government spends on foreign aid, wars, the so-called intelligence community, and other aspects of foreign policy is enormous and ever-growing. It’s an established trend in motion that is accelerating, and now approaching a breaking point. It could cause the most significant disaster since the 1930s. Most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video with all the details. Click here to watch it now.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 17:40

• Tucker Carlson Launches Streaming Subscription Service
  Tucker Carlson Launches Streaming Subscription Service

  Tucker Carlson has launched a new streaming service, the Tucker Carlson Network, which costs $9 per month (with a $6/month introductory price to become a ‘founding member’).

  

  The former Fox News host’s network features interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, commentary and early access to tickets for future live events.

  “We’ve been working in secret and producing an awful lot of material for months now. We’re launching a brand-new thing very soon,” Carlson said in a Saturday post on X.

  Join us. https://t.co/sLkXnGKCFd pic.twitter.com/G8Fv2VVAlo

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 9, 2023

  On Monday, Carlson’s network posted a preview of what’s to come:

  Join us. https://t.co/sLkXnGKCFd pic.twitter.com/G8Fv2VVAlo

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 9, 2023

  pic.twitter.com/3gnkCwCmqV

  — Simon Ateba (@simonateba) December 11, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  His social media person is already off to a good start:

  pic.twitter.com/SIoDiXLGm3

  — Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) December 11, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsCarlson, who parted ways with Fox in April, has been releasing interviews on X, which have included Donald Trump, Victor Orban, Javier Milei, Ice Cube, Devon Archer, Andrew Tate, Alex Jones, and many more. And we should note, these interviews often pull better numbers than Fox News‘ primetime lineup, while the losers at Fox attempt to badger presidential candidates into shilling for more Ukraine funds.

  Join the Tucker Carlson Network here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 17:20

• It's Dark, But Breadth Says It's Not Quite Dawn For China Stocks
  It’s Dark, But Breadth Says It’s Not Quite Dawn For China Stocks

  Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

  After another dismal set of China inflation data, sentiment for Chinese stocks feels like it can’t get much worse.

  That can be a sign the market will soon bottom, but breadth is not yet at the extreme capitulatory levels that would give a much higher confidence to this view. Nevertheless, the risk-reward for some exposure to China stocks remains attractive.

  I had thought the bottom in China stock was perhaps in last month, but the economic data has continued to be dreadful. Over the weekend, November’s CPI came in at -0.5% and PPI at -3%, both lower than the previous month.

  Confidence would be higher that a tradeable bottom is near if breadth was more extreme. However, the net number of stocks in the CSI 300 index making new 52-week lows has been more stretched at previous bottoms in the index. Similarly for the number of stocks with an RSI of less than 30 and the percentage of stocks trading below their 200-day moving averages.

  Furthermore, we haven’t yet seen a spike in volume which often occurs at capitulatory junctures.

  

  China’s decision to have one of the longest and most stringent lockdowns while giving its household sector scant support (unlike many DM countries) has led to the country being the only one to have experienced outright deflation since 2020, when every other main country has experienced inflation, often the highest for decades.

  

  A weak real-estate sector and the severe dent to confidence from lockdowns has led to a spend-averse household sector.

  The fall in CPI is being driven by a decline in food and consumer goods. Food is estimated to be about a third of the CPI basket, with goods (including food) accounting for just under two thirds of the total.

  Global food prices have started to rise again, so this may soon provide support to China’s CPI.

  

  With so much bad news already in the price, there is good risk-reward for beginning to accumulate China stocks, but breadth data suggests we are perhaps not quite yet at the point of “revulsion,” forcing the last speculative longs out, and clearing the way for a sustainable rally.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/11/2023 – 17:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Trauma Nation
  Trauma Nation

  Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

  We now are all suffering from acute trauma, in a trauma nation.

  

  I would venture to say in a trauma world, but I am not certain of conditions in countries such as India, Indonesia, much of the Middle East or the like. I do think the trauma I am speaking of is present in most of Europe, the UK, North America, Israel, Australia and probably in many other places. Anywhere the vaccine rollout occurred, as well as anywhere that experienced lockdowns, social distancing, school closures, etc. That leaves few places trauma-free.

  What is trauma?

  The Oxford Dictionary defines it as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. If this is accurate then my only response is “duh”—of course we have all been traumatized. There is no doubt that we have all experienced a deeply distressing and disturbing experience. Many experiences, in fact, over many, many years.

  But have we all experienced these traumas?

  And have all of us experienced the same number of traumatic events, and have we all responded the same way to them? No, of course not. We are all individual human beings, and the traumas are also varied, and each has a unique impact. Let me present this idea in rather broad strokes. First, I will divide us all into two groups that each have roughly similar ideas and beliefs. You know where I am going with this, so without further ado, here they are: Sheep and Shrews. (Click here if you are not familiar with my sheep/shrew terminology.)

  I do not think I need to spend time defining these two groups. There are of course outliers in addition to the main group—those who are quasi-sheep, those who are quasi-shrews, and those who really don’t fit into either group. But just for simplicity’s sake let’s say there are only two groups—and you and I belong in one or the other.

  I will start with these two distinctions in order to say that each of these groups experience the trauma that has come to all of us in different ways.

  The Sheep for the most part experience this trauma internally. They don’t really know what is happening. They may say, “oh my, Covid was horrible, the pandemic really affected me.” But they are only describing the fake version of the crises—the ridiculous infection rate, the ubiquitous fear of death, the ventilators, the hospitals, the lockdowns, the fake drugs, the social distancing, the masks. Vaccines coming on the scene were not part of the sheep trauma, they were actually the savior that descended from heaven to save the hoards from sure destruction. Now, for sheep, the trauma is largely over—the external fake one at least. The internal one is really just starting, but they still don’t know it.

  Day after day I see psychotherapy clients who are sheep that describe depression, anxiety, listlessness, lethargy, meaninglessness, purposelessness, sadness, feeling lost, confused, on and on. Now, I have to admit, I cannot be sure if this is terribly unusual. That is typically the common complaints that come into my office, even before the Covid debacle. But it does seem to have a different quality to it. There is more of a glassy-eyed-ness to it all. Is this due to the toxins in the vaccine? Is it due to a collapsing economy, a collapsing culture, or a collapse of humanity? Is it due to the radical shift that has come in the previous three years, like ubiquitous masks, working at home, etc. “There’s something happening here . . . But what it is ain’t exactly clear . . .” (Remember that song? The next line is: There’s a man with a gun over there . . . Telling me I got to beware . . .” Oh my.)

  This is sheep trauma. And sheep trauma will get worse and worse until it works its way to the surface, like a splinter that finally, after much invisible pain, works its way out. But unlike a splinter, when this trauma comes out it isn’t going to be easy to just wipe it away. It will then become conscious, like the Shrew trauma, which is mostly conscious. Is it better for the trauma to be conscious? In some ways it is, but in many ways trauma becoming conscious can be devastating.

  So, on to the next group—the Shrews. We’ve got it bad folks. As if I even have to tell you that. And don’t kid yourself, this is bonafide trauma, with a capital “T”, right here in River City.

  I would add to Oxford’s minimalist definition of trauma, “helplessness.” It is a hallmark of serious trauma—there isn’t much you can do about it as it digs its heels in, deeper and deeper.

  Our world is falling apart. Sure, it has always been tenuous. But now, it is literally falling into the ashes. Up is down, down is up, it is truly Superman’s Bizarro World. Everywhere we turn there is trauma, we’ve lost most of our friends—friends we may have had for decades. Gone. And usually gone in an ugly way. We have lost family. Same deal. Gone. We may even live in a house divided. Sheep and shrew, living together. If this is the case, you may even doubt your own sanity at times—possibly a lot of the time.

  Cognitive dissonance is always a concern and pops up around every corner. People you used to trust, at least maybe a little bit, are suddenly suspicious, or downright frightening. They say one thing, you know another. Nothing seems to match up. Nearly every source of information you used to rely on is now suspect. This at first may seem like a game. It also can seem, at times, to be a relief. Now you don’t have to trust anything. You no longer have the burden of trying to figure out what to trust and what not to trust—now you don’t trust anything at all if it is in the mainstream. This means things as simple as television and magazine advertising, billboards, the labels on cereal boxes, the headlines in newspapers, the smiling woman at Costco giving out free samples. Everything gets a cocked head response from you, like what your dog does when it hears a strange sound.

  I was walking through a local farmer’s market one of these past Saturdays. It was a nice sunny, crisp, fall day. There was a cool breeze, and people seemed to be happy and having a good time. Then I spotted a family of four coming toward me. A mom and dad, and two little girls, about the ages of 5 and 7. All in masks. The whole moment collapsed for me. No longer did I feel like it was a nice day, or that I was strolling along with fellow neighbors, or even fellow human beings. A feeling of threat came over me, and anger began to creep up my spine. I no longer understand these people, I no longer feel safe amongst them. They now actually present a danger to me. I am traumatized.

  OK, fine, so what? Well, this gets under your skin day in and day out. We keep thinking we are going to wake up from this nightmare but like Ground Hog Day, it just goes on and on. Nothing is relieved. When you hear of a won court case then in the same moment you hear of a shrew arrest. When you see a nice commercial about happy smiling people and giggling infants, within the same minute you will see beheaded babies in Gaza. Neither one of these images is trustworthy, nothing is trustworthy. The whole world has gone to hell.

  That is trauma.

  What makes it worse is our isolation.

  Shrews are definitely not the majority group. And even though we hear there are indeed many of us, it doesn’t really seem that way, in reality. Where are all of the shrews? They are around, of course, but we don’t yet have regular, and local, meeting places where we can gather and talk, and argue, and share, and love each other. We need to start creating this for ourselves. We are not only isolated as humans, but we are isolated because we have no connection with anything out there that isn’t pure SHEEP. Everything we see, hear, and read, is SHEEP. The world accommodates sheep, like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers pod world—you can’t tell who or what is ours.

  It all revolves around the vaccinated, the sheep, the followers, the blind. We are left behind. We live in a trauma nation.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 23:30

• USA Is Not #1! These Are The Top-Performing Countries For Education
  USA Is Not #1! These Are The Top-Performing Countries For Education

  Singapore has topped the latest world education ranking informally known as PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment, run by the OECD. The city-state’s pupils excelled in the core areas of math, science and reading, securing a high score of 560 points with students ahead of their peers on average by almost three to five years. As the following chart shows, several other countries and places in Asia feature high on the list, with Macau, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea rounding off the top 5.

  Students in 81 countries and economies completed a series of tests to gauge and compare national averages in education in 2022.

  Usually carried out every three years, these results have been hotly anticipated, since there was a delay in testing due to the Covid pandemic.

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, Estonia scored the highest of any European nation with a score of 516, showing particular excellency in science (526), while Ireland placed in rank nine, with students doing especially well in the reading exam (516).

  Canada received the highest marks for North America, as the United States trailed behind in rank 18 with an overall score of 489.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  European nations have lagged behind in this series of tests.

  OECD researchers say that while the shutdowns throughout the pandemic are one factor, this decline is also due to longer-term, systemic issues such as a lack of support from teachers and resources.

  Worldwide, the PISA results showed an average decline of 15 points in math since the 2018 tests.

  This equates to about three-quarters of a school year of learning. At the same time, reading dropped by the equivalent of half a year and science remained around the same.

  The lowest scoring countries and economies were the Philippines (353), Uzbekistan (352), Kosovo (351), Dominican Republic (350) and Cambodia (337).

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 23:00

• FDA System Unable To Identify Risk Of Heart Inflammation After COVID-19 Vaccination: Agency
  FDA System Unable To Identify Risk Of Heart Inflammation After COVID-19 Vaccination: Agency

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration could not provide information on a confirmed side effect of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, according to a newly disclosed document.

  

  FDA staffers said in the document, from 2021, that one of the agency’s top surveillance systems was unable to provide details on heart inflammation after Pfizer vaccination.

  The FDA’s Sentinel program was described in the document as “NOT sufficient to identify the outcomes of myocarditis and pericarditis due to reasons identified.” Pericarditis is inflammation of the pericardium, or the membrane around the heart.

  There weren’t enough people in the program to assess the risk for 12- to 30-year-olds, the population discovered to be most at-risk from post-vaccination myocarditis, or heart inflammation, FDA staffers said. Assessing whether people who suffered from the condition had recovered, and following them long-term, was also not feasible because the program’s data sources “do not have sufficient longitudinal data on patients,” they said.

  Studying subclinical myocarditis, or heart inflammation without clinical symptoms, was also not able to be done with the data “because of the absence of a definition of subclinical myocarditis and unknown background incidence of troponin abnormalities,” the document stated.

  Months before the document was prepared, U.S. authorities had learned of a large number of myocarditis cases following Pfizer vaccination in Israel, a fact they hid from Americans. The U.S. military also recorded cases just weeks after the vaccines were rolled out in late 2020. And additional cases were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is managed by the FDA and another agency.

  “It is shameful that the Sentinel Program electronic database that FDA officials use to monitor reported vaccine side effects appears to have failed to adequately assess the magnitude of risk of heart inflammation (myocarditis and pericarditis) in children and adults aged 12 to 30 that occurred after receipt of Pfizer COVID shots. It also looks like heart inflammation cases were not appropriately followed up to find out how many people suffered permanent heart damage,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times in an email.

  The FDA declined to comment.

  The document also said that information on post-vaccination myocarditis, pericarditis, and subclinical myocarditis would be coming from studies that Pfizer was conducting, in lieu of FDA surveillance.

  Several of those studies have been completed, but the FDA and Pfizer are refusing to release the results to the public. The FDA and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have confirmed the Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax vaccines cause myocarditis and pericarditis. Outside research has found myocarditis and pericarditis happen primarily in young males, while a recent study indicated subclinical myocarditis is more prevalent than previously thought.

  The document was sent to the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT), which sued the FDA after it refused to release documents relating to its authorization of Pfizer’s vaccine. It was part of the final tranche from the FDA, which the agency was required to produce by a federal court.

  Monitoring Systems

  The CDC and the FDA have repeatedly claimed the COVID-19 vaccines are closely monitored. The CDC on its website, for instance, says that the vaccines were subject to “the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history.”

  But the failure of Sentinel to provide data on a known risk is just one piece of data that undercuts that claim, according to Elizabeth Brehm, a partner at Siri & Glimstad LLP, which represents PHMPT.

  VAERS, for instance, is repeatedly described by officials as being unable to provide vaccines cause any conditions. V-safe, another surveillance system, “doesn’t directly monitor specific adverse events,” Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a top CDC vaccine safety official, wrote in one email that has been made public. The Vaccine Safety Datalink, run by the CDC, is a closed system, which outside researchers cannot access without approval. A fourth system only has CDC officials and researchers funded by the agency consulting on individual cases. They often encourage patients to receive additional vaccines even if they have experienced an adverse event.

  “Without a diagnosis, these types of consultations can be very unfulfilling for the provider and patient; the assessment of causality is typically ‘indeterminate’ as to whether a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event,” a CDC official wrote in another email about that system.

  “When you really look at the ‘system’ collectively and what they say about it themselves, the question remains: what is an adequate safety surveillance system used by our authorities that provides reliable data to FDA and CDC concerning vaccines?” Ms. Brehm told The Epoch Times via email.

  The CDC has said government systems have been useful, including helping detect the problem of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome after Johnson & Johnson vaccination and providing information on myocarditis after Pfizer and Moderna vaccination.

  Additional documents are still forthcoming in a separate legal case brought against the FDA over documents relating to its authorization of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 22:30

• Hong Kong Slump Sparks Wave Of Brokerage Closures
  Hong Kong Slump Sparks Wave Of Brokerage Closures

  By John Cheng, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

  A historic slump in Hong Kong’s $4.6 trillion stock market is rippling through the city’s financial industry.

  Thirty local brokerages have closed down this year, after a record 49 shut up shop in 2022, according to Hong Kong stock exchange data. That comes as Wall Street banks lay off dealmakers due to a plunge in initial public offerings.

  The Hang Seng Index is heading for a fourth year of declines, the longest losing streak in the gauge’s history, and touched a one-year low last week. Average daily turnover is down 14% compared with the five-year average and the IPO market having its worst year since 2001.

  The prolonged slump and the job losses are adding to questions about the future of the city’s position as Asia’s top international finance center in the wake of Hong Kong’s extreme pandemic curbs and Beijing’s imposition of national security legislation.

  “This wave of shutdowns and layoffs at brokerages is the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Edmond Hui, chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based brokerage Bright Smart Securities. “The key lies in improving the liquidity of the market. Now everyone is struggling. I simply don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.”

  

  Small-and medium-sized brokerages, whose revenue mainly comes from trading commissions and margin businesses, are bearing the brunt of the market downturn. According to a survey of local brokers by the Hong Kong Securities Association earlier this year, more than 72% suffered losses last year, with at least a quarter planning to scale down their operations this year.

  Hong Kong stocks have the widest bid-ask spreads — the price difference between offers to buy and sell stocks — in Asia Pacific markets, said Tony Cheung, an execution consulting specialist at Instinet. That’s increased trading costs for institutional investors, he added.

  Despite analyst projections at the start of the year that Chinese shares would see a recovery after the country ended its Covid Zero restrictions, investor sentiment turned persistently downbeat. A struggling economy, weak consumption, strained US-China ties and a property crisis sent foreign funds fleeing.

  The lack of liquidity shows “institutional interest in Hong Kong and China is declining to a new low,” said Qi Wang, UOB Kay Hian chief investment officer in wealth management. “Global investors have divested a big chunk of their Hong Kong holdings in the last two years. Many now consider China ‘irrelevant’ from a global portfolio view.”

  

  A drought in deals is adding to the sense of a market in trouble. This year is poised to be the worst for Hong Kong debuts since 2001, just after the dotcom bubble burst, with $5.1 billion of IPOs. That’s a fraction of the $52 billion raised three years ago, and down 84% from the past 10-year average of $31 billion.

  Just last month, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. shocked investors by terminating plans to spin off and list its $11 billion cloud business. The company, which cited US restrictions on chip sales to China for the reversal, said it’s also suspending a listing for the popular grocery business Freshippo.

  Banks are downsizing as a result. In the past year, Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley have conducted multiple rounds of layoffs in Hong Kong. UBS Group AG cut about two dozen investment bankers in Asia, mainly China-focused roles based in Hong Kong and including several managing directors, Bloomberg News reported in October.

  “This hiring market in 2023 is probably the toughest hiring market I would say since the global financial crisis,” said John Mullally, a Hong Kong-based managing director at recruiting firm Robert Walters, referring to the local financial services industry in general. “In 2024, I think there will be more cuts.”

  The ongoing slump, particularly in a year when global equity markets have gained, is turning Hong Kong into an also-ran. Japan’s stock market is now $1.5 trillion larger than Hong Kong’s — the biggest gap since 2009. The Topix has surged 23% this year, compared with a 17% retreat by the Hang Seng Index. Hong Kong is also at risk at being displaced by India, which is just $518 billion less, around the smallest discount on record based on data going back two decades.

  

  Hong Kong’s government has taken steps to arrest the downturn and stimulate trading. This includes reversing a stamp duty hike on stock trades introduced in 2021, as well as plans to ensure markets stay open during severe weather such as a typhoon.

  Yet local officials can do little about the city’s high borrowing costs, which follow US moves due to the local currency’s peg to the greenback, or the weakness in mainland China’s economy.  

  “Cutting stamp duty is only a cosmetic change,” said Chi Lo, investment strategist for Asia Pacific at BNP Paribas Asset Management. To revive Hong Kong’s stock market, US monetary policy needs to shift from tightening to loosening and Beijing needs to introduce more aggressive easing, he added.

  Wall Street banks are lowering their expectations on Chinese stocks. Morgan Stanley in August downgraded China to equal-weight, while last month Goldman Sachs cut its recommendation on Chinese stocks listed in Hong Kong due to modest earnings growth.

  “The length and severity of this cyclical downturn of the Hong Kong market could continue to weigh on its status as a global financial center,” said Vivian Lin Thurston, a portfolio manager at William Blair Investment Management. “Only if and when the macro and underlying corporate fundamentals start to improve, could it see improved performance and increased liquidity.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 22:00

• Japan Approves World's First 'Self-Amplifying' mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Without Published Efficacy Or Safety Data
  Japan Approves World’s First ‘Self-Amplifying’ mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Without Published Efficacy Or Safety Data

  Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Japan has approved the world’s first self-amplifying mRNA (sa-mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine, although the manufacturer has not published safety or efficacy data for the shot.

  

  Tokyo-based Meiji Seika Pharma received approval for manufacturing and marketing its Kostaive sa-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, the company announced in a Nov. 28 press release. The mRNA in the vaccine is designed to self-amplify when delivered into cells, which generates a “strong immune response and the potential for extended duration of protection.” The vaccine is intended for primary immunization (2 doses) as well as booster immunization in adults. Kostaive is the “world’s first approved product applying self-amplifying mRNA technology,” according to the press release.

  Both mRNA and sa-mRNA are RNA vaccines that use a virus’ genetic code against it. When an mRNA vaccine is injected into an individual, the mRNA instructs cells to make a specific protein and thus stimulates immune response. An sa-mRNA vaccine takes this concept further by making multiple mRNA copies, which ends up generating more spike protein.

  Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, a public interest group, pointed out in a Nov. 30 X post that the sa-mRNA vaccine was approved in Japan “despite only testing it on 800 people, no control group and only checking antibody levels not infection rates. Medicine regulation died with Covid.”

  A phase 3 study compared the Kostaive ARCT-154 vaccine to Pfizer’s Comirnaty mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The pre-print study, which has not been peer-reviewed, was posted in July at MedRxiv.

  The study, funded by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, followed a primary phase study that analyzed the safety and efficacy of the Kostaive vaccine. The results of that study have not been published; the manuscript is “in preparation,” according to the phase 3 study report.

  The trial was conducted among 828 people between December 2022 and February 2023. This is a far lower number of participants than Pfizer’s phase 3 study, which involved over 40,000 individuals. The small scale of Kostaive trial has raised questions about its validity.

  According to the pre-print study, Kostaive recipients reported a slightly lower number of localized reactions—such as localized pain or swelling—compared to Comirnaty. However, Kostaive recipients reported higher numbers in specific adverse events such as chills, diarrhea, dizziness, headache, malaise, nausea, and myalgia, or muscle pain.

  According to Meiji Seika Pharma, the phase 3 clinical trials for booster shots showed that Konstaive elicited “higher and longer-lasting neutralizing antibody titers against the original strain” as well as an Omicron subvariant, compared to Comirnaty.

  The vaccine was developed by San Diego-based Arcturus Therapeutics. Meiji Seika Pharma licensed the vaccine for sale in Japan via Melbourne-based CSL Seqirus in April this year.

  The company is collaborating with Arcalis, an mRNA vaccine manufacturing firm, to establish manufacturing capabilities in Japan. Meiji Seika Pharma is working towards commercializing Kostaive in 2024.

  Risks of sa-mRNA

  As sa-mRNA vaccines produce copies of mRNA and thus boost the production of proteins, some experts are worried about the consequences they can have on the human body and concerned that any negative effects from mRNA vaccines could be amplified by injecting sa-mRNA shots.

  During testimony at the European Parliament last month, cardiologist Peter McCullough said that “there’s not a single study showing that the messenger RNA is broken down” in the human body once it is injected. Since the vaccines are “made synthetically, they cannot be broken down.”

  The spike protein from the mRNA vaccines has been found circulating in the body as long as six months from vaccination, he pointed out.

  Dr. McCullough said that the spike protein is “proven” in 3,400 peer-reviewed manuscripts to cause four major domains of disease—cardiovascular, neurological disease, blood clots, and immunological abnormalities.

  In a recent Epoch Times article, molecular biologist Klaus Steger noted that “a small amount of saRNA [sa-mRNA] results in an increased amount of produced antigen.”

  “Due to increased antigen levels, one injection of saRNA—whether linear or circular—may cause adverse events comparable with repeated (booster) injections of modRNA.”

  Mr. Steger had previously pointed out that BioNTech’s “mRNA” vaccines are made not with messenger RNA but with modified RNA (modRNA).

  A study published in the journal Trends in Biotechnology in June this year admitted that the “main challenges involved in the global authorization [of sa-mRNA vaccines] are potential safety concerns regarding the replicative character of these vaccines.”

  “As for all self-amplifying vaccines, concerns have been raised over adverse events in vulnerable individuals. For example, replicon [sa-mRNA] vaccines could persist in immunocompromised individuals as clearance may be less efficient,” it said.

  The use of sa-mRNA vaccines in pregnant women also poses risks, especially if the vectors used in the vaccines come from viruses that cause congenital infections, like the Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus, the study said.

  “Additional preclinical and clinical studies are required to safeguard the implementation of replicon vaccines in vulnerable individuals,” it cautioned.

  Commenting on the Kostaive vaccine, Mike Donio, the founder of science education website Science Defined, said in a Nov. 30 X post, “I’ve been saying for a while that the first generation Covid vaccines were only the start of a coming wave of mRNA therapies.”

  “First, they told us that the mRNA wouldn’t persist in cells for a long time. Now they’ve unleashed self-amplifying mRNA, which means it replicates itself. Wonder how long that will last? Maybe forever? Now tell me how they don’t want to at least try to mess with our genetics.”

  The Epoch Times reached out to Meiji Holdings for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 21:30

• If You Didn’t Like The First Term, Just Wait For The Second
  If You Didn’t Like The First Term, Just Wait For The Second

  Authored by Ron Faucheux via RealClear Wire,

  Second presidential terms are like half-chewed gum – the zest and flavor are gone. Hence the phrase “second-term curse.” We’ve had 17 presidents who were elected and reelected. History shows us that the second act usually falls short.

  

  Why is this? For starters, popular mandates tend to dissipate over time, and public familiarity tends to curdle into boredom or contempt. Second terms often lack purpose and are tarnished by missteps, scandals, and hubris. Usually, the best presidential appointments are made in the first term.

  If either Joe Biden or Donald Trump is nominated, no matter which one wins the general election, we’re in for a second term in January 2025. Sharply negative views have already accumulated around both men; neither would have the benefit of a truly fresh start.

  While Trump’s second term would be nonconsecutive, the first since Grover Cleveland’s, it would still fit within the second-term paradigm, especially if he uses it to exact revenge on his enemies, as some pundits predict.

  Either Biden or Trump would start a second term as a lame duck and may have to battle impeachment, probably for things done in the first term. Old cuts and scars will deepen alongside new wounds. Trump will have criminal trials on his docket and may try to pardon himself, which could launch a long, bruising court fight. Biden will likely face investigations into a range of matters, including his son’s business dealings.

  During Thomas Jefferson’s first four years, he doubled the size of our young nation with the Louisiana Purchase, the shrewdest real estate deal in history. The Embargo Act, which devastated a fragile economy, came in his second term.

  Grover Cleveland’s first term ushered in good government reforms. He opposed the spoils system, created the Interstate Commerce Commission, and modernized the Navy. Although he won the popular vote for reelection, he lost the Electoral College vote. Four years later, he won a second, nonconsecutive term, which was overwhelmed by two economic depressions and numerous labor strikes.

  Woodrow Wilson’s first term was marked by the passage of significant economic reforms. His second was dominated by World War I, which he promised to avoid, and the attempted ratification of his beloved League of Nations, which he fumbled. He also suffered a severe stroke, incapacitating him during the last 16 months of his presidency.

  Franklin Roosevelt took on the Great Depression during his first four years. Social Security, immense public works, bank deposit insurance, labor laws, securities regulation, and rural electrification became realities. His second term started with the botched attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court, followed by another economic downturn and a clumsy bid to purge the Democratic Party of New Deal skeptics. Of Roosevelt’s four terms, his mistake-prone second, most historians agree, was least impressive. His third was consumed by World War II, and the fourth lasted less than three months.

  Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy achievements occurred during his first term. His second term was engulfed by Watergate, and that led to an inglorious resignation.

  Ronald Reagan’s course correction for America happened mostly during his first term: renewing national confidence, reducing taxes and spending, fighting inflation, building up the military, and breaking the PATCO strike. While his second term set the stage for the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was distracted by the Iran-Contra affair.

  Bill Clinton’s first term set into motion economic policies that would carry his presidency. This provided second term cushion – although a big chunk was squandered on the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment.

  George W. Bush’s first four years were momentous: responding to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, launching wars in Afghanistan and Iran, and passing big tax cuts. It was in his second term when the bungling of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath wrecked his administration’s reputation for competence, and that, in turn, poisoned perceptions of his war management.

  In his first term, Barack Obama passed Obamacare and major economic stimulus programs. Osama bin Laden was also captured and killed. His second term focused on fixing Obamacare and trying to sell a range of policies, domestic and foreign, that never won much public confidence.

  If either Biden or Trump wins, we’ll have a second-term presidency. As The Old Philosopher, Eddie Lawrence, might have said, “Something else to look forward to, hey Bunkie?”

  Ron Faucheux is a nonpartisan political analyst. He publishes LunchtimePolitics.com, a public opinion newsletter, and is the author of “Running for Office,” a tell-all book for political candidates.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 20:30

• Watch Live: SpaceX Launches Mysterious X-37B Spaceplane Into Orbit
  Watch Live: SpaceX Launches Mysterious X-37B Spaceplane Into Orbit

  The US Space Force’s Boeing X-37B unmanned, reusable space plane will be launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on Sunday evening. 

  The mysterious spaceplane is built by Boeing and operated by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office and the Space Force. Its last mission ended a little over a year ago after spending 2.5 years in low-Earth orbit. 

  

  “The X-37B continues to equip the United States with the knowledge to enhance current and future space operations,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said in a statement. 

  

  Saltzman continued: “X-37B Mission 7 demonstrates the USSF’s commitment to innovation and defining the art-of-the-possible in the space domain.” 

  

  With each successive top-secret mission, the X-37B spends long and longer time in orbit:

  • OTV-1: launched on Apr. 22, 2010 and landed on Dec. 3, 2010, spending over 224 days in orbit.
  • OTV-2: launched on Mar. 5, 2011 and landed on Jun. 16, 2012, spending over 468 days in orbit.
  • OTV-3: launched on Dec. 11, 2012 and landed on Oct. 17, 2014, spending over 674 days in orbit.
  • OTV-4: launched on May 20, 2015 and landed on May 7, 2015, spending nearly 718 days in orbit.
  • OTV-5: launched on Sept. 7, 2017 and landed on Oct. 27, 2019, spending nearly 780 days in orbit.
  • OTV-6: launched on May 17, 2020 and landed on Nov. 12, 2022, spending over 908 days in orbit.

  The liftoff window begins at 8:14 p.m. EST (0114 GMT) at Launch Complex-39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. 

  Democrats are furious with all of Elon Musk’s space accomplishments. 

  SpaceX is tracking to launch over 80% of all Earth payload to orbit this year pic.twitter.com/DMf5tpG0kI

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 6, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Even Jeff Bezos had to hire Musk for rocket launches. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 20:10

• Biden Wants To Seize Patents Of Pricey Drugs And Use Government To Make Them Cheaper
  Biden Wants To Seize Patents Of Pricey Drugs And Use Government To Make Them Cheaper

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Biden administration has proposed a new rule that would allow federal authorities to seize the patents of costly drugs that were developed using taxpayer dollars and to let third parties use those patents to make the drugs available more cheaply.

  

  The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, on Dec. 7 published a set of draft guidelines for government agencies to evaluate when it might be appropriate to invoke what are known as “march-in” rights under the legal framework of the Bayh-Dole Act.

  The Bayh-Dole Act, which is shorthand for the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act of 1980, grants the government the authority to suspend the patents of products of inventions that were developed with federal funding if those products or inventions are not made available to the public.

  The new proposed guidelines, which were reviewed by The Epoch Times, seek to modify the Bayh-Dole Act in such a way as to make high price alone (of a product or invention developed using taxpayer dollars) a sufficient condition to trigger the government’s exercise of the act’s march-in provisions.

  The march-in provisions—which the government has been asked to invoke in the past but never has—would let authorities seize the patents of drugs deemed too expensive (when offered for sale by the original patent holder) and grant licenses to third parties to produce those drugs to sell more cheaply.

  “We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a call with reporters.

  The draft will be published in the Federal Register on Dec. 8 and is being subjected to a 60-day public comment period.

  President Joe Biden hailed the draft proposal as a way to rein in “Big Pharma price gouging,” while the main pharmaceutical industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said it would be a loss to American patients by causing government-funded research to sit “on a shelf, not benefiting anyone.”

  Competing Takes

  Under the new draft guidelines, the government would be allowed to consider “reasonableness of the price” when considering whether to invoke the march-in rights.

  It gives federal agencies the power to act “if it appears that the price is extreme, unjustified, and exploitative of a health or safety need.”

  While the initial price of a given drug when it’s first launched is to be considered, another possibility for triggering the use of the march-in provisions would be a “sudden, steep price increase in response to a disaster.”

  President Biden said in a statement that his administration is proposing that if a drug is made using taxpayers funds and it’s “not reasonably available to Americans,” then the government could “march in” and license that drug to a producer who can make it and sell it for less.

  “It’s good for competition. It’s good for our economy,” the president said. “And it’s good for the millions of Americans who can’t afford their medications—who know all too well that fine line between dignity and dependence that the price of a prescription drug can draw.”

  The proposal drew a critical reaction from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) trade group.

  “This would be yet another loss for American patients who rely on public-private sector collaboration to advance new treatments and cures. The administration is sending us back to a time when government research sat on a shelf, not benefitting anyone,” PhRMA said in a post on X.

  The trade group argued that the reason America leads the world in medicine development is precisely because the current structure of the law enables the private sector to work with government and academic research centers “for the benefit of patients.”

  “This latest proposal is yet another bad policy from an administration intent on ceding our life science leadership to other countries and robbing Americans of hope that comes from new treatments and cures,” the group added.

  In a blog post, PhRMA said that the Bayh-Dole works well in its current form and that, over the past 25 years that it has been in effect, it has contributed $1.9 trillion to the U.S. economy and created 6.5 million jobs.

  What Do the Authors of the Bayh-Dole Act Say?

  The authors of the Bayh-Dole Act, the late senators Birch Bayh (D-Ind.) and Robert Dole (R-Kan.), have publicly stated that the law they developed did not intend for the government to be able to set prices on products.

  “The law makes no reference to a reasonable price that should be dictated by the government,” the pair wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post. “This omission was intentional; the primary purpose of the act was to entice the private sector to seek public-private research collaboration rather than focusing on its own proprietary research.”

  The two senators raised the argument that, for every single taxpayer dollar that the government spends on research of a given product or invention, private industry must spend “at least $10” to bring it to market and that the aim of their law was to “spur interaction” between public and private research so that patients could benefit from scientific innovations sooner.

  “Government alone has never developed the new advances in medicines and technology that become commercial products,” the pair wrote, adding that the intention of the law was newer to allow the government to revoke a licence on the basis of the pricing of the product or in some way tied to the profitability of a company that has commercialized it.

  “The law we passed is about encouraging a partnership that spurs advances to help Americans,” they wrote.

  Under the Bayh-Dole Act, the government has the power to seize the patents of federally funded medicines but not using price as a criterion.

  The proposal comes as the Democrat Party’s more progressive wing has heaped criticism on drugmakers over high prices of their products and has called on the Biden administration to use march-in power to lower prices.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 19:50

• A 1934-Style Packard Motor Car Will Soon Be Rolling Off A Production Line In Ohio Again
  A 1934-Style Packard Motor Car Will Soon Be Rolling Off A Production Line In Ohio Again

  The little known Packard Motor Company, previously known for high-quality, luxury automobiles manufactured before World War II, is on the cusp of its revival.

  James Ward Packard and his brother William started Packard Electric Company in 1890 to make carbon arc lamps. In 1893, they teamed up with George L. Weiss, an investor in Winton Motor Carriage Company, to form Packard & Weiss.

  The first Packard car debuted in 1899, and in 1902, the company became known as Packard Motor Car Company.

  Now, the company has opened a new plant in Medina, Ohio several weeks ago and is going to be producing a 1934-style convertible as its flagship product. 

  In record amounts, handcrafted cars were shipped to Europe, where they matched up well with brands like Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz. They were priced nearly 2-3 times more than their American counterparts.

  

  But how did the little known brand wind up back in business? It started in 2019 when Scott Andrews, an internet consultant, was on his way to work when a car on sale caught his eye. Unfamiliar with its make, he reached out to his dad, an experienced car mechanic, for insights.

  When he asked his father if he had ever heard of a “Packard”, the discussion began and Andrews “fell in love with the Packard history,” he told Cleveland.com. 

  “What really impressed me was that most of the innovations made in the automobile were patented and brought to the market by Packard,” he said. Now, the Packard revival hinges on Andrews. 

  Andrews, a watchmaker, learned that J.W. Packard was also a watch collector. He noted the coincidence. He then found out that his alma mater, Cleveland State University’s James J. Nance Business College, was named after the last President of Packard Motor Car Company. 

  “Pretty cool I graduated from the business college he helped start,” he said. He has since worked with a friend “12 hours a day” to hand-make a copy of the 1934 convertible for display in a local store. They have since moved on to lobbying local officials to open a Packard manufacturing facility in town. 

  “The iconic Packard will be available with the latest technology in engines, with myriad options to make each vehicle truly unique,” the report says. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 19:15

• Cigna Ditches Mega-Merger Plans With Humana, Opts for Stock Buybacks, Report Says
  Cigna Ditches Mega-Merger Plans With Humana, Opts for Stock Buybacks, Report Says

  Healthcare and insurance provider Cigna Group has ditched its proposed merger with health insurer Humana, according to sources from the Wall Street Journal. Initially reported on Nov. 29 by WSJ, this merger, valued at around $140 billion, would have resulted in a health insurance giant challenging the market dominance of UnitedHealth Group. 

  Sources said Cigna and Humana hit roadblocks when the two companies could not agree on price and other financial terms. Cigna will now focus on acquiring smaller companies in the same industry and repurchasing upwards of $10 billion of stock. 

  Cigna maintains its confidence in the benefits of a potential merger with Humana, citing that a possible merger would have improved consumer access to healthcare and reduced expenses, according to sources. 

  The sources said the deal would have been possible on the regulatory side despite the Biden administration’s tough stance on mergers and acquisitions.

  However, an S&P Global Market Intelligence report pointed out the merger would have “likely faced regulatory scrutiny” due to an “overlap between the two companies’ Medicare Advantage businesses.” 

  

  Hartmut Schneider, vice chair of the antitrust and competition practice at law firm WilmerHale, told S&P Global that any merger between the two companies would have to occur in an antitrust enforcement landscape currently undergoing a “seismic shift.”

  “At least in public communications, [the antitrust agencies] have given up on what used to be a pretty widely held consensus that a lot of mergers are either benign or pro-competitive and only a small number raise problems,” Schneider said, adding, “The tone at the moment seems to be that pretty much every merger is potentially a problem.”

  As of the Friday cash close in US markets, Cigna had a market capitalization of $75.5 billion, and Humana’s was $59.3 billion. 

  

  Was the potential merger between Cigna and Humana ever likely to succeed?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 18:40

• "Sticker Shock": Washington Governor Inslee's $100 Million Gamble To Address Homelessness Crisis
  “Sticker Shock”: Washington Governor Inslee’s $100 Million Gamble To Address Homelessness Crisis

  Washington Governor Jay Inslee is doubling down on the state’s efforts to address its out-of-control homelessness epidemic. Inslee’s latest maneuver involves a staggering $100 million proposal, aimed at bolstering the Rapid Capital Housing Acquisition (RCHA) fund, a critical arm of the state’s program to clear encampments and provide housing for the unhoused along state highways.

  

  This proposal comes on the heels of $149 million in funds focused primarily on counties west of the Cascade Mountains. Inslee’s announcement during Thursday’s press conference underscored his commitment to this initiative, originally dubbed the Rights of Way Safety Initiative and now rebranded as the Encampment Resolution Program.

  “We know we can succeed when we do this, but we essentially are out of money. So, we need to continue appropriating the dollars necessary to get this job done,” said Inslee.

  The governor’s office touted the success of the program since its launch in spring 2022, citing the dismantling of 30 encampments and the transition of over 1,000 individuals into more secure living arrangements. However, a closer look at the Department of Commerce’s Right-of-Way Initiative dashboard paints a slightly different picture: 816 people in housing and 149 in permanent housing.

  That said, the cost-effectiveness of these efforts has come under fire, particularly given the high price tag per individual successfully placed in permanent housing. Inslee, confronted with questions about the spending ratio, defended the expenditures as necessary investments, brushing off concerns with a reference to the impossibility of expecting such solutions to be cost-free.

  But, according to the latest numbers dated Oct. 31 on the Department of Commerce’s Right-of-Way Initiative dashboard, 816 people are in housing, and 149 have been placed in permanent housing. The initial funding for the program was $149 million.

  When asked if $1 million for every one of the 149 in permanent housing was an acceptable spending ratio, Inslee replied, “No, I wish everything was free. And we all believe in Santa Claus. But Santa can’t take care of this problem; we need to make investments.”

  “So, yes, everybody has sticker shock looking at those numbers. But those are necessary investments. And they’re paying off, and we’re going to keep doing it,” he emphasized. –Mynorthwest.com

  The governor’s new proposal alleges to go beyond a simple expansion of funding, and claims to be a multi-faceted strategy to tackle homelessness from various angles. As My Northwest notes, it includes;

  • Incentivizing landlords to lease properties to rental assistance recipients.

  • Increasing access to civil legal aid for tenants facing eviction threats.

  • Addressing funding deficiencies for local housing organizations statewide.

  • Sustaining the continuity of local emergency shelters and affordable housing programs.

  • Allocating resources for short-term rental assistance.

  • Facilitating housing provisions for victims of human trafficking.

  • Exploring innovative approaches to support homeless youth and preempt individuals at risk of homelessness.

  Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell weighed in as well, emphasizing the city’s ongoing struggles with encampments. Harrell highlighted the considerable strain on emergency services, with alarming statistics from the Seattle Fire and Police Departments regarding incidents and responses near these encampments.

  “Our data shows we still have 28 active encampments on (WSDOT) sites as of Nov. 30,” he said, adding “There were 845 reported crimes either at or adjacent to these sites, averaging 77 per month.”

  Inslee’s proposal, set to be part of a supplementary budget package, will be a focal point of state legislative discussions come January.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 18:05

• Trump Has Good Shot With Supreme Court To Get DC Case Tossed, Experts Say
  Trump Has Good Shot With Supreme Court To Get DC Case Tossed, Experts Say

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former President Donald Trump has several viable avenues to have the Supreme Court throw out federal charges he’s facing for his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election, several lawyers and Constitution experts told The Epoch Times.

  

  His best case is that the charges encroach on his First Amendment rights, but he might also successfully assert presidential immunity or argue the law was impermissibly stretched by prosecutors, the experts said.

  President Trump was charged by Special Counsel Jack Smith on Aug. 1 with obstructing electoral vote counting by Congress on Jan. 6 and conspiring to do so in order to stay in power.

  The conspiracy was allegedly carried out by spreading false claims that fraud and illegalities swayed the election outcome and using those false claims in attempts to convince various officials to overturn the results.

  President Trump’s lawyers have launched a barrage of motions to have the charges dismissed on constitutional grounds, statutory grounds, due to presidential immunity, and for malicious prosecution. While some of the claims are weak at best, others appear persuasive, according to the experts.

  In practice, however, President Trump’s arguments will need to convince his judge, the appeals court, or, in the final instance, the Supreme Court.

  The experts predict that the District of Columbia federal judge on the case, Tanya Chutkan, will almost certainly deny all the motions to dismiss. On Dec. 1, she indeed denied about half of them. They also acknowledged that the arguments would likely encounter resistance in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, given its political leanings.

  President Trump’s best chance will be in the Supreme Court, they contend.

  Free Speech Argument

  President Trump’s lawyers have asserted that the indictment runs afoul of the First Amendment by trying to criminalize political speech and advocacy.

  “The prosecution seeks to install itself as America’s censor, with roving authority to criminally prosecute all who speak out against its approved narratives,” the lawyers wrote in a Nov. 22 brief.

  “The prosecution has no such mandate. Accordingly, the indictment is unconstitutional on its face and must be dismissed.”

  

  If prosecutors can claim that President Trump’s efforts to reverse election certifications amounted to a conspiracy to obstruct the government, then people advocating against other government actions, such as COVID-19 lockdowns or mask mandates could also face such charges, the lawyers argued.

  The prosecutors retorted that such hypotheticals wouldn’t apply “absent additional information about the conduct and mental state of the individuals.”

  But if that’s the case, the defense lawyers responded, it would give the government a license to probe said individuals for such additional information—”inquire into their mental state, knowledge, and associations.”

  “The implication is that to get that information, investigation is necessary. Under the prosecution’s misconceived legal theories, then, every public statement a constituent makes to a member of Congress concerning a hotly debated topic is a license to open a federal criminal investigation into the person who made it—unless it is indisputably true,” the lawyers said.

  “That, of course, contradicts the very nature of hotly debated topics, where the truth is, by definition, in dispute.”

  This argument appears “sound” to Rob Natelson, one of America’s preeminent constitutional scholars who’s written extensively on the original meaning of the Constitution and the First Amendment in particular, including for The Epoch Times.

  “Lying is protected by the First Amendment, except in a few cases such as fraud, lying to law enforcement, and defamation,” he said.

  “It has to be so: Otherwise, as Trump’s lawyers claim, every statement would be open to investigation into the speaker’s motives. The effect would be, as the Supreme Court says [in previous cases], a severe ‘chilling effect’ on speech.”

  

  The argument that the basis for the charges against President Trump “appear to primarily stem from his political activity” belongs to the “stronger” ones his lawyers put forward, according to Horace Cooper, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research who formerly taught constitutional law at George Mason University.

  “At least the Supreme Court is reticent to allow a charge based on constitutionally protected behavior,” he said.

  Conspiracy, by law, doesn’t require any crime to actually be committed. At least two people simply need to agree to do something illegal and then at least one of them needs to engage in at least one physical act—however minor or innocuous—in furtherance of the plan.

  In the Trump case, however, it appears to Mr. Cooper and others that the entirety of the alleged conspiracy and even its objective were in fact legal.

  “They have identified no specific behavior in and of itself in terms of the president’s advocacy that constitutes illegal behavior,” Mr. Cooper said.

  The prosecutors argue the activity became illegal as it was done in bad faith.

  But the real-world result seemed to be the same.

  “There is no distinction … between a person doing exactly that without a bad motive,” Mr. Cooper said.

  To have the trial hinge on whether President Trump, in the deep recesses of his mind, truly believed his claims about the election, is troubling to Mr. Cooper.

  “I’m really concerned about the idea that we know the mindset of a person,” he said.

  The strength of one’s subjective beliefs is nigh impossible to gauge, he said.

  “The court is not going to give credence to the argument that the perception of Donald Trump and his team, even if you show at some period that it appears to waver, that that covers all of the legally protected behavior,” he said.

  

  Judge Chutkan’s rejection of the First Amendment argument was so blanket that it rendered it “very weak” he said.

  “She would have been better served by saying that there is behavior besides communication [protected by the First Amendment] that would constitute the conspiracy to act here,” he said.

  Instead, the judge argued that “the crimes Defendant is charged with violating may be carried out through speech alone.”

  Regardless of whether President Trump’s election challenges were illegitimate, the legal standard pursued by the prosecutors is dangerous, suggests a career attorney who has gained popularity analyzing the Trump cases through his anonymous X account “KingMakerFT.”

  “It is an invitation to turn this country into a banana republic where the losing side, if it speaks out, if it tries to right a wrong, if it tries to argue that there was corruption in the election itself, they could put you in jail—if you lose, you go to jail,” he told The Epoch Times.

  The lawyer, who retired several years ago after a 45-year career, asked for his real name to remain withheld.

  Presidential Immunity Argument

  President Trump’s lawyers have argued that his actions fell within the bounds of his presidential duties and thus can’t form a basis of a criminal prosecution.

  The Supreme Court has ascribed the presidency broad legal immunity, but only from civil suits, not criminal charges.

  “If the argument is that the mere fact that the president undertook this activity immunizes it from any legal scrutiny, the court has not been willing to go that far in a criminal case,” Mr. Cooper said.

  “If, instead, the argument is that the activities were those of a constitutional officer and within the ambit of authority that the Constitution allows and therefore cannot be an element for a crime, I think that’s a much more robust argument.”

  

  Judge Chutkan denied this argument, opining that criminal activity is automatically not within the bounds of presidential duties and presidents, much less former presidents, thus don’t enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution.

  But that sidesteps the issue, according to KingMakerFT.

  “If it’s within presidential duties it can’t be criminal … by implication, at least that’s the argument,” he said.

  The issue goes back to the criminal intentions the prosecutors need to prove. Courts have been reluctant to probe motivations of government executives on matters that fall within their duties, he said.

  The motivations of the executive lose relevance in such cases, Mr. Cooper said.

  “If you are an office holder, you do not get struck of your status as an office holder because your actions are intended to effectuate your either continuing to stay in office or your attempt to be reelected,” he said.

  “The Justice Department is creating a distinction that almost is completely without merit.”

  Mr. Cooper provided the example of President Joe Biden’s pronouncement of support for Israel.

  “Did he do that because that’s America’s national security [interest]? Did he do that because he says that when he was a young man, he got a chance to meet with the Prime Minister of Israel? Or did he do it because he sat down with his advisers and realized that this is a chance for him to bolster his support within the Jewish community? Did he do that because he sat down with his wife and she just simply said, ‘I will divorce you if you don’t make this statement?’” he asked.

  “A court is not going to attempt to drill down into that decision-making if in fact the president has the lawful authority to make the kind of pronouncement that Mr. Biden did.”

  Judge Chutkan’s opinion, he says, “fails to give the space for free decision-making that the Constitution does in fact give the executive.”

  

  What the judge could have done was to parse through the indictment for actions that could be argued were within presidential purview and then see if what’s left is enough to sustain the charges.

  “She didn’t do that and I think that makes her dismissal decision weaker,” Mr. Cooper said.

  Stretching the Law Argument

  Lawyers for President Trump have argued that the prosecutors are trying to squeeze his actions into criminal statutes that shouldn’t apply.

  The first count falls under Section 371—a conspiracy to defraud the government. But the law primarily deals with fleecing the government for money.

  The prosecutors are using an interpretation of the law that also covers obstructing the government. President Trump’s lawyers, however, provided examples that suggest the Supreme Court has framed such obstruction more narrowly.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 17:30

• Affiliate ACLU Members Revolt After Left-Wing Group Agrees To Represent NRA
  Affiliate ACLU Members Revolt After Left-Wing Group Agrees To Represent NRA

  Update: 

  Infighting at the American Civil Liberties Union shortly began after the group revealed on X on Saturday that it would represent the National Rifle Association in an upcoming Supreme Court case. 

  Several of the ACLU’s affiliates, such as the ACLU of Montana, the ACLU of North Carolina, and the New York Civil Liberties Union, wrote on X that they disagree with the ACLU’s move to provide legal representation to the NRA. 

  X user 2Aupdates was the first to point this out:

  *Grabs popcorn* pic.twitter.com/IouTDdvxdm

  — Rob Romano (@2Aupdates) December 10, 2023

  As clarified yesterday, the ACLU emphasized that their support is not for the NRA’s Second Amendment goals but instead on the First Amendment issue, opposing the federal government’s blacklisting of an advocacy group based solely on its viewpoints.

  *   *   * 

  The American Civil Liberties Union, a left-wing advocacy group, has returned to its roots in defense of an ideological enemy: the National Rifle Association. This move is part of their ongoing effort to remain relevant and defend Americans against First Amendment violations by an overreaching federal government. 

  

  “We’re representing the NRA at the Supreme Court in their case against New York’s Department of Financial Services for abusing its regulatory power to violate the NRA’s First Amendment rights. The government can’t blacklist an advocacy group because of its viewpoint,” the ACLU announced on ‘free speech’ platform X. 

  BREAKING: We’re representing the NRA at the Supreme Court in their case against New York’s Department of Financial Services for abusing its regulatory power to violate the NRA’s First Amendment rights.

  The government can’t blacklist an advocacy group because of its viewpoint.

  — ACLU (@ACLU) December 9, 2023

  ACLU made it very clear that they “don’t support the NRA’s mission or its viewpoints on gun rights, and we don’t agree with their goals, strategies, or tactics. But we both know that government officials can’t punish organizations because they disapprove of their views.” 

  We don’t support the NRA’s mission or its viewpoints on gun rights, and we don’t agree with their goals, strategies, or tactics.

  But we both know that government officials can’t punish organizations because they disapprove of their views. https://t.co/BPLhxFtH0P

  — ACLU (@ACLU) December 9, 2023

  ACLU and NRA have joined forces as the Supreme Court agreed to hear the gun rights advocacy group’s free-speech challenge to what it alleges New York officials encouraged banks and insurance companies to blacklist it after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

  “The NRA might be thought of as the 800-pound gorilla on the Second Amendment,” NRA lawyer William A. Brewer III said, adding, “Clearly, the ACLU is the 800-pound gorilla on the First Amendment.”

  The civil liberties group’s national legal director, David Cole, said, “It’s never easy to defend those with whom you disagree. But the ACLU has long stood for the proposition that we may disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

  The question of when government advocacy violates the First Amendment is before the justices in another case this term. That one concerns the Biden administration’s efforts to persuade social media companies to delete what the government said is misinformation about topics like the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 election.

  In its petition seeking Supreme Court review, the N.R.A., represented by Mr. Brewer’s firm and Eugene Volokh, a prominent First Amendment scholar, said the appeals court’s ruling could have sweeping consequences. -NY Times

  Here’s what X users are saying: 

  The ironic part is neither the ACLU nor the NRA protect the freedoms they claim to protect.

  — Assault Clip, #2A Voter (@assaultclip) December 9, 2023

  It’s always refreshing and encouraging seeing institutions stick up for their values instead of their side.

  — Matt Odhner (@MattOdhner1) December 9, 2023

  Beyond shocking.
  I guess this was close enough to home they realized what an oppositional government could do to the vast network of left wing advocacy groups if this was allowed to stand.

  — QTheLibertine (@QTheLibertine1) December 9, 2023

  Now do Trump

  — Curtis (@BwsCurtis) December 9, 2023

  ACLU continued on X: “If the Supreme Court doesn’t intervene, it will create a dangerous playbook for state regulatory agencies across the country to blacklist or punish any viewpoint-based organizations — from abortion rights groups to environmental groups or even ACLU affiliates.” 

  Read the NRA’s petition seeking Supreme Court review below:

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 16:55

• Court Ruling Shakes Up New York's Concealed Carry Law Landscape
  Court Ruling Shakes Up New York’s Concealed Carry Law Landscape

  In a ruling that has both sides claiming victory, a federal appeals court upheld some parts of New York State’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA), however other aspects were struck down. This ruling, emerging from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on December 8, marks the latest crescendo in a legal saga that is polarizing the nation.

  

  The court’s decision, which combined four lower court cases due to overlapping issues, overturned some lower court rulings while sustaining others. Notably, the court invalidated the CCIA’s ban on gun possession on private property without explicit permission and lifted the prohibition of gun possession in places of worship. Additionally, it rejected the mandate for concealed carry permit applicants to disclose their social media accounts to authorities.

  However, the court upheld several CCIA provisions, including the need for applicants to show good moral character and disclose family members on permit applications. It maintained the ban on concealed carry in designated “sensitive places,” with the notable exception of places of worship, and upheld requirements for an interview, character references, and extensive training.

  New York Attorney General Letitia James hailed the ruling as a win, emphasizing in a statement that the court’s decision to enforce key CCIA components. Her statement underlines a commitment to New York’s stringent gun laws and a crusade against gun violence.

  

  “Today’s decision to permit the state to enforce critical provisions of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act as the court process moves forward will help keep New Yorkers safe,” said James, adding “My office will continue to defend New York’s gun laws and use every tool to protect New Yorkers from senseless gun violence.”

  Meanwhile, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), instrumental in two of the four cases reviewed by the court, celebrated the ruling as a triumph for gun rights. SAF’s involvement in the Christian v. Chiumento and Hardaway v. Chiumento cases, which challenged aspects of the CCIA, underscored their strategic legal approach. SAF’s founder, Alan M. Gottlieb, and Executive Director Adam Kraut, highlighted these cases as victories in their mission to safeguard firearms freedom.

  “These are just two more examples of SAF carrying out its mission to win firearms freedom, one lawsuit at a time,” said Gottlieb.

  Adam Kraut, meanwhile, said the ruling was the result of a focused legal strategy.

  “Our challenges were narrowly constructed, allowing us to win a small but significant victory in the Christian case. Because the legislature changed the law after our lawsuit was filed in the Hardaway case, we consider that a victory as well,” he said.

  The ruling is set against the backdrop of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which affirmed a constitutional right to public gun carry for self-defense. Following this landmark ruling, a dichotomy has emerged across the U.S., with 27 states adopting “constitutional carry laws” allowing unlicensed firearm carry, while others, like New York, have tightened restrictions.

  The CCIA, a direct response to the Bruen decision, introduced more rigorous training requirements, expanded no-carry zones, mandated in-person interviews, and shortened license recertification periods. Its aim: to recalibrate New York’s gun laws in line with the new legal landscape.

  Yet, this latest court decision is far from the final word. Advocates for gun rights, such as Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America, vow to continue their legal crusade, signaling an unyielding resolve to overturn the CCIA in its entirety.

  “Governor Hochul and her cabal in Albany never seem to get the message, and in turn, GOA is proud to have played a major role in rebuking her unconstitutional law. Nevertheless, this was not a total victory, and we will continue the fight until this entire law is sent to the bowels of history where it belongs,” wrote Erich Pratt, senior vice president for Gun Owners of America, on the group’s website.

  As the legal tussle over New York’s gun laws continues, the implications are clear: the debate over the Second Amendment is far from settled. This ruling, a complex blend of victories and setbacks for both sides, underscores the ongoing, intricate, and often contentious negotiation between gun rights and gun control in the United States. As the case potentially heads to the Supreme Court, it remains a pivotal battleground in the enduring struggle to define the contours of the Second Amendment in contemporary America.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 15:45

• California Facing Record $68 Billion Deficit, Potential 'Fiscal Budget Emergency': Legislative Analyst
  California Facing Record $68 Billion Deficit, Potential ‘Fiscal Budget Emergency’: Legislative Analyst

  Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Because of a “severe revenue decline,” California is facing a $68 billion budget deficit that could accumulate to more than $155 billion over the next five years, according to the most updated projection released Dec. 7 by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.  

  

  A spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested some of the state’s approximately $24 billion held in reserves could be used to address the growing deficit—an idea analysts agree will be necessary. 

  “The Governor has maintained strict fiscal responsibility since taking office, building up the state’s reserves to historic levels reaching the maximum allowed by the state constitution to be put in reserves and paying down debts—putting California in a strong position to deal with budget shortfalls,” Erin Mellon, communications director for Mr. Newsom’s office, told The Epoch Times by email Dec. 7. 

  Budget problems arose after income tax collections dropped 25 percent in the fiscal year 2022–2023—which ended June 30—compared to the year before, according to the report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office.  

  Moreover, tax receipts typically due in April were delayed until October this year due to federal and state exemptions granted after winter storms impacted the state, which made it difficult for state officials to determine the scale of the deficit earlier to define budget priorities accordingly.   

  “Federal delays in tax collection forced California to pass a budget based on projections instead of actual tax receipts,” Ms. Mellon said. “Now that we have a clearer picture of the state’s finances, we must now solve what would have been last year’s problem in this year’s budget.” 

  Noting the unusual dilemma presented by the timing and severity of the decline, analysts said the state has only faced such circumstances during the Great Recession and dotcom bust. 

  With a $68 billion shortfall for the fiscal year 2024–2025 projected, in addition to $30 billion operating deficits in following years, lawmakers will need to reduce spending, increase revenues, or both to fill the gap. 

  Cuts will be needed across programs, including education and other core services to resolve the problem. The report identified approximately $8 billion in temporary spending options in 2024–2025 to be considered for funding reductions, according to the report. 

  Lowering spending on employee compensation, higher education, and judicial systems are solutions utilized in the past to manage budgets, the report said. 

  Analysts noted that such dire conditions constitute a “fiscal budget emergency,” though the governor is required to make an official declaration to enact austerity measures. Mr. Newsom has not declared such as of press time. 

  Critics point to a growth in state spending as contributing to the budget issues. 

  “Governor Newsom and Democrat lawmakers turned a $100 billion surplus into a $68 billion deficit in just 2 years,” Senate Minority Leader Brian W. Jones (R-San Diego) said in a Dec. 7 press release. “Even more alarming, the five-year deficit forecast is an astounding $155 billion, thanks to the overspending Democrats jammed into the last few budgets.” 

  Financial market uncertainty in 2022 and early 2023—including Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion triggering instability—and higher interest rates are to blame, in part, the report suggests. 

  Higher borrowing costs slowed the housing market, as average monthly mortgage prices for homes purchased in California increased from $3,500 to $5,400 over the last year, according to the report. 

  “Overall, the experience of the last few years suggests California’s economy and revenues are uniquely sensitive to Federal Reserve actions,” analysts wrote. 

  Historically, similar downturns have been followed by years of economic weakness, according to the report. 

  “Whether the recent weakness will continue is difficult to say,” analysts said. “However, the odds do not appear to be in the state’s favor.” 

  

  Calling the situation unique and challenging, the report suggested urgent action to identify potential solutions—emphasizing fewer options will be available if discussions are delayed. 

  “Given the scale of the budget problem, we suggest the Legislature immediately begin evaluating past spending to find monies that have been committed but not yet distributed,” analysts wrote. “Taking early action on these reductions could increase the choices available to the Legislature.” 

  Such work is currently underway, with proposed solutions to be introduced once the Legislature reconvenes next year, according to the governor’s office. 

  Mr. Newsom is expected to announce his budget proposal for the fiscal year 2024–2025 by the Jan. 10 deadline.

  “In January, the Governor will introduce a balanced budget proposal that addresses our challenges, protects vital services and public safety, and brings increased focus on how the state’s investments are being implemented, while ensuring accountability and judicious use of taxpayer money,” said Ms. Mellon, spokeswoman for the governor’s office. 

  One lawmaker said the budget problems are not surprising, created after years of spending increases.  

  “California’s tax-and-spend majority has joined this governor in budget decisions that are based on unrealistic revenue estimates and budgeting gimmicks,” Sen. Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) told The Epoch Times. “Hopefully, the majority will see it is time for a more realistic budget strategy, instead of throwing money at a laundry list of projects that sounds nice on the national television debate stage.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 15:10

• Trump Warns Of Business Exodus from New York Amid Fraud Case Fallout
  Trump Warns Of Business Exodus from New York Amid Fraud Case Fallout

  Former President Donald Trump has warned that if he loses his real estate fraud case in New York, businesses will flee New York.

  

  “Businesses are watching this case,” Trump told reporters outside a Manhattan courtroom on Dec. 6, adding “No business will go back into New York, no business will frankly stay in New York, some businesses are talking about leaving New York because of this action, this very serious action.”

  Trump and his organization have been accused of overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth in order to obtain preferential terms from banks, insurers, and other entities. Earlier, the Trump-hating judge presiding over the case issued a summary judgment which found Trump and his company liable for fraud, with the ongoing trial addressing conspiracy, insurance fraud, and falsification of business records.

  Trump, who’s polling in 1st place as the GOP nominee for 2024 by a wide margin, maintains his innocence, denouncing the case as a politically charged effort to derail his presidential campaign. “If you look at the case, we did nothing wrong, there were no victims,” he insisted.

  Trump’s defense gained some support from a Deutsche Bank executive, David Williams, who testified that discrepancies in asset values between a client and the bank are not uncommon. Williams’ testimony shed light on the banking industry’s inner workings, revealing that Deutsche Bank, which loaned hundreds of millions to Trump, often adjusted clients’ stated asset values and viewed these figures as subjective.

  In a twist, Williams pointed out that the bank’s lower valuation of Trump’s wealth compared to his own figures was not alarming but rather a conservative measure. He emphasized that such adjustments were standard practice and part of a financial “stress test.”

  Last week, a Florida real estate agent testified that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property is worth at least $1 billion.

  “It’s something breathtaking. It’s something amazing to see,” he said of Mar-a-Lago, adding that he had valued it at over $1.2 billion in 2021. He also told the court that President Trump’s company had actually undervalued Mar-a-Lago by about half.

  The heart of the attorney general’s argument is that Trump inflated his asset values by up to $2.2 billion for favorable loan terms, a claim Trump counters by highlighting the non-victimization of banks and the profits they earned from interest on loans extended to him.

  As Trump’s legal battle rages on, with him taking the stand and labeling the lawsuit a “witch hunt” and “election interference,” and now – the former president warns that it will set a very bad precedent going forward for businesses operating in New York.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 14:35

• Al Gore Warns: People Having Access To Non-Mainstream Information "Threatens Democracy"
  Al Gore Warns: People Having Access To Non-Mainstream Information “Threatens Democracy”

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

  Al Gore says that people having access to information outside of mainstream media sources is a threat to “democracy” and that social media algorithms “ought to be banned.”

  

  Yes, really.

  Gore made the comments during an appearance at the Cop28 climate change hysteria conference in Dubai.

  AL GORE – At COP28.

  Listen carefully. He says Democracy is under threat because citizens are no longer all getting the same print news (propaganda)

  Algorithms (that governments can’t control) are threatening democracy.

  It’s like he thinks we are stupid or insane … oh pic.twitter.com/aQe41iOhNY

  — Elander & the News (@ElanderNews) December 7, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Gore whined that social media had “disrupted the balances that used to exist that made representative democracy work much better.”

  The former Vice President said that functioning democracy relied on a “shared base of knowledge that serves as a basis for reasoning together collectively” but that “social media that is dominated by algorithms” upsets this balance.

  According to Gore, people are being pulled down “rabbit holes” by algorithms that are “the digital equivalent of AR-15s – they ought to be banned, they really ought to be banned!”

  Gore claimed, “It’s an abuse of the public forum” and that people were being sucked into echo chambers.

  “If you spend too much time in the echo chamber, what’s weaponized is another form of AI, not artificial intelligence, artificial insanity! I’m serious!” he added.

  Apparently, the only echo chamber that should be allowed to exist is Gore’s own rabbit hole, wherein the earth is constantly on the brink of destruction thanks to people not obeying his technocratic mandates.

  Perhaps Gore is unhappy at his own misinformation being fact checked by individuals who have access to information not produced by corporate media sources that are friendly to him.

  Gore infamously predicted that the north polar ice cap would be “ice free” within 5 to 7 years.

  It never happened.

  As Thomas Cartenacci documents, Gore has a storied history of making climate change predictions that turn out to be spectacularly wrong.

  No wonder he wants to ban dissent.

  *  *  *

  Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 14:00

• These Are The Richest 'Politicians' In The US
  These Are The Richest ‘Politicians’ In The US

  Entering politics doesn’t require a specific income, yet many politicians are multimillionaires.

  At some of the highest echelons of U.S. politics are federal and state-level politicians worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. Who is the wealthiest U.S. politician today?

  In the following graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualizes the net worth of America’s 12 richest politicians, using consolidated data as of June 2023 from GoBankingRates.

  

  Which Politician is Richer Than Donald Trump?

  The list of richest politicians in the U.S. includes three billionaires, with the most famous being former U.S. President Donald Trump.

  His wealth is closely tied to The Trump Organization, which has interests in real estate, hotels, casinos, and media. But Trump is not the wealthiest U.S. politician by most estimtates.

  At the top is the Governor of Illinois Jay Robert Pritzker. A longtime financial supporter of the Democratic Party, he is a member of the wealthy Pritzker family, which owns Hyatt Hotels & Resorts.

  

  Completing the billionaires list is North Dakota’s Governor Doug Burgum. In 2001, Burgum sold the accounting software company Great Plains Software to Microsoft for $1.1 billion and later founded several investment firms.

  The wealthiest serving member of Congress is Republican Rep. Darrell Issa from California. Issa served as the CEO of Directed Electronics, which he co-founded in 1982. It is one of the largest makers of automobile aftermarket security and convenience products in the United States.

  At the bottom of the list is Texas Rep. Michael McCaul. Before being elected to Congress in 2005, the Republican served as Chief of Counter-Terrorism and National Security in the U.S. Attorney’s office, and led the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 13:25

• "People Have Spoken": Elon Musk Restores X Account Of Alex Jones After User Poll
  “People Have Spoken”: Elon Musk Restores X Account Of Alex Jones After User Poll

  Update (1255ET): 

  At 1 pm EST, a discussion will take place on X Spaces between host Mario Nawfal and Alex Jones. The focus of their conversation will likely be centered on Elon Musk’s decision to reinstate Jones on the free speech social media platform. 

  https://t.co/iTZYmfO1lq

  — Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) December 10, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “Big Tech’s de-platforming playbook that got people like @Cobratate banned from all socials, was created for @RealAlexJones back in 2017,” Nawfal said. 

  🚨 Big Tech’s de-platforming playbook that got people like @Cobratate banned from all socials, was created for @RealAlexJones back in 2017

  Following a poll, @elonmusk brought Alex back:

  “I vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that… pic.twitter.com/JGNDeePl2G

  — Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) December 10, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  *   *   * 

  “The people have spoken, and so it shall be,” Elon Musk posted on X in reply to a poll on Saturday asking users whether to reinstate Alex Jones’ account. 

  “Reinstate Alex Jones on this platform?” Musk asked. Nearly two million X users voted, with more than 70% voting in favor of Jones’ return. 

  The people have spoken and so it shall be

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Jones’ account was banned under old Twitter in September 2018 for violating the platform’s abusive behavior policy. 

  As of early Sunday morning, Jones’ X account has been reinstated. 

  

  The self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” billionaire said Jones is welcomed on the platform but added: “He cannot break the law.” 

  He cannot break the law

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Restoring Jones’s account came days after the Infowars blog founder sat down with Tucker Carlson for an interview.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/10/2023 – 12:55

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Musk Asks Zelensky About Imprisoned American Journalist After Tucker Carlson Sounds Alarm
  Musk Asks Zelensky About Imprisoned American Journalist After Tucker Carlson Sounds Alarm

  In May, American YouTuber and columnist Gonzalo Lira was arrested in Ukraine because he “publicly justified” the Russian invasion, according to a press release by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

  

  The statement from Kiev said that Lira “has the citizenship of one of the countries of Latin America” but omitted that he is also California-born U.S. citizen, as ZeroHedge contributor Space Worm reported at the time.

  Following his release, Lira said he was tortured in a Ukrainian prison, explaining that “two thugs held my head and used a toothpick to scratch the whites of my left eye, while asking me if I could still read if I had just one.” Lira informed followers that he was making a mad-dash via motorcycle towards the Hungarian border:

  Right now, I’m about to try to get out of Ukraine, and seek political asylum in Hungary.

  Either I’ll cross the border and make it to safety, or I’ll be disappeared by the Kiev regime.

  This is what’s happened to me over the past three months.

  1/25

  — Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968) July 31, 2023

  Grayzone reporter Liam Cosgrove pressed State Department spox Matthew Miller on the issue, asking how the Biden Administration has allowed an American to be tortued by a closely allied nation: 

  The Grayzone’s @cosgrove_iv asked @StateDeptSpox today about the status of Gonzalo Lira, the US citizen who was jailed by the Ukrainian govt for challenging its official narrative of the war and whose Twitter account now claims he’s making a break for the Hungarian border pic.twitter.com/kc7NY6hkdt

  — The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) August 1, 2023

  Even more damning about Miller’s non-answer is that 3 months prior, Miller admitted that the State Department was aware of Lira’s imprisonment and plead the Fifth when asked whether the administration planned to advocate for his release:

  State Department refuses to say whether it will negotiate with Zelensky for the release of detained U.S. citizen Gonzalo Lira: pic.twitter.com/jTD58XjYnw

  — Liam Cosgrove (@cosgrove_iv) May 28, 2023

  Tucker and Elon sound the alarm

  In a Saturday post on X, Tucker Carlson highlighted Lira’s situation and spoke with the journalist’s father. Carlson asked why the Biden administration is allowing this, and questioned what kind of country Ukraine is for doing this to an American simply for criticizing the government.

  In response, Elon Musk asked: “An American citizen is in prison n Ukraine after we sent over a $100 billion?” adding, “Is there more to this story than simply criticizing Zelensky?”

  “If that’s all it is, then we have serious problem here.”

  An American citizen is in prison n Ukraine after we sent over a $100 billion?

  Is there more to this story than simply criticizing Zelensky?

  If that’s all it is, then we have serious problem here.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2023

  Yep. Saying unapproved things. That’s his crime.

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 10, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Musk then directly asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to explain…

  President @ZelenskyyUa, please educate the American people about this matter

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2023

  Which reminds us, 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pointed out that Ukraine is an extremely corrupt country.

  You know what’s naive? Those who claim that Ukraine is a paragon of “democracy” in a battle of good vs. evil. Here’s the TRUTH about the Zelensky regime:

  – Banned 11 opposition parties
  – Recently assassinated a 2019 Ukrainian Presidential candidate ⁰-Consolidated all TV media… pic.twitter.com/JUqPrzxC8K

  — Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 7, 2023

  Is the worm turning?

  Elon is asking the question that US politicians don’t dare to ask. Good.

  — Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) December 9, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  We need an answer immediately. We gave you so much money and you hold one of us like this?

  — Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) December 9, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  What happened next? https://t.co/FRzKw5bNsb

  — David Sacks (@DavidSacks) December 10, 2023

  Gonzalo wasn’t a gay female basketball player so the US State dept didn’t care

  — The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) December 10, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  he might ask few billions from you instead

  — The White Rabbit 🐇 (@WR_Samurai) December 9, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 23:20

• The Venezuela-Guyana Dispute Explained In 3 Charts
  The Venezuela-Guyana Dispute Explained In 3 Charts

  In a territorial dispute spanning nearly two centuries, tensions between Guyana and Venezuela have once again reached a boiling point.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti and Nick Routley detail below, the focal point of this dispute is the vast Essequibo region which encompasses around 70% of Guyana’s territory, and is roughly equivalent to the size of Florida.

  Venezuela claims historical rights dating back to the Spanish colonial period when Essequibo fell within its boundaries.

  In 1840, the British government drew the Schomburgk Line expanding the territory of British Guiana (now Guyana) far beyond the occupied area and to the strategically-located mouth of the Orinoco River.

  

  This line played a pivotal role in shaping the modern borders of the region by defining the territory claimed by the UK, and later, a decolonized Guyana, as the country gained independence in 1966. That same year, Venezuela and the UK signed an agreement aiming for a negotiated solution.

  In 2004, President Hugo Chávez eased border tensions under the advice of Fidel Castro, stating that he considered the dispute to be finished.

  Recent events, however, have reignited the dispute. Between 2015 and 2021, Guyana announced the discovery of about 8 billion barrels of oil, elevating a country with fewer than a million people to a prominent position among the top nations in terms of oil reserves. ExxonMobil, leading a consortium, operates three offshore projects in the country, earning nearly $6 billion in 2022 alone.

  Venezuela’s Referendum and New Map

  On December 1, 2023, the World Court ordered Venezuela to refrain from actions in the border dispute with Guyana. However, just two days later, on December 3, Venezuelans approved a referendum claiming sovereignty over Essequibo.

  

  President Maduro subsequently ordered the creation of a new state, Guayana Esequiba, within Venezuela’s borders, and released a new map of the country.

  Venezuela’s new territorial claims don’t stop on land, they extend far out into sea as well. Specifically, Venezuela is claiming a critical area called the Stabroek Oil Block, where ExxonMobil and others are already active.

  

  With a population of around 125,000 people, the disputed region is full of dense rainforest, making a military incursion from Venezuela feasible only by sea or through the Brazilian state of Roraima. Brazil, maintaining good diplomatic relationships with both countries, has already increased military personnel on the border. The U.S. announced joint military flight drills in Guyana on December 7.

  Despite increased military presence in the region, many experts believe that President Maduro has no intention of actually annexing Essequibo, and that this recent claim is a tactic to bolster his own image within Venezuela.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 22:45

• Long-Term ADHD Medication Use May Increase Heart Disease Risk: Study
  Long-Term ADHD Medication Use May Increase Heart Disease Risk: Study

  Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A new study indicates that long-term use of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication may increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and that the risk increases the longer the drug is used.

  

  The results of the study conducted in Sweden were published in JAMA Psychiatry, bringing to light the potential risks of long-term ADHD medication.

  About 6 million, or 1 in 10, children ages 3 to 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Approximately 8.7 million adults in the United States also have ADHD. Individuals with ADHD may have difficulty paying attention, find it hard to sit still, or act without thinking; the symptoms and specifics vary from person to person.

  Medication has been the standard treatment of care for decades, researchers wrote, adding that “the use of ADHD medication has increased greatly in both children and adults during the past decades.” Medication therapies include stimulant and non-stimulant therapies, with modalities being determined by the patient’s needs.

  Risk Grows With Duration of Use

  In the study, researchers looked at 13 years of records in the National Inpatient Register of over 278,000 individuals between the ages of 6 and 64 with ADHD. They found that the longer an individual used ADHD medication, the higher their risk was of developing cardiovascular disease compared to those who did not take ADHD medication. Additionally, each additional year an individual used ADHD medication increased their risk of heart disease by an average of 4 percent. Overall, the results suggest that heart disease risk was 23 percent higher for people who used ADHD medication for more than five years compared to those who never used it. The risk was stable among children and adults, both male and female.

  Cardiovascular diseases linked to ADHD medication include hypertension and artery disease. There was no increased risk for other associated conditions, such as heart failure, arrhythmias, thromboembolic disease, arterial disease, and other forms of heart disease.

  The study confirms previous research that indicated patients taking stimulant ADHD medication, such as Ritalin or Adderall, are at higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease than those taking non-stimulant ADHD medication. The reason for the development is likely because the stimulants in the drugs are known to elevate blood pressure, arouse the nervous system, and make the heart work harder.

  The study authors noted that clinicians should “be vigilant in monitoring patients … and consistently assess signs and symptoms of CVD (cardiovascular diseases),” especially in patients receiving high doses of stimulant medications.

  Those taking ADHD medication should monitor their heart health regularly. ADHD patients can rely on the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8, a set of key health behaviors and factors that can alter one’s risk of heart disease. The Essential 8 include the following:

  • Eating healthily.
  • Being more active.
  • Quitting smoking.
  • Getting enough sleep.
  • Managing weight.
  • Controlling cholesterol.
  • Managing blood sugar.
  • Managing blood pressure.

  No Proof of Causation

  Researchers noted the limitations of the case-control study, including that it cannot prove that ADHD medication causes any cardiovascular disease problems.

  Additionally, the study’s sample was limited to one country, which could indicate the need for more diversity in the future.

  Of prominent note: Researchers did not look at the risk of cardiovascular disease in those who already had heart issues.

  The authors indicated that further research must be done that examines those with preexisting cardiovascular disease. “Evaluating the risk among them necessitates a different study design that carefully considers the potential impact of prior knowledge and periodic monitoring,” they wrote.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 22:10

• Guess What Industry Dominates 2023's Top TV Advertisers
  Guess What Industry Dominates 2023’s Top TV Advertisers

  In 2023, advertising spend is projected to reach $61.3 billion on U.S. broadcast and cable TV.

  Despite declining viewership, traditional TV has been found to be an optimal platform for storytelling ads. Additionally, advertisers can target viewer segments on traditional TV—similar to digital marketing channels.

  Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld shows the top advertisers on traditional TV outlets in the chart below, based on data from Nielsen.

  

  Top 10 National TV Advertising Spenders

  Here are the top advertisers on national U.S. broadcast and cable TV for the month of June 2023:

  

  Procter & Gamble was the top TV advertising spender in the U.S., at $109.3 million. Home to Gillette, Crest, and Tide, the company spent a stunning $5.1 billion in overall advertising in 2022.

  Pharmaceutical companies Abbvie and GSK were the next biggest spenders, at $81.4 million and $52.8 million, respectively. Overall, pharmaceuticals accounted for the largest share of advertising across the top 10.

  Big tech companies Alphabet and Amazon also made the list, each spending over $30 million in June alone.

  Top 10 Local TV Advertising Spenders

  By contrast, the automotive sector made up seven of the top 10 local broadcast and cable TV advertisers, led by General Motors and Toyota:

  

  Meanwhile, communication giants Comcast and Charter were big spenders, and the nation’s largest personal injury law firm, Morgan & Morgan, ranked in seventh overall.

  U.S. Television Trends

  Today, live TV viewership in the U.S. is primarily made up of those aged 65 and over, which spend nearly five hours per day watching TV. In contrast, those aged 25-34 spend only about one hour and 12 minutes per day watching live TV.

  Furthermore, in 2022, fewer than half of U.S. viewers paid for traditional TV services for the first time. By year-end 2027, this proportion is projected to fall to just over a third of households.

  Yet due to its scale of available media inventory, traditional TV may continue to bring in the bulk of TV advertising spending over the near future. One reason is that advertising makes up 20% of time spent on traditional TV but just 3% on streaming platforms.

  However, as viewership declines, advertisers on live TV say that they are most likely to allocate their ad spend to streaming services. By year-end 2027, ad spend on streaming platforms is projected to jump to $40.9 billion, a 63% increase from 2023.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 21:35

• How The Federal-Private Speech Police Operated In Election 2020: With Radar Highly Attuned To The Right
  How The Federal-Private Speech Police Operated In Election 2020: With Radar Highly Attuned To The Right

  Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClear Wire,

  During the 2020 election, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) partnered with the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a consortium of groups led by the Stanford Internet Observatory, to track and counter what they considered mis- and dis-information.

  

  EIP surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts and collected from the cooperating government and non-governmental entities that it calls its “stakeholders” potential violations of social media platforms’ policies concerning election speech.

  It coordinated its efforts primarily through a digital “ticketing” system. There, one of its as many as 120 analysts or an external partner could highlight a piece of offending social media content, or narrative consisting of many offending posts, by creating a “ticket,” and share it with other relevant participants by “tagging” them. Tagged participants could then communicate with each other, in something of a group chat, about the veracity of the flagged content, concerns about its spread, and what actions they might take to combat it.

  For social media companies this meant removing the content outright, reducing its spread, or “informing” users about dubious posts by slapping corrective or contextualizing labels on them.

  During the 2020 election cycle, EIP generated a total of 639 tickets, covering some 4,784 unique URLs – representing content shared millions of times – disproportionately related to the “delegitimization” of election results. Major platforms including Twitter, Google, and Facebook responded to tickets in which they were tagged at rates of 75% or higher. The platforms “labeled, removed, or soft blocked” 35% of the URLs shared via EIP.

  RealClearInvestigations has obtained data associated with nearly 400 EIP tickets, data produced for the House Homeland Security Committee in connection with its oversight efforts. The tickets come in the form of a series of spreadsheets. Each row represents one ticket. The Stanford group provided no key for the spreadsheets. Much of the information is redacted.

  Here are just a few examples of the tickets EIP produced:

  Ticket EIP-482 (created October 27, 2020) was originated by the CISA’s Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). It concerns a tweet from then-President Trump indicating “most” states permit one to change one’s original vote after engaging in early voting, which EIP categorized as potential “Procedural Interference.”

  The analysts point to fact-checks from, among other sources, Buzzfeed and ABC News challenging the president’s claim. Following two redacted comments on the ticket, an unnamed commenter writes, “Twitter received and is reviewing.” A subsequent comment reads: “We heard back from Twitter through CISA with this response: Our team concluded that the Tweet was not in violation of our Civic Integrity Policy.”

  CISA-produced documentation shows the sub-agency’s chief counter-MDM (mis-, dis-, and malinformation) officer, Brian Scully, had also reported the tweet to Twitter, which responded to him directly about it. Therefore, EIP and its stakeholder, an executive agency, both forwarded the chief executive’s speech to a social media platform for potential censorship.

  Ticket EIP-257 (Sept. 29), originated by the EI-ISAC, concerns a social media post from an unnamed user, alleging an absentee ballot had been delivered by mail to his dead father. An EIP stakeholder “flagged the post to Facebook for removal and the link is no longer active which means it has either been taken down or made private to the individual’s Facebook.” A subsequent comment notes that “We also received confirmation from Facebook (by way of CISA) that Facebook took action on this case,” again showing EIP and CISA seemingly working as force multipliers in content moderation.

  Ticket EIP-301 (Oct. 2), originated by the EI-ISAC, concerns a “tweet regarding voting machines.” An elected official reported that the since-deleted and unavailable tweet “is false. Voting machines work the vast majority of the time. Old machines do have issues, but to phrase it like [this] vastly overstates the scope of the problem.” CISA inquired as to whether Twitter took the tweet down. It did.

  Ticket EIP-954 (Nov. 8), the origins of which are not discernible, concerns social media posts sharing an article from The Federalist, where I am a senior contributor, titled “America Won’t Trust Elections Until The Voter Fraud Is Investigated.” According to the ticket, the article “Misconstrues Disinformation as Evidence.” One tagged post comes from Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway. A stakeholder writes to Facebook and Twitter in connection with the ticket that “this seems to be the greatest hits from the past 3 days wrapped up in one article. The article links to several of the gateway pundit links which have received action since Tuesday.” Twitter indicates it was reviewing the tweet, though it appears not to have taken action on it. RCI asked Hemingway for comment on the flagging of her tweet and publication’s work. She replied:

  This unconscionable censorship of The Federalist and its reporters is sadly unsurprising. The censorship-industrial complex in this country clearly views free speech as its enemy and will do anything to shut it down, including spreading lies and using intimidation to coerce private companies to censor factual, legal speech on behalf of the regime.

  Hemingway concluded with a warning: “The censorship-industrial complex better buckle up, because the days of conservatives taking this lying down are over.”

  This article was adapted from a RealClearInvestigations article published Nov. 6.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 21:00

• Number Of Attacks On US Bases In Iraq & Syria Pushes Past 80
  Number Of Attacks On US Bases In Iraq & Syria Pushes Past 80

  US military bases in the Middle East reportedly came under Fresh attack again on Friday, pushing the total number of attacks since mid-October past 80 incidents.

  “There were four additional attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since yesterday, according to a DOD official. Now 82 overall since Oct. 17,” Politico’s Pentagon correspondent Lara Seligman wrote. Some media sources have put the figure as high as 85.

  

  While the fresh attack hasn’t been widely reported in Western media, Iran’s Mehr News Agency is among those regional sources claiming that some four American bases in Syria were hit.

  And one regional monitor OSINTdefender said, “The Attacks on U.S. Forces in the Middle East today has been Never-ending, with at least 10 Rocket and Drones Attacks reported against 6 different Bases in both Iraq and Syria in the last 12 Hours.”

  In a Thursday briefing Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Sing had said this trend of attacks had lessened since the end of the weeklong Israel-Hamas truce, and that the US is hoping things stay calm in the region.

  “In terms of the attacks on our forces, I think it’s important to remember that it’s good that we have not seen attacks on our forces in the last 24 hours,” Singh said. “We would like to see that continue.”

  The Biden administration has long asserted that it “won’t hesitate” to defend American forces in the region; however, recent reporting in Politico has suggested the US is intentionally refraining from a response to Iran-backed Houthi aggression in the Red Sea, on fears of sparking a broader war.

  This week for the first time since Oct.7, the US Embassy in Baghdad came under multiple missile salvos. Damage was reported but no injuries.

  Likely, attacks will continue to intensify especially in Syria – given that both Syrian national and Iranian forces want to squeeze American forces out of the illegal occupation of the country’s oil and gas regions. There have been dozens of US troop injuries, with all of them reported as minor.

  Attacks on U.S. Bases in Middle East Are Escalating.
  I continue to argue our troops in Iraq & Syria are serving no purpose… they are not degrading terrorist groups in the region. Get them out of there!#iraq #Syria #MiddleEast #isis #hamas #Terrorists pic.twitter.com/2UMkGHs8bR

  — Daniel Davis Deep Dive (@DanielLDavis1) December 9, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Washington has been intent on strangling Damascus and the Syrian population after Assad emerged victorious from the decade-long proxy war there. Turkey also wants to see the US presence end, given the Pentagon’s support to the Kurds.

  Just this week the Senate voted down a resolution that which have required a quick and full US troop drawdown from Syria, on the basis that there was never explicit Congressional authorization for the occupation in the first place.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 20:25

• Gun Owners Of America Defeats Hidden Gun Control In Military Funding Bill
  Gun Owners Of America Defeats Hidden Gun Control In Military Funding Bill

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  When laws are debated in Congress that are too controversial to pass on their own, oftentimes sneaky politicians will attempt to place similar language into must-pass bills.

  One of those must-pass bills is the National Defense Authorization Act, also known as the NDAA. The annual NDAA creates new programs, strategies, and authorizes the Department of Defense to procure new technologies.

  This year, thanks to Gun Owners of America and the support of our grassroots members, we are happy to report that the proposed gun control amendments to the NDAA have been defeated.

  So, you might ask, what gun control did the anti-gun politicians in Congress try to sneak into this year’s bill?

  The answer is a permanent reauthorization of the Undetectable Firearms Act.

  Gun Owners of America is the only pro-gun lobbying organization to historically oppose the Undetectable Firearms Act since its passage into law in 1988. 

  The act itself began as an attempt to ban handguns like the Glock 17 when they were first introduced to the market in the mid-80s. At this time, polymer-framed handguns were a very new idea, and a misunderstanding about the Glock’s polymer frame prompted an idea that even though the Glock had a metal slide, its polymer frame would somehow make it undetectable to metal detectors and, therefore, be the weapon of choice for criminals.

  When the act was finally passed through Congress, a compromise was made – so it did not affect any existing handguns.

  Nowadays, with the advent of 3D printing, the Undetectable Firearms Act stifles manufacturers from producing smaller, lighter, and higher-performing handguns because they must meet the UFA’s weight requirement. This issue is compounded for the consumer handgun market because of the massive demand for concealed carry firearms, especially in light of the recent landmark NYSRPA v. Bruen decision.

  In addition, security measures have come a long way since the 1980s. Metal detectors are quickly being replaced by AI detection technology and less invasive sensor-based body scanning. The Undetectable Firearms Act nowadays only serves as an arbitrary and capricious gun control statute masquerading as public safety.

  The UFA has been reauthorized four times. The original act had a ten-year sunset clause. It was renewed in 1988 for five years, in 2003 for ten years, and finally in 2013 for another ten years.

  Over these past 40 years, much has changed. More and more gun owners are starting to embrace the no-compromise mindset. As such, renewals of bills like the Undetectable Firearms Act will be harder and harder to pass. Because of the work of grassroots GOA members, members of Congress are starting to oppose gun control like the UFA, removing it from must-pass bills like the NDAA.

  While gun owners should enjoy the victory, we must remain vigilant until the UFA is laid to rest permanently.

  Gun Owners of America is urging our members to continue to call their elected representatives and let them know that they do not support the Undetectable Firearms Act.

  *   *   *  

  We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 19:50

• "Escape Liberal Hell": Oregon, Washington Republicans Flee PNW, Join California Conservatives In Idaho
  “Escape Liberal Hell”: Oregon, Washington Republicans Flee PNW, Join California Conservatives In Idaho

  America is witnessing a seismic shift in its demographic landscape. Recent data from Idaho reveals an unprecedented trend: people are migrating not just for jobs, schools, or lifestyle, but for political alignment. The movement is reshaping the country, according to the Seattle Times‘ Danny Westneat.

  

  The call to “Escape liberal hell,” as echoed by a Boise, Idaho real estate agent, is not just a catchy sales pitch but a sign of the times. Idaho’s voter database sheds light on this great political migration. Approximately 119,000 voters have moved to Idaho in recent years, with a staggering 65% registering as Republicans—a figure that overshadows the state’s already GOP-leaning demographic of 58%.

  And it’s not just a trickle of discontented conservatives – it’s a flood. The data also suggests that the narrative of liberals, untethered by remote work, turning red states purple, has been upended. Instead, a “Republican fever dream” (as the Idaho Capital Sun called it) is materializing.

  According to the data, among all Idaho voters who moved here from out of state:

  • 77,136, or 65% are registered Republicans.
  • 24,906, or 21% are unaffiliated.
  • 14,711, or 12% are registered Democrats.
  • 1,949, or 2% are a member of a third party, such as the Constitution Party or Libertarian Party.

  This political realignment has become known as the “big sort,” where America’s national stratification not just by vocation or socioeconomic status, but by political allegiance. As Westneat writes, Idaho’s dream of becoming a fortress against liberalism—a so-called “American redoubt”—is materializing.

  For states like Washington, Oregon, and California, this exodus of Republican voters is more than a demographic shift—it’s a political hemorrhage. According to the report, 75% of Californian expats in Idaho are registering as Republicans. This movement intensifies the political polarization, with red states becoming redder and blue states bluer.

  “Are you sick of living in a Blue State with high taxes, radical policies, and high crime?” reads an ad from one real estate company, Conservative Move (Motto: “Moving Families Right.”). “Find a new home in a state and community that reflects your values.”

  Parallel economy?

  This ‘big sort’ has birthed a cottage industry catering to political migration, particularly on the right. Companies like Conservative Move and GOP Agent aren’t just offering real estate services; they’re selling a lifestyle that aligns with political ideologies. It’s a trend that’s not slowing down, as evidenced by the over 150 attendees at a Seattle info session about moving to red states.

  “The interest in moving to red states is not slowing down,” according to Conservative Move’s Facebook page.

  As The Economist suggested in June, America might soon see parallel economies where partisanship dictates not just where people live, but what products they consume and services they use, like Patriot Mobile’s Christian conservative wireless network.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 19:15

• New York Democrats Nominate Former Rep. Tom Suozzi To Fill Santos' Seat
  New York Democrats Nominate Former Rep. Tom Suozzi To Fill Santos’ Seat

  Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

  Democrat officials in New York’s 3rd Congressional District have put up former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) to succeed former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.).

  

  The announcement, first reported by Jewish Insider, was made on Dec. 7.

  Instead of a primary, the local Republican and Democrat parties will pick a nominee to face off to serve the remainder of Mr. Santos’ term. The race is expected to be competitive as the district leans Democrat, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

  Mr. Suozzi, a moderate, served in the House between January 2017 and January 2023. He unsuccessfully ran in 2022 for governor of New York.

  “Tom Suozzi has a proven record of fighting for his constituents, fighting to safeguard our suburban way of life here on Long Island and Queens and always advocating for sensible solutions to the real challenges affecting everyday average Americans,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party, and Jay Jacobs, chairman of the Nassau County Democratic Party, in a statement.

  In response, Mr. Suozzi vowed to serve again the constituents he represented in Congress. Previously, he was the county executive of Nassau County, which is on Long Island.

  “The folks from Massapequa and Levittown to the north shore of Nassau, to northeast Queens deserve better,” he said in a statement posted on X.

  “I will work day and night with both parties to deliver for the people, to make living here more affordable, safer and better,” continued Mr. Suozzi. “I delivered for this district before, and I will do it again by putting you ahead of partisanship. Let’s reject the nonsense and get back to work.”

  Return to Congress

  Mr. Suozzi is already running for the seat in the 2024 general election.

  Ms. Hochul has set the special election for Feb 13. Before the ouster, Mr. Santos had already announced that he would not seek reelection and predicted the votes were there for expulsion.

  On the GOP side, possible picks include state Sen. Jack Martins and Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip, a black Jewish woman who was rescued by Israel during their airlifts of Ethiopian Jews like herself in 1991.

  The House Democrat conference’s super PAC will “play a significant role in the NY-03 special election, and we will do whatever it takes to flip this district blue,” said the group’s president, Mike Smith.

  The special election will also be a test for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who won the gavel in October, as it pertains to his fundraising operation, the Johnson Leadership Fund.

  New York’s 3rd District went for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Were the Democrats to win back the seat, the GOP would have a six-seat majority and therefore only be able to lose two votes on measures if all Democrats vote in opposition.

  Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who served as speaker of the House between January and October, announced on Dec. 6 he will leave Congress at the end of the year.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 18:40

• South American Gangs Target Dozens Of Mansions In Detroit
  South American Gangs Target Dozens Of Mansions In Detroit

  Violent crime is quickly spreading to suburbia. A new report shows gangs from South America have targeted mansions in wealthy neighborhoods across the Detroit metro area. This comes as the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies have flooded the country with millions of illegal migrants, as well as progressive cities fail to enforce ‘common sense’ law and order. 

  WXYZ Detroit reported at least 30 to 40 homes in upscale neighborhoods across Detroit have been targeted by “highly functional and well-trained” gangs from South America this fall.

  Thieves are using high-tech “jammers” to disable WiFi home security systems. They’re primarily after cash, jewelry, and expensive handbags. 

  Organized gangs of illegals are breaking into homes across America. pic.twitter.com/BIxJ1MYLw5

  — Big Fish (@BigFish3000) December 8, 2023

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  Last week, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said thieves are part of “transnational gangs” operating across the country and are targeting multi-million dollar homes. 

  In recent months, we have shared an emerging theme of thieves across the country targeting wealthy households:

  • Lawlessness Spreads To Suburbia: Westport Man Carjacked In Own Garage
  • Wealthy Chicago Neighborhood Shaken: Family Held Up At Gunpoint In Own Driveway

  This disturbing trend comes as illegal migrant encounters by the Customs and Border Protection on the southern border hit a record high. President Biden’s disastrous open southern border has flooded the country with 9 million illegals since he took office. Also, Democrat lawmakers, some of whom are Soros-backed, fail to enforce common sense law and order, transforming some metros into lawless, crime-ridden hellholes. 

  Democrats are turning this nation into a third-world-like state – and now criminals, emboldened by failed progressive policies, have the rich in their crosshairs in suburbia. 

  The only advice for law-abiding Americans who want to defend their families and homes in suburbia, where the average police could be upwards of ten minutes or more, is to get proper firearms training from a professional. 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 18:05

• He Who Must Not Be Named: The Hunter Biden Indictment is Itself a Model of Evasion
  He Who Must Not Be Named: The Hunter Biden Indictment is Itself a Model of Evasion

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Below is my column in the New York Post on the second indictment of Hunter Biden. The tax evasion charges were brought in a type of Voldemort indictment, skillfully detailing millions acquired from influence peddling without mentioning “he who must not be named.” Indeed, it says nothing of how or why millions were sent to Hunter.

  

  Here is the column:

  The 56-page indictment of Hunter Biden for tax evasion makes for racy reading, with the special counsel describing a four-year criminal pattern directed at maintaining Biden’s “extravagant lifestyle.”

  That lifestyle included massive expenses for strippers, sex clubs, fast cars and other distractions.

  The steps taken by Hunter to evade taxes are impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the efforts of the Justice Department to evade any direct implications for his father, President Biden.

  In that sense, the indictment itself is a marvel of evasion.

  There are three glaring omissions in the indictment that tend to shield critical payments and conduct that implicate the president.

  The Burisma-Ukrainian money

  First, the special counsel only indicts tax evasion that occurred in recent years.

  That’s because the long “investigation” into Hunter inexplicably allowed the statute of limitations to expire on the most controversial payments starting around 2014 from Ukraine gas company Burisma.

  Recent testimony from IRS whistleblowers suggests that wasn’t an accident. Investigators were stonewalled, they claimed, and the Justice Department was previously moving to reject any charges against Hunter Biden.

  Exploring those earlier Ukrainian payments opens up questions about Hunter’s influence peddling and would have highlighted the conflict in his father’s extraordinary move to force the Ukrainians to fire a prosecutor investigating Burisma by holding back a billion dollars in aid for the country.

  There is still no explanation why special counsel David Weiss would allow the statute of limitations to run out.

  But this recent indictment keeps the focus squarely on taxes not paid, not how the money was “earned” in the first place.

  Hunter the foreign agent

  Also missing in the indictment is any charge against Hunter Biden as an unregistered foreign agent.

  Recently, the Justice Department added a charge to the indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) that he ran afoul of FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. FARA also was used to go after Donald Trump associates such as Paul Manafort.

  The problem with charging Hunter with FARA is obvious.

  It opens up questions about the millions of dollars going to the Biden family from foreign sources, a topic that Attorney General Merrick Garland has spent years avoiding.

  In the second indictment, Weiss spends more time detailing the salacious use of this money rather than how and why it was given to the Bidens.

  He just matter-of-factly describes millions flowing through these accounts from China, Romania, Ukraine, Russia and other countries.

  The unindicted co-conspirator

  By focusing on tax evasion alone, Weiss again avoids any direct reference to the focus of the influence-peddling used to raise these millions of dollars.

  Even without mentioning the president, the implications of the indictment are devastating for the narrative and denials of Joe Biden.

  The president has continued to maintain that he had no knowledge or interaction with these dealings. Those statements are clearly and knowingly false.

  The president also maintained that his son has “never done anything wrong” and never accepted any money from China.

  That is also untrue, according to the Justice Department and Hunter himself.

  Yet Weiss continues to avoid any need to address the person who was the selling point of the influence peddling.

  It was the same person who repeatedly called in to dinners and meetings, repeatedly attended events, and held meetings and photo shots for these clients.

  Instead, Weiss indicts the failure to pay taxes on the proceeds of these dealings without addressing that underlying corruption.

  It is akin to arresting a bank robber for speeding away from the crime scene without mentioning the reason for his flight.

  In a scandal with dozens of references to the presidents and millions sent for influence and access, it took a steady hand for Weiss to avoid ever touching on President Biden’s role.

  This was a truly Homeric feat — unseen since the Greek hero Odysseus won a competition by shooting an arrow through the tiny hole in a dozen ax heads.

  It takes perfect aim not to avoid any contact. It is itself the very model of evasion.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 17:30

• Penn President Liz Magill Resigns After 'Genocide Requires Context' Comments
  Penn President Liz Magill Resigns After ‘Genocide Requires Context’ Comments

  …live by the sword, DEI by the sword!

  Amid exponentially mounting pressure following her disastrous testimony to Congress this week, Liz Magill has “voluntarily resigned” as the President of the University of Pennsylvania.

  Axios reports that the board of Penn’s Wharton business school on Friday sent a letter to the university’s board of trustees, after receiving no reply to a letter they sent on Thursday to Magill, in which they requested her resignation.

  The letter read, in part:

  “The Board will, of course, vote based upon each member’s beliefs and only the Board of Trustees, as the University’s fiduciaries, can determine the actions that are in the best interests of the University.

  However, University inaction cloaked in statements of intent and informational meetings has fostered the current climate of fear on campus and has resulted in Government inquiries, Title VI litigation, and declarations by numerous media outlets that our beloved university is ‘ground zero for antisemitism on college campuses.'”

  The letter comes after Magill rapidly backtracked on her congressional testimony in a video released Wednesday.

  “In that moment, I was focused on our university’s long-standing policies, aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which says that speech alone is not punishable,” she said.

  “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil, plain and simple.”

  But now, she’s gone…

  

  Here is the full letter: (emphasis ours)

  Dear Members of the Penn community,

  I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania. She will remain a tenured faculty member at Penn Carey Law.

  On behalf of the entire Penn community, I want to thank President Magill for her service to the University as President and wish her well.

  We will be in touch in the coming days to share plans for interim leadership of Penn. President Magill has agreed to stay on until an interim president is appointed.

  President Magill shared the following statement, which I include here:

  “It has been my privilege to serve as President of this remarkable institution. It has been an honor to work with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community members to advance Penn’s vital missions.”

  Best,

  Scott L. Bok
  Chair, Penn Board of Trustees

  Her resignation comes a day after a bipartisan group of House lawmakers is demanding the governing board members of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) dismiss their presidents following their controversial responses at a campus anti-Semitism hearing.

  In a Dec. 5 letter, 72 lawmakers expressed their disappointment over the responses from the three college presidents during the hearing “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Anti-Semitism” held the same day.

  In the letter, the group, led by Representatives Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), noted that:

  “The university presidents’ responses to questions aimed at addressing the growing trend of anti-Semitism on college and university campuses were abhorrent.”

  “This should have been an easy and resounding ‘yes.'”

  “There is no context in which calls for the genocide of Jews are acceptable rhetoric. Their failure to unequivocally condemn calls for the systematic murder of Jews is deeply alarming. It stands in stark contrast to the principles we expect leaders of top academic institutions to uphold,” the letter wrote.

  “It is hard to imagine any Jewish or Israeli student, faculty, or staff feeling safe when presidents of your member institutions could not say that calls for the genocide of Jews would have clear consequences on your campus.”

  One down, two to go…

  

  (L-R) Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, Liz Magill, president of University of Pennsylvania, Pamela Nadell, professor of history and Jewish studies at American University, and Sally Kornbluth, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, on Dec. 5, 2023. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

  The resignations won’t be enough though…

  On Dec. 7, Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) of the House Education and Workforce Committee announced that the committee had launched an investigation of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn.

  The committee said it would review the schools’ policies and disciplinary records and examine “their seemingly deplorable record.” “The testimony we received earlier this week from Presidents Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth about the responses of Harvard, UPenn, and MIT to the rampant anti-Semitism displayed on their campuses by students and faculty was absolutely unacceptable,” Ms. Foxx said.

  …and remember, Marc Morial told us all that DEI departments aren’t responsible for the safety of Jews on campus.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 16:51

• Disney's 'Democratic Political Operative' Bob Iger Fully Exposed After Musk Spat: Thacker
  Disney’s ‘Democratic Political Operative’ Bob Iger Fully Exposed After Musk Spat: Thacker

  Authored by Paul Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle (subscribe here)

  Editors at the New York Post commissioned me to write a piece last weekend explaining how the Democratic Party has been targeting Elon Musk for buying Twitter and taking away their ability to censor critics and label them “disinformation.” The issue came to a head after Musk vented during an interview when asked about Disney and other companies pulling advertising over alleged antisemitism on his platform.

  

  “If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself,” Elon Musk said. Musk repeated the advice with a wave of his hand toward Disney’s Bob Iger, a Musk critic and Biden administration donor and functionary.

  “Go. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear? Hey, Bob, if you’re in the audience.”

  Within hours of the intervew, dozens of parodies began appearing on X, including this one. But if you read about the exchange in any media outlet, you would think Musk was coming unhinged, attacking advertisers who support his own company.

  

  This is far from reality. Democratic operatives including Disney’s Bob Iger have been harassing Musk since he took over Twitter and released company documents showing the government and Democratic Party aligned organizations were censoring Americans. You can read some of my reporting on these Twitter Files here, here, here, here, and here.

  After the New York Post published my essay, I found that Musk had predicted a dirty tricks campaign over a year and a half ago.

  

  The tactics being used against Musk are quite simple to understand if you know the various figures involved, their backgrounds, and finances. First, Democratic Party attack groups like the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and Media Matters for America gin up fake studies that accuse Musk of allowing hate, antisemitism, racism (whatever label they feel is effective) to flourish on social media. Second, Biden campaign donors like Disney’s Bob Iger express panic and flee X, complaining that they can’t be associated with hate.

  The media won’t report on this, but it’s a basic squeeze play once you know the characters involved.

  In recent months, Musk has sued both the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Media Matters for America for making false allegations of hate at X that have driven away advertisers. Both groups claim to be nonpartisan but actually work to attack opponents of Democratic Party policies.

  If you read any story in the press about the CCDH, you would think they’re some lefty nonprofit laboring away to keep the world safe from online hate. A couple headlines just to give you a flavor for this.

  

  But as I documented in an investigation for Tablet, political operatives with the conservative wing of the British Labour Party founded the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in 2018 to attack people on the Left and Right. The group’s leader, Imran Ahmed, now asserts that he is  “at the forefront of reporting on the hate proliferating on X/Twitter since Musk completed his takeover in late October 2022.”

  In reality, Ahmed is also a former Labour Party political operative who ran CCDH and another Labour Party front group to attack the left wing of his own party with vague accusation of hate. While in the UK, Ahmed’s groups helped to run Jeremy Corbyn out of Labour Party leadership and tanked the lefty news site Canary, after starting a boycott of their advertisers.

  Former Canary editor Kerry-Anne Mendoza described Ahmed’s war against her leftist news site as a scorched earth campaign that destroyed their advertising revenue and forced mass layoffs. “They accuse you of hate,” she told me. “Our regulator said the opposite, but that was irrelevant.”

  Targeting advertisers seems very similar to Ahmed’s current tactics against Musk, no?

  Since Ahmed moved the group to Washington, DC, in 2021 one of CCDH’s main targets, aside from X and Elon Musk, has been presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., who leads Biden among young voters, and is suing the administration over censorship. This should not surprise anyone as CCDH’s chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank founded by John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump.

  

  Ahmed does not disclose CCDH’s funding, but I found that 75% of it comes from dark money sources. Some of this money may be coming out of Hollywood—Bob Iger’s home base. One of the board members on CCDH’s tax records is talent agent Aleen Keshishian, who reps actor Mark Ruffalo, an Ahmed ally in his crusade against Musk.

  

  After I tweeted a series of Twitter Files on Imran Ahmed’s work with the old Twitter to censor people, Musk responded, “Anyone know who is supporting this rat?” A month later, Musk sued CCDH for “faulty reports” that were driving away advertisers. “CCDH’s scare campaign to global advertisers … is an attempt to stifle freedom of speech on the X platform.”

  Media Matters has a similar political history, but you won’t find many media outlets explaining this to readers. Instead, reporters often ignore Media Matters’ Democratic Party ties or choose to describe them as a “watchdog.”

  

  When CNN wrote a dismissive article on Musk’s lawsuit, they even described one of Media Mattes’ employees as a “senior investigative reporter.” One of the media experts CNN quoted to downplay the lawsuit is Joan Donovan, one of the many academic “misinformation researchers” who have popped up in recent years to argue in favor of social media censorship.

  Again, reality is rather different from what you might read.

  The New York Times reported in 2004 that Democratic political operative David Brock created the group in 2004 with help from the Center for American Progress. The paper later noted that Media Matters served as part of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election “outrage machine.”

  After Clinton’s loss, Brock freaked and released a 49-page memo marked “private and confidential” that explained how Media Matters was being retooled to move into the digital space and attack “misinformation.”

  

  But when Biden beat Trump, the Media Matters political machine pivoted to harangue Musk and Twitter, criticizing him, in one example, for helping Stanford Professor Jay Bhattacharya look into the Twitter Files to see why he had been placed on a “blacklist.”

  After I published Twitter Files showing that the company had provided privileged access to lefty reporter Taylor Lorenz, who had gotten Dr. Bhattacharya banned, Media Matters jumped to downplay the documents.

  

  Media Matters has also harangued Musk for retweeting news about immigration problems at the southern border, for example. But as border issues have overwhelmed the Biden administration, Media Matters has ceased raising this election issue as a preferred attack.

  After Media Matters published a flimsy report a few weeks back that alleged Nazi content ran on X alongside advertisements from major corporations—claims which caused multiple advertisers to freeze spending—Musk immediately sued the group. “As the most prominent online platform dedicated to hosting free speech, X and its predecessor Twitter have long been the target of Media Matters,” reads the lawsuit.

  In case you think Disney’s Bob Iger is absolved of political guilt, take a gander at his partisan bona fides.

  In the final months of the 2020 election, CNBC reported that Iger was one of Biden’s largest donors, giving $250K to his campaign. Even before Biden had been sworn in as President, Iger then began angling for a position in his administration—possibly as ambassador to China.

  This last summer Iger claimed that he did not want to get involved in “culture wars” before hiring a loyal Biden aide to run Disney’s crisis communications and deal with … culture wars.

  

  Iger remains a critical donor for Biden’s reelection, according to New York Magazine.

  Disney now faces renewed calls for a boycott by Musk’s legion of online supporters. But you don’t need to love, hate, or be indifferent about the guy to be concerned. I am, however, eternally grateful that Musk gave me and other reporters access to Twitter’s internal company documents, something no other CEO has ever done in the history of our democracy.

  And what worries me as I watch this unfold: if a political party—either Democrat or Republican—can target the richest, most powerful man in the country because he doesn’t support all their policies, who might be next? Isn’t that what’s important?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 16:20

• Trump Is Absolutely Smoking Biden In Yet Another Major Poll
  Trump Is Absolutely Smoking Biden In Yet Another Major Poll

  President Biden is in serious trouble, with his political standing now at the weakest point of his presidency, according to a new poll from the Wall Street Journal.

  

  The poll shows Biden trailing behind former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 showdown by 4 percentage points, a gap that widens with the inclusion of third-party candidates, signifying a potential upheaval in the traditional two-party dynamics.

  Dislike of Biden has become widespread – with just 23% of voters feeling they’ve been positively impacted by Biden’s policies, starkly contrasting with the nostalgic economic reminiscence of the Trump era. The term “Bidenomics,” once a banner of hope, now flounders with less than 30% approval, reflecting widespread disillusionment. No wonder the White House has stopped using the term.

  

  The Democrat president faces serious perception issues.

  Voters say Trump is the better bet than Biden to secure the border (by 30 percentage points), tame inflation (by 21 points) and build the economy (by 17 points). Biden leads on who can best deal with abortion policy, and voters say that he more than Trump respects democracy. But the president is viewed as no better than Trump on cutting medication costs—a key Democratic initiative.  –WSJ

  “If this race is about policy and performance, then Donald Trump has a significant advantage,” said Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, who conducted the Journal survey with Democrat Michael Bocian. “If this race is about temperament and character, things like that, then Biden has an advantage.”

  

  “Things were thriving under Trump. This country is a business and it needs to be run by a businessman,” said 53-year-old Aimee Kozlowski of Goffestown, NH, a Republican who plans to vote for Trump, and says that her competitive gymnastics facility has been hurt by inflation.

  

  The poll also uncovers a dissonance between public economic pessimism and recent positive economic indicators, such as a robust GDP and low unemployment.

  The president has been adjusting his messages on the economy to put more focus on taming inflation rather than on job creation. Creating high-paying jobs was a central goal of Democratic-backed legislation that funded new infrastructure and manufacturing, but voters see jobs as less of a concern than high prices. The White House recently unveiled a new supply-chain council aimed in part at stemming inflation, and Biden recently called on companies to “stop the price-gouging.” 

  The president and his campaign have also amplified their focus on Trump’s most contentious comments, such as his description of opponents as “vermin” and his statement last week that he would be a dictator on “Day 1”—specifically to close the border and open more land for oil drilling—both of which suggest an authoritarian approach to a potential second Trump term. Trump’s allies say Democrats are trying to distract from economic issues and problems at the southern border. -WSJ

  Of course, the Journal also found a never-Trump independent voter, Michelle Bannon, who says the former president is “not qualified at all,” adding “I don’t know that Biden can go another four years, but I’ll cross my fingers and vote for him. He’s the lesser of two evils.”

  From 10,000 feet, Trump is smoking Biden in most polls in general.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 15:45

• US Tells Israel Not To Strike The Houthis In Yemen
  US Tells Israel Not To Strike The Houthis In Yemen

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  The Biden administration has asked Israel not to respond to recent attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

  The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, have fired missiles and drones at Israel in response to the Israeli onslaught in Gaza and have targeted Israeli-linked commercial ships in the Red Sea. US warships have responded to the Houthi attacks and have downed several Houthi missiles and drones in recent weeks.

  

  According to the Journal, the US is concerned an Israeli response could spark a major regional war. US officials told Israel that the US would handle any potential response, although POLITICO reported that the administration is not planning on directly targeting the Houthis, at least for now.

  The POLITICO report said the Pentagon has drawn up plans to strike the Houthis, but they have not been presented or recommended to President Biden.

  The report said there is a “high-level consensus within the administration that it does not make sense for the US military to respond directly to the Houthis.”

  Saudi Arabia has also urged the US not to strike the Houthis over concerns that such an attack could jeopardize the Saudi-Houthi peace process. A ceasefire between the Saudis and the Houthis has held relatively well since April 2022, but a lasting peace deal has not yet been signed.

  The US announced sanctions targeting the Houthis on Thursday that target 13 people and firms allegedly involved in the sale and shipment of Iranian commodities. The Treasury Department claims the network has transferred tens of millions of dollars worth of foreign currency to the Houthis.

  Houthis make today’s @ftweekend front page. The trump card they held but never played in 8+ years of war against the Saudis: Red Sea disruption. In the Axis of Resistance’s support for Palestine, the Houthis hold the greatest leverage over western economies. How far will they go? pic.twitter.com/IXSxTlOzU4

  — Iona Craig أيونا كريچ (@ionacraig) December 9, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The US has backed a Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis since 2015 in a brutal war that has killed at least 377,000 people. But it’s rare that the US and the Houthis directly exchange fire.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 15:10

• "They Look Like America": Clip Of Kevin McCarthy Fluffing Democrats Goes Viral
  “They Look Like America”: Clip Of Kevin McCarthy Fluffing Democrats Goes Viral

  If political windsock Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) wants to rehabilitate his image as a snake in the grass, he’s got his work cut out for him.

  

  A clip of an Oct. 28 address given at Oxford University in the UK has gone viral (oddly, or not, within a day of the former speaker’s endorsement of Donald Trump), in which the former speaker sings the praises of the Democratic party, while slamming Republicans just three weeks after his ouster as House Speaker.

  “When you look at the Democrats, they actually look like America. When I look at my party, we look like the most restrictive country club in America,” McCarthy said to laughter and applause.

  Watch:

  “When I look at democrats they actually look like america, when I look at [republicans] they look like the most restrictive country club” pic.twitter.com/9Vq1P6zwTB

  — Edgar  (@EdBonillaB) November 28, 2023

  As The Blaze‘s Auron MacIntyre notes: “McCarthy is not some weird outlier, he is not a “RINO”, he held THE key leadership position in the party until a few weeks ago and was defended by “serious-minded people who wanted to get things done,”” adding “This is the Republican Party.”

  There are a few good GOP members, but most are simply stewards for the regime, an R next to their name gets them elected in their district but they fully buy into the prestige hierarchy presented to them by the powers that be

  — Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) December 9, 2023

  There are 100s just like him, it’s not one guy

  — Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) December 9, 2023

  The clip resurfaced within a day or so of McCarthy announcing his support for Trump.

  “I will support the president. I will support President Trump,” McCarthy told CBS Sunday Morning in a preview of the interview released Friday, adding that he would gladly accept a position on Trump’s cabinet  if one were offered.

  “In the right position. Look, if I’m the best person for the job, yes,” McCarthy said. “I worked with President Trump on a lot of policies. We worked together to win the majority, but we also have a relationship where we’re very honest with one another.”

  “If Biden stays as the nominee for the Democrats, I believe Donald Trump will win.” Former House @SpeakerMcCarthy talks with @costareports about his future, including his openness to serving in a prospective Trump cabinet, THIS SUNDAY. pic.twitter.com/5oj2ZTNO3w

  — CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) December 8, 2023

  The time to grow a political spine has long passed, Kevin.

  

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 14:35

• US Joins Over 60 Other Nations To Pledge Emissions Reduction From Air Conditioners And Refrigerators
  US Joins Over 60 Other Nations To Pledge Emissions Reduction From Air Conditioners And Refrigerators

  Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry made a pledge with over 60 other nations to slash emissions from refrigerators and air conditioners in a bid to tackle climate change.

  

  On Tuesday, 63 nations, including the United States, joined a pledge to cut down cooling-related emissions at the COP28 United Nations climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Global Cooling Pledge requires countries to reduce such emissions by at least 68 percent by 2050 compared to 2022 levels. The focus of cooling-related emissions would be on appliances like air conditioners and refrigerators. The pledge also proposes setting up minimum energy performance standards for appliances by 2030.

  “We want to lay out a pathway to reduce cooling-related emissions across all sectors but increase access to sustainable cooling,” said Mr. Kerry, who joined representatives from other countries in the pledge, Reuters reported.

  Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) criticized the pledge in a Dec. 6 X post: “John Kerry lost his run for president & has been trying to assert his revenge on everyday Americans ever since. If he gets his way, our cars, our appliances, and food will be gone. All from a man who flies around on his wife’s private jet.”

  Mr. Kerry’s pledge comes as the Biden administration has proposed rules that could harm to the home appliance market. In July, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule to slash the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by 40 percent by 2028, calling the chemical a “climate super-pollutant.”

  HFCs are used as refrigerants in appliances like air conditioners, heat pumps, and refrigerators. Since January last year, the import and production of HFCs require special allowances. During this time, the costs of replacing refrigerants have spiked.

  In an August 2022 analysis, Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted, “Service technicians say that replacing refrigerant lost from a leak now costs upwards of $800, about double what it did a year ago.”

  “Moreover, EPA’s HFC quotas tighten in the years ahead, so the ratchet will keep turning, surely causing homeowners’ bills to increase further still.”

  Earlier in March, the Department of Energy proposed rules under which refrigerators would be subject to a stricter set of energy efficiency standards. The rule comes into effect in 2027.

  Cooling Concerns

  At present, cooling equipment accounts for 20 percent of total electricity consumption. The UN estimates this to more than double by 2050. Emissions from such cooling is projected to account for over 10 percent of global emissions by mid-century.

  According to the UN, as temperatures rise, demand for cooling equipment is also expected to increase. By 2050, installed cooling capacity is estimated to triple due to rising temperatures, increasing incomes, and a growing population.

  “The cooling sector must grow to protect everyone from rising temperatures, maintain food quality and safety, keep vaccines stable and economies productive,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of United National Environment Programme.

  “But this growth must not come at the cost of the energy transition and more intense climate impacts. Countries and the cooling sector must act now to ensure low-carbon cooling growth.”

  One of the proposed ways to cut down cooling emissions is through the use of passive cooling measures like insulation, ventilation, natural shading, and reflective surfaces. The UN estimates that passive cooling could curb the growth in demand for cooling capacity in 2050 by 24 percent.

  “Imagine a slum community, an informal settlement, the housing made of corrugated iron, and on the side an air conditioner … The aspiration of everyone as temperatures rise and incomes rise is that their wealth is measured by their cooling,” Freetown mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr of Sierra Leone said during a COP28 news conference, per Reuters.

  Coal Pledge

  Mr. Kerry’s pledge follows another climate commitment he made last week that the United States would not construct any new coal-fired power plants and would get rid of existing ones entirely.

  “To meet our goal of 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035, we need to phase out unabated coal,” he said in a statement at the Dubai climate summit.

  “We will be working to accelerate unabated coal phase-out across the world, building stronger economies and more resilient communities. The first step is to stop making the problem worse: stop building new unabated coal power plants.”

  According to data from the Department of Energy, 19.7 percent of electricity generation in the United States last year came from coal.

  In 2022, coal-fired plants accounted for 36 percent of global electricity, more than half of which came from China, which is building new coal plants at a rapid pace, undeterred by various climate pledges and goals that the country’s own leadership has paid lip service to.

  According to a February report by the Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, coal power construction starts, new project announcements, and plant permissions “accelerated dramatically” in China in 2022—with two new coal power plants being permitted per week.

  “50 GW of coal power capacity started construction in China in 2022, a more than 50 percent increase from 2021. Many of these projects had their permits fast-tracked and moved to construction in a matter of months,” the report said.

  “A total of 106 GW of new coal power projects, the equivalent of two large coal power plants per week, were permitted. The amount of capacity permitted more than quadrupled from 23 GW in 2021.”

  Tom Ozimek and Reuters contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 14:00

•  "Beyond Shocking": ACLU Will Represent NRA In Free Speech Supreme Court Case
   “Beyond Shocking”: ACLU Will Represent NRA In Free Speech Supreme Court Case

  The American Civil Liberties Union, a left-wing advocacy group, has returned to their roots in defense of an ideological enemy: the National Rifle Association. This move is part of their ongoing effort to remain relevant and defend Americans against First Amendment violations by an overreaching federal government. 

  

  “We’re representing the NRA at the Supreme Court in their case against New York’s Department of Financial Services for abusing its regulatory power to violate the NRA’s First Amendment rights. The government can’t blacklist an advocacy group because of its viewpoint,” the ACLU announced on ‘free speech’ platform X. 

  BREAKING: We’re representing the NRA at the Supreme Court in their case against New York’s Department of Financial Services for abusing its regulatory power to violate the NRA’s First Amendment rights.

  The government can’t blacklist an advocacy group because of its viewpoint.

  — ACLU (@ACLU) December 9, 2023

  ACLU made it very clear that they “don’t support the NRA’s mission or its viewpoints on gun rights, and we don’t agree with their goals, strategies, or tactics. But we both know that government officials can’t punish organizations because they disapprove of their views.” 

  We don’t support the NRA’s mission or its viewpoints on gun rights, and we don’t agree with their goals, strategies, or tactics.

  But we both know that government officials can’t punish organizations because they disapprove of their views. https://t.co/BPLhxFtH0P

  — ACLU (@ACLU) December 9, 2023

  ACLU and NRA have joined forces as the Supreme Court agreed to hear the gun rights advocacy group’s free-speech challenge to what it alleges New York officials encouraged banks and insurance companies to blacklist it after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

  “The NRA might be thought of as the 800-pound gorilla on the Second Amendment,” NRA lawyer William A. Brewer III said, adding, “Clearly, the ACLU is the 800-pound gorilla on the First Amendment.”

  The civil liberties group’s national legal director, David Cole, said, “It’s never easy to defend those with whom you disagree. But the ACLU has long stood for the proposition that we may disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

  The question of when government advocacy violates the First Amendment is before the justices in another case this term. That one concerns the Biden administration’s efforts to persuade social media companies to delete what the government said is misinformation about topics like the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 election.

  In its petition seeking Supreme Court review, the N.R.A., represented by Mr. Brewer’s firm and Eugene Volokh, a prominent First Amendment scholar, said the appeals court’s ruling could have sweeping consequences. -NY Times

  Here’s what X users are saying: 

  The ironic part is neither the ACLU nor the NRA protect the freedoms they claim to protect.

  — Assault Clip, #2A Voter (@assaultclip) December 9, 2023

  It’s always refreshing and encouraging seeing institutions stick up for their values instead of their side.

  — Matt Odhner (@MattOdhner1) December 9, 2023

  Beyond shocking.
  I guess this was close enough to home they realized what an oppositional government could do to the vast network of left wing advocacy groups if this was allowed to stand.

  — QTheLibertine (@QTheLibertine1) December 9, 2023

  Now do Trump

  — Curtis (@BwsCurtis) December 9, 2023

  ACLU continued on X: “If the Supreme Court doesn’t intervene, it will create a dangerous playbook for state regulatory agencies across the country to blacklist or punish any viewpoint-based organizations — from abortion rights groups to environmental groups or even ACLU affiliates.” 

  Read the NRA’s petition seeking Supreme Court review below:

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 13:25

• New Rumble Channel Established For Release Of Jan. 6 Security Video By Congress
  New Rumble Channel Established For Release Of Jan. 6 Security Video By Congress

  Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The GOP-controlled Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight has established a Rumble channel and released the second batch of security video from Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol.

  

  The first few videos were posted to the Rumble channel on Dec. 5. By the next day, the collection grew to 135 clips—each about 10 minutes long. The channel had nearly 700 followers on Dec. 7.

  The committee released the first batch of 90 CCTV clips on Nov. 17 on its House of Representatives website. The two websites now contain nearly 40 hours of the more than 40,000 hours of video from Jan. 6 held by Capitol Police.

  “As promised, we’re releasing more U.S. Capitol Police CCTV video footage from January 6th to ensure full transparency and accountability,” said U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight. “Every American may access this and future footage on our new Rumble video page.”

  The new batch of videos all come from Camera 0908, housed high on the west dome of the Capitol. The aerial footage starts just after midnight and ends about 11:55 p.m. on Jan. 6.

  The video includes the flow of protesters from the Ellipse during and after former President Donald Trump’s speech, the breach of the first police line, and the violence on several levels of the west front of the Capitol.

  Capitol Police have a network of more than 1,700 security cameras inside the Capitol Building and across Capitol grounds. The agency has consistently opposed (pdf) public release of the CCTV footage.

  When he announced the release of up to 44,000 hours of Jan. 6 video, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pledged to regularly update the website with “thousands of hours of footage.”

  “To restore America’s trust and faith in their government, we must have transparency,” Mr. Johnson posted on X. “This is another step towards keeping the promises I made when I was elected to be your speaker.”

  Enthusiasm about the video rollout was tempered by the announcement that the subcommittee would blur any identifiable faces.

  “As you know, we have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,” Mr. Johnson said during a press conference on Dec. 5.

  That decision drew fire from both sides of the aisle and media across the political spectrum.

  Former Rep. Lynn Cheney (R-Wyo.), onetime ranking member of the now-defunct Jan. 6 Select Committee, blasted the idea of blurring the video.

  “I think that we’re experiencing a situation where Speaker Johnson is somehow attempting to suggest that there is something in these tapes that would change the facts of what happened,” Ms. Cheney told CNN on Dec. 5.

  Defendants in Jan. 6 criminal cases have criticized both the rollout of video and the blurring of faces.

  “Johnson is flat-out lying about concerns people might be charged if the footage isn’t blurred,” defendant Will Pope, who writes as Free State Will on X, said on Dec. 5. “Congress already gave all the un-blurred video to the DOJ! Motion to vacate this Pinocchio.”

  Conservative social media influencer “Catturd” agreed in a post to his 2.1 million followers on X.

  “This is 100% to blur out all the feds,” wrote Catturd, whose real name is Phillip Buchanan. “Like the FBI doesn’t have copies of these. What a ridiculous lie.”

  A senior congressional aide defended the blurring in a statement to the Epoch Times.

  “Unfortunately, there are groups whose sole purpose is to ruin the lives of anyone who was at the Capitol on January 6, whether they have been charged with a crime or not,” the aide said. “To protect innocent individuals from groups like this, it makes sense to blur small portions of the footage where faces are identifiable as best as possible before posting footage online. And any American can set up an appointment to view the unedited, unaltered footage at the Subcommittee offices.”

  The Times-Picayune newspaper of New Orleans published an editorial cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning Walt Handelsman rapping its home-state representative.

  The three-panel cartoon, also posted on X, shows Mr. Johnson at a dais speaking about the facts and truth of Jan. 6. In the final frame, Mr. Johnson says he wants to be “crystal clear,” while his image is badly blurred.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/09/2023 – 12:50

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• Escobar: How Kiev Wanted To Expand The War To Belarus
  Escobar: How Kiev Wanted To Expand The War To Belarus

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  Well, Kiev – literally – never sleeps.

  This document – attached, and verified at the highest level, is a report on several recon operations on the Ukraine-Belarus border conducted four months ago.

  

  Several Ukrainian Special Ops groups had been engaged in deep recon previous to a possible Hail Mary-style plan: launching an offensive against the territory of Belarus, thus expanding the U.S. proxy war on Russia “multilaterally”.

  It’s not clear if this was a Kiev idea; a plan dictated by the NATO masters; or a mix of the two. Minsk, of course, was not exactly observing from a distance.

  Now let’s get to the meat of the matter.

  The document specifies “aerial reconnaissance 130 Rbpak crew MATRICE-30”, in an intel report dated July 21, 2023.

  “An aerial survey of the Republic of Belarus was conducted: two Matrice – 30 ascents were made.

  The flight altitude is 950 m. Electronic warfare system was not detected, communication with remote control was not lost, GPS signals were in Normal mode.

  Without crossing the DKU.

  During flights in the direction of KALININO-SK-42. x: 5727537; Y: 5583485 a video surveillance vehicle “Grenadier” was discovered – SK-42. x:5727404;

  Y:5583417. Designed for station monitoring of approaches to the border.

  Traces and signs of the passage of enemy DRGS, and the movement of enemy equipment in these directions are not detected.

  No changes were detected along the DKU.

  During the conducted aerial reconnaissance, no active actions related to the enemy’s offensive were detected.

  The area is wooded and impassable for enemy personnel and equipment.

  This section of the DKU is not in demand of additional aerial survey.”

  Watch those impassable swamps

  Now we switch to an intel report by the group “IRLANDETS” (“Irishman”), also dated July 21, 2023.

  “Reconnaissance was carried out by means of reconnaissance and military search in the direction of the ZABOLOTYE in the area of the border strip and adjacent areas.

  Copter take-off Point X:5719499; Y:5520355.

  Start of the route: X: 5719667; Y:5518682.

  End of Route: X: 5719641; Y:5522372.

  The area along the recreation center and roads leading to the recreation center were surveyed.

  No traces or signs of the passage of enemy sabotage and reconnaissance group and enemy equipment were found.

  The terrain in the area of reconnaissance is impassable for enemy equipment, which is due to a natural barrier in the form of impassable swamps, dense forest stands, and a river flows along the border line in this square. However, this section is possible for the passage of personnel.

  Enemy’s composition, especially sabotage and reconnaissance group.

  Confirmed presence of minefields.

  Accumulation of military equipment, enemy personnel near the recreation center was not observed.

  Aerial intelligence conducted.

  We proceed to perform tasks for their intended purpose in another area, according to the intelligence agency’s action plan groups.”

  Let’s collect some berries

  Now for the RG (intel group) reconnaissance report “Partizan”, also dated July 21, 2023.

  “Exploration was carried out by searching and observing, interviewing the local population in the direction of the PEREBRODY district (X:5733040; Y:5499111) – ZHADEN (X:5732068; Y: 5488281) – BUDIMLYA (X:5726038; Y:5498176) in the area of the border strip and adjacent areas.

  Areas along the recreation center were examined, engineering and sapper barriers, forest and field roads leading to the recreation center were checked: presence of anti-tank ditches, rubble and obstacles from trees, minefields.

  No traces or signs of the passage of enemy sabotage and reconnaissance group and enemy equipment were found. The area of exploration is conditionally passable for vehicles and personnel, which is due to a natural barrier, namely: reservoirs, swampy areas, engineering barriers.

  Confirmed presence of minefields(SK – 42: 1)X:5734692; Y;5495350; 2) X:5734724;

  Y:5495106; 3)X:5734899; Y:5494965; 4)X:5735543; Y:5497866; 5) X:5737721; Y:5501118).

  When conducting reconnaissance, optical means were used: binoculars.

  The situation along the DKU lines is calm. No sounds of movement or movement of enemy equipment were recorded.

  Due to the berry season, the local population massively collects berries in border forests, moving to the sites by quad bikes, road transport and scooters. So, during the period of conducting reconnaissance, these vehicles and collectors were recorded up to and including the borderline.

  We proceed to perform tasks according to the Action Plan of the Partizan intel group.”

  There you go. This was the situation four months ago.

  Much has happened since: the massive drying up of funds and weapons to Kiev; the war limelight stolen by Israel; and the Zelensky-Zaluzhny dogfight.

  

  Still, there are no guarantees that plans to set fire to Belarus have been permanently shelved.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 23:40

• "Filthy Air": India Overtakes China As Country With Most Polluting Cities
  “Filthy Air”: India Overtakes China As Country With Most Polluting Cities

  While China is often the topic of discussing when bringing up bad examples of air quality, India has actually surpassed China in the poor quality of its air – especially at the onset of winter – Bloomberg notes in a new article.

  During winter, the air quality gets worse because of the cold weather, lack of wind, and farmers burning their fields, the article notes. 

  A study found that in a 30-day period, New Delhi in India had air pollution levels 14 times higher than Beijing. Last year, out of the 100 most polluted cities in the world, 65 were in India and only 16 were in China. This is a big change from 2017 when China had most of the world’s most polluted cities.

  India’s government hasn’t focused much on this pollution problem, even though it’s important for the country’s environment and health. Air pollution in India is causing a lot of deaths each year and is also hurting the country’s economy. The World Bank says that pollution is slowing down India’s economic growth because it affects how well people can work and how businesses grow, the report says.

  

  Bloomberg also notes that a 2021 report by the Clean Air Fund highlights that air pollution in India impacts various business resources. It hampers the efficiency of solar panels by blocking sunlight, damages electronic components, and lowers the yield of crops.

  Karthik Ganesan, a fellow and director of research coordination at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a Delhi think tank, told BBG: “This is the biggest challenge that urban India faces today. Effectively, it’s turning the demographic dividend into a big bane because I’m left having to care for all these people who in their 50s or 60s are down and out.”

  India’s problem is contrasted by China – another well known polluter – who has made some progress in recent years.

  

  Ten years ago, China’s big cities faced serious air pollution problems due to rapid growth and high emissions from vehicles, industries, and coal plants. The US Embassy in Beijing, one of the few places providing reliable air quality data, reported extremely high pollution levels. This issue led to protests in various parts of China.

  Initially, China resisted international concerns and didn’t want foreign embassies to share air pollution data. However, as pollution worsened, the government acknowledged the issue. In 2014, President Xi Jinping recognized air pollution as Beijing’s biggest problem and launched a national plan with $270 billion to tackle it.

  

  Since then, China has taken several steps to reduce pollution. They limited the number of cars in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. They also reduced the production in industries that cause a lot of emissions, like iron and steel, and stopped building new coal plants in some areas. According to the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), China’s air pollution dropped by 42.3% from 2013 to 2021, and these efforts were the main reason for a slight decrease in global pollution levels during that time.

  

  India has made some progress in slowing smog, the report noted:

  According to data collected by the Centre for Science and Environment, a New Delhi research group, the level of PM 2.5 — microscopic, cancer-causing pollutants that travel deep into lungs — averaged 98 during the three years through 2023, down 28% from the three-year period ending in 2017.

  But the pace of improvement has slowed over the last few years and measures like ‘smog towers’ do little to help, the report says. One 50 year old rickshaw driver commented: “It’s just constant. When I go home, there’s a layer of dirt on my face.”

  “We might live five years, 10 years, who knows? You don’t know anything about tomorrow, so why think about it,” he added. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 23:20

• America's Best Strategy For Cold War II Is 200 Years Old
  America’s Best Strategy For Cold War II Is 200 Years Old

  Authored by Hal Brands, op-ed via Bloomberg.com,

  The Monroe Doctrine is disparaged in Washington and Latin America, but it remains the foundation of the liberal international order the US leads today…

  

  “I believe strictly in the Monroe Doctrine, in our Constitution and in the laws of God,” one American religious leader declared in 1923. That same year, 10 million American schoolchildren were subjected to a centennial recitation of President James Monroe’s famous doctrine in class.

  “The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers,” Monroe said in December 1823. For generations thereafter, that statement was a cardinal principle of US policy. It fused America’s founding ethos of anti-imperialism to the fierce nationalism and outrageous ambition that ultimately allowed the country to surpass every empire on Earth. It even became central to the America’s understanding of itself.

  There have been no such celebrations this weekend to mark the 200th birthday. Most Latin American observers consider the Monroe Doctrine an imperial imposition. Even US officials now see it as an embarrassing anachronism. “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” said Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013. Yet two centuries after it was issued, that policy remains more relevant than many might like to admit.

  The Monroe Doctrine is a reminder that America’s strategic interests have always been intertwined with its revolutionary values. It represents the regional foundation of the liberal international order the US leads today. And although American policymakers often say the Monroe Doctrine is dead, they don’t — or shouldn’t — really mean it.

  The Western Hemisphere was once an imperial battleground. At the start of the 1820s, Spain’s empire stretched from California to the Tierra del Fuego. Britain had territories and interests from Canada to Chile. France was clinging to imperial fragments around the Caribbean; Portugal was trying, vainly, to keep Brazil. Russia’s holdings included Alaska and outposts farther south. Powerful empires sought advantage in the Americas — and tried to keep a subversive republican newcomer well contained.

  In 1823, America’s strategic landscape was menacing. The collapse of Spanish and Portuguese empires in Latin America was birthing new nations. But a coalition of European monarchies — the Holy Alliance of Austria, Prussia and Russia — was considering intervention to recolonize those countries; just two years earlier Russia had threatened a push down North America’s Pacific Coast. The Western Hemisphere was potentially facing a two-pronged absolutist assault. The US would then be surrounded by hostile, antidemocratic empires, foreclosing its future expansion and perhaps threatening its survival.

  Monroe’s answer, drafted by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, combined self-assertion with self-denial. Monroe warned European powers not to seek new colonies in the Western Hemisphere (implicitly counting on Britain, which also opposed its rivals’ expansion, to enforce that ban), pledging that America, in return, would steer clear of Old World conflicts. After a slow start, Washington ultimately honored the first part of the doctrine more faithfully than the second.

  By the mid-19th century, the US had foreclosed European expansion in North America by taking much of the continent itself. Washington then began pushing European powers out of its neighborhood, forcibly evicting Spain from the Caribbean in 1898. During the early 20th century, the US intervened in unstable nations from Nicaragua to Haiti, primarily to deprive prowling Europeans of chances to meddle. Over the subsequent decades, Washington beat back challenges from countries — Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — that sought Latin American footholds amid the epic global clashes that defined the age.

  No other country in the modern era has dominated its surrounding region so thoroughly, and for so long, as the US. In this sense, America denied imperial prerogatives to its rivals, only to claim them for itself. But it is ironic that the doctrine is now considered a historical relic — because it continues to influence the long arc of US statecraft around the globe.

  First, the Monroe Doctrine asserted an enduring principle of US strategy — that America requires a balance of power that favors liberalism. “It is impossible,” Monroe declared, “that the allied powers should extend their political system” — monarchy — to the Western Hemisphere “without endangering our peace and happiness.”

  This wasn’t some rhetorical flourish. America’s founding struggle had been a revolt against monarchy. Its republican government cast it, immediately, into sharp ideological conflict against Europe’s absolutist regimes. So Monroe was simply explaining that the US could not flourish in an environment ruled by regimes that were inherently, even existentially, hostile to its liberal experiment. Nearly a century later, President Woodrow Wilson argued more or less the same thing in calling on his country to make a “world safe for democracy” in World War I.

  The Monroe Doctrine also enshrined a related American tradition — hostility to rival spheres of interest. The modern era has seen the astounding growth of a US sphere of interest that began in North America and now reaches around the globe. Yet American leaders have never been as comfortable with other powers, especially autocratic powers, carving out their own domains.

  Such arrangements, Monroe said, could be established only by coercion: Free peoples would never accept them “of their own accord.” Autocratic empires, whether in the Americas or elsewhere, would serve as platforms for subversion, intimidation and aggression against the world beyond. Since the early 20th century, America has fought hot wars and cold wars to keep Eurasian autocracies from establishing globe-threatening spheres of interest in their own regions — an extension of Monroe’s doctrine, but one he and Adams would have understood.

  Finally, the Monroe Doctrine established the regional primacy that underpins America’s global power. If the US faced serious threats close to home, it would have to deploy vast armies to defend its long land borders. But if America faced no major threats within the Western Hemisphere, it would be free, eventually, to roam the world. Which means that the quasi-imperialistic Monroe Doctrine was vital to the liberal order the US eventually built.

  A country plagued by nearby challenges could not have intervened three times, in the two world wars and the Cold War, to prevent autocratic powers from dominating Eurasia. It could not have secured overseas regions through globe-spanning alliances after 1945. It could not have anchored a thriving international economy and helped democracy spread more broadly than ever before.

  America’s enemies understood this: Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union all meddled in the Western Hemisphere because they knew that keeping the US preoccupied was essential to imposing their own, darker visions on the world.

  The Monroe Doctrine cast its share of darkness, of course. The tools of US primacy included military interventions in Central America and the Caribbean; coups, covert action and aid for ugly counterinsurgencies in countries throughout the region; and land grabs in strategic points like Puerto Rico and the Panama Canal Zone. Hegemony is a messy business. No country can dominate a vast region while keeping its hands entirely clean.

  When other powers pursued regional empires, in fact, they invoked US policy as their guide. Japan portrayed its aggression in China in the 1930s as a sort of Asian Monroe Doctrine. Today, when Chinese expansionists advocate “Asia for Asians,” or call Central Asia “China’s Latin America,” they are making, explicitly or implicitly, a similar claim. The truth is a bit more complicated.

  Whatever its failings, the Monroe Doctrine did — with tacit support from the British Royal Navy — gradually curtail formal European colonialism in Latin America, an achievement of real value to the independent countries of the region. In the 20th century, moreover, a hemisphere free of US imperialism might well have been more susceptible to fascist or communist influence.

  True, during the Cold War especially, the US protected its regional position through cooperation with friendly dictators. But preventing countries from going communist at least preserved the possibility they would later evolve toward democracy — as many eventually did, once their economies matured and the politics stabilized, in the 1970s and 1980s. The US placed itself firmly behind this democratic movement: Which of America’s great-power rivals would have done that?

  American primacy has had other benefits. The fact that Latin America — a region suffused, sadly, with internal violence — has seen so little interstate conflict in the past century might, perhaps, testify to the role of US power in enforcing a hegemonic peace. Not least, insofar as Latin America has benefitted from the larger liberal order — one in which trade has surged, living standards have increased and global wars have been avoided for the last 80 years — it has also benefitted from the US regional supremacy that has enabled a degree of global progress.

  Whatever the costs and benefits, the Monroe Doctrine long ago came to look like an imperial remnant in a post-imperial age. US officials mostly stopped publicly invoking the doctrine after a regionally polarizing CIA intervention in Guatemala in 1954. When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson mentioned the doctrine favorably in 2018, his comments were mostly treated as a costly gaffe. A policy Americans had once venerated now seemed painfully out of date.

  True, after the Cold War, it had certainly seemed unnecessary. With US power unchallenged, with markets and democracy sweeping the region, everything was going Washington’s way. That’s no longer the case.

  For years, the region’s politics have been deteriorating.

  In Venezuela, Nicaragua and other countries, illiberal populists have set about destroying democratic norms and institutions. Democracy is fragile and political instability is rising across much of the region.

  Peru is on its fourth president in the last three years; Argentina has elected a Donald Trump acolyte who promises to take a chainsaw to the political system. Mexico, which not long ago was moving toward stronger democracy and better ties with Washington, has regressed in both dimensions under Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Economic challenges often exacerbate political problems: Covid battered societies that were already suffering from high levels of economic insecurity.

  Meanwhile, the US — which, since the 1990s, has seen the region primarily through the lens of illegal drugs and immigration — has been bleeding influence. And given that every great-power rivalry of the modern era has ensnared the Western Hemisphere, the bill for that strategic neglect is coming due.

  One US antagonist, Russia, is forging anti-American alliances by making common cause with the region’s most thuggish leaders. When, in 2019, there was talk of US intervention in Venezuela to end the humanitarian catastrophe of Nicolas Maduro’s repressive rule, Russian military contractors raced to the country to protect his regime.

  Russian weapons and intelligence support have bolstered another anti-American dictator, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. Russian sniper rifles were used to kill pro-democracy protestors in 2018; Moscow and Managua have pursued cyber-cooperation to surveil and suppress Nicaragua’s opposition. Russian propaganda and disinformation fuel anti-US sentiment in Latin America and around the globe.

  Russia’s presence in Latin America remains modest in comparison to the Cold War. But it is supporting states that brutalize their people and oppose US influence as part of a larger “raiding strategy” meant to keep Washington off balance by making it play defense around the globe.

  There is also a Chinese challenge. Beijing is building influence for the long term by inserting itself into Latin American economies, infrastructure and communications networks. Through its Digital Silk Road strategy, China is proliferating surveillance technology that bolsters illiberal governments. Its larger Belt and Road Initiative features investments in nuclear power plants, space stations and other significant projects. Under its Global Security Initiative, Beijing is expanding internal security and intelligence programs in the region, as well.

  There’s also a military component to Chinese policy, one that has, so far, remained somewhat disguised. From Cuba to Argentina, Beijing has been seeking — and sometimes acquiring — access to “dual-use” facilities with potential military uses. US officials reportedly worry that these facilities, such as the Amachuma Ground Station in Bolivia, could enhance China’s global military surveillance network, or eventually lay the basis for power projection in the Western Hemisphere.

  Today’s autocracies aren’t recolonizing Latin America or supporting communist insurgencies. But the strategic implications of their behavior are real.

  In the 20th century, Eurasian powers stirred the pot of political instability and anti-Americanism in Latin America in hopes of putting Washington on the defensive in its own backyard. Present-day US rivals know that playbook well.

  America’s regional immunity underpins its global influence: A US fending off enemies in its own region will struggle to confront them in Eastern Europe or the Western Pacific. And if Russia or, more likely, China someday dominates its own region, it will have greater leeway to reach into the Western Hemisphere. If anything, the premium on preserving US sway may be higher today than it was in the past, given that pervasive Chinese economic influence in Latin America could spoil plans to nearshore critical supply chains.

  The core of the Monroe Doctrine is as important as ever; another epoch of competition foretells another struggle for influence in the region to America’s south.

  That’s not to say US officials should start waxing nostalgic about James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. There’s no profit in rhetoric that reminds even generally sympathetic Latin American observers of the region’s sometimes-humiliating experience with US power. The best way of obtaining a negative objective — denying America’s rivals strategic advantage in the Western Hemisphere — is through a positive program of regional cooperation.

  The US will fare best at countering Chinese economic influence if it pursues a deeper regionalization of trade, manufacturing and financial relationships in the Western Hemisphere. If Washington wishes to turn countries away from Chinese digital and physical infrastructure deals that entrench debt, repression and corruption, it must find ways — whether alone or with democratic allies — of financing less-corrosive alternatives.

  Alerting Latin American populations to the downsides of engagement with Moscow or Beijing requires helping governments and private citizens shine greater light on the role of Russian disinformation or China’s tightening grip on some of the region’s most vital resources. Investments in democratic institutions and civil society are good value amid political backsliding; so are efforts to rebuild long-atrophied relationships with the region’s militaries.

  Containing hostile states, in the region and beyond it, entails consolidating relationships with friendly ones. The tighter the bonds of integration within the Americas, the better positioned the US will be within a fragmenting world.

  That’s admittedly a tall order right now. Rather than sensibly discussing strategic challenges in Latin America, Republican presidential candidates are fantasizing about fighting the drug war by bombing Mexico. Neither major US political party has the courage to promote trade deals that might meaningfully increase economic integration with Latin America. Generating resources for the region has been a challenge for decades.

  The problem, alas, goes well beyond Washington: From Mexico to South America, many once-reliable partners have been replaced by leaders who view the US with ambivalence at best. But the effort is worth making, because the more America struggles to secure its hemispheric position through positive policies, the more it may eventually rely on harder-edged measures instead.

  Would the US really be more tolerant of its adversaries establishing military bases in Latin America today than it was during the Cold War? If it seems unthinkable that Washington might engage in covert meddling against an authoritarian strongman inviting America’s enemies into the region, or try to sway the outcome of a pivotal election in a pivotal state, that’s only because a generation of easy post-Cold War primacy left the US less reliant than it once was on such distasteful remedies.

  As the longer history of US involvement in Latin America reminds us, even relatively respectable democracies will — when their strategic vitals are sufficiently threatened — do some dirty things.

  Two centuries ago, the Monroe Doctrine asserted that the US must keep its rivals at bay within its own hemisphere. In the present era of rivalry, America will need to pursue the same policy, by one means or another.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 23:00

• Judge Grants Texas Woman With Abnormal Fetus An Exception To Abortion Law
  Judge Grants Texas Woman With Abnormal Fetus An Exception To Abortion Law

  In an exception to the state’s restrictive abortion law, a Texas judge on Thursday granted permission for a woman to abort the abnormal fetus she has been carrying for 20 weeks. 

  Kate Cox’s unborn baby has been diagnosed with trisomy 18, a chromosomal disorder that almost universally results in miscarriage, stillbirth, or death within a year of birth. Also called Edwards’ syndrome, the condition causes a variety of abnormalities, affecting the skull, heart and other organs. Of those who make it to birth, less than 10% survive a year, and frequently have major intellectual impairments. Cox’s lawyers say she’s had to make four emergency room visits to address pain and discharge. 

  “It is not a matter of if I will have to say goodbye to my baby, but when,” said Cox in a statement. “I’m trying to do what is best for my baby and myself, but the state of Texas is making us both suffer.” 

  

  Her lawyers argued that an abortion is needed to protect Cox — who’s had two prior C-sections — from a dangerous birth that could damage her fertility. “Continuing the pregnancy puts her at high risk for severe complications threatening her life and future fertility, including uterine rupture and hysterectomy,” they said in filing the suit. 

  “The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be pregnant, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability, is shocking, and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” said Judge Maya Guerra Gamble as she ruled in Cox’s favor. 

  In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade and rightfully returned abortion governance to the individual states, many conservative state legislatures raced to impose restrictions. Texas has banned nearly all abortions, with exceptions limited to situations where it’s needed to save the mother’s life or safeguard her from “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”

  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton doubled down on enforcing the law, immediately firing off a letter to three Houston hospitals warning that the judge’s order would “not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws.” The hospitals are the ones where a doctor who has committed to performing the abortion for Cox has admitting privileges.

  To read the letter, see below. pic.twitter.com/tCZMSDGqMB

  — Texas Attorney General (@TXAG) December 7, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The letter also spelled out Paxton’s reasoning for concluding that the restraining order was wrongly granted. His office, which may appeal the ruling to a higher court, warned the hospitals that the temporary restraining order “will expire long before the statute of limitations for violating Texas’ abortion laws expires.” 

  Doctors performing illegal abortions in Texas face sentences of up to life in prison, and the law also requires the state attorney general to pursue a civil penalty of at least $100,000. Critics say the abortion law’s language regarding medical exceptions is so vague as to leave doctors fearful of suffering severe consequences even where they’re confident of the medical necessity.  

  Those defending ambiguous medical exceptions in abortion bans regularly suggest that the problem is not the ambiguities, but doctors narrowly construing them.

  And yet, here’s Texas AG Ken Paxton threatening doctors with civil and criminal liability for FOLLOWING A COURT ORDER. https://t.co/t3G9BW9LvQ

  — Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) December 7, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 22:40

• Bah Humbug: The Police State Wants Us To Be A Nation Of Snowflakes
  Bah Humbug: The Police State Wants Us To Be A Nation Of Snowflakes

  Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

  – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  What a year.

  It feels as if government Grinches and corporate Scrooges have been working overtime to drain every last drop of joy, kindness and liberty from the world.

  After endless months of being mired in political gloom and doom, we could all use a little Christmas cheer right now.

  Unfortunately, Christmas has become embattled in recent years, co-opted by rampant commercialism, straight-jacketed by political correctness, and denuded of so much of its loveliness, holiness and mystery.

  Indeed, the season for giving has turned into the season for getting…and for getting offended.

  To a nation of snowflakes, Christmas has become yet another trigger word.

  

  When I was a child in the 1950s, the magic of Christmas was promoted in the schools. We sang Christmas carols in the classroom. There were cutouts of the Nativity scene on the bulletin board, along with the smiling, chubby face of Santa and Rudolph. We were all acutely aware that Christmas was magic.

  Fast forward to the present day, and Christmas has become fodder for the politically correct culture wars.

  Over the years, Christmas casualties in the campaign to create one large national safe space have ranged from the beloved animated classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (denounced for promoting bullying and homophobia) to the Oscar-winning tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (accused of being a date rape anthem) crooned by everyone from Dean Martin to Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel in the movie Elf.

  Also on the endangered species Christmas list are such songs as “Deck the Halls,” “Santa Baby,” and “White Christmas.”

  One publishing company even re-issued their own redacted version of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem “Twas the night before Christmas” in order to be more health conscious: the company edited out Moore’s mention of Santa smoking a pipe (“The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, / And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.”)

  In the politically correct quest to avoid causing offense, Christmas keeps getting axed.

  Examples abound.

  Schools across the country now avoid anything that alludes to the true meaning of Christmas such as angels, the baby Jesus, stables and shepherds.

  In many of the nation’s schools, Christmas carols, Christmas trees, wreaths and candy canes have also been banned as part of the effort to avoid any reference to Christmas, Christ or God. One school even outlawed the colors red and green, saying they were Christmas colors and, thus, illegal. 
  Students asked to send seasonal cards to military troops have been told to make them “holiday cards” and instructed not to use the words “Merry Christmas” on their cards.

  Many schools have redubbed their Christmas concerts as “winter holiday programs” and refer to Christmas as a “winter festival.” Some schools have cancelled holiday celebrations altogether to avoid offending those who do not celebrate the various holidays.

  In Minnesota, a charter school banned the display of a poster prepared to promote the school’s yearbook as a holiday gift because the poster included Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and other secular Christmas icons, not to mention the word “Christmas.”

  In New Jersey, one school district banned traditional Christmas songs such as “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night” from its holiday concerts.  A New Jersey middle school cancelled a field trip to attend a performance of a play based on Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” because some might have found it “offensive.”

  In Texas, a teacher in Texas who decorated her door with a scene from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” including a scrawny tree and Linus, was forced to take it down lest students be offended or feel uncomfortable.

  In Connecticut, teachers were instructed to change the wording of the classic poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to “Twas the Night Before a Holiday.”

  In Virginia, a high school principal debated about whether he could mention Santa or distribute candy canes given that they were symbols of Christmas.

  In Massachusetts, a fourth-grade class was asked to list 25 things that reminded them of Christmas. When one young student asked if she could include “Jesus,” her teacher replied that she could get fired if Christmas’ namesake appeared on the list.

  Things have not been much better outside the schools, muddled by those who subscribe to the misguided notion that the Constitution requires that anything religious in nature be banned from public places.

  In one West Virginia town, although the manger scene (one of 350 light exhibits in the town’s annual Festival of Lights) included shepherds, camels and a guiding star, the main attractions—Jesus, Mary and Joseph—were nowhere to be found due to concerns about the separation of church and state.

  In Chicago, organizers of a German Christkindlmarket were informed that the public Christmas festival was no place for the Christmas story. Officials were concerned that clips of the film “The Nativity Story,” which were to be played at the festival, might cause offense.

  In Delaware, a Girl Scout troop was prohibited from carrying signs reading “Merry Christmas” in their town’s annual holiday parade.

  Clearly, Christmas has become one of many casualties in the misguided dispute over the so-called “separation of church and state,” a controversy that has given rise to a disconcerting and unconstitutional attempt to sanitize public places of any reference to God or religion.

  Yet there’s a really simple solution to this annual angst of whether students and teachers can display Christmas-related posters, wear Christmas colors of red and green or sing Christmas songs, and that is for government officials to stop being such Humbugs and create a vibrant, open environment where all expression can flourish.

  While the First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing religion on people or endorsing one particular religion over another, there is no legitimate legal reason why people should not be able to celebrate the season freely or wish each other a Merry Christmas or even mention the word Christmas.

  After all, the First Amendment affirms the right to freedom for religion, not freedom from religion.

  Hoping to clear up the legal misunderstanding over the do’s and don’ts of celebrating Christmas, The Rutherford Institute’s Constitutional Q&A on “Twelve Rules of Christmas” provides basic guidelines for lawfully celebrating Christmas in schools, workplaces and elsewhere.

  Yet while Christmas may be the “trigger” for purging Christmas from public places, government forums and speech—except when it profits Corporate America—it is part and parcel of the greater trend in recent years to whittle away at free speech and trample the First Amendment underfoot.

  Anything that might raise the specter of controversy is avoided at all costs.

  We are witnessing the emergence of an unstated yet court-sanctioned right, one that makes no appearance in the Constitution and yet seems to trump the First Amendment at every turn: the right to not be offended.

  In this way, emboldened by phrases such as “hate crimes,” “bullying,” “extremism” and “microaggressions,” free speech has been confined to carefully constructed “free speech zones,” criminalized when it skates too close to challenging the status quo, shamed when it butts up against politically correct ideals, and muzzled when it appears dangerous.

  At the slightest hint of trouble, government officials (and corporations) are inclined to chuck anything that might be objectionable.

  Yet when all is said and done, what the police state really wants is a nation of snowflakes, snitches and book burners: a legalistic, intolerant, elitist, squealing bystander nation willing to turn on each other and turn each other in for the slightest offense, while being incapable of presenting a united front against the threats posed by the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

  You want to know why this country is in the state it’s in?

  The answer is the same no matter what the problem might be, whether it’s the economy, government corruption, police brutality, endless wars, censorship, falling literacy rates, etc.: every one of these problems can be sourced back to the fact that “we the people” have stopped thinking for ourselves and relinquished responsibility for our lives and well-being to a government entity that sees us only as useful idiots.

  The Greek philosopher Socrates believed in teaching people to think for themselves and in the free exchange of ideas. For his efforts, he was accused of corrupting the youth and was put to death. However, his legacy lived on in the Socratic method of teaching: posing questions that help young and old discover the answers by learning to think for themselves.

  Now even the ability to think for oneself is in danger of extinction.

  As Rod Serling, creator of the classic sci-fi series Twilight Zone and one of the most insightful commentators on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

  We face an immense threat in our society from this drive to obliterate our history and traditions in order to erect a saccharine view of reality. In the process, we are creating a schizophrenic world for our children to grow up in, and it is neither healthy nor will it produce the kind of people who will be able to face the challenges of a future ruled by a totalitarian regime.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you can’t sanitize reality. You can’t scrub out of existence every unpleasant thought or idea. You can’t legislate tolerance. You can’t create enough safe spaces to avoid the ugliness that lurks in the hearts of men and women. You can’t fight ignorance with the weapons of a police state.

  What you can do, however, is step up your game.

  Opt for kindness over curtness, and civility over censorship. Choose peace over politics, and freedom over fascism. Find common ground with those whose politics or opinions or lifestyles may not jive with your own. 

  Do your part to make the world a little brighter and a little lighter, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a chance of digging our way out of this hole.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 22:20

• Multiple Rockets Target US Embassy In Baghdad In First Since Gaza War
  Multiple Rockets Target US Embassy In Baghdad In First Since Gaza War

  There’s been a rare attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad at a moment the Gaza War has continued escalating in the southern half of the Strip. 

  A Pentagon official told Reuters Friday that about seven mortar rounds landed in the sprawling embassy compound in the Iraqi capital’s Green Zone during the early morning hours, resulting in minor damage but no injuries. Other sources say there were multiple rockets launched near the gate.

  

  “The reported attack is the first time the embassy has been targeted in more than a year,” Reuters notes. “It comes as bases housing US personnel have been targeted in Iraq and Syria dozens of times since the war in Gaza began.”

  While no claim of responsibility was immediately forthcoming, prior sporadic attacks on the US Embassy in recent years were blamed on Iran-backed militant groups. These same groups are believed to be connected with ongoing attacks on American outposts throughout the region, and in Syria.

  According to a description in the Associated Press:

  An Iraqi security official said 14 Katyusha rockets were fired Friday, of which some struck near one of the U.S. Embassy’s gates while others fell in the river. The official said the rocket attack caused material damage but no casualties.

  A US official said in the aftermath, “We again call on the government of Iraq, as we have done on many occasions, to do all in its power to protect diplomatic and Coalition partner personnel and facilities.” The statement added: “We reiterate that we reserve the right to self-defense and to protect our personnel anywhere in the world.”

  Likely the US Embassy’s powerful C-RAM systems, which protects aerial threats against the Green Zone, were on alert or activated during the attack.

  🚨| 🇮🇶🇺🇸 US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, has been targeted by a barrage of rockets. pic.twitter.com/b5TMuEMtN7

  — Arya – آریا 🇮🇷 (@AryJeay) December 8, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Prior attacks on the embassy stretching back to 2020 and beyond were seen as pro-Iranian militants’ attempts to pressure American and NATO troops out of the country. There are still thousands of Western personnel that remain throughout the country, with the biggest presence being in the north – in the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s Erbil. 

  During the recent weeklong Israel-Hamas truce which saw hostages and prisoners exchanged, attacks on US personnel in Syria and Iraq temporarily ceased; however, with fighting raging once again in Gaza, and the death toll among Palestinians soaring, this fresh rocket attack on the embassy is a sign things are about to deteriorate further in the region.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 22:00

• We All Have PTSD
  We All Have PTSD

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

  Two years ago, reports started appearing that compared the effects of lockdowns with post-traumatic stress disorder. As it turns out, one of the symptoms of PTSD is forgetting what happened. It’s an evolved trait that helps the human mind cope with terrible things. Our brains are good at blocking it out. I will explain the neuroscience behind this in a bit but first an anecdote from this morning.

  

  I was speaking to the director of a childrens’ choir and he was speaking about an age gap in his singers. The lead singer just graduated high school, and the next oldest singer is 14, which creates huge problems for the choral competence. I hesitated to do it but I finally just observed that this 3-year gap fits exactly with the lockdown period, child masking, and Zoom school.

  He began to speak about what it was like to train a choir on Zoom and then conduct masked singers outdoors on winter nights. He recalled the attacks and the difficulties, and then his voice trailed off.

  “Actually I’ve blocked out that whole period of life from my memory. I won’t think about it anymore. Anyway, I need to circulate a bit here but good seeing you.”

  That was that.

  It got me curious about the relationship between selective memory and trauma. For a long time now I’ve noticed that when this subject comes up, the response is either to quickly change the subject, which is common, or dig deeper into what seems like a bit of catharsis. Some people have so much to share, so many painful memories, so much shock and abuse to report, that once they start they cannot stop talking.

  This one comment from this one choir director got me suspecting that vast numbers of people might be trying to forget it all. This is how the political debates manage to pretend like this never happened, how the major media gets away with never bringing it up, and how people like Fauci still get high speaking fees, and so on. It’s not just that they are no-good liars; too often it’s because people really do want to forget.

  This is how the number one most shared trauma of our lives is fading so fast into the national and global consciousness.

  It’s a well-known feature of child or spousal abuse. The memories are so terrible and grim that the human mind develops the capacity for pretending like it never happened if only so that life functioning can continue. This is fine but actually the trauma is still there and feeds other forms of pathologies like substance abuse and attachment disorders and so on. The point of therapy is to come to terms with the reality itself in the process of healing.

  Some years ago, a theory developed to explain this and it was tested on mice. I’m going to quote directly:

  “Two amino acids, glutamate and GABA, are the yin and yang of the brain, directing its emotional tides and controlling whether nerve cells are excited or inhibited (calm). Under normal conditions the system is balanced. But when we are hyper-aroused and vigilant, glutamate surges. Glutamate is also the primary chemical that helps store memories in our neuronal networks in a way that they are easy to remember.

  “GABA, on the other hand, calms us and helps us sleep, blocking the action of the excitable glutamate. The most commonly used tranquilizing drug, benzodiazepine, activates GABA receptors in our brains. There are two kinds of GABA receptors. One kind, synaptic GABA receptors, works in tandem with glutamate receptors to balance the excitation of the brain in response to external events such as stress.

  “The other population, extra-synaptic GABA receptors, are independent agents. They ignore the peppy glutamate. Instead, their job is internally focused, adjusting brain waves and mental states according to the levels of internal chemicals, such as GABA, sex hormones and micro RNAs. Extra-synaptic GABA receptors change the brain’s state to make us aroused, sleepy, alert, sedated, inebriated or even psychotic. However, Northwestern scientists discovered another critical role; these receptors also help encode memories of a fear-inducing event and then store them away, hidden from consciousness.”

  To test the theory, researchers infused the hippocampus of mice with gaboxadol, a drug that stimulates extra-synaptic GABA receptors. The mice were put in a box and given an electric shock. When the mice were returned to the same box the next day, they played with no memory of what happened the last time they were there. However, when scientists put the mice back on the drug and returned them to the box, they froze, fearfully anticipating another shock.

  The lesson here is that “in response to traumatic stress, some individuals, instead of activating the glutamate system to store memories, activate the extra-synaptic GABA system and form inaccessible traumatic memories.”

  Is this what has happened to humanity on a global scale, some kind of activation of our extra-synaptic GABA systems to permit the formation of huge barriers around our trauma to make our memory inaccessible? Perhaps.

  At the time of Fauci’s strange deposition, I suspect that there was some brilliant madness behind the claim that he could not remember. He said it hundreds of times, again and again on every subject. It was strange, almost like he was training the rest of us to do the same, like some mad scientist modeling the correct way to think about what happened to us. In his view, we shouldn’t think about it at all.

  We know we’ve been made the subject of some insane medical and political experiments. It’s perhaps also true that we’ve been made the subject of some malicious psychological experiments, like mice injected with drugs, put in a box, and then shocked. It’s like perhaps the ordering was different: we were put in a box, shocked, and then given drugs.

  In any case, it all does indeed feel like PTSD, and it affected no population cohort as traumatically as it did the children. They are owed the truth about the trauma, however, and now. We must have honesty about this. The lies have to stop. We should not tolerate them at all. And the professional liars all need to be removed from their jobs immediately.

  In our own lives, we really do need therapy that comes in the form of friendships, community, and physical fellowship with each other. Sadly, the people who need it the most are least likely to get it. I’m thinking of the many people who are still walking around masked up, fearing getting next to others, and otherwise hiding out in their homes in a sense of terror that something bad from the microbial kingdom is going to attack at any time.

  The only people who benefit from our mass amnesia are the people who did this to us. We must remember. We must discuss. We must seek justice.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 21:40

• Woman Who Threw Hot Chipotle Bowl At Employee Sentenced To Work 2 Months In Fast Food Industry
  Woman Who Threw Hot Chipotle Bowl At Employee Sentenced To Work 2 Months In Fast Food Industry

  A woman who went berzerk and threw a bowl of hot food into the face of a Chipotle worker has been sentenced by a judge not only to a month in jail, but also two months working in a fast food job. 

  Rosemary Hayne was caught on video screaming at Chipotle worker Emily Russell on September 5 of this year. She threw food at the worker’s face from close range and the 39-year-old mother of four subsequently pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault charges. 

  Judge Timothy Gilligan in Parma, Ohio gave her “the choice of a 90-day jail sentence or a 30-day sentence on top of 60 days working in a fast food job,” according to a report from ABC News’ local affiliate. 

  The judge commented about the hearing: “Every time you watch the video, it makes you more and more upset. I was thinking, ‘What else can I do rather than just have her sit in jail.'”

  “You didn’t get your burrito bowl the way you like it, and this is how you respond?” he asked. 

  Gilligan asked her at the hearing: “Do you want to walk in her shoes for two months and learn how people should treat people, or do you want to do your jail time?”

  

  To which Hayne responded: “I’d like to walk in her shoes.”

  Judge Gilligan, who has been on the bench for three decades, expressed his displeasure at frequently coming across such cases. He recalled a similar incident where a customer assaulted a McDonald’s employee over a missing cookie in a Happy Meal, resulting in a 90-day jail sentence for the assailant.

  Chipotle, commenting on the case, emphasized their commitment to employee safety and expressed satisfaction with the court’s decision.

  The victim, Russell, reported ongoing stress and trauma from the incident, leading her to quit her job at Chipotle and seek another position. She is considering counseling to cope with the aftermath of the attack. 

  “Let’s give her the opportunity to not let this one day define the rest of her life,” Hayne’s attorney, Joseph O’Malley, commented to CNN. “I don’t see her as any greater risk than anyone who walks in off the street. I looked at it as someone who lost her cool.”

  Russell concluded: “She’s going to get what she deserves. She didn’t get a slap on the wrist. She’s going to learn to work in fast food, and hopefully it will be good.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 21:20

• The Pentagon's Rush To Deploy AI-Enabled Weapons Is Going To Kill Us All
  The Pentagon’s Rush To Deploy AI-Enabled Weapons Is Going To Kill Us All

  Authored by Michael T. Klare via The Nation,

  While experts warn about the risk of human extinction, the Department of Defense plows full speed ahead…

  

  The recent boardroom drama over the leadership of OpenAI—the San Francisco–based tech startup behind the immensely popular ChatGPT computer program—has been described as a corporate power struggle, an ego-driven personality clash, and a strategic dispute over the release of more capable ChatGPT variants. It was all that and more, but at heart represented an unusually bitter fight between those company officials who favor unrestricted research on advanced forms of artificial intelligence (AI) and those who, fearing the potentially catastrophic outcomes of such endeavors, sought to slow the pace of AI development.

  At approximately the same time as this epochal battle was getting under way, a similar struggle was unfolding at the United Nations in New York and government offices in Washington, D.C., over the development of autonomous weapons systems—drone ships, planes, and tanks operated by AI rather than humans. In this contest, a broad coalition of diplomats and human rights activists have sought to impose a legally binding ban on such devices—called “killer robots” by opponents—while officials at the Departments of State and Defense have argued for their rapid development.

  At issue in both sets of disputes are competing views over the trustworthiness of advanced forms of AI, especially the “large language models” used in “generative AI” systems like ChatGPT. (Programs like these are called “generative” because they can create human-quality text or images based on a statistical analysis of data culled from the Internet). Those who favor the development and application of advanced AI—whether in the private sector or the military—claim that such systems can be developed safely; those who caution against such action, say it cannot, at least not without substantial safeguards.

  Without going into the specifics of the OpenAI drama—which ended, for the time being, on November 21 with the appointment of new board members and the return of AI whiz Sam Altman as chief executive after being fired five days earlier—it is evident that the crisis was triggered by concerns among members of the original board of directors that Altman and his staff were veering too far in the direction of rapid AI development, despite pledges to exercise greater caution.

  As Altman and many of his colleagues see things, humans technicians are on the verge of creating “general AI” or “superintelligence”—AI programs so powerful they can duplicate all aspects of human cognition and program themselves, making human programming unnecessary. Such systems, it is claimed, will be able to cure most human diseases and perform other beneficial miracles—but also, detractors warn, will eliminate most human jobs and may, eventually, choose to eliminate humans altogether.

  “In terms of both potential upsides and downsides, superintelligence will be more powerful than other technologies humanity has had to contend with in the past,” Altman and his top lieutenants wrote in May. “We can have a dramatically more prosperous future; but we have to manage risk to get there.”

  For Altman, as for many others in the AI field, that risk has an “existential” dimension, entailing the possible collapse of human civilization—and, at the extreme, human extinction. “I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong,” he told a Senate hearing on May 16. Altman also signed an open letter released by the Center for AI Safety on May 30 warning of the possible “risk of extinction from AI.” Mitigating that risk, the letter avowed, “should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

  Nevertheless, Altman and other top AI officials believe that superintelligence can, and should be pursued, so long as adequate safeguards are installed along the way. “We believe that the benefits of the tools we have deployed so far vastly outweigh the risks, but ensuring their safety is vital to our work,” he told the Senate subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law.

  Washington Promotes the “Responsible” Use of AI in Warfare

  A similar calculus regarding the exploitation of advanced AI governs the outlook of senior officials at the Departments of State and Defense, who argue that artificial intelligence can and should be used to operate future weapons systems—so long as it is done so in a “responsible” manner.

  “We cannot predict how AI technologies will evolve or what they might be capable of in a year or five years,” Amb. Bonnie Jenkins, under secretary of state for arms control and nonproliferation, declared at a Nov. 13 UN presentation. Nevertheless, she noted, the United States was determined to “put in place the necessary policies and to build the technical capacities to enable responsible development and use [of AI by the military], no matter the technological advancements.”\

  Jenkins was at the UN that day to unveil a “Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy,” a US-inspired call for voluntary restraints on the development and deployment of AI-enabled autonomous weapons. The declaration avows, among other things, that “States should ensure that the safety, security, and effectiveness of military AI capabilities are subject to appropriate and rigorous testing,” and that “States should implement appropriate safeguards to mitigate risks of failures in military AI capabilities, such as the ability to… deactivat[e] deployed systems, when such systems demonstrate unintended behavior.”

  None of this, however, constitutes a legally binding obligation of states that sign the declaration; rather, it simply entails a promise to abide by a set of best practices, with no requirement to demonstrate compliance with those measures or risk of punishment if found to be in non-compliance.

  Although several dozen countries—mostly close allies of the United States—have signed the declaration, many other nations, including Austria, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain, insist that voluntary compliance with a set of US-designed standards is insufficient to protect against the dangers posed by the deployment of AI-enabled weapons. Instead, they seek a legally binding instrument setting strict limits on the use of such systems or banning them altogether. For these actors, the risks of such weapons “going rogue,” and conducting unauthorized attacks on civilians, is simply too great to allow their use in combat.

  “Humanity is about to cross a major threshold of profound importance when the decision over life and death is no longer taken by humans but made on the basis of pre-programmed algorithms. This raises fundamental ethical issues,” Amb. Alexander Kmentt, Austria’s chief negotiator for disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation, told The Nation.

  For years, Austria and a slew of Latin American countries have sought to impose a ban on such weapons under the aegis of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), a 1980 UN treaty that aims to restrict or prohibit weapons deemed to cause unnecessary suffering to combatants or to affect civilians indiscriminately. These countries, along with the International Committee of the Red Cross and other non-governmental organizations, claim that fully autonomous weapons fall under this category as they will prove incapable of distinguishing between combatants and civilians in the heat of battle, as required by international law. Although a majority of parties to the CCW appear to share this view and favor tough controls on autonomous weapons, decisions by signatory states is made by consensus and a handful of countries, including Israel, Russia, and the United States, have used their veto power to block adoption of any such measure. This, in turn, has led advocates of regulation to turn to the UN General Assembly—where decisions are made by majority vote rather than consensus—as an arena for future progress on the issue.

  On October 12, for the first time ever, the General Assembly’s First Committee—responsible for peace, international security, and disarmament—addressed the dangers posed by autonomous weapons, voting by a wide majority—164 to 5 (with 8 abstentions)—to instruct the secretary-general to conduct a comprehensive study of the matter. The study, to be completed in time for the next session of the General Assembly (in fall 2024), is to examine the “challenges and concerns” such weapons raise “from humanitarian, legal, security, technological, and ethical perspectives and on the role of humans in the use of force.”

  Although the UN measure does not impose any binding limitations on the development or use of autonomous weapons systems, it lays the groundwork for the future adoption of such measures, by identifying a range of concerns over their deployment and by insisting that the secretary-general, when conducting the required report, investigate those dangers in detail, including by seeking the views and expertise of scientists and civil society organizations.

  “The objective is obviously to move forward on regulating autonomous weapons systems,” Ambassador Kmentt indicated. “The resolution makes it clear that the overwhelming majority of states want to address this issue with urgency.”

  What will occur at next year’s General Assembly meeting cannot be foretold, but if Kmentt is right, we can expect a much more spirited international debate over the advisability of allowing the deployment of AI-enabled weapons systems—whether or not participants have agreed to the voluntary measures being championed by the United States.

  At the Pentagon, It’s Full Speed Ahead

  For officials at the Department of Defense, however, the matter is largely settled: the United States will proceed with the rapid development and deployment of numerous types of AI-enabled autonomous weapons systems. This was made evident on August 28, with the announcement of the “Replicator” initiative by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.

  Noting that the United States must prepare for a possible war with China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), in the not-too-distant future, and that US forces cannot match the PLA’s weapons inventories on an item-by-item basis (tank-for-tank, ship-for-ship, etc.), Hicks argued that the US must be prepared to overcome China’s superiority in conventional measures of power—its military “mass”—by deploying “multitude thousands” of autonomous weapons.

  “To stay ahead, we’re going to create a new state of the art—just as America has before—leveraging attritable [i.e., disposable], autonomous systems in all domains,” she told corporate executives at a National Defense Industrial Association meeting in Washington. “We’ll counter the PLA’s mass with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, harder to beat.”

  In a follow-up speech, delivered on September 6, Hicks provided (slightly) more detail on what she called all-domain attritable autonomous (ADA2) weapons systems. “Imagine distributed pods of self-propelled ADA2 systems afloat…packed with sensors aplenty…. Imagine fleets of ground-based ADA2 systems delivering novel logistics support, scouting ahead to keep troops safe…. Imagine flocks of [aerial] ADA2 systems, flying at all sorts of altitudes, doing a range of missions, building on what we’ve seen in Ukraine.”

  As per official guidance, Hicks assured her audience that all these systems “will be developed and fielded in line with our responsible and ethical approach to AI and autonomous systems.” But except for that one-line one nod to safety, all the emphasis in her talks was on smashing bureaucratic bottlenecks in order to speed the development and deployment of autonomous weapons. “If [these bottlenecks] aren’t tackled,” she declared on August 28, “our gears will still grind too slowly, and our innovation engines still won’t run at the speed and scale we need. And that, we cannot abide.”

  And so, the powers that be—in both Silicon Valley and Washington—have made the decision to proceed with the development and utilization of even more advanced versions of artificial intelligence despite warnings from scientists and diplomats that the safety of these programs cannot be assured and that their misuse could have catastrophic consequences. Unless greater effort is made to slow these endeavors, we may well discover what those consequences might entail.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 21:00

• Goldman Says China Politburo "Less Dovish" As Policymakers Gear Up For 2024 Fiscal Support
  Goldman Says China Politburo “Less Dovish” As Policymakers Gear Up For 2024 Fiscal Support

  The Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party held its monthly meeting on Friday. According to the statement, policymakers want to stabilize the economy and boost growth with more fiscal measures in 2024. 

  State-run media Xinhua News Agency reported Politburo, which includes the ruling Communist Party’s top 24 officials and chaired by President Xi Jinping, plans to ramp up fiscal policy “appropriately” amid the souring backdrop of a real estate crisis, increasing local government debt risks, slowing global growth, and rising tensions with the West. 

  According to Bloomberg, the Politburo said monetary policy should be flexible, appropriate, targeted, and effective, with the previous wording “forceful” dropped from the statement. 

  

  Economists who reviewed the statement said the change indicates Beijing might be less focused on a monetary cannon and instead utilize targeted tools. 

  Xing Zhaopeng, a senior strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, said the statement indicates the size of interest rate cuts and bank reserve requirements might be smaller in 2024 compared to 2023. 

  Goldman Sachs said, “The overall tone appears less dovish compared with the July Politburo meeting statement.”

  “In particular, policymakers pledged to step up fiscal policy support “at an appropriate pace” in today’s readout, and vowed to enhance consistency in macro policies. These statements appear consistent with our expectation that fiscal policy will do the heavy lifting of supporting growth next year,” Goldman continued. 

  They added: “Today’s readout mainly aims to provide the broad guidance of policy tone for next year. The CEWC may offer more discussion around fiscal, monetary, property and local government implicit debt resolution plans, in our view.” 

  Here’s Goldman biggest takeaways from the Politburo meeting:

  1. As the December Politburo meeting is the preparation meeting for the Central Economic Work Conference, today’s readout only aims to set the broad tone for policy stance, rather than offering detailed discussions on various policy measures for next year. The statement continued to send pro-growth signals, but appears less dovish compared with the July Politburo meeting statement.

  • When assessing the recent economic developments, the authority shifted to a less cautious tone in today’s readout compared with the July Politburo meeting (Exhibit 1) by only highlighting the economic recovery this year after the end of pandemic. This is likely because Q3 real GDP growth picked up from 0.5%qoq in Q2 to 1.3% in Q3.
  • Policymakers pledged to conduct “both countercyclical and cross-cycle policy adjustments” next year according to today’s statement, in comparison with only the “countercyclical policy adjustment” in the July statement. Specifically, the authority required stepping up fiscal policy easing “at an appropriate pace” and claim that prudent monetary policy should be precise and effective. Policymakers also vowed to enhance consistency in macro policies, and acknowledged the importance of managing expectations around economic growth. 
  • The authority softened the tone on significant reforms by stating that economic policies should be supportive first before being reformative (“先立后破”). This phrase was previously used in 2021 when policymakers tried to correct for the aggressive decarbonization efforts which contributed to coal shortages and power outages in many parts of the country. 
  • Besides the broad stance, the authority reiterated promoting technology and innovation, enhancing resilience and security of supply chains, pushing forward opening-up, and effectively containing and reducing risks. Policymakers will also better coordinate deepening supply-side reforms and expanding domestic demand, urbanization and rural revitalization, high-quality growth and high-level of security.

  2. The December Politburo meeting statement continued to send pro-growth signals. The statement around fiscal policy is consistent with our expectation that fiscal policy easing will do the heavy lifting of supporting growth next year. However, the discussion around high-quality growth and emphasis of “appropriate pace of easing” imply policy support will likely still be measured rather than being aggressive. The CEWC, which will likely be held over the next few days, should offer more discussions around fiscal, monetary, property and local government implicit debt resolution plans.

  Exhibit 1: The December Poliburo meeting continued to highlight measured policy easing

  

  The key message from the meeting is that growth is crucial to policymakers. And the days policymakers flooded the system with credit are over as Moody’s Investors Service warned earlier this week that China risks a sovereign credit rating outlook downgrade. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 20:40

• The Deep State Agenda Is "Controlled Demolition Of America": Alex Newman
  The Deep State Agenda Is “Controlled Demolition Of America”: Alex Newman

  Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

  Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State,” says there is a not-so-secret plan to destroy everything in America and everything it stands for. 

  

  Newman contends it is the only way for evil globalists to have the tyrannical New World Order they dream of. 

  The evil destroyers of freedom and liberty around the world will be talking about the demise of America at the globalist COP28 conference in Dubai, UAE this week.  Newman explains,

  “This is all part of the agenda.  What we are watching now is the deliberate destruction of the American middle-class and the deliberate destruction of the American economy.  

  Ultimately, if these evil doers get their way, it will result in the deliberate destruction of the United States of America.  We are talking about the controlled demolition of our economy, our military might and everything we hold dear.  This has been known at the highest levels of government for a long time…

  During the Trump Administration, they had Rich Higgens on the National Security Counsel, and he put together the ‘Higgens Memo.’  People should read this.  

  He talked about the global alliance of globalists, communists, socialists and Islamists who are all working in unison for the goal of destroying the United States of America.

  This is not just as a nation, says Higgens, but even as an ideal. 

  They want to shift global power over to China and over to the United Nations to gradually and then suddenly destroy the United States.  

  They don’t just want to destroy this country, they also want to destroy the ideas and principles it is founded upon because it is simply not compatible with this one world system they want. 

  George Soros told us what the New World Order was going to look like 10 years ago.  He told the Financial Times that China needed to own the New World Order in the same way the United States owns the current one.”

  Newman says Donald Trump is not part of the New World Order, and he dismantled much of it during his Presidency. 

  Newman says,

  “Donald Trump is the first President in a century who did not go to this weird club of elitists such as Bohemian Grove.  He never went to Bilderberg.  He was never involved with the Council on Foreign Relations.  Trump did not participate in the Trilateral Commission.  He was not recruited in the ‘Scull and Bones’ at Yale like John Kerry, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. 

  He was just not part of the club… Trump was not controlled by these people. 

  They were able to manipulate him on some key things like the CV19 shots and the MCA, but ultimately, they did not feel like they could control him. 

  He was an outsider.  This is why they are absolutely petrified of him coming back now.”

  The news is not all bad as Newman says he is seeing a huge backlash from all sectors to the New World Order agenda.  Newman explains,

  “There is an enormous backlash building.  Just go out and talk to regular people.  Turn off the boob tube, and this is not even propaganda, it is psychological terrorism. 

  Turn it off and talk to real people…

  What you will find is normal people who can’t tell you about the Bohemian Grove, the Council on Foreign Relations or the climate scam, but they can tell you ‘we are being lied to.’ 

  Life is getting increasingly difficult.  My spouse and I are both working with two jobs, and we still can’t make ends meet.  We can’t pay the mortgage.  Food costs are going up.  They know that this is not normal. 

  They know that we have a uniparty with Kevin McCarthy who showed up at the Bohemian Grove just before he was ousted as Speaker of the House. 

  You have an incredible awareness from people that we are being looted, robbed, deceived and that our country is being betrayed. 

  You don’t have to watch the fake media to be aware of all those things. 

  I am encouraged by the awareness of people and the polling data that virtually nobody believes the media.”

  There is much more in the 40-minute interview.

  Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with hard-hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the book “Deep State” that explains it all for 12.02.23.

  *  *  *

  To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

  Newman’s website is called LibertySentinel.org.  There is lots of free information and articles. For a copy of Alex Newman’s popular book “Deep State,” click here,

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 20:20

• 'Shadow Fleet' Tanker Runs Aground Near Singapore
  ‘Shadow Fleet’ Tanker Runs Aground Near Singapore

  A petroleum tanker, part of a global “shadow fleet” of vessels, hauled upwards of a million barrels of Venezuelan oil and ran aground near Singapore. Blomberg reported that this incident occurred shortly after the tanker falsified its location to avoid detection.

  The 23- year-old oil tanker, “Liberty,” was sailing under the Cameroon flag and ran aground on Sunday. An Indonesian navy spokesman said an investigation into Liberty is underway. 

  Satellite research from TankerTrackers said the vessel was ‘spoofing’ its location in October, making it appear as if the ship was off the coast of West Africa while actually filling up on sanctioned oil in Venezuela. 

  TankerTrackers said this is the second time a shadow fleet tanker has “run aground west of the Singapore Strait” in 14 months. 

  For the 2nd time in 14 months, yet another Dark Fleet tanker has run aground west of the Singapore Strait. The vessel has been identified as LIBERTY (9207027).

  According to our research, she’s laden with nearly a million barrels of Venezuelan fuel oil.https://t.co/JulhoMGgiK

  — TankerTrackers.com, Inc. (@TankerTrackers) December 8, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Bloomberg pointed out that hundreds of tankers are part of the shadow fleet that allows Venezuela, Iran, and Russia to ship their US-sanctioned crude and crude products around the world.

  The International Maritime Organization recently warned about shadow fleets operating outside international regulation, usually with no insurance, calling it a “grave concern” to the environmental safety and welfare of crews and countries that reside on coastlines. 

  The dangers posed by the dark fleet were realized earlier this year when a tanker called “Pablo,” which was thought to be transporting Iranian oil, caught fire off the coast of Malaysia. 

  This could be the tip of the iceberg as the growth in the shadow fleet soars, mainly because the US has been on a sanctioning spree against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 20:00

• Bitcoin: The Gold Standard For A Digital Age
  Bitcoin: The Gold Standard For A Digital Age

  Authored by Michael Matulef via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  The nature of money is tragically one of the most unexamined and vital questions in modern society. Over the course of history, different monetary systems have risen and fallen as technology progressed and new forms of money emerged that were superior to what came before.

  To help us understand money, we must examine the question: “who controls the ledger?” As we explore the technological history of money and its various incarnations, from informal social credit to commodity-backed systems, we can gain insight into how control over the monetary ledger impacts individual liberty, economic prosperity, and human flourishing.

  

  In the Austrian tradition, figures like Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and many others have written extensively about the function of money. At its core, money enables indirect exchange as a medium to facilitate transactions. In small communities, social credit systems can adequately regulate resources through direct exchange. However, as these communities grow, indirect exchange through money becomes essential. Expanding the division of labor and specialization requires more complex economic calculations. The increasing sophistication of wants necessitates indirect transactions between distant parties. Most crucially, direct exchange relies on trust and familiarity between counterparties, which erodes with scale. Money arose to enable growing communities to reap the benefits of economic expansion through indirect exchange. Without sound money, rising productivity and specialization cannot be effectively coordinated. The Austrian tradition recognizes how critical the monetary framework is in an evolving economy.

  Naturally, certain commodities are selected as monies within the market economy due to their optimal monetary properties as a monetary technology. Said differently, The most salable good, which has the lowest rate of declining marginal utility will be chosen to facilitate indirect trade. The primary monetary properties of scarcity, durability, portability, divisibility, fungibility, and verifiability give way to the salability of goods across time and space. Sea shells, beads, silver, and gold are all examples of different commodities that have historically been used as different mediums of exchange for their respective strengths in these monetary properties.

  Lyn Alden, in her recent book, Broken Money: Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make it Better reexamines the question of what money is through her ledger theory of money. She writes:

  “A ledger theory of money observes that most forms of exchange are improved by having a salable unit of account that can be held and transferred over both time and space, and that this unit of account implies the existence of a ledger, either literally or in the abstract. These monetary units and the ledger that defines them rely either on human administrators or on natural laws to maintain their stability across time and space.”

  Through this lens, we can come to a better understanding of What Has Government Done to Our Money? The cumbersome nature of physical gold as a medium of exchange ultimately led to the adoption of paper currency, and eventually fiat money no longer backed by commodities. Storing, transporting, and verifying pure gold for transactions became increasingly impractical as economies grew and developed technologically. Gold’s weight and risk of theft made storage expensive. Assaying gold to verify purity was difficult for everyday commerce. And transporting adequate gold for large transactions was hazardous. Paper currency provided a lighter, more portable proxy for gold that was more practical for exchange. However, it still depended on central authorities securing adequate gold reserves to maintain convertibility. This constrained monetary policy, as the expansion of currency was limited by gold supplies. Over time, the constraints of gold convertibility frustrated governments and central banks. Suspending convertibility in 1971 allowed greater control over money supply and interest rates, providing more policy flexibility. But without commodity backing, fiat currency carries greater risks of inflation, hyperinflation, and other negative externalities. Alden continues:

  “The technology of banking systems and paper banknotes in various denominations backed by gold improved gold’s effective divisibility. And then, in addition to exchanging paper, people could eventually “send” money over telecommunication lines to other parts of the world, using banks and their ledgers as custodial intermediaries. This was the gold standard – the backing of paper currencies and financial communication systems with gold.”

  “For a gold-backed banking system, the only part of the ledger that individual users have control of is the precious metal coins that they retain in their own custody, and for that they rely on the properties of nature to maintain the integrity of the ledger. Once they surrender coins over to the banking system, they have begun to rely on a hierarchy of other people to control their money.”

  In the context of Alden’s ledger theory, the supply of gold is controlled by nature and natural laws. Fiat, in contrast, is controlled by human administration and unequivocally by the State. This explanation is the simple answer to what the government has done to our money. The State has taken control of the monetary ledger away from natural law and used that power to facilitate its metastatic growth. Moreover, it has exerted this control as one of its exclusive monopoly privileges. As advocates for free markets, individual property rights, and the right to self-determination nothing is more imperative in our time than separating money from State. The great Friedrich A. Hayek, who advocated for the Denationalisation of Money, famously stated:

  “I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop”

  For the past 15 years, Bitcoin has emerged and continued to develop into a possible sly roundabout way that Hayek hypothesized. Initially and abstractly, Bitcoin was conceived of as a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. A decentralized ledger system utilizing cryptographic digital signatures to enforce the concept of perfect digital scarcity. Bitcoin, as a monetary unit, represents a digitally native bearer commodity asset, a truly revolutionary concept. In the context of Alden’s ledger theory of money, she writes:

  “Gold has long been turned to as a form of defense and savings, but it’s not a useful transactional money in the digital age. The Bitcoin network presents a newer and faster alternative, where nobody can create bitcoin for free, and thus nobody has the power of seigniorage”

  Bitcoin closes the speed gap between transactions and settlements. Ever since the invention and deployment of intercontinental telecommunication systems in the second half of the 19th century, transactions have been able to move around the world at the speed of light, while scarce, self-custodial bearer asset money (e.g., gold) could only be transported and verified at the speed of matter. This speed gap opened a massive arbitrage opportunity for banks and governments to use, because it gave them custodial monopolies over fast long-distance payments. Bitcoin represents the first significant way to settle scarce value at the speed of light.

  While politics can impact how we interact with money locally and temporarily, it’s technology that impacts how we interact with money globally and permanently. As new technologies come into existence, certain types of ledgers become obsolete and go extinct while new types of ledgers are born and become necessary. That’s why new forms of money tend to be adopted everywhere rather than just locally. As the world became increasingly industrialized, gold won out over every other commodity. And then as the world became increasingly connected by telecommunication systems, fiat currencies displaced gold in every country. Now that digital scarcity and digital settlement exist as new forms of technology, there is an opening for a new monetary era yet again.”

  Today Bitcoin’s usage is primarily that of a store of value asset. One possible explanation for this is Gresham’s Law, which states that when two forms of currency have equal face value, the one perceived as less valuable will circulate more widely while the more valuable one will be hoarded. This helps explain Bitcoin’s current role – its capped supply and volatile valuation make it “good money” for holding as an asset, while fiat currencies with less perceived worth remain the common medium of exchange. However, Bitcoin’s monetary status could evolve if adoption increases.

  CONCLUSION:

  Studying monetary history reveals that the evolution of money reflects advancements in technology. Societies have selected different monetary mediums based on the strength of their monetary properties – their salability across both time and space. Examining who controls the ledger for each monetary system also provides useful insight. Natural laws governed the ledger of commodities like gold. However, the advent of telecommunications enabled financial transactions to occur much faster than settling payments in physical gold. This highlighted the limitations of using physical gold as money in the modern digital era. As a result, societies adopted credit-based paper and digital monies with ledgers controlled by human administration rather than natural laws.

  Unfortunately, over time, the State captured control of these ledgers, expanding its authority by manipulating fiat currencies, removing their tether from gold entirely.

  To counter the unchecked growth of state power, we must return to sound money anchored to a reliable store of value, with a ledger that cannot be manipulated by the State.

  Using physical gold as a medium of exchange is no longer practical in an increasingly digital world. Therefore, an inventive, censorship-resistant monetary alternative must be developed to separate control of money from the State. Over the past 15 years, Bitcoin’s globally distributed public ledger has proven a fascinating experiment in decentralized digital money.

  Unlike traditional currencies, Bitcoin’s ledger is not controlled by any single entity. Rather, it relies on a network of individuals voluntarily running Bitcoin software to reach a consensus on the protocol. This decentralized approach allows the market to decide on the properties of the network and monetary units. Ultimately, the market will determine if Bitcoin is best suited as a medium of exchange for humanity in the digital world.

  One question we should ask ourselves is this:

  “What would it seem like if it did seem like a global, digital, sound, open, programmable money was monetizing from absolute zero?”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 19:40

• Putin Formally Announces 2024 Election Bid
  Putin Formally Announces 2024 Election Bid

  As was long anticipated, Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a formal announcement saying he’s seeking re-election in 2024 – a vote that will be held between March 15 and March 17, 2024. The winner will be inaugurated in early May. Assuming a Putin victory, it would be his fifth term as head of state, and this would put him in office until 2030, after already approaching nearly a quarter-century in power.

  Interestingly, the Kremlin cast Putin’s declaration as part of “spontaneous” remarks which followed an award ceremony honoring war veterans…

  🇷🇺 Putin responding to a Russian serviceman’s question about running in the election:

  “I won’t hide the fact that I’ve had thoughts at different times. But right now, you are right. These are times when decisions must be made. I will run for the office of president.” pic.twitter.com/X0xkFD9Yp1

  — Sputnik (@SputnikInt) December 8, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “I won’t hide it from you — I had various thoughts about it over time, but now, you’re right, it’s necessary to make a decision,” Putin said in a video released following the event. “I will run for president of the Russian Federation.”

  Russian state media is already previewing that newly annexed territories of the Donbas would vote in the election:

  The Russian leader made his remarks at a ceremony where he awarded Hero of Russia medals to servicemen who had taken part in the special military operation against Ukraine. Hero of the Donetsk People’s Republic Artyom Zhoga, who was recently named speaker of the Russian federal subject’s parliament, asked if he would run in 2024 and he replied in the affirmative.

  The footage from the ceremony shows Zhoga shaking hands with Putin and telling him that the entire Donbass would like him to participate in the election. “Thanks to your actions… we became free, we got the opportunity to choose… You are our president… We are your team, we need you, Russia needs you,” he said.

  The legal path was paved for this expected fifth term when in 2020 the Russian population voted to overwhelmingly approve an overhaul to the national constitution. Assuming he would again win by a landslide, this means that 71-year old Putin could theoretically stay in power until even 2036 if he wanted to go that far (assuming two more back-to-back terms). He would be 83-years old that year.

  In power since 2000, those prior changes to the law allow him to run for two more terms in the Kremlin once his current term ends in 2024. The law now in effect basically “resets” his number of terms already served, which considerably stretch all the way back to 2000 (excepting Dmitry Medvedev’s stint as president, 2008-2012). 

  One early indicator of Putin’s intentions was on display all the way back in 2020, when he told reporters while discussing at that time the proposed constitutional changes, “I do not rule out the possibility of running for office, if this comes up in the Constitution. We’ll see.” He has also said at the time, “I have not decided anything for myself yet,” according to the prior state television interview statements.

  

  Very likely, the Russian population will rally around desiring a ‘strong’ and ‘proven’ leader that can stand up to the West, and to Washington and NATO in particular, again especially given the proxy war nature of what’s happening in Ukraine, and given it remains clear that the Russian side is ‘winning’. But it remains that among some sectors, the war is unpopular given reports of a huge Russian death toll. The numbers of young men coming back either in coffins or severely maimed from war has certainly had an impact among many common Russian families.

  It’s been many years since Putin actually had any significant challengers who had major name recognition in Russia (even during Medvedev’s rule, Putin was seen as the ‘real power’ while in the prime minister’s role). The West would chalk this up to the Kremlin oppressing or locking up any political rivals or oppositionists (like Navalny, who never actually polled very high regardless) – while many Russians would see in Putin national unity and strength. Following last summer’s Wagner armed rebellion, his power is consolidated now more than ever.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 19:20

• Senate Votes Down Resolution To Withdraw Troops From Syria: "Another Regional War Without Debate"
  Senate Votes Down Resolution To Withdraw Troops From Syria: “Another Regional War Without Debate”

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  The Senate on Thursday voted down a resolution that would have directed President Biden to withdraw all US troops from Syria, where US forces have come under frequent attack in response to President Biden’s support for Israel’s Gaza onslaught.

  The bill failed in a vote of 13-84 and received support from seven Democrats, five Republicans, and one Independent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT). The resolution was introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who argued the US occupation of eastern Syria risks a major regional war.

  

  “Keeping 900 US troops in Syria does nothing to advance American security. Rather, our intervention puts those servicemembers at grave risk by providing an enticing target for Iranian-backed militias,” Paul said.

  “Our continued presence risks the United States getting dragged into yet another regional war in the Middle East without debate or a vote by the people’s representatives in Congress. Congress must cease abdicating its constitutional war powers to the executive branch,” he added.

  Paul’s bill would have given the president 30 days to withdraw from Syria unless he was able to get authorization from Congress. The resolution received support from Robert Ford, who was the US ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014 when the US first threw its weight behind the regime change effort against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

  “We owe our soldiers serving there in harm’s way a serious debate about whether their mission is, in fact, achievable. Absent a debate and authorization of such a mission, our troops should be removed. Consideration of S.J. Res. 51 is an important opportunity for the Senate to take a step towards that necessary outcome,” Ford said.

  The US has launched several rounds of airstrikes against Shia militias in Syria and Iraq in response to the rocket and drone attacks that have targeted US bases since October 17. The US bombings, which have killed dozens of militia members, have not deterred further attacks, and the region has turned into a powder keg.

  

  The US maintains that its presence in eastern Syria is about fighting ISIS remnants, but the occupation is part of a broader campaign against Damascus and its allies, which includes Iran. The US maintains crippling economic sanctions on Syria that are designed to prevent the country’s reconstruction, and the area the US occupies is where most of Syria’s oil and gas fields are located.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 19:00

• Vivek Vivisects Van Jones Over 'Great Replacement' Hypocrisy
  Vivek Vivisects Van Jones Over ‘Great Replacement’ Hypocrisy

  

  Vivek Ramaswamy has seriously kicked the hornets’ nest – drawing harsh rebuke from MSM over his fiery debate performance on Wednesday, where he;

  • Called Nikki Haley a ‘fascist’ for thinking “the government should identify every one of those individuals with an ID”

  • Slammed Haley and Biden for being two of the last “neocons” supporting “pointless war” in Ukraine

  • Fat shamed Chris Christie

  • Said he was the “only candidate” who would raise questions regarding the Jan. 6 riot, Saudi Arabia’s involvement in 9/11 and more

  • Suggested the 2020 election was stolen

  • Said that the “Great Replacement Theory is not some grand, right-wing conspiracy theory,” but rather a “basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform” and that the 2020 was “stolen by Big Tech.”

  Watch:

  Vivek Ramaswamy calls out all three candidates for turning on Trump after using him for money and endorsements and then drops truth nukes 🔥

  – J6 was an inside job
  – The 2020 Election was stolen
  – The Government lied about 9/11
  – The “Great Replacement” is not a “Conspiracy… pic.twitter.com/AAWKSwn2oG

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 7, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  It was the “great replacement theory” that really got the hornets buzzing – with the NY Times writing that it was a “racist idea that minorities, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to replace white Americans,” none of which Ramaswamy articulated.

  The “great replacement theory” has been creeping into the conservative mainstream, popularized by hosts like Tucker Carlson, and has been referenced by several mass shooters. -NY Times

  CNN host Van Jones got in on the feeding frenzy, calling Ramaswamy a “demagogue” for discussing said great replacement theory.

  Van Jones was left “Shaking” after hearing Vivek speak at the debate.

  Lmao🤣

  pic.twitter.com/lRyM2RekSU

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 7, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Except, Jones himself is a big fan of it, which Vivek fired back in Jones’ face with a 2021 video of the race hustler saying “The request from the racial justice left: we want the white majority to go from being a majority to being a minority and like it. That’s a tough request, and change is hard.”

  Watch:

  Yesterday, Van Jones called me a “demagogue” for discussing the Great Replacement Theory. Well, here are Van’s words in 2021: “The request from the racial justice left: we want the white majority to go from being a majority to being a minority and like it. That’s a tough request,… pic.twitter.com/yPRvJ2VCUa

  — Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 8, 2023

  The replies were priceless…

  New York Times also covered this though. Are they also demagogues? https://t.co/eo5ioj7jaI

  — The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) December 8, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Typical left wing tactic: It’s not happening, but it’s good that it is happening, which it isn’t.

  — Simon Isturiz (@Simon_Isturiz) December 8, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Hey @VanJones68, you hypocritical sycophant. When are you going to issue your retraction for accusing Vivek of saying what you yourself said? Oh wait, you won’t. Because the racial justice left never ever admits it’s many, many faults and mistakes. You are a gaslighter…

  — Drew (@304to956) December 8, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The real reason why Van Jones was shaking is because Vivek was speaking TRUTH. pic.twitter.com/BadRZIi9Ke

  — Briana V. Whatley (@briana_whatley) December 8, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 18:40

• "A Constant State Of Sticker Shock" – Here Is Proof That Inflation In The US Is Wildly Out Of Control
  “A Constant State Of Sticker Shock” – Here Is Proof That Inflation In The US Is Wildly Out Of Control

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

  Do you believe the politicians in Washington or do you believe your own eyes? 

  The politicians keep telling us that “inflation is low”, but everyone can see that everything sure does cost a lot more than it once did.  Our standard of living just keeps going down, and even JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is admitting that “inflation is hurting people”.  But how can inflation be “hurting people” if it is under control?  Of course the truth is that it isn’t under control.  If the official rate of inflation was still measured using the formula that was in place in 1980, it would be well into double digit territory right now.  Prices have been rising much faster than paychecks have, and that is putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress on the more than 60 percent of U.S. adults that currently live paycheck to paycheck.

  

  Vox is a website that leans very far to the left, and even they are complaining about inflation.

  In fact, a recent article posted on Vox boldly declared that life in 2023 “means being in a constant state of sticker shock”…

  Life in 2023 means being in a constant state of sticker shock.

  You walk out of the grocery store feeling like you’re not really sure what happened, but somehow, your normal fare ran you $50 more than you swear it should have. Did Diet Coke always cost that much? Or eggs? Maybe you’ve been putting off buying that new car in the hope prices go back to where they were pre-pandemic, but you’re starting to feel like the wait is awfully long. Or, the morning after a post-work happy hour, you’re left scratching your head. You swear you had two glasses of wine, but the size of your credit card receipt makes you wonder if it wasn’t four. “How expensive everything is today” is a top theme of conversation. The whole situation can be infuriating.

  I don’t care for Vox much, but those two paragraphs are quite accurate.

  Prices have reached absurd heights, and most of us really are “in a constant state of sticker shock” these days.

  And the cold, hard numbers back this up.

  According to a report from Republican members of the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee, the typical household in this country “must spend an additional $11,434 annually” in order to have the same standard of living that it did when Joe Biden entered the White House…

  The typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021, right before inflation soared to 40-year highs, according to a recent analysis of government data.

  So let me ask you a question.

  Has your household income gone up by $11,434 a year since January 2021?

  If you are like most Americans, your income has barely moved.

  As I discussed last week, half of all American workers made less than $40,847.18 last year.

  If you are one of those workers, life is not easy in 2023.

  Even really basic things just cost so much at this point.  For example, a Big Mac value meal will now set you back 18 dollars in some parts of the country…

  A Big Mac burger, a medium beverage, and a medium fry meal now costs 18 dollars in some locations, up $10 from 2018 when former President Donald Trump was president.

  Visiting McDonald’s has become something that only wealthy people can afford to do on a regular basis.

  Of course it isn’t just fast food that has become painfully expensive…

  • A pound of ground beef now costs $5.23 on average, up from $3.89 in January 2020.

  • Coffee is up some $2 a pound. Prices for fresh fruits and vegetables are nearly 14% higher.

  • At one point, the price of a carton of eggs was triple its pre-pandemic price.

  When I was growing up, my mother would feed us ground beef all the time.

  Now it is considered to be a luxury item.

  Let me give you another example of how inflation is killing us financially.

  The cost of auto insurance and the cost of home insurance are both going through the roof…

  The skyrocketing cost of auto and home insurance is increasingly weighing on cash-strapped Americans.

  In 2022, the average price of both types of insurance saw its biggest spike in more than five years.

  And this year rates are projected to grow by an even greater amount, according to analysis from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Within the first seven months, both had already jumped by double-digit amounts.

  When you combine both expenses, the average American household is now spending over $3,700 a year…

  According to the latest analysis from Forbes Advisor, the average cost of home insurance is $1,582 a year for a policy with $350,000 coverage. And typical motorist pays $2,150 a year for full coverage car insurance.

  That means on car and home insurance alone a household can expect to spend more than $3,700 a year.

  How can anyone afford that?

  And don’t get me started on health insurance.

  Our system is so broken that only those with lots of money can afford a decent health insurance policy that actually has adequate coverage.

  Needless to say, Joe Biden doesn’t want to take the blame for any of this.  Last week, he was accusing large corporations of “price gouging”…

  President Joe Biden delivered remarks from the White House on Monday to announce the new council’s creation. He touted the lower inflation rate and falling grocery prices but admonished American companies for, in his view, not going far enough.

  “Let me be clear: To any corporation that has not brought their prices back down—even as inflation has come down, even as supply chains have been rebuilt—it’s time to stop the price gouging,” Biden warned, imploring them to “giv[e] the American consumer a break.”

  Seriously?

  Other liberals are actually blaming you for inflation…

  People hate inflation, just not enough to spend less: This is one of the central tensions of today’s economy, in which things are going great yet everyone is miserable. And in some ways, Americans have nobody to blame but themselves.

  No matter how high prices go, most of us still have to pay the bills and put food on the table.

  So there is only so much that we can “cut back” on our spending.

  However, one recent survey did find that approximately a quarter of the U.S. population has been engaged in “doom spending”…

  Nearly all Americans, 96%, are concerned about the current state of the economy, according to a recent report by Intuit Credit Karma.

  Still, more than a quarter are “doom spending,” or spending money despite economic and geopolitical concerns, the report found.

  A lot of people figure that if everything is about to fall apart they may as well enjoy things while they still can.

  But I think that a much wiser approach would be to use the resources that you have to get prepared for the tremendous chaos that is ahead of us.

  Economic conditions are going to get a whole lot rougher from here.

  So enjoy these relatively stable times while you still can, because they will not last indefinitely…

  *  *  *

  Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 18:20

• US Mulls Military Action Against Houthis After Officials Angered At Lack Of Response
  US Mulls Military Action Against Houthis After Officials Angered At Lack Of Response

  The US says it is in talks with regional allies to establish a joint naval task force to protect commercial vessels traversing the Red Sea, following several attacks on commercial ships and even the hijacking of one Israeli-linked ship.

  The White House has said it’s in “active conversations” with allies about setting up such escorts. “We are in talks with other countries about a maritime task force of sorts involving the ships from partner nations alongside the United States in ensuring safe passage,” US national security advisor Jake Sullivan said earlier this week.

  

  The US position is that even though Houthi rebels out of Yemen had “their finger on the trigger” – also after declaring war on Israel – it remains that the Shia Muslim group’s Iranian sponsors are ultimately responsible.

  By the end of the week, fresh Bloomberg reporting confirmed the following on Friday:

  The US has been consulting with Gulf allies about potential military action against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels in response to their increasingly brazen attacks on ships in the Red Sea, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions.

  The talks are at a preliminary stage and both the US and partners still favor diplomacy over direct confrontation, said the people, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. That said, the fact the discussions are taking place at all underscores how seriously the US takes the threat, the people added.

  This follows several Pentagon officials complaining to US media outlets over the lack of response from President Biden over the increased attacks from the Houthis.

  Defense leaders are said to be “frustrated” and handcuffed by US political leadership’s lack of action at a moment US warships are under direct threat in the region. Politico described the growing anger and pushback from the Pentagon this week as follows: 

  Senior Biden administration officials agree that striking Houthis in Yemen is the wrong course of action for now, per three U.S. officials, even though some military officers have proposed more forceful responses to the militants’ attacks in the Red Sea.

  There’s high-level consensus within the administration that it does not make sense for the U.S. military to respond directly to the Houthis, the officials said. Although the missile and drone attacks on three civilian vessels on Sunday drew a U.S. Navy warship into an hours-long firefight, U.S. intelligence officials have not determined that the warship was the target.

  The Biden White House has further been accused of “downplaying” the threat:

  Some current and former military officials were frustrated by the administration’s initial response to the Houthis’ Sunday attacks on the ships. The Houthis launched four drone and missile attacks on three ships; the destroyer USS Carney, responding to the distress calls, shot down three drones in its vicinity. Those current and former officials say the Iran-backed group’s increasingly aggressive behavior poses a significant risk to American forces in the region, and took issue with the administration’s public statements on Monday, which they say downplayed that threat.

  

  The dissenters worry that lack of meaningful response could only embolden Iran-backed forces in the region, which also includes militia groups across Syria and Iraq, where Americans have also been coming under fire.

  All of this serves to highlight that positioning Americans in the region – which includes the now years long occupation of Syria to put pressure on Assad – leaves troops incredibly vulnerable. Indeed Iran might see them as ‘easy targets’ – and with little to no strategic advance for Washington whatsoever.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 18:00

• Elon Musk Appeals SEC Case To US Supreme Court, Alleges Violation Of Free Speech Rights
  Elon Musk Appeals SEC Case To US Supreme Court, Alleges Violation Of Free Speech Rights

  Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times,

  Elon Musk asked the U.S. Supreme Court to undo a part of a deal he made with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that required vetting of his online posts, alleging that the deal violates his free speech rights, Mr. Musk’s lawyer, Ellyde Thompson, confirmed with The Epoch Times on Thursday.

  

  The billionaire businessman asked the high court in a Dec. 7 petition to hear his appeal of a lower court’s decision in May that upheld a 2018 consent decree that he negotiated with the SEC, escalating a years-long feud between the industrialist and the powerful regulatory agency to the nation’s highest court.

  The consent decree resulted from settlement negotiations of a 2018 lawsuit brought by the federal agency against Mr. Musk, which alleged that Mr. Musk made “false and misleading” statements to investors when he posted on Twitter (now X) in August of that year that he had “funding secured” to take private his electric car company, Tesla.

  The terms of the consent decree, to which Mr. Musk agreed, stipulate that Mr. Musk steps down as the then-chairman of Tesla; Mr. Musk and Tesla each pay a civil penalty of $20 million; and that Mr. Musk obtain pre-approval from a securities lawyer before publishing written statements about Tesla or its shareholders.

  In February 2019, the SEC alleged that Mr. Musk violated that deal when he posted on Twitter, “Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019,” and sought contempt sanctions, which included fines and potential imprisonment.

  After a few court proceedings, the two parties resolved the contempt sanctions, but Mr. Musk sought to quash the SEC’s consent decree, arguing that the SEC had exploited the decree to “punish protected speech” because Mr. Musk is an “outspoken and much-followed critic of the government generally, and the SEC specifically.”

  A Manhattan-based federal district court and later a federal appeals court both ruled in favor of the SEC, on the rationale that Mr. Musk could not revisit the speech-vetting deal because he previously agreed to the deal in the settlement with the SEC.

  “Parties entering into consent decrees may voluntarily waive their First Amendment and other rights,” wrote a three-judge panel in the Manhattan-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in an August decision. “Had Musk wished to preserve his right to tweet without even limited internal oversight concerning certain Tesla-related topics, he had ‘the right to litigate and defend against the [SEC’s] charges’ or to negotiate a different agreement—but he chose not to do so.”

  Mr. Musk’s Thursday filing takes issue with this point of law, contending that despite having agreed to the consent decree after negotiations with the SEC, the agency had no right to impose, as a condition of settling, a “gag rule” that they contend violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment constraints on governmental limits on free speech.

  The petition asks the court to rule that “government settlements are not immune from constitutional scrutiny,” a decision Mr. Musk’s lawyer says would benefit “the hundreds of defendants who settle cases with the SEC each year” because they cannot afford to litigate.

  The SEC consent decree “restricts Mr. Musk’s speech even when truthful and accurate,” Mr. Musk’s lawyers wrote in the petition to the Supreme Court. “It extends to speech not covered by the securities laws and with no relation to the conduct underlying the SEC’s civil action against Mr. Musk. And it chills Mr. Musk’s speech through the never-ending threat of contempt, fines, or even imprisonment for otherwise protected speech if not pre-approved to the SEC’s or a court’s satisfaction.”

  The district and appeal courts’ ruling “squarely conflicts” with past U.S. Supreme Court decisions,” they added, “and it vests administrative agencies with intolerable power to coerce private parties into relinquishing their constitutional rights.”

  Four of nine U.S. Supreme Court justices would need to agree to hear the case for it to advance to oral arguments.

  Separately, the New Orleans-based Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to reconsider its March decision that Musk violated federal labor law by posting on Twitter in May 2018 that Tesla employees would lose stock options if they joined a union. The Fifth Circuit is set to hear arguments in the case in January 2024.

  The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/08/2023 – 17:40