• US: The New Real Hoaxes?
  US: The New Real Hoaxes?

  Authored by Pete Hoekstra via The Gatestone Institute,

  • The investigative reporting by these two organizations [the New York Times and the Washington Post] was so thorough and groundbreaking it turned up things that were not even there.

  • For having refused to rescind these awards, the Pulitzer Committee should receive its own Pulitzer — for fraud.

  • The real hoax appears to have been the CCP’s ostensible good behavior and the now-hugely-discredited initial reporting on the virus.

  • Or how about the Hunter Biden laptop cover-up? Once again, On October 14, 2020, just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, a critical story of possible extensive influence-peddling with senior intelligence officers in the CCP, Russia and Ukraine by the son of a presidential candidate. The contents of the laptop raised questions that the candidate at the time, Vice President Joe Biden, could be compromised. The entire subject was decisively pushed aside, along with the potential threat to national security that such an eventuality might entail.

  • Also not allowed during the January 6th hearings have been any witnesses for the defense, any cross-examination, or any exculpatory evidence.

  • One wonders, for instance if the January 6th Committee will consider the July 29, 2022 tweet by General Keith Kellogg, that on January 3, 2021, Trump, in front of witnesses, did indeed ask for “troops needed” for January 6. Kellogg wrote: “I was in the room.”

  • The January 6th Committee has also not released any information about government informants or FBI undercover law enforcement officers who might have been in the crowd, and Pelosi is also said to be blocking access to a massive quantity of documents. Finally, according to attorney Mark Levin, under the Constitution’s separation of powers, Congress, has no legitimacy even to hold a criminal investigation: that power belongs to the Judiciary. The entire proceeding is illegitimate and a usurpation of power.

  • Is it surprising that after the Pulitzer decision, the Russia collusion hoax, the Whitmer kidnapping hoax, the Covid origin hoax, the Hunter Biden laptop hoax, and now the January 6th Committee hoax, that many Americans believe there is something wrong with the system?

  Recently former US President Donald Trump challenged the award of Pulitzer Prizes to the New York Times and the Washington Post for their investigative reporting on alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

  

  The investigative reporting by these two organizations was so thorough and groundbreaking it turned up things that were not even there.

  You have to hand it to them for this so-called “great reporting”: the Pulitzer Committee sure did.

  We now know, of course, the grand conspiracy pushed by these papers is nothing more than thoroughly debunked disinformation. For having refused to rescind these awards, the Pulitzer Committee should receive its own Pulitzer — for fraud.

  The intractability of the Pulitzer Committee is only the latest example of why so many Americans have been losing trust in their institutions, both public and private. Rather than admitting that these awards were a mistake, and that much of the reporting was not investigative reporting, but merely a recitation of fabrications put forward by political hacks for campaign purposes, the Pulitzer Committee announced that it will stand by its initial decision, facts be dammed.

  The Russia hoax is emblematic of the model built by the anti-Trump, anti-America First, anti-populist movement that the American people have experienced for the last six years. It embodies many of the characteristics that have frustrated Americans. It is a combination of influential forces — media, social media, political players, and government — that put forward information detrimental to one — oddly always the same — political viewpoint. In this instance, populists — believers in the rights, wisdom or virtues of the common people, according to Merriam Webster — who might embrace the concept of personal freedom espoused by the Constitution, a free market economy, economic growth, energy independence, school choice, equal application of the law and decentralized governance.

  Much of the material used to foster the Russia hoax originated from the discredited “Steele Dossier,” pedaled by former British spy Christopher Steele, funded by Clinton-linked opposition research firm FusionGPS, and pushed by Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman. This discredited information was shared widely — and often, it seems, with prior knowledge of its falseness — through the mainstream media and social media when it was leaked to the press early in 2017 just before Donald Trump was sworn in as president. The material contributed to the launching of the Mueller “Russiagate” investigation, which cast a shadow over the first two years of the Trump administration. Government officials were involved as CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and DNI James Clapper all lent their credibility to the supposed authenticity or seriousness of the Russian materials. All of this did tremendous damage to the effectiveness of the Trump administration, as it sought to govern, by putting it under a cloud of suspicion and illegitimacy from the outset.

  This, however, was not the only example. Consider the disrupted kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in her key swing state for presidential elections. “The FBI got walloped [in April]”, according to the New York Post, ” when a Michigan jury concluded that the bureau had entrapped two men accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Those men and others were arrested a few weeks before the 2020 election in a high-profile, FBI-fabricated case….”

  The media, however, for the most part portrayed the kidnapping plot as the work of domestic terrorists, with the implied inference being they were right-wing Trump supporters. Whitmer went so far as to accuse Trump of being complicit in the plan, even though it emerged that these alleged plotters had also supposedly wanted to hang Trump. The FBI, it was later shown, had been heavily involved in the plot through informants and individuals it had placed in the group. By the time the case came to trial after the election, Biden had won Michigan’s electoral votes and the damage had been done.

  Consider, also, the COVID pandemic. The “facts” at the time were supposedly that it came from “nature” and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government had supposedly known nothing about its human-to-human transmissibility, even though it had “made whistleblowers disappear and refused to hand over virus samples so the West could make a vaccine.”

  The CCP, early on, was portrayed as a constructive player in controlling the spread of the virus, even as it was recalling and hoarding all of its Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). This fiction was reinforced by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the World Health Organization, and other prominent participants – apart from Taiwan, which futilely tried to warn the WHO of the coronavirus’s fierce human-to-human transmissibility, only to be dismissed.

  The mainstream media and social media also quickly began parroting the “official” story line. Social media companies suspended the accounts of whoever might have had a different opinion and some were even canceled.

  For the 10 months leading up to the November 2020 election, the narrative was set: COVID-19 was a naturally occurring virus and the CCP was in the clear. Imagine how different the 2020 presidential election might have been if the debate was how the world would have held the CCP accountable for the leak and coverup of COVID from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Now in 2022, a lab-leak is considered the most “likely cause” of the coronavirus, but again the political damage, and a gigantic amount of non-political damage, has already been done. The real hoax appears to have been the CCP’s ostensible good behavior and the now-hugely-discredited initial reporting on the virus.

  Or how about the Hunter Biden laptop cover-up? Once again, On October 14, 2020, just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, a critical story of possible extensive influence-peddling with senior intelligence officers in the CCP, Russia and Ukraine by the son of a presidential candidate. The contents of the laptop raised questions that the candidate at the time, Vice President Joe Biden, could be compromised. The entire subject was decisively pushed aside, along with the potential threat to national security that such an eventuality might entail.

  Discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop with its reportedly incriminating information about the Biden family business dealings with the CCP, Russia, and other actors in what appeared to be a model of pay-for-play, was instantly shut down. Fifty-one former government intelligence officials , who we now know were perfectly well aware that the laptop was real – the FBI had been holding it for months — wrote a letter describing the contents of the laptop as having “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” designed to damage Joe Biden.

  NPR famously downplayed the story, and once again, if you used social media to post information originally reported by the New York Post, you were canceled.

  A year and a half after the election, the facts were finally “officially” accepted: Well, what do you know, it really was Hunter Biden’s laptop and the material on it “is real!”

  Once again, the leadership at the FBI, the media, social media, and former government officials had developed a hoax to damage their political opposition and the people who supported it.

  Finally, there is the January 6th Committee, a one-sided investigative body, sometimes called “the third (attempted) impeachment.” The Committee appears to have been put in place to stop Trump from running for office again. Before the proceeding even began, its outcome was predetermined: Trump was to be found guilty of — something. As Stalin secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria used to say during Soviet Russia’s reign of terror, “Find me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” So the US show trial commenced.

  Even its start was ominous. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in an unprecedented move, vetoed the committee appointments of Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan. This rebuff led House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to pull his five Republican candidates from participating. Pelosi, it appeared, wanted only anti-Trump folks to serve on the Committee. Also not allowed during the January 6 hearings have been any witnesses for the defense, any cross-examination, or any exculpatory evidence.

  One wonders, for instance if the January 6th Committee will consider the July 29, 2022 tweet by General Keith Kellogg, that on January 3, 2021, Trump, in front of witnesses, did indeed ask for “troops needed” for January 6. Kellogg wrote:, “I was in the room:”

  “Great OpEd. Reinforces my earlier comment on 6 Jan Cmte. Has quote from DOD IG Report regarding 3 Jan 2021 meeting with Actg Def Secy Miller/CJCS Milley in the Oval on the 6 Jan NG request by POTUS on troops needed. I was in the room.”

  While purportedly examining in detail every decision and action by Trump and his team, the Committee refuses to question Pelosi, among the leading figures responsible for the security of the Capitol. She reportedly “turned down” requests for greater security. According to the Federalist:

  “Four days after the riot, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned his post in the aftermath, told The Washington Post his request for pre-emptive reinforcement from the National Guard ahead of Jan. 6 was turned down. Sund said House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, overseen by Pelosi, thought the guard’s deployment was bad “optics” two days before the raid…. Despite the Associated Press and Washington Post’s best efforts to run interference for the speaker, suddenly exonerating her of duties overseeing Capitol security, the riot on Jan. 6 was a security failure Pelosi owns. If the “speaker trusts security professionals to make security decisions,” then why, as the police breach unfolded, did Irving feel compelled to seek the speaker’s approval to dispatch the National Guard, as The New York Times reported? How could Pelosi also order the extended shut down of the Capitol to visitors, citing coronavirus, and install metal detectors in the House chamber?”

  The Committee has not evaluated the performance of the Capitol Police or other law enforcement agencies, but it has targeted the “private records of individuals with no connection to the violence.”

  The January 6th Committee has also not released any information about government informants or FBI undercover law enforcement officers who might have been in the crowd, and Pelosi is also said to be blocking access to a massive quantity of documents. Finally, according to attorney Mark Levin, under the Constitution’s separation of powers, Congress, has no legitimacy even to hold a criminal investigation: that power belongs to the Judiciary. The entire proceeding is illegitimate and a usurpation of power. The Committee’s narrative is clear: Donald Trump is responsible for the events of January 6, now let us manufacture the evidence to prove it.

  This article has not even delved into the 28 states that “changed voting rules to boost mail-in ballots.” Some States apparently omitted both state law and the need for states’ legislatures to be the sole arbiters of election law, as required by the Constitution; the $400 million spent by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; the 2000-plus “mules” and the algorithms that sent conservative emails to spam while emails with liberal content went through to the addressees.

  Is it any wonder that many Americans have lost faith in their institutions and leaders? Is it surprising that after the Pulitzer decision, the Russia collusion hoax, the Whitmer kidnapping hoax, the Covid origin hoax, the Hunter Biden laptop hoax, and now the January 6th Committee hoax, that many Americans believe there is something wrong with the system? The media, social media, government officials and others have been complicit in undermining our rule of law and possibly even subverting an election.

  *  *  *

  Peter Hoekstra was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the second district of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. He is currently Chairman of the Center for Security Policy Board of Advisors and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 23:55

• Americans Spend Much More On Pharmaceuticals
  Americans Spend Much More On Pharmaceuticals

  When it comes to the expenditure on pharmaceuticals across OECD countries, the United States spends much more than other industrialized nations that are part of the organization.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  In 2019, the average American racks up costs of $1,376 for medications after adjusting for purchasing power parity, almost 2.5 times the OECD average of $571 and still 47 percent more than the next biggest spender, Germany. Canada and Japan followed in third and fourth place, both with spending that was around 40 percent higher than average, at $811 and $803, respectively. The OECD members with the least spending on pharmaceuticals and were Mexico and Costa Rica, while spending was also below average in many Eastern European and Scandinavia nations.

  Prescription drugs made up the bulk of pharmaceutical spending in most countries. English-speaking nations on the list, including the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK, shared the characteristic of above-average spending on over-the-counter meds despite their overall expenditure levels diverging quite a bit.

  Government and government-mandated insurance covered 55 percent of total pharmaceutical spending across OECD nations, with the share as high as 80 percent in Germany and France. That number was 70 percent in the United States. Across Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, out-of-pocket spending often hovered around 50 percent, hitting as much as 97 percent in Costa Rica.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 23:30

• Victor Davis Hanson: FBI, RIP?
  Victor Davis Hanson: FBI, RIP?

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

  The FBI is dissolving before our eyes into a rogue security service akin to those in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

  

  Take the FBI’s deliberately asymmetrical application of the law. This week the bureau surprise-raided the home of former President Donald Trump — an historical first.

  A massive phalanx of FBI agents swooped into the Trump residence while he was not home, to confiscate his personal property, safe, and records. All of this was over an archival dispute of presidential papers common to many former presidents. Agents swarmed the entire house, including the wardrobe closet of the former first lady.

  Note we are less than 90 days out from a midterm election, and this was not just a raid, but a political act.

  The Democratic Party is anticipated to suffer historical losses. Trump was on the verge of announcing his 2024 presidential candidacy. In many polls, he remains the Republican front-runner for the nomination — and well ahead of incumbent President Joe Biden in a putative 2024 rematch.

  In 2016 then FBI Director James Comey announced that candidate Hillary Clinton was guilty of destroying subpoenaed emails — a likely felony pertaining to her tenure as secretary of state. Yet he all but pledged that she would not be prosecuted given her status as a presidential candidate.

  As far as targeting presidential candidates, Trump was impeached in 2020 ostensibly for delaying military aid to Ukraine by asking Ukrainian officials to investigate more fully the clearly corrupt Biden family — given Joe Biden at the time was a likely possible presidential opponent in 2020.

  The FBI has devolved into a personal retrieval service for the incorrigible Biden family. It suppressed, for political purposes, information surrounding Hunter Biden’s missing laptop on the eve of the 2020 election.

  Previously, the FBI never pursued Hunter’s fraudulently registered firearm, his mysterious foreign income, his felonious crack cocaine use, or his regular employment of foreign prostitutes.

  Yet in a pre-dawn raid just before the 2020 election, the FBI targeted the home of journalist James O’Keefe on grounds that someone had passed to him the lost and lurid diary of Ashley Biden, Biden’s wayward daughter.

  At various times, in Stasi-style the FBI has publicly shackled Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro, swarmed the office of Trump’s legal counsel Rudy Giuliani, and sent a SWAT team to surround the house of Trump ally Roger Stone. Meanwhile, terrorists and cartels walk with impunity across an open border.

  FBI Director Christopher Wray last week cut short his evasive testimony before Congress. He claimed he had to leave for a critical appointment — only to use his FBI Gulfstream luxury jet to fly to his favorite vacation spot in the Adirondacks.

  Wray took over from disgraced interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe. The latter admitted lying repeatedly to federal investigators and signed off on a fraudulent FBI FISA application. He faced zero legal consequences.

  McCabe, remember, was also the point man in the softball Hillary Clinton email investigation — while his wife was a political candidate and recipient of thousands of dollars from a political action committee with close ties to the Clinton family.

  McCabe took over from disgraced FBI Director James Comey. On 245 occasions, Comey claimed under oath before the House Intelligence Committee that he had no memory or knowledge of key questions concerning his tenure. With impunity, he leaked confidential FBI memos to the media.

  Comey took over from Director Robert Mueller. Implausibly, Mueller swore under oath that he had no knowledge, either of the Steele dossier or of Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned Christopher Steele to compile the dossier. But those were the very twin catalysts that had prompted his entire special investigation into the Russian collusion hoax.

  FBI legal counsel Kevin Clinesmith was convicted of a felony for altering an FBI warrant request to spy on an innocent Carter Page.

  The FBI, by Comey’s own public boasts, bragged how it caught National Security Advisor-designate General Michael Flynn in its Crossfire Hurricane Russian collusion hoax.

  As special counsel, Mueller then fired two of his top investigators — Lisa Page and Peter Strzok — for improper personal and professional behavior. He then staggered their releases to mask their collaborative wrongdoing.

  Mueller’s team deleted critical cell phone evidence under subpoena that might well have revealed systemic FBI-related bias.

  The FBI interferes with and warps national elections. It hires complete frauds as informants who are far worse than its targets. It humiliates or exempts government and elected officials based on their politics. It violates the civil liberties of individual American citizens.

  The FBI’s highest officials now routinely mislead Congress. They have erased or altered court and subpoenaed evidence. They illegally leak confidential material to the media. And they have lied under oath to federal investigators.

  The agency has become dangerous to Americans and an existential threat to their democracy and rule of law. The FBI should be dispersing its investigatory responsibilities to other government investigative agencies that have not yet lost the public’s trust.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 23:05

• "Boom Time Over": Rolex Prices Crash In China
  “Boom Time Over”: Rolex Prices Crash In China

  China’s second-hand luxury goods market crashed in the last two months amid economic turmoil that has curbed discretionary spending among wealthy folks. 

  Financial Times said prices for some of the most popular brands of luxury watches and designer handbags (such as Rolex watches and Hermès bags) on secondary markets have plunged between 20% to 50% since Shanghai imposed strict Covid lockdowns earlier this year. 

  China’s deflating property bubble and President Xi Jinping’s controversial zero-Covid policy in Shanghai and dozens of other regions have sent the economy into a tailspin, denting consumer sentiment. 

  With China’s economy decelerating, Watcheco, an industry portal for used luxury watches, said the price of second-hand Rolex Submariners has crashed by 46% since March. Luxury bag shops in Shanghai and Hangzhou have slashed the prices of Hermès Birkin bags by 20% over the same period. 

  

  FT noted luxury goods resellers and pawnshops report business owners who accumulated large inventories of luxury goods, expecting boom times, are now liquidating those items to raise cash to pay down debt and fund operations. This is just more evidence of the terminal phase of the so-called ‘bullwhip’ effect. 

  “The boom time is over: We are entering a correction period that could last for a long time,” James Wang, a seller of second-hand luxury watches in the eastern city of Nanjing, warned. 

  Wang said in just the last month, he bought six Patek Philippe and 29 Rolex Submariner watches from distressed shop owners, compared with no Patek Philippes and five Rolex Submariners in 1Q22. 

  “Patek Philippe says you never actually own its watch, but merely look after it for the next generation,” he said. “That’s not the case in a business crisis.”

  Shaun Rein at China Market Research, a Shanghai-based consultancy, said there is “very weak consumer confidence … probably the weakest I’ve seen in my 25 years in China.” 

  Both official and independent data show that China’s economy deteriorated further in July and is set for more turmoil in the months ahead as the real estate sector downturn intensifies. 

  The Rolex bubble in China on the second-hand market for Submariners jumped 240% in the six months leading up to Shanghai’s lockdown earlier this year — now prices are reversing. 

  Besides China, second-hand luxury watch prices are cooling worldwide, as we noted in June: Investors’ Clock Out’ Of Rolex Bull Market As Demand Cools. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 22:40

• Alex Berenson: White House Demanded Twitter 'Kick Him Off Platform'
  Alex Berenson: White House Demanded Twitter ‘Kick Him Off Platform’

  Authored by Alex Berenson via Unreported Truths (emphasis ours),

  

  Biden Administration officials asked Twitter to ban me because of my tweets questioning the Covid vaccines, even as company employees believed I had followed Twitter’s rules, internal Twitter communications reveal.

  In a White House meeting in April 2021, four months before Twitter suspended my account, the company faced “one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform,” a Twitter employee wrote.

  The employee recounted the meeting discussion afterwards on Twitter’s internal Slack messaging system. The message, and others, make clear that top federal officials targeted me specifically, potentially violating my basic First Amendment right to free speech.

  The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter. But if the companies are acting on behalf of the federal government they can become “state actors” that must allow free speech and debate, just as the government does.

  Previous efforts to file state action lawsuits against the government and social media companies for working together to ban users have failed. Courts have universally held that people who have been banned have not shown the specific demands from government officials that are necessary to support state action claims.

  In my case, though, federal officials appear to have gone far beyond generically encouraging Twitter to support Covid vaccines or discourage “misinformation” (i.e. information that the government does not like).

  Instead, top officials targeted me personally.

  Andrew Slavitt, senior advisor to President Biden’s Covid response team, complained specifically about me, according to a Twitter employee in another Slack conversation discussing the White House meeting.

  “They really wanted to know about Alex Berenson,” the employee wrote. “Andy Slavitt suggested they had seen data viz [visualization] that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”

  According to an interview he gave to the Washington Post in June 2021, Slavitt worked directly with the most powerful officials in the federal government, including Ron Klain, President Biden’s chief of staff, and Biden himself.

  The Slack conversations also show the pressure Twitter employees felt internally to respond to the government’s questions about whether the company was doing enough to suppress “misinformation” about Covid and the vaccines. An employee writes that the questions at the meeting were “pointed” but “mercifully, we had answers.”

  (From Twitter’s internal Slack channel)

  

  

  At the time, employees said internally they did not believe I had broken the company’s rules. “I’ve taken a pretty close look at his account and I don’t think any of it’s violative,” an employee wrote on the Slack conversation a few minutes after the “really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off.”

  But the pressure on Twitter to take action against me and other mRNA vaccine skeptics steadily increased after that April meeting, and especially in July and August, as the government began to consider the unprecedented step of mandating Covid vaccines for adults.

  On July 16, 2021, President Biden complained publicly that social media companies were “killing people” by encouraging vaccine hesitancy. A few hours after Biden’s comment, Twitter suspended my account for the first time.

  On August 28, 2021, barely four months after the meeting, Twitter banned me – for a tweet that it has now acknowledged “should not have led to my suspension.”

  I obtained the message and other documents related to Twitter’s censorship of me as part of my lawsuit against Twitter over my August 2021 ban. I filed the suit in federal court in San Francisco in December 2021. Twitter and I settled it last month, when Twitter restored my account and acknowledged it had erred in banning me.

  The documents contain other revelations, including emails showing that other reporters asked Twitter to take action against me; I will report on those in the future.

  More messages, emails, and internal documents are expected.

  Subscribe here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 22:15

• Public Trust In The FBI Is Plunging
  Public Trust In The FBI Is Plunging

  The FBI raided former U.S. President Donald Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday, where they reportedly opened up a safe, following a search warrant for classified documents believed to have been removed from the White House.

  

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck notes, the raid has fueled anger from Trump’s supporters, dozens of whom gathered outside the Mar-a-Lago home that night. Several Republicans have condemned the investigation body, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who said in a statement:

  “I’ve seen enough. The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”

  So what do Americans actually think of the FBI?

  According to the most recent survey by Gallup on the topic, public trust in the FBI has fallen in recent years.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Where 57 percent of U.S. adults said that the FBI was doing either an “excellent” or a “good” job in 2019, this fell to 44 percent in 2021.

  This change mostly comes down to a drop in trust from the Republican side, which saw a fall from 46 percent to 26 percent over the two years.

  Democrats, on the other hand, have maintained higher levels of confidence, at a level 66 percent.

  Trump is currently facing several investigations, including into his role in the January 6 riot, as well as his business practices.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 21:50

• The Attempt To Prosecute Donald Trump Is Unleashing More Than Our Political System Can Handle
  The Attempt To Prosecute Donald Trump Is Unleashing More Than Our Political System Can Handle

  Authored by William Anderson via The Mises Institute,

  With the recent FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida home, the Democrats and the Biden administration have raised the political stakes to a level from which this country as we have known it may never return. All one can say to those that are demanding a criminal prosecution of the former president is: Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

  

  Although the raid ostensibly was to see if Trump took classified documents from the White House when he left in a chaotic move in January 2021, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy believes the Biden administration was again attempting to find that proverbial “smoking gun” tying Trump to the January 6 Capitol riot. Whether or not Attorney General Merrick Garland is able to grab the brass ring and prosecute Trump after yet one more fishing expedition is another story, although I doubt that any president has seen as many resources used to investigate him as has Donald Trump, but the Department of Justice has not filed charges yet.

  Understand that anyone reading this article has committed a federal crime at some point, perhaps more than once. I adopted four children from overseas, and while I was not involved in the details (done through legitimate and registered adoption agencies), I can be held criminally responsible if anyone paid bribes in the countries where the adoptions took place. Even if investigators could not prove someone paid bribes, they could still charge me with a crime on a mere pretext. And the charges would stick, and most likely a federal jury would vote to convict.

  Remember that Democrats wanted Amy Coney Barrett’s adoption of two children from Haiti investigated. While the demands were overtly political, it was clear that the Democrats believed in using criminal law to achieve political purposes in her case, but using the law that way hardly is limited to operatives of the Democratic Party.

  (Lest one believe I exaggerate, read this account about lobster importers charged with federal crimes for allegedly violating Honduran lobster regulations—with the attorney general of Honduras telling the FBI there was no violation. A federal jury convicted the men, and they were sent to federal prison for eight years.)

  Anyone who has Democrat friends on social media knows that they are obsessed with having Trump charged, convicted, and thrown in prison. Because I spent many years researching and writing about federal criminal law, I can say that if federal authorities wish to charge someone with a crime, nothing, not even the law itself, stands in their way. So, if the Biden administration really wants to charge Trump with something, the FBI will have no trouble cooking up something to order.

  Furthermore, if the DOJ were to charge Trump with something, he would be tried in Washington, DC, facing a jury made up entirely of DC Democrats that almost surely will have decided guilt even before the trial begins. While the feds already know this, they also know something else: if they file criminal charges against Trump, they know they will be unleashing a mix of anger and political forces that they cannot control. If one believes there is a red-blue divide in the United States now, the public anger from those who have supported Trump will dwarf anything we saw January 6, 2021.

  We also are hearing the usual “no one is above the law” platitudes from David French and Nancy Pelosi, as though the DOJ had never placed its thumb on the scales when engaged in other investigations and prosecutions of politicians and politically connected people. One journalist who does understand what is happening, someone who called out the bogus “Trump Dossier” that turned out to be a dirty Hillary Clinton campaign trick is Matt Taibbi, a man of the Left but also someone interested in the truth.

  Not surprisingly, Taibbi has weighed in on this latest development and he sure doesn’t sound like the New York Times. He writes:

  We’ve reached the stage of American history where everything we see on the news must first be understood as political theater. In other words, the messaging layer of news now almost always dominates the factual narrative, with the latter often reported so unreliably as to be meaningless anyway. Yesterday’s sensational tale of the FBI raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of former president Donald Trump is no different.

  As of now, it’s impossible to say if Trump’s alleged offense was great, small, or in between. But this for sure is a huge story, and its hugeness extends in multiple directions, including the extraordinary political risk inherent in the decision to execute the raid.

  He continues:

  The top story today in the New York Times, bylined by its top White House reporter, speculates this is about “delayed returning” of “15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives.” If that’s true, and it’s not tied to January 6th or some other far more serious offense, then the Justice Department just committed institutional suicide and moved the country many steps closer to once far-out eventualities like national revolt or martial law.

  The editors of the NYT, CNN, David French and his fellow “Never Trumpers,” and most of Twitter really don’t care if Trump really committed a crime or not. They want him in jail for purely political reasons. These are the same people that insisted that the Hunter Biden laptop affair was nothing more than a “Russian disinformation” effort, and since it involves Hunter and his famous father, Joe, it is clear that there will be no effort by the FBI or Merrick Garland, or anyone else in the DOJ, to investigate beyond something cursory, enough to have the authorities claim “there is no there there.”

  At this time, we have no idea if Trump violated federal criminal laws or if we are looking at yet another bogus investigation, a road we have been down before. This is not to defend Trump’s presidency or agree with his insistence that the Democrats stole the 2020 election. The former president’s postelection antics certainly do not speak well of his character or the prospect of another run for the presidency.

  But we should not fool ourselves about the consequences of the jihad against Trump and the never-ending “jail to the chief” efforts of America’s political elites. Sooner or later, other people will be in power, and since the elites have shown no restraint in pursuing Trump and his allies, one can be sure that no one else will show restraint, either. If the political classes have not yet turned the USA into a Third World country, they are well on their way to finishing the job.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 21:25

• These Are The Most (And Least) Livable Cities In The World
  These Are The Most (And Least) Livable Cities In The World

  Pandemic restrictions changed the livability of many urban centers worldwide as cultural sites were shuttered, restaurant dining was restricted, and local economies faced the consequences. But as cities worldwide return to the status quo, many of these urban centers have become desirable places to live yet again.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop notes, this map uses annual rankings from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to show the world’s most livable cities, measuring different categories including: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure.

  

  A Quick Note on Methodology

  The ranking attempts to assess which cities across the globe provide the best living conditions, by assigning a score on 30 quantitative and qualitative measures across the five categories with the following weightings:

  1. Healthcare (20%)
  2. Culture & Environment (25%)
  3. Stability (25%)
  4. Education (10%)
  5. Infrastructure (20%)

  Of the 30 factors within these categories, the qualitative ones are assigned as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable, or intolerable by a team of expert analysts. Quantitative measures are given a score based on a number of external data points. Everything is then weighted to provide a score between 1-100, with 100 being the ideal.

  Ranked: The 10 Most Livable Cities

  Of the 172 cities included in the rankings, many of the most livable cities can be found in Europe. However, three of the top 10 are located in Canada: Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto.

  Vienna has been ranked number one many times, most recently in 2019. According to the EIU, the Austrian capital only fell out of the top slot during the pandemic years because its famous museums and restaurants were shuttered.

  

   

  Only one Asian city, Osaka, makes the top 10 list, tying with Melbourne for 10th place. Notably, not a single U.S. city is found in the top ranks.

   

  Editor’s note: Two cities tie for both the #3 and #10 ranks, meaning that the “top 10” list actually includes 12 cities.

  Ranked: The 10 Least Livable Cities

  Some of the least livable cities in the world are located across Africa and Central Asia.

  

   

  Many of the least livable cities are within conflict zones, contributing to the low ratings. However, these regions are also home to some of the world’s fastest growing cities, presenting many opportunities for ambitious residents.

   

  The Biggest Changes in Ranking

  Let’s take a look at the cities that moved up the global rankings most dramatically compared to last year’s data.

  Moving Up: The 10 Most Improved Cities

  

   

  Here’s a look at the cities that fell the most in the rankings since last year’s report.

   

  Moving Down: The 10 Cities That Tumbled

  

   

  According to the report, a number of cities in New Zealand and Australia temporarily dropped in the ranking due to COVID-19 restrictions.

   

  It’s also worth noting that some Eastern European cities moved down in the rankings because of their close proximity to the war in Ukraine. Finally, Kyiv was not included in this year’s report because of the conflict.

  Urbanization and Livability

  As of 2021, around 57% of the world’s population lives in urban centers and projections show that people worldwide will continue to move into cities.

  While there are more amenities in urban areas, the pandemic revealed many issues with urbanization and the concentration of large populations. The stress on healthcare systems is felt most intensely in cities and restrictions on public outings are some of the first measures to be introduced in the face of a global health crisis.

  Now with the cost of living rising, cities may face pressures on their quality of life, and governments may be forced to cut spending on public services. Regardless, people worldwide continue to see the benefits of city living—it’s projected that over two-thirds of the global population will live in cities by 2050.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 21:00

• World Economic Forum Calls For Merging Of Human And AI Intel To Censor "Hate Speech" & "Misinformation"
  World Economic Forum Calls For Merging Of Human And AI Intel To Censor “Hate Speech” & “Misinformation”

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  Despite the fact that no one asked, the World Economic Forum is now advocating for the merger of human and artificial intelligence systems to censor “hate speech” and “misinformation” online before it is even allowed to be posted.

  

  A report published to the official WEF website ominously warns about the peril of “the dark world of online harms.”

  But the globalist body, run by comic book Bond villain Klaus Schwab, has a solution.

  They want to merge the ‘best’ aspects of human censorship and AI machine learning algorithms to ensure that people’s feelings don’t get hurt and counter-regime opinions are blacklisted.

  “By uniquely combining the power of innovative technology, off-platform intelligence collection and the prowess of subject-matter experts who understand how threat actors operate, scaled detection of online abuse can reach near-perfect precision,” states the article.

  After engaging in a whole host of mumbo jumbo, the article concludes by proposing “a new framework: rather than relying on AI to detect at scale and humans to review edge cases, an intelligence-based approach is crucial.”

  “By bringing human-curated, multi-language, off-platform intelligence into learning sets, AI will then be able to detect nuanced, novel abuses at scale, before they reach mainstream platforms. Supplementing this smarter automated detection with human expertise to review edge cases and identify false positives and negatives and then feeding those findings back into training sets will allow us to create AI with human intelligence baked in,” the article rambles.

  NEW – Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum proposes to automate censorship of “hate speech” and “disinformation” with AI fed by “subject matter experts.”https://t.co/A4JDrh7RaK pic.twitter.com/LYqFhik3Wk

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) August 11, 2022

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

  In other words, your free speech will probably get censored before you’re even able to post it on social media sites. Some are calling it “preemptive censorship.”

  Or as the WEF puts it, “Trust and safety teams can stop threats rising online before they reach users.”

  No doubt that a central part of such “misinformation” will be strident denunciation of the WEF itself, given that the organization is notorious for blocking its critics on Twitter.

  Many would ask why the World Economic Forum, amidst a cost of living crisis, upcoming energy rationing and a global recession, is concerning itself with any of this.

  Why don’t they just stick to the economy?

  “It’s never a sure bet if this Davos-based elite’s mouthpiece comes up with its outlandish “solutions” and “proposals” as a way to reinforce existing, or introduce new narratives; or just to appear busy and earn its keep from those bankrolling it,” writes Didi Rankovic.

  “No – it’s not the runaway inflation, energy costs, and even food security in many parts of the world. For how dedicated to globalization the organization is, it’s strangely tone-deaf to what is actually happening around the globe.”

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 20:35

• White House Warns Of Dangers As Congress Members Take Unauthorized Trips To Ukraine
  White House Warns Of Dangers As Congress Members Take Unauthorized Trips To Ukraine

  What could go wrong? It’s being widely reported that some Congressional members are taking unauthorized trips to Ukraine following complaints that the White House stopped approving them. 

  The Hill reports Friday that “At least one Democrat and six Republican lawmakers, including Fitzpatrick, have traveled to Ukraine independently between April and July.” This is in reference to Pennsylvania Republican Brian Fitzpatrick, who in May went to Odesa and Kyiv, but without waiting for Biden administration approval. 

  

  The White House has meanwhile warned of serious security risks for these “off the books” trips. Concerning Fitzpatrick, The Hill writes, “The former FBI agent, who helped stand up Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau in 2015, traveled with Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), relying on a network of personal contacts and the Ukrainian government to ensure his safety.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 20:10

• The Frogs Will Boil Themselves
  The Frogs Will Boil Themselves

  Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

  There’s a well-known old fable that describes a frog being boiled alive. It states that if a frog is dropped in boiling water, it will hop out. But if it’s placed in lukewarm water, it will be comfortable. Then, if the heat is turned up slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be boiled to death.

  In political terms, this translates into a slow increase, say, the slow rise of taxation or the gradual removal of freedoms.

  But there’s another way to boil the electorate of a country: have them become willing participants in their own demise.

  

  This method is a common practice in many countries, particularly the US. Americans have repeatedly been conned into begging for their second amendment rights to be diminished.

  The method is to make use of the media to shine a light on the horrific murder of innocents through the use of firearms.

  In recent years, this effort has been ramped up through regular senseless massacres of people, particularly children, in public places, such as schools and movie theatres.

  Whether or not these incidents are actually created by the ruling elite is a moot point. What matters is that their proliferation has been extremely effective in providing the media will the fodder to repeatedly ask, “When is the Government going to make the possession of guns illegal so that the killing will stop?”

  Many citizens are wary of such suggestions, but countless others quickly take the bait and demand that the Government “do something.”

  Eventually, this becomes a point of pride for many citizens — a badge of righteousness — for standing up for those who have been victims.

  Through such efforts, the US constitution has slowly lost its ability to serve as a limitation to Government power. A proliferation of laws that redefine what the Constitution means has, over time, eviscerated the Constitution.

  Not surprisingly, those who support this effort are largely liberal, which creates a backlash from those who are conservative and vehemently oppose any erosion of the Constitution.

  Those who are liberal may reinforce their beliefs by watching propaganda networks on television and regularly pump up the dangers of the Constitution. Likewise, conservatives have their propaganda network, which can be counted on to reinforce their views.

  Whichever side Americans take on such issues, they would be wise to keep an eye out for what may be the next development in this wrangle.

  Those who dutifully watch the liberal “news” networks may soon see pundits despairing that the failings of the aging Constitution must be dealt with. It must be updated if it is to serve changing needs. After all, the Founding Fathers cannot be blamed that they didn’t foresee the existence of AK-47s. Surely, it falls to the present administration to “correct” the failings of the well-intentioned old document.

  Conservatives, of course, are likely to be more cautious, but what we may see is for the pundits on their favoured network to express frustration that the Left is seeking to erode traditional values and must, at some point be stopped, or the country will be destroyed. There can be no question that the Founding Fathers were correct — that unless the Constitution and its amendments are not clarified once and for all as to what they were meant to express, American liberty is at stake.

  Americans, like citizens of most countries, love a good battle between good and evil. Every four years, a massive three-ring circus is staged in which the political leader is decided and both sports teams – Democrats and Republicans – go all out in seeking a victory on the playing field.

  However, in most cases, neither candidate is trustworthy or qualified for the job, but this is of no importance. The essence of the battle is not to select a wise and capable leader but to win.

  Similarly, once the populace has been wound up on both sides to believe that only a pitched battle can “re-establish the Constitution” or “modernise the Constitution,” the battle shall be met.

  At present, this eventuality may seem mere speculation. But then, the media campaign has not yet begun.

  At present, all that exists is pundits in the media bemoaning the injustice of the present situation.

  What is needed is the prediction of pundits that, whatever side an individual takes on the issue, his side is sure to win.

  On the liberal side, social warriors must come out daily in the media with demands for change and the certainty of success once the battle has begun. On the conservative side, pundits need to guarantee that the battle will be won once and for all, but that the situation is in dire need of immediate attention, or all may be lost.

  The result will not be immediate, but, with repetition, eventually, the American people on both sides of the fence may well not only suggest, but demand that the matter be sorted.

  At that point, the Government may announce that a Constitutional Review will be undertaken. It would not matter that most of those making the demand are the pundits on the media networks. What would be presented would be that “a majority of Americans demand that the review take place as soon as possible.”

  Although at the time, the propaganda may imply that the review will be focused on one part of the Constitution, such as the Second Amendment, Americans will soon discover that the entire document is up for grabs. Under the terms of the review, all facets of the Constitution may be questioned.

  Then what would the outcome be?

  Each side will hope that their elected representatives will emerge as the heroes, but that is not how politics works.

  In truth, elected leaders do not seek to serve the public but to dominate them. Invariably, their recommendations for change will be whatever transfers greater power to themselves.

  Both Democratic and Republican members will argue forcefully for the rights of the American citizen. However, in the end, a “compromise” shall be made — one in which the rights of the populace are diminished and the Government has new powers to allow it to bypass the electorate in the future.

  If this does occur, the public will, in effect, “boil themselves.” They will have demanded that the Government act, and, when the dust has settled, each side will claim some sort of victory but will fail to understand that they have brought about their own loss of rights.

  It is hoped that, when the day comes that a Constitutional Review is proposed, Americans refuse to take the bait.

  *  *  *

  Economically, politically, and socially, the United States seems to be headed down a path that’s not only inconsistent with the founding principles of the country, but accelerating quickly toward boundless decay. In the years ahead, there will likely be much less stability of any kind. That’s exactly why New York Times bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the Raging 2020s. Click here to download the free PDF now.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 19:45

• Apollo Readies Large Cap Direct Loan Fund
  Apollo Readies Large Cap Direct Loan Fund

  As the old adage goes, “if you can’t beat them, join them…”

  That appears to be exactly what Apollo Global Management is doing, after the asset manager has spun up its first ever dedicated fund for large-cap direct loans.

  The firm is looking to “fill the gap left by banks pulling back from financing buyouts,” according to a Thursday morning Bloomberg wrap up of the news. 

  The newly formed venture is going to be called Apollo Origination Partners, and it’ll be the first in a series of funds that will make direct loans to companies with at least $100 million in earnings, the report says. The fund raised $2.35 billion to get started.

  

  John Zito, Apollo’s deputy chief investment officer of credit, told Bloomberg: “The number of firms who can do $1 billion deals is shrinking. We’re financing these sponsors in ways that they used to access the syndicated market. Now they’re accessing the private market.” 

  Wall Street has pulled back on this type of funding as concerns about inflation, raising rates and recession have loomed. 

  Apollo has already handled 11 transactions of at least $1 billion each, this year through July, the report says. 

  The company is stress testing new loans using the assumption that there could be a recession anytime with the next four to six quarters. Loans come with first-lien collateral protection, and Apollo is looking for “well capitalized” borrowers who have sticky customer bases with recurring revenue. 

  “Everyone wants capital right now. We’re leaning into our deepest sponsor relationships,” Zito said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 19:20

• House Democrats Pass Inflation Reduction Act, Sending It To Biden's Desk
  House Democrats Pass Inflation Reduction Act, Sending It To Biden’s Desk

  Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  House Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act in a strictly party-line vote on Aug. 12, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk for final approval.

  The 220-207 vote came as little surprise, as Democrats have been outspoken in their support for the package while Republicans have come out strongly against the legislation. Four Republicans did not vote.

  The bill was passed by the Senate on Aug. 7 using the reconciliation process, which rendered it immune to the filibuster.

  On July 27, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced that he had reached a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pledge his support for the $700 billion spending bill, which Democrats claim will bring in $725 billion in new revenue to the federal government and reduce the deficit by around $292 billion annually.

  The Inflation Reduction Act was the product of a year of harried negotiations, compromises, and disappointments for Democrats as they tried to pass the much larger $1.75 trillion Build Back Better (BBB) Act.

  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) barreled ahead with the vote even though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had not given its final scores yet, meaning that the actual effect the bill will have on federal revenues, spending, the deficit, and national debt are largely unknown.

  Republicans and Democrats alike have pointed to hundreds of economists who either support the bill or oppose it.

  There is no consensus among the experts, and without CBO numbers, analysts can do little more than make an educated guess about the effects it will have.

  Floor Debate

  Prior to the vote, Republicans and Democrats debated the bill for about three hours on the House floor.

  Democrats portrayed the bill as a timely one which will help reduce inflation and lower costs for American families. Republicans, on the other hand, contended that the bill would only worsen the situation, and blasted Democrats for moving the partisan bill through Congress without proper bipartisan consideration.

  “For too long, too many people in this country have felt like the work that happens in Washington isn’t meant to help them,” Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who led Democrats’ caucus during the floor debate, said in his party’s opening remarks. “And for a long time, they’ve been right.”

  “At the end of the day, this is not a complicated vote—it comes down to what your values are,” McGovern continued.

  “This is a historic bill,” McGovern said, encouraging others to support the legislation.

  Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) echoed McGovern’s support for the bill in his opening remarks.

  “The legislation before us today is a big deal for American families and a big deal for our planet,” he said. “The Inflation Reduction Act will lower health care and energy costs for working families. This legislation finally makes the wealthiest corporations start paying their fair share in taxes, and it ensures that rich tax cheats start paying what they owe.”

  Yarmuth said that the bill was fiscally responsible, fully paid-for, and had been endorsed by top U.S. economists.

  “Not one American family making less than $400,000 per year will see their federal tax bill increased by this legislation—not by a penny,” Yarmuth insisted. However, some critics of the legislation have described this oft-repeated claim as misleading, saying that it ignores the trickle-down effects that raising corporate taxes will have on consumer prices and wages.

  In his opening remarks for Republicans, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) blasted Democrats for the haste with which they’ve moved the bill through Congress, with no Republican input.

  He also mocked the title of the bill, saying that “you would need a nanometer [or a] micrometer” to measure the effect that the legislation will have on inflation.

  “This is the second time we’ve seen this legislative vehicle. The Democrats tried to push through partisan budget reconciliation—what does that mean? That means there is zero input from the Republican side of the aisle. And why is that important? You have a House and a Senate that are almost evenly-divided!

  “It’s 50-50 in the Senate—they relied on the vice president’s vote to get this across the finish line,” Burgess said, adding that Democrats barely have a majority in the House.

  “So don’t try to tell people that this has been an exercise that was well thought-out, that has come through the committees of jurisdiction, where people have had input—no! No Republican has had any input into this travesty that we have in front of us today.”

  Burgess said the Inflation Reduction Act is a reconfigured Build Back Better Act, and that the Democratic senators cut a deal with themselves

  “I stress again,” Burgess emphasized, concluding his remarks. “This bill had no Republican input and it will have a negligible effect on inflation.”

  Budget Committee Ranking Member Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who has been outspoken in his opposition to the bill, opened Republicans’ remarks during the floor debate.

  “This week we found out inflation remains at a 40-year high, with inflation having risen 13.7 percent since Biden became president,” Smith began. “Real wages have decreased by 4.5 percent. Americans are suffering.

  “Are we here debating how to alleviate that suffering? No. We are here to debate what Democrats call the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’—which everyone from the Congressional Budget Office, to 230 different economists, [and even] Sen. Bernie Sanders, have said will not reduce inflation.

  “When you strip away the sunset policies, this bill spends $745 billion and adds over $46 billion to our debt. It adds $54 billion to our debt in just the first five years.”

  Democrats’ claims that the bill will reduce the deficit, Smith noted, point to provisions which will not even begin to go into effect until 2029.

  “So lots of spending up front, lots of debt up front—and maybe savings eight years from now.”

  What’s In the Bill

  Included in the bill’s $700 billion in new spending is an $80 billion appropriation to the Internal Revenue Service—six times the agency’s current budget—as well as an array of new climate policies and tax incentives for individuals and corporations who switch to renewable energy sources and low-emission vehicles.

  Broken down, the roughly $80 billion appropriation to the IRS will go toward “necessary expenses for tax enforcement activities … to determine and collect owed taxes, to provide legal and litigation support, to conduct criminal investigations (including investigative technology), to provide digital asset monitoring and compliance activities, to enforce criminal statutes related to violations of internal revenue laws and other financial crimes … and to provide other services.”

  In addition, the funds would go to hire tens of thousands of new IRS agents to further aid enforcement of the new tax rules—which likely will mean far more audits across the board.

  Unsurprisingly, the effort to expand the IRS is not popular with Republicans, who have generally opposed such efforts in the past.

  “Democrats are scheming to double the size of the IRS by hiring an army of 87,000 new agents to spy on Americans,” wrote House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in an Aug. 4 tweet.

  The bill also includes a series of new taxes.

  The most substantial of these is a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations that make more than $1 billion per year. Though the law currently sets the tax rate for U.S. corporations at 21 percent, many megacorporations end up paying a substantially lower rate after exemptions, write-offs, and tax code workarounds are taken into account.

  The effect that this new tax requirement will have on consumer prices and workers’ wages is disputed. But Preston Brashers, a senior tax policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, predicted in an interview with The Epoch Times that the new tax would cause prices to surge and wage growth to slow or stagnate.

  In a compromise with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to win her support, Democrats also added a 1 percent excise tax on corporate stock buybacks, a practice commonly used by retirement account managers to increase the value of clients’ retirement portfolios.

  In addition the bill would, for the first time ever, allow Medicare Part D to negotiate with prescription drug manufacturers, who will have no choice under the legislation but to enter negotiations or face a massive 95 percent excise tax as punishment.

  While private insurers have long had the ability to haggle with drug manufacturers, such negotiations have been voluntary for both parties. But under the Inflation Reduction Act, drug manufacturers would not be permitted to refuse negotiations upon receiving an offer from the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

  These mandated price controls, the CBO has warned in the past, could greatly reduce medical innovation in the United States—meaning the number of new, life-saving drugs coming to market every year could shrink by as much as 50 percent.

  In the worst case, the CBO warned in a 2019 letter to Democrats discussing the same policy included in the Inflation Reduction Act, pharmaceutical companies may simply pull out of the U.S. market entirely rather than accept price controls or the excise tax (pdf).

  What’s Next for the Bill

  Because the bill has already been passed by the Senate, it will not need to go back to the upper chamber. Instead, it will now go directly to Biden’s desk for approval, which he has vowed to give.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 18:55

• Popeyes Appears To Be Calling It Quits In China
  Popeyes Appears To Be Calling It Quits In China

  What would a U.S. presence anywhere be without fast food fried chicken? 

  Perhaps this is why Popeyes is in focus by the Global Times, after it was reported that the fast food chain shut down 7 of its 9 stores in mainland China. 

  The brand “apparently failed to gain ground” in China, the report says, while sister brand Tim Hortons – originally a Canadian brand – has continued to make an “ambitious expansion push”.

  Four outlets in Shanghai have closed, according to the report. They are unable to be reached by phone and only two additional locations – one in Huangpu District and one in Pudong New Area – remain.

  

  Popeye’s also formerly had two stores in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province and one store in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu Province, the report says. 

  A member of Popeyes’ staff confirmed to Global Times that the locations had been shuttered, and that they were unsure about their future: “We were not informed whether the stores will be closed permanently or opened later. We haven’t received any specific notice nor the reason for the closure.”

  Popeyes first started to expand in China at the worst possible time, May 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic. The company’s initial success – with customers waiting in line as early as 4AM – had led the brand to believe it could expand to 1,500 stores in 10 years. 

  Restaurant Brands International still has Tim Hortons – referred to as “Tim’s China” – and Burger King with a strong presence in mainland China. RBI is still aiming for more than 2,750 Tim Hortons stores in China by 2026.  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 18:30

• Mister Market Handing Out Roses Will Eventually Change His Mind
  Mister Market Handing Out Roses Will Eventually Change His Mind

  By Ven Ram, Bloomberg Markets Live commenator and analyst

  Just when you thought owning beta isn’t working anymore, out pops Mister Market and serenades you with a bouquet of roses.

  If you had taken a deep breath at the start of the second half of the year and kept your faith in the broader market, you would have got one-period price returns of some 11% on the S&P 500 and about 15% on the Nasdaq 100. You would, of course, take that any day. And especially in a milieu where inflation — despite the brouhaha we have seen since the release of US inflation data for July — is running rife and the Fed is nowhere near done with its hiking cycle.

  We have already heard from Charles Evans and Neel Kashkari that the Fed will keep going into next year and that the monetary authority has no intention to start slashing rates as the market seems to be thinking. By year-end we will likely be witness to the Fed rate being somewhere between 3.50% and 4% given that the Fed still needs to get into restrictive territory to engineer a soft landing. And lest it should be forgotten, the top end of the rate penciled in by Fed members for next year is 4.40%. Now juxtapose that with what stocks are yielding, and you will know their recent hubris may be tested in the months to come: the S&P promises an earnings yield of 5.4% and the Nasdaq just 4.1%.

  

  If you are going to own equities for the foreseeable future, would you rather not demand a bigger risk premium than a wafer-thin margin over where the Fed rate is likely to be? And don’t forget the rebound in real yields that we have seen this month, which has been nothing short of stunning, which will act as a drag on equities. At the moment, both the major stock benchmarks are sorely in need of a reality check — especially everyone’s favorite technology stocks.

  Owning beta has its advantages, but it may be easy to be swept up by a false sense of complacency. Mister Market seems to be thinking that this summer will last all-year long, but when the reality dawns, we know he can turn whimsical before you have time to pare your positions.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 18:05

• Rent Is Becoming A Crisis In The U.S.
  Rent Is Becoming A Crisis In The U.S.

  The growing rental crisis in the U.S. has shown no signs of stopping.

  That was the topic of a new Bloomberg report this week that highlighted the stories of numerous Americans struggling to meet their rental obligations. 

  The cost of rent in the U.S. is moving higher at the highest pace in three decades, the report notes, blowing past a median of $2,000 per month for the first time ever. Rents are now above where they were prior to the pandemic in most major cities.

  Areas just outside cities, which saw a large influx of new renters during the pandemic, have seen their rents rise disproportionately higher. People returning to large cities, post-pandemic, have also not helped prices cool off.

  Additionally, rising interest rates have now deterred some would-be buyers, who are now becoming renters. Tight inventory continues to lead to bidding wars, even in the rental market, the report says. 

  

  Kate Reynolds, principal policy associate at the Washington-based Urban Institute, said: “It’s pretty much the perfect storm for renters right now. Those renters and their landlords don’t have a place to turn if they’re unable to pay the rent.”

  At the same time, renters are trying to cope with the affects of inflation nearly everywhere else in their lives. 

  Bloomberg notes that people of color and those with lower incomes are most disproportiately affected by the rise in rents:

  In the US, about 58% of households headed by Black adults rent their homes, along with nearly 52% of Latino-led households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data. In comparison, about a quarter of households led by non-Hispanic White adults, and a little under 40% of Asian-led households, are rentals. Some 54% of renters earn less than $50,000, and the annual median household income among renters is about $42,500, below the national median of $67,500, according to Zillow.

  Single family rents were up by a record 14% in May from the year prior this year. In some cities, like Miami and and Orlando, rents skyrocketed 40% and 25%, respectively. Las Vegas rents were up 16.7% in May from the year prior. 

  

  Cities like Atlanta have also seen rents rise 14.8% from a year prior. People moving from the West or the Northeast to the South have also boosted rents. 

  Duluth, Georgia resident Karla Kelley said: “We’re getting a lot of people from the Northeast or from the West Coast. To them, these rents are not huge.”

  40% of all households that are not current on their rent say they are likely to be evicted or foreclosed within the next two months. This represents about 5.4 million households, according to the report. 

  And as we have documented on this site many times over, people are now turning to debt to try and cover their costs – including their housing costs. Credit card balances were up $46 billion in Q2 of this year and 30% of Americans have admitted to using credit cards or loans to meet “spending needs in the prior week”. This number was up from 23% in early January.  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 17:40

• Five Lingering Questions In The Wake Of The Mar-a-Lago Raid
  Five Lingering Questions In The Wake Of The Mar-a-Lago Raid

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Former President Donald Trump has waived any objections to the release of the warrant and property receipt after the filing of a motion by the Justice Department. The motion, however, did not seek the release of the most important document in this controversy: the supporting FBI affidavit. That is the document that would reveal what the FBI told the magistrate about the prior communications with the Trump team and the specific allegations of the status of the documents in question.

  

  There are reports that the documents involved material of the highest possible classification dealing with nuclear weapons. There is no question that the former President has no authority to retain classified material and that the government has a legitimate right to retrieve such material.

  We should see the warrant and property list relatively soon in light of the DOJ motion and the Trump waiver. My greatest interest is the specificity of the information. Here are a few questions as we wait for the warrant and list:

  1. Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the DOJ would have used other less intrusive means if they were possible. Yet, it would seem that such options were not just possible but obvious, including the use of a second subpoena. Moreover, even if a raid was necessary, it is not clear why the DOJ would descend upon Mar-a-Lago with such a massive show of force rather than send a few agents over with the warrant.

  2. If the FBI believed that there was nuclear-related information in the resort, it certainly did not seem to move with dispatch. The last communication, according to the Trump team, was in June. Even after securing a warrant, there was reportedly a delay in executing the warrant. Why?

  3. If the FBI suspected that high-level material was retained at the resort, did they identify the material to the Trump team and demand its return? It is hard to imagine the Trump Team telling the FBI to pound sand if such a demand was made. Yet, such a denial would readily support a showing of probable cause. Moreover, adding a lock to the door of a storage room would not be viewed as a sufficient for material at the apex of classification levels.

  4. Did the warrant specifically identify the material or the classification level? If the warrant sought the recovery of any possible classified evidence, it would again raise what was stated in the affidavit and the reason why such material was not acquired in the June subpoena despite the reported cooperation of the Trump team.

  5. There remains the role of the confidential informant and what the person shared with the DOJ. Was there evidence of active concealment of the material or merely a statement of additional documents being stored at the resort?

  It is highly unlikely that all of this information will be contained in just the warrant and the list. Given the growing controversy over the necessity of the raid, this is one circumstance where the release of the affidavit is warranted. Rather than allow such questions to fester and grow, early and total transparency would seem in the public interest.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 17:15

• NYC Warns "Polio Circulating" City After Virus Found In Sewage
  NYC Warns “Polio Circulating” City After Virus Found In Sewage

  Health officials have detected poliovirus in wastewater from New York City, suggesting the virus is circulating undetected across the metro area. 

  The New York State Department of Health and the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene announced their findings about the virus known to cause permanent paralysis and even death. 

  “The risk to New Yorkers is real but the defense is so simple — get vaccinated against polio … With polio circulating in our communities there is simply nothing more essential than vaccinating our children to protect them from this virus, and if you’re an unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated adult, please choose now to get the vaccine,” Dr. Ashwin Vasan, the New York City health commissioner, stated in a Department of Health press release. 

  UPDATE: NYSDOH & @nychealthy wastewater monitoring has identified poliovirus in samples in NYC. Now is time for every adult & child to get immunized against polio & be up to date with immunization schedules, especially those in the greater NY metro area. https://t.co/aOJNV1lP0I pic.twitter.com/i9GIRULDQS

  — NYSDOH (@HealthNYGov) August 12, 2022

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   A polio case identified in Rockland County, just north of NYC, in late July was “just the very, very tip of the iceberg” and an indication there “must be several hundred cases in the community circulating,” Dr. Jose Romero, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told CNN on Wednesday. 

  Besides an emerging polio threat, main stream media and government have been drumming up monkeypox and COVID virus doom stories to keep people in a perpetual state of fear.  

  … and, of course, the government is offering polio booster vaccines. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 16:50

• Grocery Inflation Hits Highest Level In 43 Years Despite Biden’s 'Zero' Inflation Messaging
  Grocery Inflation Hits Highest Level In 43 Years Despite Biden’s ‘Zero’ Inflation Messaging

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

  

  While the annual pace of inflation in the United States eased slightly in July, a deeper dive into the numbers reveals that some of the categories that hit everyday Americans especially hard in the pocketbook have soared, with the price of groceries jumping to the highest level since 1979.

  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Aug. 10 that the headline pace of inflation, as reflected in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) ticked down from a recent peak of 9.1 percent in June to 8.5 percent in July.

  The month-over-month CPI inflation figure came in at 0 percent, meaning the overall pace of price growth stayed flat between June and July, prompting President Joe Biden to take a victory lap saying that the “economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July.”

  Republicans and some economists objected to the White House messaging on “zero” inflation by arguing that Biden was cherry picking the data by focusing on the 0 percent month-over-month pace of growth, while overlooking that the year-over-year rate of inflation—which tends to be the more commonly reported figure—remained at an eye-watering 8.5 percent.

  “It’s a bogus math trick. This is the overall one-month index change. Overall that means that the big drop in fuel oil and gas (following previous massive monthly increases) swamped the huge increases everywhere else,” wrote Jeffrey Tucker, president of the Brownstone Institute think tank and columnist for The Epoch Times.

  But while the annual 8.5 percent pace of inflation was, indeed, a slowdown from the prior month, several categories the BLS uses to calculate the price index soared, with one key gauge hitting a multi-decade high.

  The food-at-home index, which represents food purchased in places like grocery stores for consumption at home, jumped by an annual 13.1 percent, which is the fastest pace since March 1979.

  “Consumers are getting a break at the gas pump, but not at the grocery store,” Bankrate Chief Financial Analyst Greg McBride told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “Food prices, and especially costs for food at home, continue to soar, rising at the fastest pace in more than 43 years.”

  

  In Monthly or Annual Terms, Food Inflation Soars

  Some of the sharpest year-over-year jumps in food purchased for consumption at home include flour (+22.7 percent), chicken (+17.6 percent), milk (+15.6 percent), bread (+13.7 percent), and eggs (+38 percent).

  And even though the overall month-over-month CPI index growth came in at 0.0 percent, the vast majority of food-at-home items that make up the index also saw month-over-month increases, including potatoes (+4.6 percent), coffee (+2.7 percent), peanut butter (+3.5 percent), chicken (+1.4 percent), and eggs (+4.3 percent).

  The cost of shelter also rose in both annual and monthly terms, climbing 5.7 percent over the year and 0.6 percent over the month.

  Experts say that the lagging nature of the shelter component of the price index means inflationary pressures are likely to stay high for at least several more months.

  “Shelter costs are still rising at a knee-buckling pace, and accounted for 40 percent of the increase in the core CPI,” McBride said. “Change in rent prices, in particular, tend to lag increases in home prices so we can expect to see continued moves higher for months to come in what is the biggest component of the inflation index.”

  The so-called “core” CPI inflation measure, which excludes food and energy and is viewed as a better gauge of underlying price pressures, remained unchanged in July at 5.9 percent in annual terms, and up 0.3 percent in monthly terms.

  The fact that core CPI rose over the month suggests inflation could stick around for longer and maintain pressure on the Fed to keep hiking rates aggressively, despite stocks and other risk assets rallying following Wednesday’s relatively soft inflation print.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 16:25

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• Trump Demands 'Immediate Release' Of FBI Raid Documents
  Trump Demands ‘Immediate Release’ Of FBI Raid Documents

  Update (0032ET): President Trump has effectively dared the Department of Justice to release the documents related to the Monday raid on Mar-a-Lago.

  

  “Not only will I not oppose the release of documents related to the unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid and break-in of my home in Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago, I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents, even though they have been drawn up by radical left Democrats and possible future political opponents, who have a strong and powerful vested interest in attacking me, much as they have done for the last 6 years…” Trump said in a Thursday night post on Truth Social.

  

  “This unprecedented political weaponization of law enforcement is inappropriate and highly unethical. The world is watching as our Country is being brought to a new low, not only on our border, crime, economy, energy, national security, and so much more, but also with respect to our sacred elections!” he said in a subsequent post.

  

  *  *  *

  The FBI was looking for ‘classified documents relating to nuclear weapons,’ among other things, during its Monday raid at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, WaPo reports, citing ‘people familiar with the investigation.’

  So – we’re to believe that the FBI took several boxes from Trump in June, told him to put a bigger lock, and then two months later realized ‘oh — he might have nuclear secrets‘ – justifying the raid.

  

  The leakers did not offer additional details.

  Material about nuclear weapons is especially sensitive and usually restricted to a small number of government officials, experts said. Publicizing details about U.S. weapons could provide an intelligence road map to adversaries seeking to build ways of countering those systems. And other countries might view exposing their nuclear secrets as a threat, experts said.

  One former Justice Department official, who in the past oversaw investigations of leaks of classified information, said the type of top-secret information described by the people familiar with the probe would probably cause authorities to try to move as quickly as possible to recover sensitive documents that could cause grave harm to U.S. security. -Washington Post

  “If the FBI and the Department of Justice believed there were top secret materials still at Mar-a-Lago, that would lend itself to greater ‘hair-on-fire’ motivation to recover that material as quickly as possible,” said David Laufman, the former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section.

  So we assume the narrative will now be that Trump leaked, or could have leaked, nuclear secrets to Putin – which justified “authorities to try to move as quickly as possible to recover sensitive documents” in the name of national security.

  Right…

  So hours after Merrick Garland says that DOJ only speaks through its filings in court, they go out and leak this story to the Washington Post. https://t.co/farxNnnCtR

  — House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) August 12, 2022

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  *  *  *

  Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed during a brief Thursday speech that he personally approved the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, and that the DOJ has asked a federal court to unseal the document.

  

  Garland: “I personally approved” the Mar-a-Lago raid. pic.twitter.com/qw8HJOcsGZ

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 11, 2022

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  “Just now, the Justice Department has filed a motion in the Southern District of Florida to unseal a search warrant and property receipt relating to a court approved search that the FBI conducted earlier this week,” Garland said.

  35 min wait for:

  1. doj will unseal the warrant and property receipt barring an objection from trump

  2. garland personally approved the raid

  3. stop being mean to the FBI

  4. that’s all, folks

  — T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) August 11, 2022

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  Trump allies have suggested that the warrant was politically motivated, while Trump himself said on Truth Social on Wednesday that the FBI may have planted evidence.

  

  It’s no accident or coincidence that the grand juries involved in Jan. 6 and the National Archives are under the control of the same United States attorney in Washington, D.C., Matthew Graves, who is an Obama-Biden leftist, as is his wife.

  — Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) August 11, 2022

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  The search is connected to an investigation on whether Trump unlawfully retained presidential records – including classified materials, following his departure from office in January 2021.

  garland will not take any questions but you can learn more when his staff leaks to the new york times and cnn

  — Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) August 11, 2022

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  Kind of crazy to think that Merrick Garland may have posed less of a threat to the republic as a Supreme Court justice than as an incompetent, vindictive, corrupt AG.

  — Mollie (@MZHemingway) August 11, 2022

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  According to US Attorney Juan Antonio Gonzalez from the Southern District of Florida, “The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing” the warrant.

  Jay I. Bratt, the Justice Department’s chief for Counterintelligence and Export Control Section National Security Division, co-signed the document.

  According to the four-page motion, a judge signed and approved of the search warrant on Aug. 5, the Friday before the search was executed. The Justice Department also seeks to reveal the property receipt listing the seized items and filed today with the court.

  Shortly after the government’s filing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart set a speedy pace to determine whether Trump opposes unsealing. -Law & Crime

  “On or before 3:00 p.m. Eastern time on August 12, 2022, the United States shall file a certificate of conferral advising whether former President Trump opposes the Government’s motion to unseal,” Reinhart wrote.

  FROM MY SOURCE

  To obtain a criminal search warrant, the government must identify 1) the specific item to be seized; 2) the specific location of that item; and 3) that specific item is at that specific location at that precise moment.

  — Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 11, 2022

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  At Mar-a-Lago, Trump is surrounded by 2 types of people:
  1) political loyalists
  2) law enforcement officers in the Secret Service

  Only the LE officers would have an ethical and/or legal duty to report observations of criminal conduct to fellow law enforcement officers.

  — Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 11, 2022

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  Therefore, it would seem more likely than not that the probable cause for the search warrant was based on information provided by the President’s Secret Service security detail.

  — Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 11, 2022

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  “You’re goddamn right I ordered the Code Red!” pic.twitter.com/6PxjkbZfxG

  — Jeff B. is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) August 11, 2022

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  *  *  *

  US Attorney General Merrick Garland will make a statement to the media at 2:30 pm ET on Thursday, following the FBI’s Monday raid on Mar-a-Lago.

  Garland has found himself in the crosshairs of conservatives, who claim that the establishment has once again ‘weaponized’ the DOJ against Donald Trump.

  

  Watch live:

  Sen. Rand Paul and other conservatives have called for an investigation.

  “And if it warrants it, there’s going to have to be a look at whether or not the attorney general has misused his office for political purposes. Have they gone after a political opponent? I mean, this is beyond the pale,” he told Fox News on Wednesady. “No one would have ever imagined before that we would be using or one political party would be using the FBI to attack their political opponents.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/12/2022 – 00:34

• The Madness Of Groupthink
  The Madness Of Groupthink

  Authored by Robert Malone via Brownstone Institute,

  “Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.”

  ~ Fredrich Nietzsche

  We all seek to understand the root causes of the COVIDcrisis. We crave an answer, and hope is that we can find some sort of rationale for the harm that has been done, something that will help make sense out of one of the most profound policy fiascos in the history of the United States.

  

  In tracing the various threads which seem to lead towards comprehension of the larger issues and processes, there has been a tendency to focus on external actors and forces. Examples include the Medical-Pharmaceutical Industrial complex, the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum, the Chinese Central Communist Party, the central banking system/Federal Reserve, the large “hedge funds” (Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Corporate/social media and Big Technology, the Trusted News Initiative, and the United Nations.

  In terms of the inexplicable behavior of the general population in response to the information which bombards all of us, the denialism and seeming hypnosis of colleagues, friends and family, Mattias Desmet’s 21st century update of the work of Hannah Arendt, Joost Meerloo, and so many others is often cited as the most important text for comprehending the large scale psychological processes which have driven much of the COVIDcrisis madness. Dr. Desmet, a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University (Belgium) and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist, has provided the world with guide to the Mass Formation process (Mass formation Psychosis, Mass Hypnosis) which seems to have influenced so much of the madness that has gripped both the United States as well as much of the rest of the world.

  But what about the internal psychological processes at play within the United States HHS policy making group? The group which has been directly responsible for the amazingly unscientific and counterproductive decisions concerning bypassing normal bioethical, regulatory and clinical development norms to expedite genetic vaccine products (“Operation Warp Speed”), suppressing early treatment with repurposed drugs, mask and vaccine mandates, lockdowns, school closures, social devision, defamation and intentional character assassination of critics, and a wide range of massively disruptive and devastating economic policies.

  All have lived through these events, and have become aware of the many lies and misrepresentations (subsequently contradicted by data) which have been walked back or historically revised by Drs. Fauci, Collins, Birx, Walensky, Redfield, and even Mr. Biden. Is there a body of scholarship and academic literature which can help make sense of the group dynamics and clearly dysfunctional decision making which first characterized the “coronavirus taskforce” under Vice President Pence, and then continued in a slightly altered form through the Biden administration?

  During the early 1970s, as the (tragically escalated) Viet Nam War foreign policy fiasco was starting to wind down, an academic psychologist focusing on group dynamics and decision making was struck by parallels between his own research findings and the group behaviors involved in the Bay of Pigs foreign policy fiasco documented in A thousand days: John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur Schlesinger.

  Intrigued, he began to further investigate the decision making involved in this case study, as well as the policy debacles of the Korean War, Pearl Harbor, and the escalation of the Viet Nam War. He also examined and developed case studies involving what he saw as major United States Government policy triumphs. These included the management of the Cuban missile crisis, and development of the Marshall Plan. On the basis of these case studies, examined in light of current group dynamic psychology research, he developed what a seminal book which became a cautionary core text for most students of Political Science.

  The result was Victims of Groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes by Author Irving Janis (Houghton Mifflin Company July 1, 1972).

  Biographical Context:

  Irving Janis (1918-1990) was a 20th century social psychologist who identified the phenomenon of groupthink. Between 1943 and 1945, Janis served in the Research Branch of the Army, studying the morale of military personnel. In 1947 he joined the faculty of Yale University and remained in the Psychology Department there until his retirement four decades later. He was also an adjunct professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

  Janis focused much of his career on studying decision making, particularly in the area of challenging habitual acts such as smoking and dieting. He researched group dynamics, specializing in an area he termed “groupthink,” which describes how groups of people are able to reach a compromise or consensus through conformity, without thoroughly analyzing ideas or concepts. He revealed the relationship peer pressure has to conformity and how this dynamic limits the confines of the collective cognitive ability of the group, resulting in stagnant, unoriginal, and at times, damaging ideas.

  Throughout his career, Janis authored a number of articles and governmental reports and several books including Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes and Crucial Decisions: Leadership in Policy Making and Crisis Management. 

  Irving Janis developed the concept of groupthink to explain the disordered decision-making process that occurs in groups whose members work together over an extended period of time. His research into groupthink led to the wide acceptance of the power of peer pressure. According to Janis, there are several key elements to groupthink, including:

  He observed that:

  • The group develops an illusion of invulnerability that causes them to be excessively optimistic about the potential outcomes of their actions.
  • Group members believe in the inherent accuracy of the group’s beliefs or the inherent goodness of the group itself. Such an example can be seen when people make decisions based on patriotism. The group tends to develop negative or stereotyped views of people not in the group. 
  • The group exerts pressure on people who disagree with the group’s decisions.
  • The group creates the illusion that everyone agrees with the group by censoring dissenting beliefs. Some members of the group take it upon themselves to become “mindguards” and correct dissenting beliefs. 

  This process can cause a group to make risky or immoral decisions. 

  This book was one of my assigned textbooks during undergraduate studies in the early 1980s, and it has deeply influenced my entire career as a scientist, physician, academic, entrepreneur, and consultant. It has been widely read, often as required reading during undergraduate political science coursework, and A Review of General Psychology survey (published in 2002) ranked Janis as the 79th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

  As I have considered the revelations provided by the recent books from Dr. Scott Atlas (A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America) and Dr. Deborah Birx (Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late), I realized that the prescient insights of Dr. Janis were directly applicable to the group dynamics, behaviors and faulty decision making observed within the core HHS leadership “insider group” responsible for much of the grossly dysfunctional decision making which has characterized the COVIDcrisis.

  Janis’ insights into the process of groupthink in the context of dysfunctional public policy decision making profoundly foreshadowed the behaviors observed within the HHS COVID leadership team.

  A high degree of group cohesiveness is conductive to a high frequency of symptoms of groupthink, which in turn are conductive to a high frequency of defects in decision-making.  Two conditions that may play an important role in determining whether or not group cohesiveness will lead to groupthink have been mentioned – insulation of the policy-making group and promotional leadership practices.

  Rather than paraphrasing his ideas, below I provide key quotes from his seminal work which help shed light on the parallels between the foreign policy decision making fiascos which he examined and current COVIDcrisis mismanagement.

  I use the term “groupthink” as a quick and easy way to refer to a mode of thinking that peole engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the member’s strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.  “Groupthink” is a term of the same order as the words in the newspeak vocabulary George Orwell presents in his dismaying 1984– a vocabulary with terms such as “doublethink” and “crimethink”.  By putting groupthink with those Orwellian words, I realize that groupthink takes on an invidious connotation.  The invidiousness is intentional.  Groupthink refers to a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures.

  Hardhearted actions by softheaded groups

  At first I was surprised by the extent to which the groups in the fiascoes I have examined adhered to group norms and pressures toward uniformity.  Just as in groups of ordinary citizens, a dominant characteristic appears to be remaining loyal to the group by sticking with the decisions to which the group has committed itself, even when the policy is working badly and has unintended consequences that disturb the conscience of the members.  In a sense, members consider loyalty to the group the highest form of morality. That loyalty requires each member to avoid raising controversial issues, questioning weak arguments, or calling a halt to softheaded thinking. 

  Paradoxically, softheaded groups are likely to be extremely hardhearted toward out-groups and enemies.  In dealing with a rival nation, policymakers comprising an amiable group find it relatively easy to authorize dehumanizing solutions such as large-scale bombings.  An affable group of government officials is unlikely to pursue the difficult and controversial issues that arise when alternatives to a harsh military solution come up for discussion.  Nor are members inclined to raise ethical issues that imply that this “fine group of ours, with its humanitarianism and its high-minded principles, might be capable of adopting a course of action that is inhumane and immoral.”

  The more amiability and esprit de corps among the members of a policy-making in-group, the greater is the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions directed against out groups.

  Janis defined eight symptoms of groupthink:

  1)    An illusion of invulnerability, shared by most or all of the members, which creates excessive optimism and encourages taking extreme risks.

  2)    Collective efforts to rationalize in order to discount warnings which might lead the members to reconsider their assumptions before they recommit themselves to their past policy decisions.

  3)    An unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.

  4)    Stereotyped views of enemy leaders as too evil to warrant genuine attempts to negotiate, or as too weak and stupid to counter whatever risky attempts are made to defeat their purposes.

  5)    Direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes, illusions, or commitments, making clear that this type of dissent is contrary to what is expected of all loyal members.

  6)    Self-censorship of deviations from the apparent group consensus, reflecting each member’s inclination to minimize to himself the importance of his doubts and counterarguments.

  7)    A shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgements conforming to the majority view (partly resulting from self-censorship of deviations, augmented by the false assumption that silence means consent).

  8)    The emergence of self-appointed mindguards- members who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.

  It is relatively easy to identify errors of thought, process, and decision making in retrospect. Much harder is to devise recommendations that will help to avoid repeating history. Fortunately, Dr. Janis’ provides a set of prescriptions which I have found useful throughout my career, and which can be readily and effectively applied in almost any group decision making environment.  He provides the following context for his treatment plan:

  My two main conclusions are that along with other sources of error in decision-making, groupthink is likely to occur within cohesive small groups of decision-makers and that the most corrosive effects of groupthink can be counteracted by eliminating group insulation, overly directive leadership practices, and other conditions that foster premature consensus.  Those who take these conclusions seriously will probably find that the little knowledge they have about groupthink increases their understanding of the causes of erroneous group decisions and sometimes even has some practical value in preventing fiascoes.

  Perhaps one step that might be taken to avoid further repeats of the public health policy “fiascoes” which characterize the domestic and global response to the COVIDcrisis is to mandate leadership training of the Senior Executive Service (much as mandated within DoD), and particularly within the leadership of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Whether or not this ever becomes the governmental policy, below are the nine key points which any of us can apply when seeking to avoid groupthink in groups that we participate in.

  Nine action items for avoiding groupthink

  1)    The leader of a policy-forming group should assign the role of critical evaluator to each member, encouraging the group to give high priority to airing objections an doubts.  This practice needs to be reinforced by the leader’s acceptance of criticism of his own judgements in order to discourage the members from soft-pedaling their disagreements.2)    The leaders in an organizations hierarchy, when assigning a policy planning mission to a group, should be impartial instead of stating preferences and expectations out the outset.  This practice requires each leader to limit his briefings to unbiased statements about the scope of the problem and the limitations of available resources, without advocating specific proposals he would like to see adopted.  This allows the conferees the opportunity to develop and atmosphere of open inquiry and to explore impartially a wide range of policy alternatives.

  3)    The organization should routinely follow the administrative practice of setting up several independent policy-planning and evaluation groups to work on the same policy question, each carrying out its deliberations under a different leader.

  4)    Throughout the period when the feasibility and effectiveness of policy alternatives are being surveyed, the policy-making group should from time to time divide into two or more subgroups to meet separately, under different chairmen, and then come together to hammer out their differences.

  5)    Each member of the policy-making group should discuss periodically the group’s deliberations with trusted associates in his own unit of the organization and report back their reactions.

  6)    One or more outside experts or qualified colleagues within the organization who are not core members of the policy-making group should be invited to each meeting on a staggered basis and should be encouraged to challenge the views of the core members.

  7)    At every meeting devoted to evaluating policy alternatives, at least one member should be assigned the role of devil’s advocate.

  8)    Whenever the policy issue involves relations with a rival nation or organization, a sizable bloc of time (perhaps an entire session) should be spent surveying all warning signals from the rivals and constructing alternative scenarios of the rivals’ intentions.

  9)    After reaching a preliminary consensus about what seems to be the best policy alternative, the policy-making group should hold a “second chance” meeting at which every member is expected to express as vividly as he can all his residual doubts and to rethink the entire issue before making a definitive choice.

   

  Robert W. Malone is a physician and biochemist. His work focuses on mRNA technology, pharmaceuticals, and drug repurposing research. You can find him at Substack and Gettr

   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 23:40

• What's Trading Most On Capitol Hill?
  What’s Trading Most On Capitol Hill?

  On August 9, after more than a year of preparation, President Biden signed the CHIPS for America Act into law. Congress passed the policy to strengthen U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturers in January 2021 but didn’t allocate it any budget until now. The bill comes at a time of increased dependency by U.S. companies like Apple, Qualcomm or NVIDIA on Taiwanese chip manufacturers.

  As Statista’s Florian Zandt notes, the latter company made headlines at the end of July when the spouse of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sold 25,000 of the corporation’s shares from their portfolio, one day before CHIPS Act passed Congress a second time.

  As Statista’s chart based on data from Capitol Trades shows, NVIDIA is not the only stock drawing increased attention from U.S. lawmakers in the past year.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Topping the list are Big Tech stocks like Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet, whose trade volume amounted to $129.6 million, $8.3 million and $7.0 million in the last twelve months, respectively. With Antero Midstream Corp and Shell Midstream Partners, the top 8 traded stocks include two listings that could be categorized as left-field if not for the ongoing war in Ukraine. Shell Midstream partners, according to company statements, “owns, operates, develops and acquires pipelines”, while Antero Midstream focuses on “natural gas and NGL production in the Appalachian basin”. Interestingly, both stocks were only traded by Republicans in the past year, with the majority of trade activity coming from House Republican Mark Green from Tennessee, a notable opponent of the theory of human-made climate change.

  Politicians using their knowledge of upcoming bills in conjunction with stock trading activities could, in theory, constitute insider trading. Discussing its perceived legality or illegality has long been a staple of the stock market. Still, the practice flies under the radar in day-to-day trading activities. While the so-called STOCK Act which prohibits trading commodities based on nonpublic information was signed into law in 2012, the fines tied to a violation are often minuscule. This could change soon though: Business Insider and other media outlets have identified 67 politicians not complying with the law in a recent report, and Congress is open to debating measures that would ban all federal lawmakers from trading stocks.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 23:20

• Modern American Policy: Stupid Or Sinister?
  Modern American Policy: Stupid Or Sinister?

  Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

  American policy has been acting in ways which suggest either a desperate ignorance or a sinister restructuring of the national narrative.

  

  Surveying the Senseless

  The USA is now staring down the barrel of four-decade high inflation, an inverted yield curve and the highest debt levels in its history as Wall Street recently enjoyed the strongest relief rally since 2020 on the bad news of yet another Fed rate hike (75bp) into a percolating liquidity crisis.

  Huh?

  In a Fed-led dystopia marked by years of printed rather than earned liquidity, bad news is now good news to markets who nervously seek pretexts for central bank stimulus rather than actual earnings or GDP.

  In such distorted landscapes, positive jobs data creates sell offs and crippling rate hikes induce rising stocks.

  For almost 2 years, while we and other candid market observers were warning of crippling inflation, our central bankers were describing it as “transitory” with a dishonesty similar to the current recession is not a recession meme.

  Huh?

  Meanwhile in DC, we see growing signs of a political culture less about public service and more about self-service.

  Wealth disparity in the home of the brave has passed the highest levels ever recorded and points directly to the slow and empirical death of the American middle class.

  The suburbs around DC are growing richer with lobbyist and polo-playing defense contractors buying concessions and second homes from politicians who openly sell votes for reelection in a democracy that more resembles an auction house than a house of representation.

  A former tobacco tsar at the FDA, for example, recently took an executive role at Phillip Morris while an executive at Raytheon (America’s second largest defense contractor) just took a key post at the Department of Defense.

  Alas, the foxes not only guard the hen house, they run it.

  The Land of the Free?

  If fascism is defined as “the perfect merger of the state and corporate powers” (See Mussolini circa 1936), then the USA may still be the land of the brave, but it no longer resembles the land of the free.

  JP Morgan, led by a $35M/year Jamie Dimon, just paid a $96M “fine” for a $20B profit garnered from openly manipulating the gold market.

  Huh?

  At the same time, once great (and now police-defunded) cities like Chicago, NYC, and San Francisco are seeing tumbleweeds blowing past office vacancy rates as high as 40% following an historically disastrous COVID lockdown policy which did far more psychological, criminal and financial damage ($7T and counting) to America than a flu with less than a 1% Case Fatality Rate.

  Huh?

  Turning to foreign policies, having failed to deliver “freedom and democracy” to Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan at the cost of America’s best sons and daughters, one wonders why the US has spent another $60B to bring “freedom” to the Ukraine when millions of US children live in poverty.

  All Americans hate to see civilians suffer in needless wars. But many who blindly wave Ukrainian flags in moments of ad-water, instant-virtue signaling from a government-led media can’t place Ukraine on a map nor bother to examine the complex history of its Russian tensions which date back to the 1750s.

  Furthermore, sending an IQ, history and geography challenged Kamila Harris to pre-war Ukraine with a NATO narrative only accelerated the February drums of war (and the financially disastrous sanctions that followed) in the same way that Pelosi’s recent trip to Taiwan seems to be more about flaming rather than cooling the war hawks.

  Does the US, with over 800 military bases in 70 countries actively seek war, or does it seek peace? Thousands are dying in the East for what many professional US statesmen believe was an easily avoidable war.

  Has the military industrial complex, against which Eisenhower (no stranger to war) warned in January of 1961, hi-jacked American politics?

  Meanwhile, as American monetary and fiscal policy reached new levels of open insanity in the seemingly deliberate fear-campaign led by “experts” like Fauci in the dramatically-described “war against COVID,” the latest boogieman out of DC is an equally unaffordable war against an equally-hyped climate change.

  If passed, “The Inflation Adjustment Act of 2022,” now sitting on Biden’s desk (or pillow), seeks further dollars that America does not earn yet which the White House assures won’t be inflationary.

  Huh?

  Do the foregoing samples of questionable policy failures evidence open stupidity, or is there something more systemic at play?

  The Fed: “Advancing the Few at the Expense of the Many”

  My take on the Fed is only that: My take. It is based upon the premise (and bias) that the Fed is driven, as Andrew Jackson warned, to serve the few and not the many.

  This presumption comes not only from personal observations, but a careful study of the Fed’s illegitimate practices and origins, far too complex to unpack here but detailed in Gold Matters.

  The Ongoing Inflation Lie

  As I’ve been writing and saying for months, the Fed’s current inflation narrative as well as “solution” is as openly bogus as a 42nd Street Rolex.

  There is little about the current inflation narrative that compares to the 1970’s, and hence little about Powell’s current policies which remotely compare to the so-called Volcker era of 1980, which ended, by the way, in a recession.

  Nevertheless, I am fascinated by the extensive time, brain-power and pundit attention given to explaining current inflation.

  Fancy concepts from “demand-pull” to “supply shocks,” or “extraneous shocks” and “accelerants” to even “black swans” are used to explain a 9.1% CPI inflation scale (which, if DC truly wishes to be “Volcker-like,” is closer to 18% using the metrics of his era…).

  The Simple Inflation Truth

  Inflation, which was already steadily rising pre-Putin and percolating pre-COVID, is nothing more than the direct consequence of USD debasement driven by: 1) years of openly addictive mouse-click money (>10X since 2008) from the Eccles Building and, 2) fatal fiscal spending from the White House, be it red or blue.

  In just the last 24 months, the Fed created 50% more mouse-click money than all the money that ever existed in the 256 years of its national existence.

  Such numbers are a tad “inflationary,” no? Alas, costs are rising because our grotesquely inflated/de-valued dollar is tanking.

  Between 1776 and the un-immaculate conception of the Fed in 1913, a USD was once a USD.

  Since 1913, however, a USD is really (worth) nothing more than a Nickle.

  Why?

  Broken Faith vs. Store of Value

  Because when a central bank creates trillions of those dollars out of thin air with no link to an underlying real asset or an equivalent exchange for a good or service (as Germans like Alfred Lansburgh, Austrians like von Mises and Americans like Andrew Dickson White argued), that dollar is nothing more than a symbol of broken faith rather than a store of genuine value.

  Like a glass of wine filled with a swimming pool of water, the dollar is diluted; it’s flavor, color and value ruined. Since 1971, and when measured against a single milligram of gold, the USD, like all other fiat currencies, has lost greater than 95% of its value.

  

  The Fed: Blaming vs. Accountability

  Rather than confess the toxic reality (and complicity) of the fatal and inflationary expansion of the broad money supply, the DC elites first tried to call it “transitory,” and when that failed, they tried to call it “Putin’s inflation.”

  Really?

  There’s no doubt that the sanctions against Putin sent gas prices and the CPI higher—especially in Europe. And there’s also no doubt that the trillions of fiscal and monetary dollars used to “fight” COVID were CPI tailwinds.

  But a tailwind does not mean a cause.

  Take the “war on COVID” and the $7T+ in combined fiscal and monetary dollars used to combat it.

  I’m not here to end the COVID debate with medicine or science, of which I’m clearly no expert. But many of us (including Rand Paul or Christine Anderson) would agree that neither was Fauci, the CDC, the WHO or the NIH.

  Almost everyone (vaxed or un-vaxed, masked or un-masked) has already caught the virus; it’s fairly clear that locking the country down for well over a year did nothing but cost money and freedoms while destroying businesses who deserved to choose for themselves whether to stay open or shut.

  There will be others who disagree, but in my legally, historically and financially educated mind, not since the oxy-moronic Patriot Act have I seen a greater crime (or psy op) against a nation’s own citizens and their once inalienable rights and civil liberties as that which was embodied by the 2020 lockdowns.

  As Ben Franklin warned, a nation which surrenders its freedoms in the name of security deserves neither.

  Critical Thinking Locked Down

  As a kid who won athletic scholarships to some of the finest schools (from Choate to Harvard) in America, I learned the trade of critical thinking, which any of us can acquire, with or without a shiny diploma.

  What particularly sickened me, however, was that the very schools (prep to grad level) who taught me the history, laws and methods of thinking critically, independently and openly, were the same knee-bending schools who collectively insulted those same principals by shutting their doors to the un-vaxed and censoring alternative views from professors and students who thought differently.

  Were these lockdowns proof of humanitarian concern or were they test-drives for increasingly centralized control over national and international markets, currencies and populations?

  From the very beginning of the pandemic, expert virologists, physicians and even vaccine creators (as evidenced by the meetings at the AIER in Great Barrington) with equal if not far superior credentials than Dr. Fauci, were openly censored, gas-lighted and criminalized by the media as flat-earth “conspiracy theorists”—the now favorite term of art for anyone who disagrees with DC’s often comically official narrative on anything from WMD to the current definition of a recession.

  Thus, when considering the current inflation narrative and its causes, was the US merely stupid in imposing financially crippling lockdowns or were there sinister forces engineering fear as a means of pushing the masses into dependency while the Fed printed more dollars for the repo and bond markets (a hidden “bailout’) than for Main Street?

  Saudi Did It?

  Others may want to blame the Saudis and the high oil prices for the inflation we see today.

  It’s worth reminding, however, that today’s oil price is roughly the same as it was in April of 2020.

  

  The Solution Narrative

  As far as combatting inflation, that too creates a great deal of space for debate, error and comedy.

  Many, including the Fed’s James Bullard, Lael Brainard or Neel Kashkari have been arguing for aggressive rate hikes to kill inflation.

  But with inflation already at 9.1%, such “above-neutral” would require the Fed to follow the IMF’s recommendation that interest rates be at least 1% above inflation rates. In an honest world, that would require a 10.1% interest rate policy, which would immediately bankrupt Uncle Sam.

  Instead, Powell is boasting of an “aggressive” 2.25-50% Fed Fund Rates to fight 9.1% inflation, the policy equivalent of storming the beaches of Normandy with squirt-guns.

  Meanwhile, the Cleveland Fed, as per my recent articles, is using dishonest math to publicly claim positive 1% real rates despite the fact that when measuring even a 3% yield on the 10Y UST against a 9.1% inflation rate, the USA is in fact living in a world of at least -6% rather than +1% real rates.

  Like the CPI scale itself, the Fed is openly lying about negative real rates.

  Sadly, such clever math is now the new DC normal. The Fed won’t say what the rest of us know, namely: The only tool to fight Fed-made inflation is a Fed-made recession, which they will deny in plain sight.

  The Recession Narrative

  The latest lie from on high, of course, is the valiant attempt by Powell, Biden and Yellen to downplay 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP as a non-recessionary “transition” despite such data effectively confirming the very definition of a recession.

  Instead, DC would now have us believe that positive labor and unemployment data is non-recessionary.

  In particular, the BLS is boasting 528,000 newly created jobs in July (and 2M year-to-date), which places US unemployment at an admirable 3.5%, the lowest level seen in 50 years.

  Unfortunately, a little bit of honest math indicates that those “new jobs” don’t represent new folks finding work, but sadly, just folks already-employed who are taking on second or third jobs to survive rising inflation costs.

  The July labor force participation rate actually went down, which means there are less not more people in the work force.

  In April of 2019, I did a more extensive report on the DC math used to artificially puff US labor data (U3 and U6) which is far worse than officially reported.

  But who needs real math or honest data when DC’s comforting words feel so much better?

  Such consistent trends of sanctioned dishonesty, however, force us to question the intelligence and desperation of our so-called “leadership.”

  From Fake Math to Real Wars

  I’ve written and spoken extensively about the avoid-ability of the war in Ukraine as well as the foreseeable stupidity of the Western sanctions against Putin, all of which have empirically backfired at every level– from the slow collapse of the petrodollar (and hence USD) to the slow rise of a stronger, Eastern-lead trading block among the BRICS.

  The petrodollar is no laughing matter. Since de-coupling from the gold standard, the US relies on the forced global purchase of oil in US Dollars to prevent this already debased currency from losing even more demand, and hence value and power.

  Only two global leaders have since tried to stand up to the petrodollar power in the past. Saddam Hussein wanted to buy oil in euros and Khaddaffi wanted to buy oil in gold; and just look what happened to them…

  Unfortunately for the US, both China and Russia have nuclear weapons. Hence, the US playbook of fighting wars or indirectly eliminating leaders to keep its financial interests secure got a little bit messier this February when poking at Putin.

  The Dollar Fairytale: Another Open Lie from On High

  Despite openly objective evidence of an increasingly unloved USD, DC continues to boast of the relative strength of the USD on the DXY.

  What DC won’t say, however, is that this “strength” is only measured against a tanking yen and euro, two debt-soaked currencies who don’t have enough reserve currency clout to afford a currency-boosting rate hike.

  

  Against the Chinese Yuan, however, the US has less of which to boast…

  In short, the USD is anything but strong.

  

  As discussed above, its inherent purchasing power has been neutered by over a century of devaluation and is little more than the best horse in the Western glue factory.

  Profitable War Drums

  Given the failings and open lies above, from inflation realism and recessionary word-smithing to dying currencies and rising, unpayable debts, why on earth would the US now be saber rattling over the Ukraine or pinching the Chinese bear over Taiwan?

  Is it to spread democracy and freedom by helping the underdog, whatever the sacrifice?

  Well, one of our most famous underdogs, military generals and presidents, George Washington, warned over 2 centuries ago to precisely avoid such foreign entanglements. “Truly enlightened and independent patriots,” he argued, focused on prosperity within their borders not peripheral wars outside them.

  Despite such warnings, the US has spent a lot of time fighting outside its borders rather building unity within them.

  Why?

  One sad but empirically proven argument is that war is historically good for tanking GDP and struggling stock markets.

  In March of 2018, I penned an eerily prescient analysis of how US stocks love global war, and warned of escalations against Russia and China.

  In particular, I addressed the historical data of the “war dividend,” which tracked US markets reacting favorably to de-stabilization outside its borders.

  Thus, even if Generals Washington and Eisenhower warned against such conflicts, Wall Street and the defense contractors who lobby DC love a good war.

  Why?

  Because war feeds US markets. Conflicts overseas create massive capital flows into the relative safety of the US.

  During the Iraq War, hundreds of billions in Middle Eastern assets rushed into US markets while NATO bombs landed in Iraq. Between 2003 and 2008, the Dow rose steadily upwards.

  During the Vietnam War (which killed 58,000 Americans and 1.2 million Vietnamese), the Dow gained 53%. When the war ended, the markets promptly fell, and fell hard.

  During the Great War of 1914-1918, the Dow nearly doubled. As for WW2, the Dow rose by 164% between Pearl Harbor in 1941 and VJ day in 1945.

  Given such numbers, was the recent idea of sending a kindergarten-level intellect like Kamila Harris to negotiate peace (?) with Putin in early 2022 deliberately set up to fail?

  Was Pelosi’s recent flight to Taiwan a commitment to ensure freedom? Or is there a more sinister, yet hidden, motive to push for war in a time of economic disaster at home?

  Is America Heading in the Opposite Direction of Its Founding Fathers?

  History confirms that every debt crisis leads to a financial crisis, a market crisis, a currency crisis, social unrest, a political crisis, and ultimately extreme authoritarian and centralized control from the far political left of right.

  Given how increasingly centralized our openly broken yet centrally controlled markets, economies and politics have become, and given the acceleration and scope of the open lies, backfiring polices and unpayable costs and debts which have emerged in the post-COVID and post-sanction new normal, is it possible that the USA is headed toward a similarly authoritarian fate?

  Is it possible that the by ignoring the clear warnings of figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Franklin and Dwight Eisenhower, that America is heading in the opposite direction of its founding principles?

  Is it possible that the openly failing inflation, recessionary, domestic and foreign polices listed above are more than just a list of stupid mistakes, but indicators of a set-up for something more sinister?

  Are our markets, economies, currencies and individual freedoms being sacrificed to the altar of order, control, safety and security?

  Is DC creating an intentional class of American lords and serfs, in which the former hand out stimulus checks to prevent the later from reaching for pitch forks?

  As we learned in the Europe of the 1930’s or the lockdowns of the 2020’s, fear (be it viral, militant or economic) is a potent tool of control—it turns revolutionary anger into malleable subservience.

  Just a thought.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 23:00

• Hurricane-Stoking La Nina To Persist Through Peak Season
  Hurricane-Stoking La Nina To Persist Through Peak Season

  As peak hurricane season is underway, the odds of La Nina sticking around for at least a few months are rising, potentially leading to more hurricanes and tropical storms. 

  According to the US Climate Prediction Center’s latest data, there’s an 80% chance of cool waters across the equatorial Pacific Ocean through October. Last month the agency estimated 62% odds of La Nina for the same period, a noticeable increase over the previous month. 

  

  The weather phenomenon known as La Nina helps to fuel tropical development by cutting down on the amount of wind shear across the western Atlantic. High wind shear can disorganize the structure of tropical systems by weakening them or destroying them.

  We pointed out earlier this month that the first two months of hurricane season have been relatively quiet, but that is all expected to change as peak hurricane season has arrived. 

  Increased tropical storm activity usually begins in August and lasts through early October. 

  

  The concern with entering the most active part of hurricane season, plus a possible boost in the severity of storms due to lingering La Nina, is that more areas of the US are prone to possible landfall. 

  

  The National Hurrican Center has identified one disturbance in the Atlantic, though formation odds in the next 48% hours are extremely low. 

  

  And here’s what La Nina means for the weather conditions across the country this fall. 

  

  Another problem is if a hurricane or tropical storm were to make landfall on US soil and damage infrastructure, a critical supply shortage of transformers, distribution lines, and poles could prolong power outages. Then there’s the risk of a tropical system slamming into the Gulf Coast of the US, where major oil/gas refinery operations exist — any disruption due to storm-related damage could reverse the steepest declines in fuel prices since GFC. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 22:40

• It's Not Hypocrisy, You're Just Powerless
  It’s Not Hypocrisy, You’re Just Powerless

  Authored by N.S. Lyons via The Upheaval (emphasis ours),

  Hello Friend,

  I saw your post on the interweb the other day about that nasty thing Team A did, even though they always completely lose their collective mind with moralistic outrage if Team B (which I understand is your team) even thoughtcrimes about doing something similar. In fact Team A seems to blatantly do things all the time that no one on Team B could ever get away with doing without being universally condemned as the absolute worst sort of immoral criminal/being openly threatened with mob violence/losing their livelihood/having their assets frozen/being rounded up by the state and shipped to a black site somewhere for some extended TLC.

  Maybe the latest thing was breaking some very important public health rules, or pillaging and burning down government buildings for fun, or mean tweets, or polluting the planet with a private jet, or using allegedly neutral public institutions against political opponents, or just engaging in a little tax-dodging or corruption while doing, like, a ton of blow in a hotel room with some capital city hookers – I forget the specifics. In fact I forget what country you’re even living in now days.

  

  But I did see that slick video you posted on how just pointing out “imagine if someone on Team B did this!” is all it takes to blow the lid off this glaring hypocrisy, thus totally destroying Team A with facts and logic. I’ve noticed you posting a lot of things like this, which is nice, since they are very witty and produce a pleasant buzz of smug superiority, even though this feeling never lasts very long.

  However, I suddenly realized that you may not be in on the joke, so to speak, so I figured I’d write this short PSA to help explain what “hypocrisy” in politics actually is, just in case you didn’t know and had been fooled into seriously trying to benefit Team B with your comparative memes.

  You see, it’s possible you are under the misapprehension that you are not supposed to notice what you described as the “double-standard” in acceptable behavior between Team A and Team B. And that you think if you point out this double-standard, you are foiling the other team’s plot and holding them accountable. This might be because, in your mind, you are still in high school debate club, where if you finger your opponent for having violated the evenly-applied rules a neutral arbiter of acceptable behavior will recognize this unfairness and penalize them with demerits.

  Except in reality you are not holding Team A accountable, and in fact are notably never able to hold them accountable for anything at all. Even though Team A gets to hold you accountable for everything and anything whenever they want. This is because unfortunately there is no neutral arbiter listening to your whining. In fact, currently the only arbiter is Team A, because Team A has consolidated all the power to decide the rules, and to enforce or not enforce those rules as they see fit.

  As some dead American white male once said, “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” And if you remember there once being a more equal, neutral standard for both teams in the past, that probably wasn’t because either team was nicer back then, or was more constrained by some higher power within or above the system – there was just a more equal balance of power between them, and therefore they could both hold each other accountable by punishing the other if it strayed too far from “the rules” written down on a scrap of paper somewhere.

  Today, however, Team A is not operating on remotely the same level as Team B. And your biggest misunderstanding may be that you think Team A doesn’t want Team B to recognize this fact and point it out for the whole world to see. Yes there is a separate-and-not-equal standard for Team A, and this is no accident. Yes there are two different tiers of acceptable behavior; two tiers of justice; two tiers of citizen.

  In fact, there is no “Team A” or “Team B,” only Class A and Class B.

  And Class A really wants everyone, especially Class B, to understand this, because they think Class B seriously needs to get the message and accept its place in the order of things. Class B is on the bottom, where it belongs. Class A is on top, and a more lenient standard is a privilege reserved for them, by virtue of their natural moral/educational/economic/aesthetic superiority and consequent rightful dominance. If Class B does not enjoy this discipline, they should strive to clean up their dirty, stupid, wicked ways and someday become part of Class A.

  Friend, you are not in high school debate club anymore. You are a peasant in feudal Japan, and every day the Samurai get to denigrate, abuse, and rough up your kind as much as they want. But if you ever talk back to a samurai, let alone try to do a little roughing up of your own, you will be beheaded on the spot. And far from being punished for this, the samurai who does it will be praised for doing his duty, since uppity peasants are dangerous and immoral and need to be dealt with at once, before they threaten the established social hierarchy. That samurai is just protecting democracy the Shogunate. Pointing out the hierarchy of the social order as a peasant will be met only with a nod of approval: “yes, that is how it is, it’s good that now you finally understand.”

  “Hypocrisy,” I hope you now see, is simply a display of power, so the more blatant it is the better. Hypocrisy is a concrete demonstration of living without having to fear consequences. And Class A loves it when Class B notices this and whines about it, because complaining about hypocrisy is just another way of saying “Class A is higher status than me,” and “I am the loser.” That’s the joke.

  Much like the Great Khan, Class A has decided the greatest happiness in life is to crush its class enemies, see them driven before it, and hear the lamentations of their pundits.

  Fundamentally, Class A believes the purpose of power is to reward its friends and punish its enemies. Which is what it does. That way it can keep its enemies down at the same time as it attracts more friends by offering great perks for class membership. And as a controversial Arab thought-leader once said: everyone prefers a strong horse to a weak horse.

  If you, Class B serf, do not enjoy this arrangement, your lamentations about hypocrisy will not change it, no matter how loud and shrill. Only taking back control of the levers of power and then using that power to strike the fear of accountability into the hearts of your ruling class will ever be able to do that.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 22:20

• Trump 'Shattering' All Fundraising Records After FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid
  Trump ‘Shattering’ All Fundraising Records After FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid

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

  Former President Donald Trump shattered fundraising efforts following the FBI Mar-a-Lago raid, according to his son Eric.

  “Breaking: DonaldJTrump.com is shattering all fundraising records and I’m told has raised more money in the past 24 hours than ever before in recent history! The American people are [angry]!” Eric Trump wrote on Truth Social.

  

  The former president’s second-oldest son did not say how much was raised in the past two days.

  After Trump confirmed the raid occurred at his Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday, he has sent out numerous emails and text messages that include links to donate.

  Trump and other top Republicans say the FBI and Department of Justice are acting in a blatantly political manner, with members of Congress promising investigations. Further, they’ve accused the Biden administration of weaponizing federal law enforcement to harm Trump’s and Republicans’ chances during the midterm elections, which are only about 90 days away.

  “They are trying to stop the Republican Party and me once more,” Trump said in a fundraising email Tuesday, which was seen by The Epoch Times. “The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt, must be exposed and stopped.”

  Trump on Tuesday also released a political ad describing the United States as a “nation in decline” and makes reference to what is described as numerous failures on behalf of the Biden administration including the fall of Afghanistan, inflation, high energy prices, and more.

  “We are a nation that allowed Russia to devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and it will only get worse,” Trump says in the clip. “We are a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before.”

  More Details

  Both the Justice Department and FBI have declined to comment or even confirm the raid to numerous news outlets. The Epoch Times has contacted the two agencies for comment.

  

  Stark images of FBI agents holding rifles during the Mar-a-Lago raid have since been uploaded online as Trump spokeswoman Christina Bobb confirmed about two dozen agents descended on the property Monday. She told news outlets that Trump’s team members were denied the ability to watch the agents, who took boxes of documents.

  On Truth Social Wednesday, Trump warned that the FBI may have planted evidence.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 21:40

• Flying Taxi Company Doubles DoD Deal For eVTOLs
  Flying Taxi Company Doubles DoD Deal For eVTOLs

  Bloomberg reported that Californian venture-backed aerospace company Joby Aviation doubled the size of its US Defense Department (DoD) contract to produce electric-powered, vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, or eVTOLs, for the military. 

  The new agreement was announced Wednesday and had more than doubled the size of the prior contract from a $30 million value to $75 million, including eVTOLs for the US Marine Corps.

  “Continued momentum with government customers has always been an important part of how we go to market,” said Joby Executive Chairman Paul Sciarra. 

  

  Sciarra said additional military users testing eVTOLs would allow Joby to improve manufacturing, flight operations, and other functions before a public taxi service is launched in 2024. 

  “As we work toward our goal of launching a passenger ridesharing service, we’re grateful for the support of our defense partners. This extension provides valuable support for our ongoing development efforts and allows our partners to see first-hand the potential for this aircraft in their future concept of operations,” JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, stated in a corporate press release. 

  Joby has already tested eVTOLs with the Air Force for two years. The aircraft can transport four passengers at speeds up to 200 mph and fly 150 miles on a single charge.  

  

  Sciarra said that the Army and Navy had labeled eVTOLs as a “critical area of interest,” though both services aren’t part of the expanded contract. 

  DoD doesn’t expect to mount Hellfire or Sidewinder missiles on the eVTOLs. Instead, the aircraft will be primarily for military logistics, such as transporting supplies and medical emergencies.  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 21:20

• Did Lockdowns Turn Americans Into Lazy Bums?
  Did Lockdowns Turn Americans Into Lazy Bums?

  Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via Brownstone Institute,

  

  It looks as if we can add another line to the long list of lockdown harms. Sloth. 

  This explains so much actually. For months, we’ve been watching working/population ratios and labor participation rates and have been stunned by how they both continue to plummet. We search for explanations. Early retirement. Women driven out due to childcare shortages. Unemployment payments. 

  All these factors contribute but there is still more to explain. 

  In the midst of the astonishing hullabaloo over the raid of Donald Trump’s home – and the confiscation of a pro-freedom Republican Congressman’s smartphone – the Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped a remarkable report on labor productivity. Here we see something we’ve never seen before. 

  It’s low and falling. Lower than it has been than in the entire postwar period. It breaks all records. This chart is from 1948 to the present. It adjusts for all factors including participation, population, retirement, and so on. It only looks at hours over output. Here is what we see. 

  

  What does this mean?

  The immediate response might be that Americans have gotten lazy. They got used to their Zoom lifestyles and pretending to work. They want to hang around on apps, Tweet, chat it up with their friends on Facebook or Slack, and otherwise fake out the boss who can’t fire them anyway for fear of lawsuits. They aren’t doing much anymore, at least not those in high-end employment in professional office suits. 

  I resisted that conclusion and looked more deeply into how this number is calculated. It looks at total economic output compared to the number of labor hours from wage and salary employees involved in making that output. The result is a figure that estimates productivity per hour. And yes, it is probably widely inaccurate as these sorts of macroeconomic magnitudes tend to be. We use them anyway because they are consistently inaccurate: the same method used to calculate in one quarter is used to calculate in all. It thereby becomes useful. 

  And what it reveals is probably what we might expect. American workers have dealt with lockdowns and shutdowns, plus vaccine mandate demoralization, plus inflation eating away at real wages, plus an existing or impending recession, and you have the result. A nation of goof-offs. 

  It might be more than that. Lockdowns kicked off a national substance-abuse crisis: liquor, drugs, weed, you name it. And depression too. Even today, one cannot help but notice the smell of weed in large cities. This is not the smell of ambition and productivity. 

  We can combine this with the sheer number of people who have left the workforce completely and you paint a grim picture. 

  Economist and Brownstone Senior Fellow David Stockman has an interesting take on this. Rather than just fire people outright, companies are keeping unproductive employees on the payroll just in case. He writes:

  Today’s Q2 productivity report…came in at -4.7%, on top of the -7.7% decline posted in Q1. Together they amount to the worst back-to-back productivity declines ever reported.

  Our point is that this development puts a whole new angle on the so-called “strong” labor market. To wit, owing to the labor market turmoil and disruptions of the Covid-Lockdowns and massive stimmy injections since 2020, employers are apparently hiring on a just-in-case basis like rarely before. This is otherwise known as top-of-the-cycle labor hoarding.

  As shown below, since Q4 2021 economic output, which is a close derivative of real GDP, has shrunk by –1.2%. By contrast, the US nonfarm payroll has increased by 2.77 million jobs or nearly +2.0%.

  Needless to say, with far more labor spread over contracting output, labor productivity took it on the chin. That is to say, bad Washington policies including $6 trillion of stimmies, massive money-pumping and the brutal Lockdowns of the Virus Patrol have apparently left employers dazed and confused.

  At length, however, employers will wake-up to the fact that bloated payrolls against declining sales will result in a severe profit margin squeeze. Then the labor-shedding and layoffs will commence big time, even as the Keynesians in the Eccles Building are reduced to babbling about the “strong” labor market which suddenly vanished.

  What he is getting at is what I’ve called (after Keynes) the coming euthanasia of the overclass. It won’t be the people actually doing real stuff who will face layoffs but the Zoom workers who stayed home because government said they could and their employers could not object. Employees gradually discovered that they could be anywhere – at the pool, in bed, on the road, climbing mountains – and so long as they had a Slack app running, no one could tell. 

  Lockdowns acculturated an entire generation to believe that work is fake, productivity is a ruse, money comes for nothing, the boss is an idiot, and many workers are privileged to be wealthy forever due to papers handed out for $200,000 by colleges and universities. Who needs productivity, much less ambition? 

  In the old days, in an ethos formed from bourgeois experience over hundreds of years, the idea of working and doing one’s part was ingrained as a moral habit, part of the liturgy of life itself. When the government told everyone to stop in the name of virus control, something went haywire in people’s brains. If governments say that the work ethic amounts to nothing but pathogenic spread, and we can all contribute more by staying home and doing less, it’s hard to go back. It wrecked a generation. We are paying the price now. 

  The good news for the productive few is that this means higher wages and job opportunities galore, especially if you have actual skill and a desire to work. The bad news for everyone else is that many companies will soon discover that you are useless. That’s when the unemployment numbers will start ticking up, making this recession look more like ones in the past except for the relentless decline in real wages. 

  To answer the question about whether Americans have become lazy bums, the answer is many but not all. It’s sector specific. And individual specific. 

  Strange times. Sad times. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 21:00

• Like In Taiwan, US Is "Main Instigator" Of Ukraine Crisis, China Says
  Like In Taiwan, US Is “Main Instigator” Of Ukraine Crisis, China Says

  In the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit this month, which sparked more than a week of Chinese military ‘live fire’ drills surrounding and threatening the self-ruled island, Beijing has grown bolder in its rhetoric on the war in Ukraine.

  In Wednesday remarks China’s ambassador to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, told Russian media that it is fundamentally the United States which started the crisis in Ukraine. He named the US as the “main instigator” of the conflict in an interview with TASS. 

  “As the initiator and main instigator of the Ukrainian crisis, Washington, while imposing unprecedented comprehensive sanctions on Russia, continues to supply arms and military equipment to Ukraine,” Zhang was quoted as saying.

  

  “Their ultimate goal is to exhaust and crush Russia with a protracted war and the cudgel of sanctions,” he added.

  The provocative accusation comes months after the Biden administration first charged that Beijing was helping the Kremlin evade Western sanctions, and was even quietly supplying its military – allegations which were never backed by evidence. 

  Interestingly the Chinese ambassador drew on Taiwan parallels, where Beijing has also denounced the expansion of Washington influence and ‘illegal’ intervention via weapons shipments and high level Congressional delegations to Taipei which violate the One China principle:

  He railed against U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last week to self-governing Taiwan, which China claims as its own, and said the United States was trying to apply the same tactics in Ukraine and Taiwan to “revive a Cold War mentality, contain China and Russia, and provoke major power rivalry and confrontation”.

  “Non-intervention in internal affairs is the most fundamental principle of maintaining peace and stability in our world,” Zhang said, applying the principle to criticize Washington’s Taiwan policy but not Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  On Sino-Russian relations, Zhang stressed that the two powerful countries had entered “the best period in history, characterised by the highest level of mutual trust, the highest degree of interaction, and the greatest strategic importance”.

  Zhang’s commentary on the ongoing Ukraine war is in line with the perspective of Russian state media, which has recently emphasized that US coup planners were behind the 2014 overthrow of Russia-backed Viktor Yanukovych, and further exacerbated a proxy war for the Donbas along the border. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 20:40

• The Inflation Reduction Act Deserves Our Condemnation
  The Inflation Reduction Act Deserves Our Condemnation

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  Anyone pleased about the type of legislation Washington has come to see as normal does not understand what it means to be responsible.

  

  Huge bills containing hundreds or even thousands of pages of print where the devil in the details can be hidden from the minions are far too common. Bills joining and including several unrelated issues seldom make sense. It seems more like a wish list of things that would never get through the process on their own suddenly become more reasonable when coupled with other unimpressive ideas. Most of the large spending bills being passed in Washington deserve our condemnation.

  Mainstream Media Hails The Victory!

  While the news put out by mainstream media is busy saluting Biden and the Democrats for passing the latest “groundbreaking and historic” monstrosity they mention but fail to highlight the fact it was totally partisan. Not one Republican Senator voted for it. In short, this implies it is the type of legislation that only half the country or voters would support.

  

  Its supporters claim this bill aims to curb inflation by reducing the deficit, lowering prescription drug prices, and investing in domestic energy production while promoting clean energy solutions. Sadly, the cost for this monster is also skewed and not evenly shouldered by all. Not only is there some dispute as to who will get stuck paying for it when all is said and done, but do not be surprised if it cost more than planned and is far less effective at meeting its goals than promised. 

  Even the name of this legislation has drawn criticism for being misleading. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is not so much about reducing inflation as it is about, other things. Some people are calling it a landmark climate, health care, and tax package. In truth, it does a lot of things at great cost that many Americans don’t necessarily agree with. The Senate Democrats put out a one-page summary of the bill touting all the support it received. If it was overwhelmingly supported, why did it not get one Republican vote in the Senate?

  The Democrats Are Thrilled

  As for actual inflation reduction, the Tax Foundation estimates that the Inflation Reduction Act would reduce long-run economic output by about 0.1 percent and eliminate about 30,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the United States. It would also reduce average after-tax incomes for taxpayers over the long run. In fact, the Tax Foundation claims this bill may actually worsen inflation by constraining the productive capacity of the economy.

  

  One glaring problem is that it pushes Americans into electric cars whether they want them or not. The biggest issue with this is the whole premise that electric cars will solve the world’s environmental problems may be fundamentally flawed. A great deal could be done to improve the MPG we get on gasoline-fueled vehicles and the way we use them. Regardless of what many voters think, through subsidies, it seems those in charge are hellbent on pushing electric vehicles down consumers’ throats under the idea it is for the greater good.

  The idea Washington will utilize this law to bargain down prescription prices for all Americans is also hogwash. This legislation simply caps seniors’ out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses to $2,000 per year, and in four years will enable Medicare to negotiate the prices on 10 medications. As for all those people in America with diabetes, the final version of this bill that was passed by the Senate caps insulin prices at $35 a month for Medicare patients only.

  Those unimpressed with how Obamacare has performed will be annoyed to find this legislation also pushes back for three years the massive increase in Obamacare premiums that were set to move higher in January. This means the enhanced federal tax credits to save millions of people an average of $800 a year on health insurance premiums on the Affordable Care Act will remain in effect. This highlights the fact this does not reduce inflation it merely kicks the can down the road by masking the true cost of services by transferring wealth to subsidize their cost.

  This Is The Reality We Face

  This bill is another case of a slight majority shaping society and  transferring wealth through subsidies and edicts from high. The best thing about The Inflation Reduction Act is that its creators cannot praise it as being passed with broad bipartisan support. Again, I point to the fact not one Senate Republican voted for this 430 billion dollar bill. In some ways, its passage personifies Washington at its worse.  

  

  The icing on the cake for many taxpayers that already feel their freedom is slipping away as they wither under thousands upon thousands of archaic tax laws. The bill will also give $80 billion to the IRS to expand its audit capabilities, as well as a bevy of technology upgrades. The big issue is while Democrats hail the passage of this bill as a big win it is in all honestly, no way to run a country.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 20:20

• Kim Jong Un Was 'Seriously Ill' With COVID, Blames S.Korea For Sending Tainted Objects Across Border
  Kim Jong Un Was ‘Seriously Ill’ With COVID, Blames S.Korea For Sending Tainted Objects Across Border

  In a rare public admission, North Korea’s government has confirmed that dictator Kim Jong Un became seriously ill during a recent Covid-19 outbreak in the country, though without specifically naming the virus.

  In Thursday statements by his sister Kim Yo Jong, it was revealed he had a “high fever” but as she described it, continued to work out of greater concern for the people amid the outbreak. Bloomberg writes of the statement from KCNA: 

  Still, she added in a quivering voice that her brother “could not lie down for even a moment because of his concerns for the people,” with state TV showing audience members in tears as she delivered her remarks. She didn’t say whether the elder Kim was among what North Korea calls “fever cases” or specify the date of his illness.

  

  Kim has emerged apparently healthy after spending most of last month away from public appearances, and was recently seen at a public event declaring “victory” in the “great quarantine war.” Pyongyang says it has at this point defeated the virus, which was slow to emerge in the country likely due to its extreme isolation.

  Kim Yo Jong in her address took the opportunity to lash out further at South Korea, which Pyongyang blames for spreading the outbreak, bizarrely charging that the south’s propaganda leaflets which routinely come across the border carried the virus in.

  According to more of her statements via Bloomberg: 

  Repeating dubious claims that the pamphlets caused the recent Covid outbreak in the north, Kim Yo Jong blamed “South Korean puppets” for sending “dirty objects” across the border in leaflets carried by balloons, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Thursday.

  The revelation of her brother’s illness marked an unusual admission for a regime that rarely comments on the leader’s health — and then only to show that he shares the struggles of the people.

  In a May speech she had warned Seoul directly, saying “If the enemy continues to do such a dangerous thing that can introduce virus into our republic, we will respond by eradicating not only the virus but also the South Korean authorities.”

  BREAKING: North Korean TV airs video and audio of the leader’s sister Kim Yo Jong giving a speech for the first time. The audience is shown crying as she says Kim Jong Un had a fever during the COVID-19 outbreak and as she threatens South Korean authorities with “extermination” pic.twitter.com/BKuqv7GIiu

  — NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) August 11, 2022

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  While North Korean authorities have acknowledged hundreds of thousands of what it has called “fever cases” over the last months, it hasn’t specifically name it as Covid per se – perhaps in part as the country lacks enough testing kits, and also has consistently rejected foreign Covid vaccines. 

  Kim Jong Un, who is a smoker and has in prior years been overweight, is subject of frequent speculation about his health, given also he’s recently gone through rapid weight loss. It’s widely perceived that if anything were to happen to him that power would immediately be in the hands of his influential sister, who over the past half-decade has consistently been seen by his side.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 20:00

• DOJ Charges Iranian Over Alleged Plot To Assassinate John Bolton
  DOJ Charges Iranian Over Alleged Plot To Assassinate John Bolton

  Authored by Kenny Stancil via Common Dreams,

  The United States Department of Justice has charged an Iranian citizen who it says is a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with attempting to hire an assassin to murder John Bolton, an ex-national security adviser in the Trump administration, multiple outlets reported Wednesday.

  According to the Justice Department, Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, offered to pay unnamed individuals $300,000 in November 2021 to “eliminate” Bolton in Washington, D.C. or Maryland.

  

  Federal officials said the assassination of Bolton would have been in retaliation for the U.S. military’s January 2020 drone strike killing of Qasem Soleimani—a top commander in the IRGC, which is a branch of Iran’s military—in Iraq.

  “Poursafi is alleged to have said that after Bolton was killed, there would be another job, for which the hitman would be paid $1 million,” The Guardian reported. “The person offered the money became an FBI confidential informant, and continued to exchange texts on an encrypted communications app with Poursafi.” The 45-year-old suspect, who the DOJ believes tried to orchestrate the plot from Tehran, remains at large abroad.

  “If found and convicted, he would face up to 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000 for the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, and up to 15 years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000 for providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot,” the Washington Post reported.

  As The Guardian noted:

  Bolton was no longer national security adviser when the drone strike against Soleimani was carried out as the Iranian general was visiting Baghdad on January 3, 2020, but he is a longtime advocate of military action against Iran and a staunch opponent of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal with Tehran. Secret Service cars have been reported to have been parked across the road from Bolton’s house in the Washington area at least since early 2022.

  In the immediate wake of Soleimani’s assassination, Bolton tweeted, “Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.” Bolton, who admitted on CNN last month that he has “helped plan coups d’état” in foreign countries, served as a national security adviser to former President Donald Trump for 17 months, resigning in 2019 over reported disagreements about whether to lift some sanctions against Iran as a negotiating tactic.

  For months, Iran’s gunmen have been walking around the streets of DC stalking John Bolton.

  DOJ’s indictment says Iran wanted to assassinate another top U.S. government official.

  I can confirm the second target is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.https://t.co/7PBdgf86Wj

  — Morgan Ortagus (@MorganOrtagus) August 10, 2022

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  “Bolton, who did not want the sanctions lifted, was a main architect of the Trump administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign of escalating economic sanctions and threats of retaliation for Iran’s alleged support of terrorism,” the Post noted. “The idea was to cripple Iran’s economy to the point that its leaders felt they must bargain away any nuclear ambitions and missile technology.”

  News of the FBI’s search for Poursafi comes just two days after negotiators in Vienna said they’re close to reviving the Iran nuclear accord that the Trump administration, with no small part played by Bolton, unilaterally tanked.

  Before his stint in the Trump White House, Bolton, whom critics have called a “bloodthirsty warmonger,” was a major cheerleader for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He served in senior arms control roles and eventually became ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush. Between the Bush and Trump presidencies, Bolton spent time working at right-wing think tanks, a private equity firm, and as a Fox News contributor.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 19:40

• "Be Willing To Use Deadly Force": IRS Sparks Uproar Over Job Posting
  “Be Willing To Use Deadly Force”: IRS Sparks Uproar Over Job Posting

  Only two things in life are certain – death and taxes, and the IRS can take care of both.

  

  As the agency prepares to add 87,000 new positions over 10 years, pending the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act that will give the agency $80 billion (half of which will be earmarked to help crack down on tax evasion), an online job posting for “Criminal Investigation Special Agents” has sparked outrage over a “key requirement” that applicants be “legally allowed to carry a firearm.”

  “Major duties” of the job include “Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary,” and “Be willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.”

  The IRS is hiring new special agents!

  Requirements include working min “50 hours per week, which may include irregular hours, and be on-call 24/7, including holidays and weekends” and “Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”https://t.co/uvwbrAkIit pic.twitter.com/z0aVX6uoMr

  — Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) August 10, 2022

  While Democrats say the IRS’s enhanced collections will raise an additional $124 billion in federal revenue from tax cheats over the next decade, Republicans warn that an army of IRS agents will do nothing but harass small business owners and lower-income workers. According to an analysis by House Republicans, Americans earning less than 75,000 per year will receive 60% of the additional tax audits.

  The analysis, which is a conservative estimate based upon recent audit rates and tax filing data, shows that individuals with an annual income of $75,000 or less would be subject to 710,863 additional IRS audits, while those making more than $1 million would receive 52,295 more audits under the bill.

  Overall, the IRS would conduct more than 1.2 million more annual audits of Americans’ tax returns, according to the analysis. Another 236,685 of the estimated additional audits would target individuals with an annual income between $75,000 and $200,000.

  Democrats insist Americans making less than $400,000 will not be targeted by agents hired due to the spending bill. -NY Post

  IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, however, insists that “audit rates” won’t increase relative to recent years. 

  In a related piece of legislation reported by the Epoch Times, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced a bill last month which would bar the IRS from acquiring ammunition. Known as the “Disarm the IRS Act,” the bill (pdf) stipulates that the IRS is “prohibited from acquiring ammunition” and “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), and Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) are co-sponsors of the measure, according to his office.

  

  It came after Gaetz, in interviews with Fox News and other outlets, expressed concern after he discovered that the IRS purchased more than $700,000 in ammunition over a span of several days days. The congressman suggested that it’s part of a broader White House plan to disarm Americans.

  “Here’s the Biden plan: Disarm Americans, open the border, empty the prisons–but rest assured, they’ll still collect your taxes, and they need $725,000 worth of ammunition, apparently, to get the job done,” he told Fox News last week.

  The bill, he said, would put a “total moratorium on the IRS buying ammo. When we used to talk about the IRS being weaponized, we were talking about political discrimination, not actual weapons for the IRS.”

  “Undeniably, part of the strategy is that with one hand, the Biden regime is doing everything they can to suppress access to ammunition for regular Americans, while with the other hand, they are scooping up all the ammo that they can possibly find,” Gaetz alleged.

  5 Million Rounds

  According to a report released by the Government Accountability Office in 2018, the IRS has been stockpiling ammunition and weapons for years. As of 2018, the agency had 4,487 firearms and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition in its inventory, the report said.

  A 2018 report from Forbes noted that the IRS buys guns and ammunition for its Criminal Investigation Division. Agents in that division are the only employees in the IRS that carry firearms, according to its website.

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  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 19:20

• Michigan Town Votes To Defund Library Over Books With Graphic Sexual Content
  Michigan Town Votes To Defund Library Over Books With Graphic Sexual Content

  Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Residents of a town in western Michigan have overwhelmingly voted to not renew a property tax millage that has helped fund their public library following a battle over LGBT-themed books with explicit illustrations.

  

  More than 60 percent of Jamestown Township voters voted “no” on Aug. 2 to a 10-year millage renewal and a tax increase for the local library. Roughly 3,000 people, representing a third of the township’s population, participated in the election.

  The bulk of the library’s $245,000 annual budget comes from the now-defeated millage, which means that the Patmos Library will run out of money in early 2023, according to library board President Larry Walton. It also means that residents won’t have their property taxes raised by $24.

  Walton told Bridge Michigan that he “wasn’t expecting” the battle over graphic LGBT-themed books to end the way it did, saying it was “very disappointing” for people to be “short-sighted” in closing the library over those materials.

  “We’re all for the library. I use it,” Jamestown resident Sarah Johnson told the media outlet after voting to defund the library. “We want to make a statement that we want some say in the books.”

  According to Bridge Michigan, a parent complained earlier this year about the library’s inclusion of Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir.” The book depicts a variety of sexual acts, including the self-described nonbinary author’s sexual experiences. When asked to take “Gender Queer” out of circulation, the library board instead put it behind the counter so that children wouldn’t be able to access it.

  Jamestown residents also reportedly took issue with some other titles, including “Spinning,” a graphic novel about a teenage lesbian skater, and “Kiss Number 8,” a graphic novel with similar homosexual themes. Despite popular demand for their removal, the board insisted on keeping those books in the young adult section.

  Patmos Library officials couldn’t be reached for comment.

  Nathan Triplett, president of the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), praised Patmos for refusing to “give in to the demand” of the people whose tax dollars support the library’s operation.

  “It’s a credit to the staff and board leadership of the Patmos Library that they have steadfastly refused to give in to demand that they purge their collection of LGBTQ materials. We need more of that courage and resolve today,” Triplett wrote on Twitter, in response to a post by the national ACLU regarding what it called “censorship” in school and public libraries.

  Progressive activists have decried “censorship” when concerned parents seek transparency in what their children are being exposed to and challenge sexually explicit books in classrooms or libraries.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 19:00

• A Defense Sector Tailwind Helped By US-China Tensions Isn't Immune To Supply Chain Hangups
  A Defense Sector Tailwind Helped By US-China Tensions Isn’t Immune To Supply Chain Hangups

  “It’s all a god damn fake, man. It’s like Lenin said: you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh, you know…” – The Dude, The Big Lebowski

  When looking for those who will benefit from rising tensions between the U.S. and China, look no further than defense contractors like Lockheed, Boeing and Raytheon. They will continued to stand to benefit…that is, assuming they can get the parts they need to manufacture. 

  According to a new report from Nikkei, the firms are scrambling to try and meet demand from a slew of new orders that are arising due to the heightened tensions.

  For example, Japan purchased 150 air-to-air missiles that can be loaded on its F-35 fighters from Raytheon Technologies, the report notes. The deal totalled $293 million. 

  Singapore bought laser-guided bombs and other munitions from the U.S. for $630 million on the very same day, the report notes.

  Australia was also given the approval to buy 80 air-to-surface missiles from Lockheed Martin just days prior. That deal totaled $235 million, the report says.

  Finally, South Korea is spending $130 million on 31 lightweight torpedoes to use with its MH-60R helicopters, the report says.

  The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees foreign military sales, has had a “busy few months”, facilitating 44 deals that included an $8.4 billion potential sale of F-35’s to Germany. 

  

  And like everyone else in the world, these orders have been mired in supply chain hell. Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics have all discussed that they are having difficulty securing both parts and labor during their most recent respective earnings calls. 

  China could (purposefully or incidentally) wind up adding complexities to the supply chain drama, should they move to infringe further on Taiwan. 

  Bradley Martin, director of the RAND National Security Supply Chain Institute, told Nikkei: “When disruptions don’t occur, this practice benefits producers and consumers alike. When they do occur, whether the reason is a pandemic or a natural disaster or an international conflict, there’s wide impact, sometimes in unexpected ways.”

  “The Pacific is on higher alert because of the statements and actions of China recently, not to mention North Korea. The value of deterrence has never been greater,” he added. 

  And while Lockheed’s sales were lower than expected last quarter, the blame has been place on supply chain challenges. In fact, the firm lowered its 2022 outlook to reflect such challenges. 

  Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer, had similar concerns: “We continue to experience real constraints.”

  “To stabilize production and support our supply chain, we’re increasing our on-site presence at suppliers, creating teams of experts to address industrywide shortages, utilizing internal fabrication for search capacity and managing inventory safety stock levels,” he continued. 

  Gregory Hayes, the chairman and CEO of Raytheon, followed suit: “We’re seeing lead times double and sometimes triple.”

  Kathy Warden, CEO of Northrop, concluded, noting that the recent events could act as a tailwind for defense going forward: “We’ve seen a fundamental shift in global commitment of resources for defense and national security, particularly in Europe.”

  “The geopolitical environment has highlighted an increased requirement for defense and deterrent. In the U.S., this has also resulted in strong bipartisan support for defense spending.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 18:40

• Outgoing Whole Foods CEO: "I Feel Like Socialists Are Taking Over"
  Outgoing Whole Foods CEO: “I Feel Like Socialists Are Taking Over”

  Authored by Nick Gillespie via Reason (emphasis ours),

  “My concern is that I feel like socialists are taking over,” Whole Foods CEO John Mackey tells me on today’s show. “They’re marching through the institutions. They’re…taking over education. It looks like they’ve taken over a lot of the corporations. It looks like they’ve taken over the military. And it’s just continuing. You know, I’m a capitalist at heart, and I believe in liberty and capitalism. Those are my twin values. And I feel like, you know, with the way freedom of speech is today, the movement on gun control, a lot of the liberties that I’ve taken for granted most of my life, I think, are under threat.”

  If you’re as old as I am (I just turned 59), you will remember how dreary food shopping was before Whole Foods exploded the concept since it came on the scene in 1978. When I was a kid, you were lucky to find two or three types of potatoes in the produce aisle, one type of eggplant, maybe a green bell pepper, and a sad jalapeno or two (jalapenos were almost always sold pickled and in cans). Even in big cities, you had to roam around all over town to find oddball spices that you can now pick up in 7-11s and gas station convenience stores. 

  

  At the end of August, Mackey, born in 1953, is retiring from Whole Foods. Throughout his career, John has developed and evangelized for what he calls “conscious capitalism,” or businesses that seek to “create financial, intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, spiritual, physical, and ecological wealth for all of their stakeholders.” That may sound a bit hippy-dippy to you, but John is one of the most hardcore capitalists I’ve ever met, yet also an incredibly spiritual and thoughtful guy who wants to help all of us live better, more interesting lives.

  That comes through loud and clear in his epic 2005 debate with Nobel laureate Milton Freidman and former Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers about rethinking the social responsibility of business. “I believe that the enlightened corporation should try to create value for all of its constituencies,” wrote John. “From an investor’s perspective, the purpose of the business is to maximize profits. But that’s not the purpose for other stakeholders—for customers, employees, suppliers, and the community. Each of those groups will define the purpose of the business in terms of its own needs and desires, and each perspective is valid and legitimate.” In many profound ways, John’s vision is now widely accepted, partly because he’s speaking to a post-industrial world that is rich enough that more and more of us are starting to bump our snouts further up Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Even in the developing world, more and more of us are trying to figure out how we can flourish rather than just subsist.

  I caught up with John at FreedomFest, the annual gathering in Las Vegas, and we talked about his time at Whole Foods, how his company did an exceptional job of staying open and serving people during COVID, what he thought about the government’s response to the pandemic, and a whole lot more. We also, of course, talked about what he’s going to do once he’s retired.

  In terms of business ventures, he’s planning to open a series of wellness centers and cafes. Of greater interest to me, John said that he felt muzzled in his position as CEO of Whole Foods. For many reasons, he says he couldn’t speak his mind on various issues, especially what he sees as a dangerous drift toward more and more control of everyday life, commerce, and speech. That all changes in September, he said, and we should expect him to be even more outspoken in his celebration of capitalism, which he considers the greatest anti-poverty program ever created, and many other issues.

  * * * 

  Previous Reason interviews with John Mackey:

  “Can ‘Conscious Capitalism’ Make Business a Heroic Enterprise? John Mackey Is Betting Yes: Podcast,” August 14, 2018

  “John Mackey’s Merger Made in Heaven,” July 1, 2018

  “‘They’re More Conscious and More Awake than My Generation Was,'” March 31, 2018

  “Whole Foods’ John Mackey on Amazon Merger: ‘A Meeting of the Souls,'” March 30, 2018

  “Whole Foods’ John Mackey on Veganism, Gary Johnson, and How Regulation Is Stunting Innovation,” August 16, 2016

  “Whole Foods’ John Mackey: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism,” August 12, 2015

  “John Mackey on Whole Foods, Conscious Capitalism, and Life Beyond the Profit Motive,” March 21, 2013

  “Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on the Moral Case for Capitalism,” August 10, 2012

  “Whole Foods Health Care,” December 15, 2009

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 18:20

• Manhattan Rents Hit New Record High As Peak Season Could Lead To Cooling In Fall
  Manhattan Rents Hit New Record High As Peak Season Could Lead To Cooling In Fall

  Manhattan apartment rents jumped again in July into uncharted territory as a combination of low supply, soaring interest rates, and increasing demand suggests leasing activity will stay strong through summer. 

  Let’s revisit our housing note from mid-April, “Not A Peak” – Manhattan Apartment Rents Hit Another Record High that correctly pointed out how prices would soar this summer. 

  Bloomberg reported, citing new data from appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate, that the median rent on new leases last month was a whopping $4,150, up 2.5% from June and 29% from a year earlier.  

  

  Median rents have smashed records in the past six months, even as listing inventory increased by 3.7% from June. The vacancy rate rose above 2% for the first time in seven months to 2.08%. Even as supply returns, about 20% of all new leases signed in the borough involved bidding wars, with some renters locking in contracts 13% over the asking price in July. 

  “New York apartment costs began rising more than a year ago as the city, and Manhattan, in particular, rebounded from the depths of the pandemic. July’s prices were stoked by a pullback in homebuying and typical renting patterns that always make the summer an expensive time of year for Manhattan renters,” Bloomberg said. 

  Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, said elevated mortgage rates push more people into rental markets during the peak rental season. He expects rent prices to reach another record high this month before possibly topping in fall when seasonal demand plateaus.

  Even though both headline and core CPI inflation were softer than expected in July, Shelter costs continued to rise (+0.5% MoM). On the year, the shelter index rose 5.7%. 

  

  And there is some good news. As we recently outlined, Apartment List data shows CPI shelter data should peak sometime in September or October. 

  

  If you’re in the market for a new rental, perhaps wait until the fall when cooling should begin to get a better deal. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 18:00

• Sorry White House, Gasoline Prices Are About To Surge: Here's Why
  Sorry White House, Gasoline Prices Are About To Surge: Here’s Why

  There was celebration in the White House overnight when the AAA reported that the average retail gasoline prices fell below $4 a gallon to the lowest level since early March.

  

  It wasn’t just the Biden admin (which eagerly awaits the plunge in gas prices to translate in sharply higher approval ratings) however, which was enthused by the drop in gasoline: so was the broader market, expecting this drop in gas prices would allow the Fed to ease its tightening pace and accelerate the stock market bounce.

  Alas, the recent drop in gas prices is unlikely to last, and not just because after dropping to pre-Ukraine war levels, oil has resumed its move higher, with Brent just shy of $100 and expected to move briskly higher…

  

  …  now that fears of collapsing gasoline demand have been shelved.

  Implied gasoline demand finally spiked, jumping back over 9 million: was 9.12MM in last week, up from artificially low 8.54MM the week prior

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 10, 2022

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

  The more actionable reason why gas prices – especially in the tri-state area – are set to move much higher, is because the wholesale cost of gasoline in New York surged more than 40% against futures after regional supplies sank to the lowest level in a decade, raising the risk of shortages.

  

  Reminding market watchers just how vast the chasm between financial and physical commodities has become, gasoline stockpiles in the central East Coast region are at the lowest absolute level since November 2012, the EIA reported yesterday. Seasonally, supplies are near an all-time low in records going back to 1993…

  

  … and as a result, the premium for New York gasoline on the spot market, jumped by 10 cents Wednesday. Only San Francisco has more expensive wholesale gasoline.

  Stockpiles have slumped as a result of tighter supply amid a rebound in demand, a drop in European gasoline imports and continued cargo diversions away from the region. This offset production efforts from East Coast refiners – all of them in the Central Atlantic region – which operated at 100.4% of nameplate capacity last week, the highest on record.

  But so what? A New York shortage will hardly crippled the rest of the country? Well, not so fast: as Bloomberg notes, low gasoline supplies in region can have an outsized global impact because New York Harbor is home to physical deliveries of futures contracts that underpin trade flows around the world. A fuel tanker moving from India to Brazil, for example, is likely priced against the New York futures benchmark. So shortages in this key region that cause prices to spike would also impact prices elsewhere.

  Meanwhile, gas station fuel sales have been rising over the past few weeks, according to data from price reporting agency Opis and retail tracker Gasbuddy. The implied demand figure from the EIA has been far more volatile than usual in recent weeks (and prompted allegations of manipulation by the Biden DOE), but the latest weekly jump should help further bolster retail volumes.

  

  Commenting on the recent absurd gasoline demand reports, Rabobank’s Michael Every wrote the following:

  You could hear the champagne corks fly wherever you were yesterday. After all, there was “zero US inflation” in July, as some put it. And that came after zero US recession, as some also put it, despite two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. And after a red-hot labour market report. And EIA energy data showing gasoline usage apparently well below 2020 levels despite all this non-recession and jobs boom, and even as refineries are working at incredibly high capacity levels, diesel stocks are low, and exports are also down. These are all numbers/claims worthy of champagne. Yet they make little sense taken together.

  And speaking of diesel, supply there remains dire as well, with seasonal distillates stockpiles languishing at the lowest level ever since March in records going back to 1993. The tightness will start to be felt when the weather turns in two months. The US northeast is the only region in the country where the majority of home and commercial heating comes from burning fuel, and while it won’t be hit as hard as Europe where a monthly electricity bill will hit 4 digits, it will still be hit very hard.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 17:40

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• From Davos Without Love – True Detective Or True Conspiracy
  From Davos Without Love – True Detective Or True Conspiracy

  Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

  From the point of ignition
  To the final drive
  The point of the journey
  Is not to arrive
  Anything can happen

  — RUSH, PRIME MOVER

  Sometimes I wake up in the morning and feel like I’ve got the cheat codes to the world, that, like Neo in The Matrix, I can see the code behind the world they parade in front of us.

  

  But, I know, in my heart that this is, itself, just another illusion. It’s just another layer of false reality that forms the core of the conflict in Philip K. Dick’s seminal work that The Matrix borrows heavily from, UBIK.

  I also know that sometimes I come off as some insufferable (and vulgar) know-it-all, but that’s all just part of the quest to sift through the mal-information and get something vaguely resembling but not quite unlike The Truth(tm).

  Mark Wauck is a guy who writes about what I write about a lot. He’s on his own truth journey. It’s a laudable mission. He’s got a great Substack in general called Meaning In History that I recommend.

  He recently posted a two-part review of a recent interview I gave with YouTube channel Not the BBC, which is linked below, called “Tom Luongo’s Theory of Everything.” (Links: Part I and Part II). Seb is also a person on that same journey.

  Mark literally transcribes some of my tracing of recent history, in effect, translating my somewhat chaotic ramblings into a coherent vision of what’s in my head.

  And all I could think of was this moment from Bruce Timm’s excellent Justice League Unlimited where someone finally did my man, The Question, proper justice at DC instead of trying to turn him into something woke and broken.

  Funny story about this ‘cartoon.’ I first ran across it in the before time, when I still had DirecTV doing its predictive programming thing on my household. Mostly I had it to watch the NHL, because, at the time that was my side hustle, writing for AOL’s Fan House and blogging about my eternally frustrating Buffalo Sabres.

  I was working away from home at the time, visiting my life on the weekends. In hindsight it was brutal. And it did nearly irreparable damage to my relationship with my daughter. Thankfully, she forgave me for not being there for the first five years of her life.

  After putting my wife and daughter to bed one night I was flipping through the channels when I came across Mr. No Face spouting Ayn Rand and Aristotle at Lex Luthor and had to suppress not only a fan boy squee but the desire to rush in and wake my wife and have her corroborate what I was seeing.

  

  The Question is the primal detective, more so than Batman or even Sherlock Holmes. He is the man seeing the world for what it is but steadfastly refuses to be sucked into the moral relativism of modernity.

  His creator, Steve Ditko, was a staunch Randian Objectivist, much to his professional and, from what I’ve read, personal detriment. For anyone interested in one of the most controversial figures in comics’, and therefore 20th century pop art’s, history, I recommend highly David Currie’s excellent book, Ditko Shrugged: The Uncompromising Life of the Artist Behind Spiderman and the Rise of Marvel Comics.

  The Question was Ditko’s first attempt to embody these ideas. They got progressively more didactic and less interesting.

  Part of what makes my work what it is is the balance between believing enough in one’s ability to parse information while constantly remaining humble in the face of an overwhelming amount of it trying to distract you and lead you down dead ends and dark alleys.

  And I don’t want to sound like some hopeless egoist here, because I’m not. If I’m wrong I’m wrong.

  I’ve been a real functioning scientist testing failed hypothesis after failed hypothesis in my life. Humility doesn’t come easy, but the Universe is nothing if not consistent in its application of lessons.

  I’m as aware of the potential for my own confirmation bias as I call it out in others.

  If you don’t like it, fight me, Bro!

  I found the titles of Mark’s posts simultaneously amusing, flattering, and burdensome — not necessarily in that order. We all crave some amount of approval for what we do in this life. It’s part of the ‘uneconomic’ return on our time investment that Marxists like to tell themselves doesn’t exist in others to justify their envy-driven evil.

  But it’s not all that drives us. There is a burning need, an obsession if you will, to find a path out of the dark world we live in today. The stories are all around us. The anxiety we all feel is written in them. It’s why the cultural touchstones are so important. The zeitgeist tells us both what we are feeling and what we want.

  That’s what keeps me on target and the give and take from those I’ve inspired inspire me to stay the course, even when it would be so much easier to let up, have a drink and coast. But, there is no coasting in this journey, only recharging.

  In the end, I don’t think there is just one big conspiracy. This isn’t my Geopolitical Unified Field Theory.

  But there is a dominant one that has been in operation for a long time. When opportunities arise thanks to shifts in circumstance, that’s when you see the various players make their moves to regain some of what was previously lost. Until a group is categorically taken out, they will always be there lurking for the next opportunity to validate some long-form narrative of their supposed potency.

  As Hippolyta said so eloquently in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, “Evil does not sleep. It waits.”

  I want to thank Seb for structuring the talk in such a way as to lead me to laying everything out in a kind of coherent order for the listener to parse.

  *  *  *

  Join My Patreon if you fear sleeping

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/11/2022 – 02:00

• Democratic Party Playbook Exposed: The Cloward-Piven Strategy
  Democratic Party Playbook Exposed: The Cloward-Piven Strategy

  Via EconomicNoise.com,

  Cloward and Piven is the Playbook of the Democrat Party. It is the second part of this two-pronged approach:

  1. When you don’t have logic or reason on your side, use power.

  2. If you don’t have enough power, flood the system to acquire more.

  

  Cloward and Piven

  Flooding the system was the Cloward and Piven strategy to bring down this country. Create real or phony problems that “require” government actions that begin the process of shifting freedoms from individuals to the State. (For a more layman’s insight, see here.)

  Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, said that “no good crisis should ever go to waste.” That implied an opening for more government, a Cloward and Piven (CP) opportunity. (To visualize one asserted implementation of this, involving Acorn, see here.)

  The strategy is not a Democrat monopoly. Republicans use it also, although do not brag about it or depend upon it almost exclusively.

  The process is like rust eroding liberty, slowly and steadily. It replaces freedom with dependency and controls.

  There are two problems with the strategy:

  • It must be slow and steady (boil the frog beginning with unheated water, slowly increasing the temperature [a wonderful metaphor but physically erroneous] so that the frog doesn’t notice until it is too late).

  • It must be stealth, that is citizen “frogs” must not realize what is happening.

  The CP strategy was developed in and for a world very different from today. The Internet changed this world. Conventional media was all that needed to be controlled in the CP world. By controlling this source, government created its own “Pravda.”

  Controlling the  media was possible because it was owned by corporations. It consisted of known and immovable assets, which are easy targets for government. The message was simple: Obey or we will put you out of business! 

  Legal action against government is a “fool’s errand.” They own the courts and have unlimited funds to fight. If threatened, you will comply or they will bankrupt you! Tax issues and anti-trust cases are the bludgeoning weapons of choice. Fighting charges, regardless of how false, is akin to a minor suing his parents. That is why media, other companies and wealthy individuals generally settle government claims for enormous sums of money, but without the admission of guilt. There is no better job than that of blackmailer when you are also the sheriff or the Department of  Justice!

  Why are Things Different

  Then came the internet! While it didn’t stop extortion of corporations, it exposed the media as “captured” propagandists. Bloggers began telling different “truths.” The first reaction was to shut them down. Unfortunately for government, this group is so diverse geographically and otherwise, that traditional threats of “putting you out of business” were meaningless. Asset confiscation threats are meaningless when there are no physical assets. To be a blogger only requires electricity and the internet (and perhaps some intellectual capital to enhance success).

  The only way to shut these sources down is to control the Internet and its content. The first was impossible. The second was tried. Unfortunately for government, silencing free speech is frowned upon in free countries, especially those where Free Speech is the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

  Definitions of speech that didn’t qualify for protection were tried (“hate speech,” “lies,” “dangerous rhetoric,” “racism,” “inciting danger,” etc.) in an effort to obviate the First Amendment. Threats of imprisonment were tried, but the First Amendment was too broad and too sacred for these efforts to succeed. Government then went after the platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). It was the same corrupt strategy employed against traditional media — You impose our “bans” (censorship) or we will put you out of business!

  But, “muscling” these corporate platforms only caused new competitors to sprout. Most were smaller and not asset-heavy. Suppressed views and voices began to move to these venues where free speech was allowed.

  Censorship works, but only where government can exert leverage via harm. It was easy to cow Facebook and Twitter. Ditto for established institutions like public schools, colleges and corporations. These entities had to decide whether they wanted the hassle and threats of being “un-woke.” Most submitted, presumably determining that losing some customers would be less costly than getting into a legal or other battle with Leviathan. Some probably thought this “new inclusiveness” would gain them additional customers.

  The Wrong War

  Generals are always prepared to fight the next war in the same manner they fought the last one. They are rarely prepared to fight the next one if it requires different strategies and tactics. So it appears to be here! Government believed prior tactics and strategies would suffice.

  The prior war was against traditional media with fixed positions and assets. The Internet changed “warfare.” It created media guerrilla war! This new enemy moves quickly and has no assets to threaten or destroy. Take away a bloggers website address and he easily gets a new one.

  Government wins against corporate internet players but loses against the “guerrillas.” Vietnam and Afghanistan showed US military weaknesses in non-conventional wars. Traditional bloggers or start-up sharing sites are guerrillas. Conventional war strategies do not win guerrilla battles!

  Arguably the demented Joe Biden and his Obama staff are to thank for ultimately saving this country. Someone inside that Administration realized the “slow boil” strategy was not convincing the American public fast enough and had to be sped up. They put Cloward and Piven into overdrive! Time was likely not on their side, but escalating the war was a fatal mistake! Marty Bent summarized it nicely:

  They tried to do too much too quickly and people have started to develop pattern recognition on the go that allows them to recognize when the unproductive class is attempting to manipulate their minds.  This pattern recognition is accelerated and enhanced by our ability to communicate directly with each other in real time over the internet.

  Instant communications were not possible when Cloward and Piven designed their strategy. Nor was there a means to present an opposing view. That all changed with the Internet. Now you see why governments around the world want to control the Internet. They can’t and they must not be allowed to change that!

  For all its negatives, the Internet has at least one positive — it obsoleted traditional and controllable sources of information. The fragmentation of the internet makes it impossible to control (unless you wish to go full Communist Korea or China). This country is not ready for that step, at least not yet.

  Thank God for the private sector, technology and the Internet. Together they voided the Cloward and Piven strategy, censorship and a complete government take-over of society.

  So long as the Internet exists in its present form (warts and all), freedom cannot be extinguished. Big guns do not silence big truths! Only big censorship can do that and we must not allow that to happen!

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 23:40

• Repression, Terror, Fear: The Government Wants To Silence The Opposition
  Repression, Terror, Fear: The Government Wants To Silence The Opposition

  Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

  – President Harry S. Truman

  Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Lockdowns.

  This is not the language of freedom. This is not even the language of law and order.

  

  This is the language of force.

  This is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who speak out against government corruption, misconduct and abuse.

  These overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation and fear.

  We didn’t know it then, but what happened five years ago in Charlottesville, Va., was a foretaste of what was to come.

  At the time, Charlottesville was at the center of a growing struggle over how to reconcile the right to think and speak freely, especially about controversial ideas, with the push to sanitize the environment of anything—words and images—that might cause offense. That fear of offense prompted the Charlottesville City Council to get rid of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that had graced one of its public parks for 82 years.

  In attempting to err on the side of political correctness by placating one group while muzzling critics of the city’s actions, Charlottesville attracted the unwanted attention of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and the alt-Right, all of whom descended on the little college town with the intention of exercising their First Amendment right to be disagreeable, to assemble, and to protest.

  That’s when everything went haywire.

  When put to the test, Charlottesville did not handle things well at all.

  On August 12, 2017, government officials took what should have been a legitimate exercise in constitutional principles (free speech, assembly and protest) and turned it into a lesson in authoritarianism by manipulating warring factions and engineering events in such a way as to foment unrest, lockdown the city, and justify further power grabs.

  On the day of scheduled protests, police deliberately engineered a situation in which two opposing camps of protesters would confront each other, tensions would bubble over, and things would turn just violent enough to justify allowing the government to shut everything down.

  Despite the fact that 1,000 first responders (including 300 state police troopers and members of the National Guard)—many of whom had been preparing for the downtown rally for months—had been called on to work the event, and police in riot gear surrounded Emancipation Park on three sides, police failed to do their jobs.

  In fact, as the Washington Post reports, police “seemed to watch as groups beat each other with sticks and bludgeoned one another with shields… At one point, police appeared to retreat and then watch the beatings before eventually moving in to end the free-for-all, make arrests and tend to the injured.”

  “Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville,” reported ProPublica.

  Incredibly, when the first signs of open violence broke out, the police chief allegedly instructed his staff to “let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.”

  In this way, police who were supposed to uphold the law and prevent violence failed to do either.

  Indeed, a 220-page post-mortem of the protests and the Charlottesville government’s response by former U.S. attorney Timothy J. Heaphy concluded that “the City of Charlottesville protected neither free expression nor public safety.”

  In other words, the government failed to uphold its constitutional mandates.

  The police failed to carry out their duties as peace officers.

  And the citizens found themselves unable to trust either the police or the government to do its job in respecting their rights and ensuring their safety.

  This is not much different from what is happening on the present-day national scene.

  Indeed, there’s a pattern emerging if you pay close enough attention.

  Civil discontent leads to civil unrest, which leads to protests and counterprotests. Tensions rise, violence escalates, police stand down, and federal armies move in. Meanwhile, despite the protests and the outrage, the government’s abuses continue unabated.

  It’s all part of an elaborate setup by the architects of the police state. The government wants a reason to crack down and lock down and bring in its biggest guns.

  They want us divided. They want us to turn on one another.

  They want us powerless in the face of their artillery and armed forces.

  They want us silent, servile and compliant.

  They certainly do not want us to remember that we have rights, let alone attempting to exercise those rights peaceably and lawfully, whether it’s protesting politically correct efforts to whitewash the past, challenging COVID-19 mandates, questioning election outcomes, or listening to alternate viewpoints—even conspiratorial ones—in order to form our own opinions about the true nature of government.  

  And they definitely do not want us to engage in First Amendment activities that challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

  Why else do you think Wikileaks founder Julian Assange continues to molder in jail for daring to blow the whistle about the U.S. government’s war crimes, while government officials who rape, plunder and kill walk away with little more than a slap on the wrist?

  This is how it begins.

  We are moving fast down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts.

  In the wake of the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, “domestic terrorism” has become the new poster child for expanding the government’s powers at the expense of civil liberties.

  Of course, “domestic terrorist” is just the latest bull’s eye phrase, to be used interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist,” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.”

  This unilateral power to muzzle free speech represents a far greater danger than any so-called right- or left-wing extremist might pose. The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

  Watch and see: we are all about to become enemies of the state.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

  So what’s the answer?

  For starters, we need to remember that we’ve all got rights, and we need to exercise them.

  Most of all, we need to protect the rights of the people to speak truth to power, whatever that truth might be. Either “we the people” believe in free speech or we don’t.

  Fifty years ago, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas asked:

  “Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet… [A]t the constitutional level, speech need not be a sedative; it can be disruptive… [A] function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”

  In other words, the Constitution does not require Americans to be servile or even civil to government officials. Neither does the Constitution require obedience (although it does insist on nonviolence).

  Somehow, the government keeps overlooking this important element in the equation.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 23:00

• Top NYC Health Official Claims 'Retaliation' After Monkeypox Messaging Dispute
  Top NYC Health Official Claims ‘Retaliation’ After Monkeypox Messaging Dispute

  A veteran top infectious diseases expert at the New York City Health Department says he was reassigned in “retaliation” for butting heads with higher-ups regarding the city’s monkeypox messaging.

  Dr. Don Weiss, director of surveillance, was transferred to another unit after he publicly criticized the department’s advice that gay men should simply ‘avoid kissing’ and ‘cover up their sores’ – as opposed to Weiss’ advice that gay men abstain from or reduce sex for a period of time, the NY Post reports.

  

  “Monkeypox in NYC is a sexually transmitted infection. Not communicating this clearly and often is a public health failure,” Weiss said in a July 18 letter to Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan, which he posted on his website.

  “DOHMH continues to emphasize skin-to-skin contact as the major risk and have now dangerously suggested that sex is not a risk, as long as you don’t kiss and cover your sores. This is completely contrary to the evidence,” he continued.

  According to Weiss, leadership within the health department “is more concerned with stigma avoidance” than “giving people the risk information they need to protect themselves and others. People are suffering.”

  Four days after his post, Weiss received a letter from assistant commissioner Sean McFarlane, notifying him that he’d been reassigned to the division of family and child health, effective Monday. His new title? ““infant and reproductive health medical specialist.”

  His salary remains unchanged.

  Weiss also posted an audio recording of a conversation he had with a health department official who would not tell him who ordered his reassignment.

  Noting that the reassignment came just days after publicly taking issue with department brass over monkeypox guidance, Weiss said, “You are aware under the whistleblower statute that you cannot do any retribution to me for my coming forward with information that I thought was necessary for the public to know?”

  “This could be seen as retribution, especially the timing of it.” -NY Post

  On Thursday, NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett declared monkeypox and imminent public health threat.

  “Based on the ongoing spread of this virus, which has increased rapidly and affected primarily communities that identify as men who have sex with men, and the need for local jurisdictions to administer vaccines, I’ve declared monkeypox an Imminent Threat to Public Health throughout New York State,” she said. “This declaration means that local health departments engaged in response and prevention activities will be able to access additional State reimbursement, after other Federal and State funding sources are maximized, to protect all New Yorkers and ultimately limit the spread of monkeypox in our communities.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 22:40

• Florida Board Of Medicine Moves To Ban Transgender Treatments For Minors
  Florida Board Of Medicine Moves To Ban Transgender Treatments For Minors

  Authored by Jannis Falkenstern via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Florida Board of Medicine voted on Aug. 5 to advance a plan that would ban doctors from providing gender-affirming treatments such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers to youth under the age of 18.

  

  Florida Department of Health Secretary, Dr. Joseph Ladapo acknowledged at the public hearing in Broward County, that there were “strong feelings about the issue,” but argued that current standards of care are a “substantial departure” from the “level of evidence and data surrounding the issue.”

  “It is very clear that the effectiveness is completely uncertain,” Ladapo said. “I mean, maybe it is effective, but the scientific studies that have been published today do not support that.”

  Ladapo agreed that findings could change in future, but said that it was unlikely, “considering what I’ve reviewed.”

  Ladapo said minors experiencing gender dysphoria should instead receive counseling to address their concerns. He sent a letter to the board expressing his opinion before the hearing.

  A pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Quentin Van Meter served as an expert for the state and warned the board that a growing number of children are seeking these treatments of gender reassignment.

  “This is a giant experiment on United States children,” Van Meter warned the board.

  Speaking to the board, Van Meter said that Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom have “halted treatment” for transgender youths.

  “They found that there was far more harm than any benefit in allowing these children to receive any kind of medical intervention,” Van Meter said. “There are approximately 127,000 children throughout the U.S. that are receiving gender-affirming treatment.”

  Michael Haller, a professor and chief of pediatric endocrinology at the University of Florida, disagreed with Van Meter’s assessment and said that fewer children are receiving gender-affirming treatments than the public has “been led to believe” and the “numbers are not growing.”

  The Florida Department of Health filed a petition in July that asked for the medical board to initiate a rule-making process on gender reassignment therapies. In addition, the Board of Medicine propelled the state Agency for Health Care Administration to prevent the Medicaid program from covering the treatments for gender dysphoria for adolescents and adults.

  Gender dysphoria, as defined by the federal government, is a “significant distress that a person may feel when sex or gender assigned at birth is not the same as their identity.”

  David Diamond, the board chairman, said other countries have changed their approach to the treatment of gender dysphoria.

  “Do you have any sense what the scientific underpinning may be? Why they have modified their opinions, or is it your contention it was not a scientific decision but rather based upon other factors?” Diamond asked Haller.

  “I think it’s impossible to fully separate the political decision-making from the science, ” Haller replied.

  Haller’s colleague Kristin Dayton, also a pediatric endocrinologist who specializes in gender dysphoria, called the board’s plan “redundant” because standards of care already exist.

  Haller then injected that he didn’t “trust” the state to advance its own plan.

  “If the redundancy were such that it was in line with the general practices and data, then I think it would be adequate; but it’s clear that is not the intent of the state,” Haller said. “They have provided you with a recommendation for a rule that is contrary to what almost all reasonable providers of gender-affirming care and gender care, in general, would say is the standard of care.”

  If the guidelines are finalized, Florida would be the only state where a medical board has barred transgender treatment for adolescents, according to Meredithe McNamara, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine.

  McNamara said in a Tweet that she has “never heard of” a state medical board prohibiting such care.

  “Standards of health care don’t come from states, don’t come from government,” she posted. “They come from clinical research that gets reviewed and vetted and discussed in relevant groups of experts and published and spread widely and adopted by people everywhere.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 22:20

• Northern Mexico Runs Out Of Water, May Impact Beer Production
  Northern Mexico Runs Out Of Water, May Impact Beer Production

  Extreme drought in northern Mexico has sparked a water crisis. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador addressed the beer industry in the region to shift production elsewhere because of sustainability factors, reported Bloomberg. 

  The water crisis is particularly critical in Monterrey, one of Mexico’s most important economic hubs and home to some of the largest beermakers in the world, such as Heineken NV. 

  Some neighborhoods in Monterrey have been without water for nearly three months, and Heineken’s facility has suffered as waterways dry up. Residents have protested commercial districts due to their oversized demand for local water. 

  Monterrey Mexico is having a water crisis. Protestors blocked traffic. Looks like America will need more warehouses. International supply chains are not predictable. pic.twitter.com/olKErrFRpP

  — Daniel Spenrath (@Daniel_Spenrath) June 24, 2022

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

  Lopez Obrador said the government would support a transition of the beer industry from the northern part of the country to the south or southeast, where water supplies are more abundant.

  “This is not to say we won’t produce any more beer, it’s to say that we won’t produce beer in the north — that’s over,” the president said Monday at a daily press conference. “If they want to keep producing beer, increasing production, then all the support for the south or southeast.”

  Lopez Obrador said Constellation Brands is the perfect example of how his administration directed the brewer to halt the construction of a beer plant in the border city of Mexicali because of water shortages. He said the company had planned a new brewery in the southeastern state of Veracruz, though local news outlet El Financiero said construction permits are still pending. 

  Constellation is a top brewer in Mexico and has a portfolio that includes Corona Extra, Corona Light, Modelo Especial, Modelo Negra, and Pacifico, among others. 

  

  The water crisis in Monterrey is so severe that Heineken offered 20% of its water rights to the drought-stricken town and even offered to donate a well to support the municipality. Lopez Obrador called on beermaking companies to assist cities with water shortages. 

  There have yet to be significant reports of beer production disruptions. It’s essential to note Mexico is responsible for 76% of all the beer imported by the US last year, according to Commerce Department figures cited by the Beer Institute. If production upsets emerge, American beer drinkers could be in for a surprise of soaring prices, tight supplies, and an even worst-case scenario: A beer shortage. 

  “You can’t give permits in places where there’s no water,” said the president. “So, we’re going to intervene and that’s what the state is for.”

  Besides Heineken and Constellation, Grupo Modelo, owned by Ab InBev, is another larger brewer in the northern part of the country. 

  While Lopez Obrador has only encouraged beermakers to shift production south, what could come next are water restrictions that would limit production and could create a beer shortage in the US. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 22:00

• Senators Introduce Bill To Stop CCP From Buying US Farmland
  Senators Introduce Bill To Stop CCP From Buying US Farmland

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

  Two Senate Republicans have introduced a proposal to stop the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from purchasing farmland in the United States, arguing that the communist regime’s acquisitions on American soil pose a threat to national security.

  

  In introducing the bill dubbed the Securing America’s Land From Foreign Interference Act, Sens. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) cited a 2020 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) saying that foreign individuals and entities held an interest in nearly 37.6 million acres of U.S. agricultural land.

  While some 14 states have restrictions against foreign ownership of land, there are no federal restraints regarding private U.S. agricultural land that can be foreign-owned, they said.

  “Chinese investments in American farmland put our food security at risk and provide opportunities for Chinese espionage against our military bases and critical infrastructure. Instead of allowing these purchases, the U.S. government must bar the Communist Party from purchasing our land,” Cotton said in a statement last week.

  Allowing the CCP to purchase U.S. farmland, Tuberville said, is tantamount to “giving our top adversary a foot in the door to purchase land in the United States and undermine our national security.”

  “I hope my colleagues will recognize the importance of our bill and join the effort to prohibit Chinese Communist Party involvement in America’s agriculture industry,” he said.

  The senators noted that because U.S. farmers are rapidly aging, with about a third being over the age of 65, millions of acres of American farmland may be up for sale in the near future.

  Earlier this year, a CCP-linked agribusiness raised national security concerns with its purchase of farmland in North Dakota that’s close to a U.S. military base.

  “This property is approximately 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, which has led to concern that Fufeng operations could provide cover for PRC [the People’s Republic of China] surveillance or interference with the missions located at that installation, given Fufeng Group’s reported ties to the Chinese Communist Party,” several senators wrote in a July 14 letter addressed to several Biden administration officials.

  Data

  “Chinese investors’ holdings of U.S. agricultural land surged from 13,720 acres in 2010 to 352,140 acres in 2020,” Cotton’s statement added.

  Meanwhile, in the House, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) introduced legislation in late June that would bar the purchase of agricultural land—including ranches—by officials affiliated with the CCP.

  “If we begin to cede the responsibility for our food supply chain to an adversarial foreign nation, we could be forced into exporting food that is grown within our own borders and meant for our own use,” Newhouse wrote in a statement at the time.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 21:40

• Florida Man With Concealed Firearm Kills Gunman Who Threatened To "Shoot Up The Crowd"
  Florida Man With Concealed Firearm Kills Gunman Who Threatened To “Shoot Up The Crowd”

  Instead of waiting for the police, a law-abiding citizen with a concealed carry license (also known as a ‘good guy with a gun’) took matters into his own hands and acted quickly, drawing his weapon and killing a gunman who was about to “shoot up the crowd” at a party in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday night.

  Local news CBS12 said a fight broke out between 20 people at a family gathering on Division Avenue and 4th Street in West Palm Beach. At that moment, a 22-year-old male retrieved a short-barreled shotgun from his car and threatened to “shoot up the crowd.”

  West Palm Beach Police said the man refused to drop the weapon after yelling out mass shooting threats, and that was when a 32-year-old man with a concealed weapon license fired his pistol, hitting the armed suspect. 

  The law-abiding citizen immediately called 911 late Sunday night after he shot the crazed gunman. Detectives said the 22-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene.

  Instances such as this where a good guy with a gun neutralizes an armed person threatening to kill others tend to be ignored by liberal mainstream media because it goes against the left’s narrative of more gun control. 

  In the last several months, we have documented multiple acts of bravery from law-abiding citizens with concealed carry licenses who acted swiftly to neutralize threats: 

  • “Law-Abiding West Virginian Woman With Concealed Firearm Stops A Mass Shooting” 
  • “Mass Shooter At Indiana Mall Killed By Armed “Good Samaritan” Civilian”

  It’s clear the left-wing media cherrypicks gun-related stories by focusing solely on mass shootings neglecting reports that show how law-abiding citizens with guns have saved lives. 

  Watch the local media report via CBS12.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 21:20

• The Smartphone's Role In Dumbing-Down America
  The Smartphone’s Role In Dumbing-Down America

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  The smartphone has begun to play a huge role In dumbing down America. Rather than being a source to move us forward, it has become an albatross around the necks of many weak-minded souls that depend on them. People turn to these devices for all kinds of unneeded updates including performing simple math problems so they don’t have to think. 

  

  Originated in 1933, the term “dumbing down” was movie-business slang, used by screenplay writers, meaning: “to revise to appeal to those of little education or intelligence.” For those with little drive or purpose, the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy find great comfort in the constant flow of dribble a cell phone can provide. In short, dumbing down is the deliberate oversimplification of intellectual content in education, literature, cinema, news, video games, and culture.

  It should be noted this is being written just as the world is on the cusp of being offered a whole new recipe that may lead to more social dysfunction. That comes in the form of “virtual reality” which offers an even stronger form of escapism that may result in damaging the ability of people to relate to each other in the real world. Especially worrisome is the effect it might have on children that experience and embrace it. Their ability to separate this fake virtual world from reality could become impaired.

  A great deal of the problems with smartphones are rooted in the idea everyone deserves one. Yes, I said deserves, not needs. Smartphones are now considered by many people as an extension of their being. A government program started years ago has mushroomed in size and transfers a huge amount of wealth down the social ladder. Years ago I wrote an article that outlined a government program supplying free phones to people with low incomes or that have been declared needy. At that time these phones have become known as “Obama Phones.” Below I give some of the details about the program including who qualifies. If you want to be popular with the voters give them free stuff and let them know that they should not bite the hand that feeds them.

  

  The term “Obama phone” is not a myth as an online search rapidly confirms. This popular government program explains why we see so many people that would appear to not have a dime in their pockets walking along or driving down the street talking on a cell phone. What exactly is the free Obama phone? It is a program that is meant to help the financially unstable who cannot afford access to a cell phone. It seems that communication should not be limited to people based on what they can afford. The Lifeline program started decades ago to help low-income families have access to landlines has been expanded. Over the years the cost of cell phones and cellular service has decreased and the program has been extended to cover cell phones.

  So who qualifies? It appears little has changed over the years, it seems that if you or members of your household are, receiving the following benefits you automatically qualify for the Lifeline program. The best way to know if you qualify is by filling out an application for a Lifeline provider in your state. Those interested in the program must have an income of less than 135% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines or about $22,350 per year for a family of four.

  • Food Stamps or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

  • Medicaid

  • Supplemental Security Income – commonly known as SSI

  • Health Benefit Coverage under Child Health Insurance Plan (CHIP)

  • The National School Lunch Program’s Free Lunch Program.

  • Low-Income Energy Assistance Program – LIHEAP

  • Federal Public Housing Assistance ( Section 8 )

  • If you are a low-income Eligible Resident of Tribal Lands

  • Temporary Assistance to Needy Families – TANF

  Lifeline is a government-sponsored program, but who is paying for it? Some people claim that the government is using taxpayers’ money to run this program, however, the claim is false. The clever clowns we have sent to Washington found a backhanded under-the-table sort of way to make it appear it is not taxpayer money. Universal Service Fund (USF) which is administered by the Federal Communication Commission along with the Universal Service Administration Company (USAC), pays for the Lifeline phone assistance program. The Universal Service Fund (USF) was created back in 1997 by Federal Communication Commission to achieve the goals set by Congress under the Telecommunication Act of 1996. According to the Act, service providers are obliged to contribute a portion of their interstate and international telecommunications revenues. In short, paying phone customers are paying for it.

  It is written that if you are one of those people who have lost their jobs due to the recession, then probably you’re having a hard time with your daily expenses. On top of that, paying telephone bills is just another pressure. You can get rid of this burden by applying to the “Lifeline Assistance Program” run by the government. To get a phone contact the provider of this service. The government has approved many companies at the national and regional levels to provide this service to eligible people.
   Just how much might one of these free government cell phones change your life?

  • An employer can more easily reach you with a job offer if you have a free government cell phone.
  • You can stay in touch with your doctor and other emergency medical professionals more easily with a free government cell phone.
  • A free government cell phone can help you keep in touch with family and other loved ones.

  And the good news is that while a government-assisted cell phone provides you with up to 250 monthly minutes to go with your free cell phone. While that’s a generous contribution from the government, it’s barely enough airtime to last many people a month. But good news is they can easily buy more minutes for the phone from each of the major Lifeline cell phone companies. You can see this is what has happened when it has gotten to the point where people carry their phone in their hand as they go about their business. Apparently, if you use a promotion code, you can get some very good deals.

  

  Smartphone Have Become A Major Distraction

  A great deal of attention has been given to some of the ideas and visions the World Economic Forum has floated. A powerful and very visible glimpse was contained in the public relations video entitled: “8 Predictions for the World in 2030. Its 2030 agenda promotes the idea that  by 2030, “You will own nothing. And you’ll be happy.” Smartphones dovetail with edging the general population towards such an existence. With the government transferring the costs for millions of customers to those that pay full price, another face of corporate welfare is exposed.

  

  Over The Years This Addiction Has Only Grown Stronger

  Interestingly while many people admit they are addicted to these phones that seem to offer a form of escapism from the real world, some users are moving back to dumbphones. A video by ColdFusion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02mIRnPJm6g), an Australian-based online media company, looks into this “Anti-Smartphone Revolution.” It points out how the dumbphone or what is sometimes called a brick is far less intrusive in our lives. Surprisingly, it is those users between the age of 25-35 that are leading this charge.

  

  Are Smartphones Making Children Slaves To Big Tech?

  We should never underestimate the role of the smartphone in dumbing down America. We can only hope people will begin to take a closer look at these society-changing devices. When a phone will provide the answer to simple math problems many people no longer feel compelled to learn or memorize the things which give us perspective and help us to understand the world around us. It has become apparent, that smartphones change more than society. They change people, too. Being able to push a few buttons does not necessarily make you smarter.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 21:00

• Dozens Of Whole Foods Stores Allow Customers To Pay With Palm Print Biometric Data
  Dozens Of Whole Foods Stores Allow Customers To Pay With Palm Print Biometric Data

  Amazon’s palm-reading payment technology will expand to dozens of Whole Foods locations across California. Shoppers will be able to pay for groceries by scanning the palm of their hand at checkout devices instead of using cash or card, as this is more evidence of the emergence of a cashless society. 

  The Verge reported that 65 Whole Foods stores in California would soon get the new payment technology. This is the most extensive rollout by the e-commerce giant since announcing the payment system in 2020. 

  

  “Customers can set up Amazon One by registering their palm print using a kiosk or at a point-of-sale station at participating stores. To register, you need to provide a payment card and phone number, agree to Amazon’s terms of service, and share an image of your palms. Once completed, you can take items to checkout and not have to take out your wallet — or even your phone. A hover of your hand over the device is all that’s needed to pay and leave,” The Verge said. 

  Amazon One has been pilot tested at Whole Foods stores in Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, and New York. Amazon said customers had found the new payment system more convenient to checkout, though privacy concerns emerged last year by a group of lawmakers who raised questions about the megacorporation collecting biometric data of its customers.

  A group of senators in 2021 sent Amazon CEO Andy Jassy a letter for more details about how it scans palm prints. 

  Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) asked Jassy if Amazon plans to expand its biometric payment system and if the data collected will allow the company to increase the effectiveness of targeted ads.  

  “Amazon’s expansion of biometric data collection through Amazon One raises serious questions about Amazon’s plans for this data and its respect for user privacy, including about how Amazon may use the data for advertising and tracking purposes,” the senators wrote in the letter.

   Amazon One appears to be ushering in a cashless society where a customer’s body is becoming a transactional tool. 

  Amazon has successfully provided customers with a convenient lifestyle through high-tech devices (think of Alexa smart speakers and Ring smart cameras), but the only tradeoff is the company harvests user data for advertisement purposes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 20:40

• Judge Orders DOJ To Respond To Requests To Unseal FBI’s Trump Warrant
  Judge Orders DOJ To Respond To Requests To Unseal FBI’s Trump Warrant

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

  

  The Justice Department has to respond to motions to unseal a warrant that triggered the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, according to a magistrate judge who reportedly approved the search.

  Judicial Watch and the Albany Times Union newspaper filed a motion to unseal the document earlier this week, which was granted by a judge in the case.

  “On or before 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on August 15, 2022, the Government shall file a Response to the Motion to Unseal,” wrote Judge Bruce Reinhart on Wednesday afternoon, referring to the Department of Justice.

  “The response may be filed ex parte and under seal as necessary to avoid disclosing matters already under seal. In that event, the Government shall file a redacted Response in the public record. If it chooses, the Government may file a consolidated Response to all Motions to Seal,” he wrote.

  Neither the FBI nor Justice Department has issued public comments about the raid, which was first confirmed by Trump on Monday evening.

  The FBI declined to comment when contacted by The Epoch Times, and the Justice Department has not responded to several requests for comment.

  As for the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden was not aware of the raid before Trump’s announcement. Her claim was refuted by Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social.

  “What I can tell you definitively and for sure, he was not aware of this,” Jean-Pierre said of Biden. “Nobody at the White House was. Nobody was given a heads up and we did not know about what happened yesterday.”

  Requests

  On Wednesday, the Times Union’s managing editor, Brendan J. Lyons, wrote to Reinhart to ask for the warrant to be unsealed.

  “Given that the search warrant(s) have been executed, and the target of that search has full knowledge of what occurred, there is no impediment to any ongoing investigation from the disclosure of the search warrant order or the returns. As such, these records should be unsealed,” the letter to the Florida judge reads.

  

  Judicial Watch asked for the warrant as part of an investigation into “the potential politicization of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice and whether the FBI and the Justice Department are abusing their law enforcement powers to harass a likely future political opponent of President [Joe] Biden.”

  “If the Court were to unseal the materials, Judicial Watch would obtain the materials, analyze them, and make them available to the public,” the letter said. “Unsealing the records therefore would further Judicial Watch’s mission of educating the public.”

  It comes as Eric Trump, a son of the former president, told the Daily Mail that a Trump attorney at Mar-a-Lago, Christina Bobb, asked FBI agents Monday about seeing a warrant.

  “They would not give her the search warrant,” he told the outlet, referring to Bobb. “So they showed it to her from about 10 feet away. They would not give her a copy of the search warrant.”

  Top Republicans, meanwhile, demanded an investigation into the raid and argued that it was politically motivated to wound the GOP ahead of the 2022 midterms. Some have said the Justice Department immediately needs to release documents pertaining to the raid.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 20:20

• Visualizing All The Latest Major Layoffs At US Corporations
  Visualizing All The Latest Major Layoffs At US Corporations

  Hiring freezes and layoffs are becoming more common in 2022, as U.S. businesses look to slash costs ahead of a possible recession.

  Understandably, this has a lot of people worried. In June 2022, Insight Global found that 78% of American workers fear they will lose their job in the next recession. Additionally, 56% said they aren’t financially prepared, and 54% said they would take a pay cut to avoid being laid off.

  In this infographic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualizes major layoffs announced in 2022 by publicly-traded U.S. corporations.

  

  Note: Due to gaps in reporting, as well as the very large number of U.S. corporations, this list may not be comprehensive.

  An Emerging Trend

  Layoffs have surged considerably since April of this year. See the table below for high-profile instances of mass layoffs.

  

   

  Here’s a brief rundown of these layoffs, sorted by industry.

   

  Automotive

  Ford has announced the biggest round of layoffs this year, totalling roughly 8,000 salaried employees. Many of these jobs are in Ford’s legacy combustion engine business. According to CEO Jim Farley, these cuts are necessary to fund the company’s transition to EVs.

  We absolutely have too many people in some places, no doubt about it.

  – JIM FARLEY, CEO, FORD

  Speaking of EVs, Rivian laid off 840 employees in July, amounting to 6% of its total workforce. The EV startup pointed to inflation, rising interest rates, and increasing commodity prices as factors. The firm’s more established competitor, Tesla, cut 200 jobs from its autopilot division in the month prior.

  Last but not least is online used car retailer, Carvana, which cut 2,500 jobs in May. The company experienced rapid growth during the pandemic, but has since fallen out of grace. Year-to-date, the company’s shares are down more than 80%.

  Financial Services

  Fearing an impending recession, Coinbase has shed 1,100 employees, or 18% of its total workforce. Interestingly, Coinbase does not have a physical headquarters, meaning the entire company operates remotely.

  A recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period. In past crypto winters, trading revenue declined significantly.

  – BRIAN ARMSTRONG, CEO, COINBASE

  Around the same time, JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced it would fire hundreds of home-lending employees. While an exact number isn’t available, we’ve estimated this to be around 500 jobs, based on the original Bloomberg article. Wells Fargo, another major U.S. bank, has also cut 197 jobs from its home mortgage division.

  The primary reason for these cuts is rising mortgage rates, which are negatively impacting the demand for homes.

  Technology

  Within tech, Meta and Twitter are two of the most high profile companies to begin making layoffs. In Meta’s case, 350 custodial staff have been let go due to reduced usage of the company’s offices.

  Many more cuts are expected, however, as Facebook recently reported its first revenue decline in 10 years. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear he expects the company to do more with fewer resources, and managers have been encouraged to report “low performers” for “failing the company”.

  Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.

  – MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO, META

  Also in July, Twitter laid off 30% of its talent acquisition team. An exact number was not available, but the team was estimated to have less than 100 employees. The company has also enacted a hiring freeze as it stumbles through a botched acquisition by Elon Musk.

  More Layoffs to Come…

  Layoffs are expected to continue throughout the rest of this year, as metrics like consumer sentiment enter a decline. Rising interest rates, which make it more expensive for businesses to borrow money, are also having a negative impact on growth.

  In fact just a few days ago, trading platform Robinhood announced it was letting go 23% of its staff. After accounting for its previous layoffs in April (9% of the workforce), it’s fair to estimate that this latest round will impact nearly 800 people.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 20:00

• "Completely Unprecedented" Martin Armstrong Warns Trump Raid Is "Deathblow To Democracy"
  “Completely Unprecedented” Martin Armstrong Warns Trump Raid Is “Deathblow To Democracy”

  Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

  Last month, legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong said the time to prepare is now for the chaos that is coming in 2023. 

  

  The destabilization of America has been kicked into high gear early with the FBI raid on President Trump’s Florida home this week.  Armstrong explains,

  “This really is unprecedented…

  In the United States, we are supposed to have civilized transfer of power.  That’s all coming to an end.  I am not being dramatic here.  From a legal perspective, this is completely unprecedented.  The danger of this is once they have done this, if the Republicans are ever allowed to get back into power, they would only end up doing the same thing to the Democrats…

  It’s striking a real deathblow to the very idea of a democracy.  We are not, at least we were not until today, someplace like Guatemala where you throw the opposition in jail, kill them or whatever you do.  This is what’s going on.  They are so afraid of Trump running in 2024 that this is just over the top.  Once they did this, there is no end.”

  Armstrong says the Democrats are in “dire straits” at the polls–and they know it.  Armstrong thinks the Trump raid by the FBI is an act of desperation, and it will “backfire,” but that’s not the only play in the Democrat playbook for the midterms in November.  Armstrong says,

  “I have been warned that the Democrats have been maneuvering, and the reason they are allowing all the illegal aliens to come in is they intend to allow them to vote.  You already had the Justice Department go after one state that said you had to prove you are an American to vote, and they filed a suit against them saying that they violated their civil rights.  At that stage of the game, hey, all of Europe, Australia, everybody should just send in a vote.”

  Armstrong’s says forget what the mainstream polls are saying about voter support for Democrats and Joe Biden because the real numbers are much lower than the public is told.  Armstrong’s “Socrates” computer program shows Joe Biden has just 12% of support in America.  Maybe this is why Democrats are desperate and realize they have to cheat and break the law to stay in power.  It’s not going to get any better, and the entire world is in the same sinking boat.  Armstrong says,

  “We basically are sitting here in the middle of the collapse of Western civilization.  It’s socialism that is collapsing because these people have done nothing but borrow money to bribe them to vote for them…

  There is no way to pay it back, and they had no intention of paying it back…

  Europe is, just forget it.  You have emerging markets collapsing around the world because to sell their debt, they had to put it into dollars.  Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Pakistan, Argentina are falling apart on a global scale.”

  Armstrong thinks the dollar will be strong for now and not to expect a collapse in the USA anytime soon because America will be the last man standing. 

  That said, Armstrong does see the possibility of a “stock market collapse in September.” 

  Armstrong is also “worried about civil war or extreme civil unrest in 2023 in America.” 

  Armstrong is seeing a “world war coming in 2024 or after.”

  Armstrong also said, “My computer warns that there may not even be an election in America in 2024.  It’s reaching that critical period.  So, this raid on Trump is like throwing down the gauntlet.  Everything is gone.”

  There is much more in the nearly 53-minute interview.

  Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong, cycle expert and author of the upcoming new book “The Plot to Seize Russia, Manufacturing World War III” for 8.9.22.

   

  To Donate to USAWatchdog.com, Click Here

  There is some free information, analysis and articles on ArmstrongEconomics.com.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 19:40

• Ring Cameras Amassing Info On Users…And Their Neighbors
  Ring Cameras Amassing Info On Users…And Their Neighbors

  About 18% of Americans now own a video doorbell. That means a significant and growing slice of American neighborhoods are under a form of intermittent surveillance. If the surveillance video and associated data were the exclusive property of individual homeowners, it might not be of much concern. 

  However, that’s not the case. For example, Ring, the company behind the top-selling brand, maintains a vast database on its users and their cameras. Ring is an Amazon subsidiary, thanks to the tech giant’s 2018 purchase of the company for over $1 billion.

  Ring says it doesn’t sell its customers data, but sometimes it gives it away for free — to the police. In the first half of 2022 alone, Ring fielded more than 3,500 requests from law enforcement agencies. 

  Ring keeps plenty of info that you’d expect them to have. According to Wired magazine:

  Ring gets your name, phone number, email and postal address, and any other information you provide to it—such as payment information or your social media handles if you link your Ring account to Facebook, for instance. The company also gets information about your Wi-Fi network and its signal strength, and it knows you named your camera “Secret CIA Watchpoint,” as well as all the other technical changes you make to your cameras or doorbells.

  But that’s not all. In 2020, the BBC reported that Ring keeps data on every motion detected by its cameras, including the exact time “down to the millisecond.” The event database also tracks doorbell rings — and how many rings — as well as on-demand actions by the Ring doorbell’s owner, such as requesting live video or speaking through the speaker. 

  

  BBC also found Ring’s database tracked interactions with the company’s apps — every time it’s opened, various types of screen-taps, and instances where the owner zoomed in on video footage. Over time, scrutiny of all this data can provide insights into whether you’re home or not.

  If you subscribe to the Ring Protect Plan — which archives 6 months of video and audio — Ring may even keep the video you’ve personally deleted, according to a Wired analysis of the company’s privacy policy. 

  Maybe you’ve opted against buying a Ring doorbell out of privacy concerns. That’s fine, but don’t forget that your neighbor’s Ring camera may be watching you — or even listening to you. Tests have found Ring cameras can record audio from 20 feet away. If you’re strolling by a Ring-equipped house and talking to someone, you and your conversation could be in Ring’s database. The same is true if you’re on your own property and you’re close enough to a neighbor’s camera and microphone. 

  This isn’t just a question of whether you trust Amazon and Ring not to misuse your video, audio and associated data. There’s always the chance that your info could be hacked by common criminals — or the ones who work for the government.

  Speaking of the latter, earlier this year, Amazon was awarded a $10 billion renewal of a secret NSA contract.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 19:20

• A History Lesson For President Joe Biden
  A History Lesson For President Joe Biden

  Authored by Vance Ginn & John Hendrickson via RealClear Policy,

  A nation emerging from a significant pandemic and an economic downturn awaited President Joe Biden in early 2021. President Warren G. Harding inherited a similar situation after winning the 1920 election in a landslide. But Harding overcame it by getting government out of the way. The economy recovered quickly—whereas Biden enacted bad progressive policies that have resulted in a double-dip recession with 40-year high inflation.

  

  Biden should learn from Harding and his successor President Calvin Coolidge to correct government failures and allow markets to heal so that we can enjoy abundant economic prosperity again.

  In the aftermath of the Great War, the U.S. suffered a severe economic downturn. The late economist Milton Friedman described this as one of the most “severe on record.” The depression of 1920-1921 is often forgotten because it was short-lived, but it offers policy lessons that can be applied to our current situation.

  Prior to and during the Great War, President Woodrow Wilson led a massive expansion of the federal government, which included the creation of the Federal Reserve and personal income tax system. After the war, markets corrected from those government failures throughout the economy triggering a steep economic downturn.

  The business and agriculture sectors were hit particularly hard by the depression of 1920-1921, which led to bankruptcies and farm foreclosures. Unemployment was estimated to be about 12% and the nation was hit buffered from deflation. Americans were hurting.

  During the presidential campaign of 1920, then-Sen. Warren G. Harding pledged a “return to normalcy” against Wilson’s progressivism. During the campaign, Harding argued that the nation needed to return to sound money, less spending, lower taxes, less debt, and limited government.

  This was the fiscal policy blueprint of the “normalcy” agenda. Harding understood that to revive business confidence and lower high income tax burdens, the federal government must get its fiscal house in order.

  In 1921, Congress passed the Budget and Accounting Act, which under the leadership of Bureau of the Budget Director Charles Dawes and later his successor, Herbert Lord, worked to reduce federal spending. Dawes would compare the task of cutting spending to having a “toothpick with which to tunnel Pike’s Peak.”

  Harding also understood that to lower the high tax rate, spending had to be addressed first. “The present administration is committed to a period of economy in government…There is not a menace in the world today like that of growing public indebtedness and mounting public expenditures…We want to reverse things,” explained Harding.

  Reducing spending was not easy.

  As an example, Harding vetoed a popular bonus for veterans of the Great War. Overall, Harding’s commitment to economy in government resulted in an estimated 50% reduction in federal spending. Harding also relied on Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, who also shared his views regarding limiting spending.

  Mellon would serve as the lead architect for Harding’s tax reform policies. The top income tax rate was over 70% and Mellon’s goal was to lower the rate. Through a series of tax reforms, the high rate would eventually be cut to 25% during the Coolidge administration.

  Harding and Coolidge’s fiscal conservatism of lowering spending and tax rates and paying down the national debt resulted in a quick economic recovery. The Federal Reserve also tightened the money supply. The late historian Paul Johnson wrote “Harding had done nothing except cut government expenditure, the last time a major industrial power treated a recession by classic laissez-faire methods…”

  After the death of Harding in August 1923, Coolidge continued and strengthened the economic policies of Harding. President Coolidge, along with Secretary Mellon, continued to lower spending and tax rates. The federal budget was $3.14 billion in 1923. By 1928, when Coolidge left, the budget was $2.96 billion.

  Altogether, spending and taxes were cut in about half during the 1920s, leading to faster real economic growth and productivity that contributed to budget surpluses throughout the decade. The decade had started in depression and by 1923 the national economy was booming with low unemployment.

  And that continued throughout much of the decade. This would have continued but government expanded again. In particular, the Hoover administration ran deficits and raised taxes and the Federal Reserve had too loose and then too tight money supply. This led to the Great Depression—a phenomenon that was avoidable and was exacerbated by President Roosevelt’s large expansion of government.

  It’s unlikely that President Biden will follow the pro-growth economic policies of Harding and Coolidge, nor will the Fed tighten the money supply enough to reduce inflation.

  President Biden’s philosophy of woke progressivism is bankrupting our country. The latest example is the recently passed “Inflation Reduction Act” that will lead to higher taxes, more inflation, and a deeper recession.

  Congress instead should have adopted more of the pro-growth policies practiced by Harding and Coolidge.

  Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is chief economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and is the former associate director for economic policy at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, 2019-20. John Hendrickson is the Policy Director at Iowans for Tax Relief Foundation.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 19:00

• Inflation: A Play In Three Acts
  Inflation: A Play In Three Acts

  By Simon White, Bloomberg Markets Live commentator and reporter

  Today’s drop in inflation potentially sets the stage for less tightening – or even easing – in the medium term, leading to a resurgence in inflation later in the cycle, eventually requiring a significant re-tightening of monetary conditions. Even if today’s fall in consumer-price inflation means we are over the peak, and it continues to slow, we are still probably only in the first act of a three act play.

  The 1970s are an imperfect analogy, but they have one crucial aspect in common with today: the monetization of large fiscal deficits. Runaway inflation is almost always preceded by large government borrowing financed by the central bank.

  Both the late 1960s and the last few years saw rising fiscal deficits facilitated by a central bank that thought it had more room to ease than it really did, as was the case in the late 1960s and early 1970s; or one that decided to ignore rising inflation altogether, as the Fed did with its recent maximum-employment/average-inflation-targeting framework.

  Once the conditions for high inflation are there, the economy is at the mercy of “events”, whether that be the Arab Oil Embargo in the early 1970s, or the pandemic and the Ukraine war in the current period.

  We are now in Act I, where inflation is high and rising. We will soon enter Act II, where a respite in inflation hoodwinks the Fed into believing it can take its foot off the tightening pedal prematurely. This sets the stage for Act III, where price growth stops falling, and takes off again, this time making new highs.

  

  But what’s maybe happening under the surface here? A way to think about this is to quantitatively break up inflation into cyclical and structural components.

  Cyclical price pressures should soon start to ease, taking the headline number down. But, as the chart below shows, the estimate for structural inflation is very high, making up almost half the headline number.

  

  If almost half of current inflation proves harder to shake, the cyclical-driven fall in the headline number would only be cosmetically positive. Once the cyclical components start contributing positively again, they would reinforce the stickier, structural inflation, potentially leading CPI to new highs.

  This would be Act III, and we know from the Volcker era how that has to end.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 18:40

• The Geopolitics Of Inflation
  The Geopolitics Of Inflation

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via DailyReckoning.com,

  Though it’s difficult to be confident of anything in the current flux we’re experiencing, I am pretty confident of three things:

  1) Price is set on the margins.

  2) Currencies are the foundation of every economy.

  3) The financial forecasts issued to calm the public do not reflect operative geopolitical goals.

  Let’s break this down. Every national government has “global interests.” Governments naturally do whatever they can to boost dynamics favorable to the state and nation, and obstruct or hinder dynamics injurious to the state or nation.

  As a general rule, nations have relatively few levers they can pull to influence global finance, trade, growth, currencies or the geopolitical balance of power.

  One such lever is the interest the state pays on its sovereign bonds.

  

  Leverage

  If a central bank/state increases the interest it pays on its bonds, that attracts capital seeking higher return (presuming the bond is perceived as safe from default). This inflow of capital strengthens demand for its currency, because the bonds are denominated in the state’s currency.

  As the currency strengthens vis-à-vis other currencies, it buys more goods and services. Imports become cheaper and the nation’s exports become more costly to those using other currencies.

  Another lever is to reduce the exports of commodities, especially essential commodities like energy and grains. If this reduction reduces the global supply, the price leaps.

  If allies get the exports and enemies don’t, this punishes enemies and rewards allies.

  A third lever is to limit imports.

  A consumer nation can limit imports from specific exporters, or make do with domestic supplies or only buy from allies.

  A fourth lever is to meet with allies and reach an agreement about finance and commodities to stave off imbalances that threaten the stability of the alliance.

  An example of this is the 1985 Plaza Accord that weakened the U.S. dollar at the expense of the Japanese yen and European currencies. The strong dollar was crushing U.S. exports and generating destabilizing trade deficits in the U.S.

  Each of these levers has geopolitical consequences.

  It’s All Connected

  Financial actions such as raising interest rates are presented as purely financial, but their geopolitical consequences are not lost on the nation’s political/military leadership.

  Boosting or trimming exports of commodities can be presented as financial as well, even when the real purpose is geopolitical.

  In other words, events which are presented as solely financial can also serve geopolitical aims beneath the domestic-centric rah-rah.

  Consider how the price of oil contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  In the mid-to-late 1980s, the price of oil fell and stayed relatively low for years.

  In 1986, oil fell under $10/barrel. Adjusted for inflation, this was lower than prices paid in the late 1950s.

  Although this ample oil supply was fundamentally a result of super-major oil fields discovered in the 1960s and 1970s coming online, it had a geopolitical consequence few fully appreciate: It pushed the Soviet Union over the fiscal cliff into collapse.

  No Coincidence, Comrade

  Oil and natural gas exports were the primary source of the Soviets’ hard cash it needed to buy goods and commodities from other nations.

  Once the oil revenues dried up, the Soviet Union was no longer financially viable.

  Was this lengthy “glut” of oil just good luck for the U.S., or was a policy agreement with Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters that “nudged” the price lower also a factor?

  What do you reckon — pure luck or luck “nudged” to achieve a geopolitical goal? Given the high stakes and the vulnerability of the USSR to low oil prices, is it plausible that it was entirely happy happenstance?

  In the 37 years since the Plaza Accord, the U.S. has endeavored to keep the dollar relatively weak for a number of reasons: to limit trade deficits and avoid putting undue pressure on emerging countries with debts denominated in USD and nations that imported commodities priced in USD, which is virtually all commodities.

  This weak-dollar policy has changed, with profound implications. The soaring USD is adding a currency “surcharge” on top of rising prices for commodities such as oil and grain.

  A Double-Whammy of Inflation

  Take Japan as an example: The yen has weakened 20% against the USD. This means every commodity priced in USD is 20% higher in price for those using yen.

  Add the increase in cost due to global scarcities and that’s a double-whammy hit of inflation.

  These sharp increases in inflation/price of essentials are recessionary as demand craters. People simply don’t have enough earnings to pay higher costs for essentials and maintain their discretionary spending on goods and services.

  Recall that price is set on the margins. If supply of oil falls 5 million barrels per day (BPD), price rises. But if demand falls 10 million BPD, the price of oil plummets.

  As the price of oil falls, oil exporters receive much less money, and so they compensate by pumping more oil. This serves to further depress prices.

  Who would benefit from a rising U.S. dollar and a global recession, and who would be hurt? The U.S. would benefit from a higher USD because that lowers the cost of all imports. Everyone else using weaker currencies would pay more for imported commodities.

  As demand for oil falls, the price plummets. That helps consumer nations and hurts oil exporters.

  Is China the Target?

  As the USD rises, it drags every currency pegged to the USD higher with it, making their exports more expensive. That would pressure China’s exports, forcing China to adjust its currency peg, reducing the purchasing power of everyone using yuan/RMB.

  Is the looming global recession merely “bad luck” or could an unavoidable global recession be “nudged” to serve geopolitical aims?

  The forces that have been unleashed (higher interest rates, scarcities, strong dollar) will take time to work through the global economy. The USD may drop and oil may rise over the next few months, but where will global demand and oil be in a year?

  What Really Matters

  Many people expect the dollar to weaken and the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates back to zero once the recession becomes undeniable.

  I am not so sure. A case can be made that interest rates have completed a 40-year cycle of decline and are now in a secular cycle higher.

  A case can also be made that the weak-dollar policy has ended and the dollar will move higher, accelerating the financial and geopolitical consequences described above.

  A strong currency exports inflation to those nations which do not issue the currency. Luck, coincidence or “nudge”?

  Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe what matters is that it’s happening.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 18:20

• Some More Good Inflation News: Owner-Equivalent Rents Are About To Peak
  Some More Good Inflation News: Owner-Equivalent Rents Are About To Peak

  It was seven months ago today, when looking at the latest real-time rent data from the likes of Apartment List and Zillow, we highlighted to readers that the surge in rents has finally peaked as the annual rate of rental increases had capped out at 18% and when Owner-Equivalent Rent – the broadest and most closely watched housing/shelter/rent series in the CPI – was just starting to move higher. This was notable not only because this was around the time the Fed finally realized inflation was not transitory, but also because with its traditional 4-7 month delay, it meant that shelter inflation had already peaked (on an annual basis) and its rate of Y/Y growth was now declining; it also meant that it would take readers of the CPI report – such as the Fed – about 4-7 months to figure out what our readers already knew in January.

  

  Incidentally, this same real-time rental data is what prompted us to correctly warn one year ago (when “team transitory” still ruled supreme), that rental hyperinflation had arrived bringing with it “soaring prices, competition and desperation.”

  

  Well, fast forward to today when the red-hot OER component of CPI, while still red-hot, came in just fractionally below expectations…

  

  … but what is more important is that as the latest Apartment List data shows, the rapid pace of annual increases is now slowing rapidly, and at this pace, the CPI shelter data – which is arguably the stickiest of all and is again delayed 4 to 7 months – will peak some time in September or October.

  

  Courtesy of Apartment List, here are some more observations on the latest real-time trends in the rental market:

  Our national index rose by 1.1 percent over the course of July, a slightly slower rate of growth than we observed last month. So far this year, rents are growing more slowly than they did in 2021, but faster than they did in the years immediately preceding the pandemic. Over the first seven months of 2022, rents have increased by a total of 6.7 percent, compared to an increase of 12.0 percent over the same months of 2021. Year-over-year rent growth currently stands at 12.3 percent, but has been trending down since the start of the year from a peak of 18 percent.

  On the supply side, our national vacancy index held steady at 5 percent this month. Our vacancy index has been gradually easing from a low of 4.1 percent last fall, but that easing now appears to be leveling off at a rate that remains well below the pre-pandemic norm. This may be at least partially attributable to spiking mortgage rates, which can contribute to tightness in the rental market by sidelining potential first-time homebuyers from the for-sale market and keeping these households in rental units for longer. Rents increased this month in 87 of the nation’s 100 largest cities. The Miami metro has seen the nation’s fastest rent growth over the past year, but elsewhere in the Sun Belt, the booming Phoenix and Las Vegas markets have shown signs of cooling in recent months.

  Month-over-month rent growth cools slightly with 1.1% increase; rents up 12.3% year-over-year

  The national median rent increased by a record-setting 17.6 percent over the course of 2021. This rapid growth in rent prices is a key contributor to overall inflation, which is currently rising at its fastest pace in 40 years.1 With inflation top-of-mind for policymakers and everyday Americans alike, our rent index is particularly relevant, since movements in market rents lead movements in average rents paid. As a result, our index can signal what is likely ahead for the housing component of the official inflation estimates produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thankfully for the country’s renters, our index shows that rent growth in 2022 has cooled from last summer’s peaks. At the same time, however, rents are continuing to rise faster than they did in pre-pandemic years.

  

  In the seven months of this year, our national rent index has increased by 6.7 percent, well below last year’s 12.0 percent increase over the same months. However, this year’s pace is also still notably faster than that of the years prior to 2021. For comparison, rent growth from January to July totalled 4.0 percent in 2017, 4.5 percent in 2018, 4.1 percent in 2019, and -0.4 percent in 2020. Rent growth is pacing well behind last summer’s scorching pace, but ahead of the pre-pandemic norm, as can also be seen in the following chart of month-over-month growth from 2018 to present.

  

  Our national rent index increased by 1.1 percent month-over-month in July, representing a slight cooldown from last month’s 1.4 percent increase. In July 2021, our national rent index logged record-setting month-over-month growth of 2.7 percent, more than doubling this month’s increase. In contrast, from 2017 to 2019, month-over-month growth in July averaged 0.6 percent, just over half of this month’s increase. Over the past 12 months as a whole, rent prices have spiked by a staggering 12.3 percent nationally. That said, our year-over-year growth estimate has been gradually cooling in recent months after peaking at 18 percent last December, as monthly growth comes in slower than last year’s pace. This month’s slowing rate of growth is consistent with the timing of seasonal trends that we have observed in the past, and it is likely that growth will cool further in the coming months, as the fall and winter tend to bring a slowdown in rental market activity.

  More here

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 18:00

• "Coup" Means Whatever The Regime Wants It To Mean
  “Coup” Means Whatever The Regime Wants It To Mean

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, many pundits and politicians were eager to describe the events of that day as a coup d’etat in which the nation was “this close” to having some sort of junta void the 2020 election and take power in Washington. 

  The headlines at the time were unambiguous in their assertions that the riot was a coup or attempted coup. For example, the riot was “A Very American Coup” according to a headline at the New Republic. “This Is a Coup” insists a writer at Foreign Policy. The Atlantic presented photos purported to be “Scenes from an American Coup.” 

  This general tactic has not changed since then. Just this month, for example, Vanity Fair referred to the January 6 riots as “Trump’s attempted coup” Last month, Vox called it “Trump’s cuckoo coup.” Moreover, anti-Trump politicians have repeatedly referred to the riot as a coup, and “attempted coup” has become the standard term of choice for the January 6 panel. 

  At the time, it was obvious that if the riot was a coup at all, it failed utterly. Thus, the debate is now over whether or not it was an attempted coup. On January 8, 2021, I argued the riot was not an attempted coup. Now, 18 months later, after months of “investigation” and testimony to the January 6 committee, we’ve learned new details about the events that occurred that day. And now I can say with even more confidence: the January 6 riot was not an attempted coup. 

  

  It was not an attempted coup because it simply wasn’t the sort of event that historians and political scientists—the people who actually study coups—generally define as a coup. Even the Justice Department admits that virtually all of the rioters were, at most, guilty only of crimes such as trespassing and disorderly conduct. Among the tiny minority of those charged with actual conspiracy—11 people— they lacked any sort of institutional backing or support that is necessary for a coup attempt to take place. 

  Nor is this just some meaningless debate over semantics. Words matters and definitions matter. This should be abundantly clear to anyone in our current age of debates over what terms like “recession” or “vaccine” or “woman” mean. In fact, the use of term “coup” has been thoroughly weaponized in that outside academic circles it is employed largely as a pejorative to discredit political acts designed to register discontent with a ruling regime or to oppose a ruling coalition. For many, the term coup is now used increasingly to describe political acts one doesn’t like. But if the term “coup” ultimately means “political thing those bad guys did” then it ceases to have any precise meaning at all. But, the use of the term in this way does explain why so many pundits and politicians routinely use the term to label their opponents coup plotters. It’s basically name calling, and really only tells us about the user’s political leanings. 

  What Is a Coup?

  In their article for the Journal of Peace Research, “Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset,” authors Jonathan M. Powell and Clayton L. Thyne provide a definition: 

  A coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive.

  Although the terms “military” and “coup” are routinely employed together, Powell and Thyne emphasize military involvement at early stages is not necessary:

  [Other definitions] more broadly allow non-military elites, civilian groups, and even mercenaries to be included as coup perpetrators. This broad definition includes four sources, including [a definition stating that coup] perpetrators need only be ‘organized factions’. We take a middle ground. Coups may be undertaken by any elite who is part of the state apparatus. These can include non-civilian members of the military and security services, or civilian members of government.

  Moreover, it is not necessary that violence actually be used. The presence of a threat issued by some organized group of elites is sufficient. 

  This definition is helpful because there are many types of political actions that are not coups, even if the intended outcome is a change in the ruling regime. The definition offered by Powell and Thyne is useful because it avoids “conflating coups with other forms of anti-regime activity, which is the primary problem with broader approaches.”

  For example, popular uprisings that force ruling executives from power are not generally coups. Intervention by a foreign regime is not a coup. Civil wars initiated by non-elites or other outsiders are not coups. 

  Why the Jan 6 Riot Was Not a Coup

  In the case of the January 6 riot, the rioters had no institutional backing, no promises of help from elites, and no reason to assume they had access to any coercive tools necessary to seize and hold control of a state’s executive apparatus. Nor was Donald Trump even in a position to promise such things. As noted by Elaine Kamarck at the Brookings Institution: 

  we now know that Trump did not even have the support of his own family and friends nor his handpicked White House staff. To pursue his plans, he had to rely on a close group of advisors known as “the clown show” led by Rudi Giuliani, a pillow manufacturer, and a dot-com millionaire—none of whom was in government and none of whom controlled the most important “assets” (guns, tanks, planes etc.) needed to take over a government. In contrast to most successful coups in history, Trump had no faction of the military, no faction of the National Guard, and no faction of the District of Colombia Metropolitan Police at his disposal.

  In other words, the rioters had no avenue to calling upon any faction of the state or group of elites to secure backing. Kamarck continues: 

  As we learned in some of the most recent hearings, it was Vice President Mike Pence who was in contact with the military and the police, and most importantly, the military and the police were taking orders from Pence not Trump, the commander in chief! 

  Given that Trump didn’t attempt to actually attempt to secure any government agency to secure power for himself, we can guess Trump knew no branch of the federal government was about to step in to illegally secure an extension to his tenure as president. We can never know for sure what Trump was really thinking on that day, but even if Trump sought to encourage a group of protestors to somehow put pressure on Congress—even if by violent means—that’s not a coup. It’s a popular uprising. 

  The Bolivian “Coup”: The Anti-Morales Protestors in Bolivia 

  The protests that followed the 2019 elections in Bolivia provide an interestingly similar case to the January 6 riot and demonstrate that it’s often quite debatable as to what constitutes a coup. 

  As the Bolivian election neared its end on October 24, sitting president Evo Morales began to claim victory. Numerous opponents, however, claimed Morales’s supporters had engaged in electoral fraud. Both sides refused to accept the results of the election, and protests and riots soon erupted across the nation. Morales and his supporters accused the opposition of staging a coup. The opposition accused Morales of the same. Or, more precisely, they accused Morales of attempting an “autocoup”—autogolpe in Spanish—in which Morales was attempting to hold on to power via illegal means. 

  Ultimately, Morales ended up resigning after he failed to maintain control over the police and military. High ranking officials from those institutions “recommended” Morales resign, and Morales did so soon after. Morales went into exile and Mexico and the opposition became the de facto governing coalition in Bolivia. 

  There remains no agreement, however, as to whether or not the actions of either side in Brazil constituted a coup (or autocoup.) Morales’s supporters—mostly leftists—refer to the political crisis following the election as a coup. Those who are convinced Morales did indeed lose the election refer to his efforts as an autocoup. But many also refer to the events as a popular uprising. 

  For many, the situation in Bolivia in 2019 remains ambiguous, and we can see how it shares many elements in common with the events surrounding the January 6 riot at the Capitol. It began with claims of election fraud, and ended with a group of protestors attempting to pressure congress to change the outcome. This is not fundamentally different from the popular uprisings in Bolivia, except that in the US the outcome was never really dubious. There was never really any doubt as to whether the Pentagon would he helping Trump push through an autocoup. Trump never had any real reason to believe he could hold on to power, even with 900 mostly unarmed protestors trespassing in the Capitol. 

  “Coup” Now Means “Thing I Don’t Like”

  The Bolivia situation also helps to illustrate how the term “coup” is used selectively for political effect. The fact that Morales’s leftist supporters are generally those who favor the use of the term to describe Morales’s removal from office is no coincidence. Those who support one side say it’s a coup, while the other side does not. 

  We see the same dynamic at work in the US, and we should not be surprised that the media has rushed to apply the term to the riot. This phenomenon was examined in a November 2019 article titled “Coup with Adjectives: Conceptual Stretching or Innovation in Comparative Research?,” by Leiv Marsteintredet and Andres Malamud. The authors note that as the incidence of real coups has declined, the word has become more commonly applied to political events that are generally not coups. But, as the authors note, this is no mere issue of splitting hairs, explaining that “The choice of how to conceptualize a coup is not to be taken lightly since it carries normative, analytical, and political implications.”

  Increasingly, the term really means “this is a thing I don’t like.” It’s clear the January 6 panel in Congress, and countless anti-Trump pundits use the term in this way to express disapproval and also to justify regime crackdowns against pro-Trump opponents of the regime. It’s easier to justify harsh prison sentences for a disorganized group of vandals if their acts can be framed as a nearly successful coup and therefore a threat to “our democracy.” Moreover, if the situation were reversed, and if protestors invaded the Capitol to support a leftwing, pro-regime candidate, we can be sure that the vocabulary used to describe the event in the mainstream press would be quite different. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/10/2022 – 17:40

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• Sperry: Lies, Damned Lies, And The Jan. 6 Committee
  Sperry: Lies, Damned Lies, And The Jan. 6 Committee

  Authored by Paul Sperry via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6 has adjourned for a well-deserved summer break. Misleading the public is exhausting work.

  

  A careful review of the official transcripts of its eight long hearings shows the committee repeatedly made connections that weren’t there, took events and quotes out of context, exaggerated the violence of the Capitol rioters, and omitted key exculpatory evidence otherwise absolving former President Donald Trump of guilt. While in some cases, it lied by omission, in others, it lied outright. It also made a number of unsubstantiated charges based on the secondhand accounts—hearsay testimony—of a young witness with serious credibility problems.

  These weren’t off-the-cuff remarks. Panelists didn’t misspeak. Their statements were tightly scripted and loaded into teleprompters, which they read verbatim.

  In other words, the committee deliberately chummed out disinformation to millions of viewers of not just cable TV, but also the Big Three TV networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—which agreed to preempt regular daytime and even primetime programming to air the Democratic-run hearings. And because Democrats refused to allow dissenting voices on the panel or any cross-examination of witnesses, viewers had no reference points to understand how they, along with the two Trump-hating Republicans they allowed on the committee, shaded the truth.

  This charade of an honest investigation appears to have had the desired effect. Polls show the Jan. 6 hearings hurt Trump, who plans to run again, with independents. Unaffiliated voters have grown more likely to blame Trump for the Capitol riot and to show support for Democrats in the midterms, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey.

  With the November elections fast approaching, Democrats plan to hold another round of hearings next month, hoping voters pay even closer attention. With that in mind, it’s important to examine the false claims and distortions they no doubt will repeat. They are legion. Here’s the fact-checking the viewing public—and the electorate—thus far has been denied.

  CLAIM: While committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) excoriated Trump for not calling off the Capitol rioters earlier, he claimed they were “savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers,” according to the transcript of his remarks from the prime-time July 21 hearing, carried live by the networks.

  FACT: No police officer was killed during the riot.

  CLAIM: During the same hearing, committee member Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) faulted Trump for his “glaring silence” about the “tragic death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who succumbed to his injuries” suffered during the riot.

  FACT: The D.C. medical examiner ruled Sicknick died of “natural causes,” not injuries, well after the riot. Luria seemed to perpetuate false rumors started by The New York Times that Sicknick was struck with a fire extinguisher, a fable debunked by both the coroner and the Sicknick family.

  CLAIM: Thompson asserted Trump “summoned” a mob that was “heavily armed and angry.”

  FACT: Not a single gun was recovered in the riot. For that matter, the only gun used during the four-hour melee was fired by a Capitol police officer, who killed an unarmed rioter, Ashli Babbitt—whose name was never mentioned in any of the hearings. Despite airing endless footage of rioters breaching the Capitol and fighting police, the committee omitted footage of USCP Lt. Michael Byrd shooting Babbitt from behind a doorway without warning, which was the most violent incident that occurred that day.

  CLAIM: The committee put a former far-right extremist on as a witness to testify that rioters built “a gallows” to allegedly hang then-Vice President Mike Pence.

  FACT:  The witness, Jason Van Tatenhove, wasn’t at the Capitol that day. He had no insider knowledge about the purpose of the flimsy wooden structure erected across from the Capitol. In any case, it was a mock gallows, not a functional one. Even the New York Times recently acknowledged it “was too small to be used.”

  CLAIM: Committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) proclaimed in the hearing curtain-raiser—also held in primetime and broadcast live by all three networks—that the panel had evidence Trump said Pence “deserves” to be hanged, a chilling claim if true. “Aware of the rioters’ chants to hang Mike Pence,” she asserted, “the president responded with this sentiment: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea,’ Mike Pence quote ‘deserves it.’”

  FACT: Her “evidence” turned out to be a secondhand retelling by witness Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House assistant fresh out of college who overheard a paraphrasing of what Trump may have thought about the chants, not a direct Trump quote as Cheney implied. Hutchinson later testified Trump said, “something to the effect of,” Pence “deserves it.”

  CLAIM: Hutchinson also swore she wrote a note dictated by then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows suggesting a more forceful White House response to the riot.

  FACT: Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann insisted that he actually wrote the note, not Hutchinson, adding a serious chink in her credibility as the committee’s star witness. “The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” said a spokesperson for Herschmann, who noted that Herschmann told the committee that in his deposition. The panel never informed the public that Hutchinson’s claim was disputed.

  CLAIM: Based on Hutchinson’s testimony, the committee also claimed that former White House counsel Pat Cipollone said Trump’s plan to march to the Capitol would cause Trump officials to be “charged with every crime imaginable.”

  FACT: Cipollone didn’t corroborate the claim in his sworn deposition before the committee.

  CLAIM: The committee relied on another second-hand account by Hutchinson to broadcast to the world the alleged bombshell that Trump tried to physically commandeer his Secret Service limo to the Capitol. “When the president got in ‘The Beast’ … he thought they were going up to the Capitol,” Hutchinson testified, relaying what she’d heard from a security official who had heard it from another source. But when Trump was told he had to go back to the White House, she continued, Trump got “irate” and said “something to the effect of ‘I’m the [expletive] president, take me to the Capitol now,’” and proceeded to “grab at the steering wheel.” She claimed he even “lunged” at a Secret Service agent inside the vehicle.

  FACT: Trump rode in a different motorcade vehicle than “The Beast” that day (an SUV, not the famous Cadillac limo), and several Secret Service agents have denied any physical altercation took place, casting further doubt on Hutchinson’s reliability as a key witness for the panel (records show she kept working for Trump in his post-presidential office for nine weeks after he left the White House, even though she claimed to be “disgusted” by what happened on Jan. 6, which she said was based on “a lie” peddled by Trump that the election was stolen). After pushback from the Secret Service, the committee leaked to CNN that a D.C. police officer “has corroborated” Hutchinson’s testimony. But when DCPD Sgt. Mark Robinson testified in the final hearing, he failed to corroborate her tale of Trump grabbing the steering wheel or lunging at a member of his security detail. “The only description I received was that the president was upset and was adamant about going to the Capitol and there was a heated discussion about that,” Robinson said.

  CLAIM: Throughout the hearings, the committee cited Trump’s speech at the Ellipse as the spark that ignited the riot. “There can be no doubt that [Trump] commanded a mob, a mob he knew was heavily armed, violent, and angry, to march on the Capitol to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power,” Thompson said in the last hearing. Emphasized Luria: “Donald Trump summoned a violent mob and promised to lead that mob to the Capitol.”

  FACT: While Trump did urge supporters to “walk” with him down to the Capitol after the rally, he specifically asked them to do so “peacefully.” The committee left that key exculpatory phrase out of the hearings. It never aired the footage or transcript of him saying, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” If it had, it would have ruined the carefully crafted narrative that Trump incited violence. The omission was a critical deception.

  CLAIM: In the opening hearing, Cheney read out loud a tweet Trump sent during the riot in which he said, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” She claimed Trump was justifying more violence.

  FACT: But Cheney cut off the next line where Trump called for “peace” and told supporters to leave the Capitol. “Go home with love & in peace,” the rest of the tweet said. Cheney blinded millions of viewers watching to the full picture.

  CLAIM: Cheney, who faces a Trump-endorsed challenger in her Aug. 16 primary race, kicked off the hearing with a bold charge: “President Trump summoned a violent mob and directed them illegally to march on the United States Capitol.” She vowed to show “evidence” to back it up. Thompson said they would prove that Trump was “at the center” of a “seditious conspiracy.”

  FACT: Not only did they fail to deliver any hard evidence that Trump ordered rioters to attack the Capitol as part of a conspiracy, they also began to contradict themselves as the hearings progressed. Thompson later said Trump merely “spurred” the mob and “energized” extremists, which is quite different from directing them. In an unintended revelation, one of their witnesses presented a timeline that suggested the instigators of the breaches of the Capitol had already headed to the Capitol before Trump spoke at the Ellipse. Documentarian Nick Quested testified the Proud Boys marched to the Capitol at 10:30 a.m., which meant Trump couldn’t possibly have incited them. “I was confused to a certain extent why we were walking away from the President’s speech,” said Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys.

  Despite taking more than 1,000 depositions and subpoenaing more than 140,000 documents, the committee never found a smoking gun proving Trump was involved in a top-down organization of the riot. There was no coordination or conspiracy, which tracks with what the Biden Justice Department has found. Of the 874 criminal cases prosecutors have brought against Trump supporters at the Jan. 6 riot, none of them names Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator.

  But don’t take my word for it.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 23:25

• Defense Experts Game Out US-China War Over Taiwan; Dalio Warns Escalations 'Very Dangerous'
  Defense Experts Game Out US-China War Over Taiwan; Dalio Warns Escalations ‘Very Dangerous’

  A group of American defense experts operating out of a 5th floor suite in Washington DC have been mapping out a hypothetical war between the United States and China over Taiwan.

  

  “The results are showing that under most — though not all — scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has been simulating various war scenarios. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.“

  In sessions that will run through September, retired US generals and Navy officers and former Pentagon officials hunch like chess players over tabletops along with analysts from the CSIS think tank. They move forces depicted as blue and red boxes and small wooden squares over maps of the Western Pacific and Taiwan. The results will be released to the public in December. –Bloomberg

  The base assumption is that China invades Taiwan to force unification, which the US responds to with its military. Another assumption (that’s ‘far from certain’) is that Japan would grant ‘expanded rights’ to use US bases on its territory – but wouldn’t intervene directly unless Japanese land is attacked.

  

  Nuclear weapons are not part of the scenarios, and the weapons used in the simulation are the most likely to be deployed based on current capabilities of the nations involved.

  News of the war game simulations come as China began test-firing missiles in recent days following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) visit to Taiwan.So far, 18 of 22 rounds of the simulation to date have resulted in Chinese missiles sinking a large part of the US and Japanese surface fleet, and would destroy “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” according to Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst and retired US Marine.

  “However, allied air and naval counterattacks hammer the exposed Chinese amphibious and surface fleet, eventually sinking about 150 ships,” he added.

  “The reason for the high US losses is that the United States cannot conduct a systematic campaign to take down Chinese defenses before moving in close,” Cancian continued. “The United States must send forces to attack the Chinese fleet, especially the amphibious ships, before establishing air or maritime superiority.”

  “To get a sense of the scale of the losses, in our last game iteration, the United States lost over 900 fighter/attack aircraft in a four-week conflict. That’s about half the Navy and Air Force inventory.“

  

  According to the simulations, the Chinese missile force “is devastating while the inventory lasts,” which makes US subs and long-range-capable bombers “particularly important.” Also key, is Taiwan’s defense capabilities, because its forces would be primarily responsible for countering Chinese landings from the South.

  “The success or failure of the ground war depends entirely on the Taiwanese forces,” said Cancian. “In all game iterations so far, the Chinese could establish a beachhead but in most circumstances cannot expand it. The attrition of their amphibious fleet limits the forces they can deploy and sustain. In a few instances, the Chinese were able to hold part of the island but not conquer the entire island.”

  “For the Taiwanese, anti-ship missiles are important, surface ships and aircraft less so,” because surface ships “have a hard time surviving as long as the Chinese have long-range missiles available.”

  There have been no estimates so far on lives lost, or the sweeping economic impact of such a conflict between the US and China.

  As Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio notes, “The US-China Tit-For-Tat Escalations Are Very Dangerous.”

  Unfortunately, what is happening now between the US and China over Taiwan is following the classic path to war laid out in my book “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order.” If events continue to follow this path, this conflict will have a much larger global impact than the Russia-Ukraine war because it is between the world’s leading superpowers that are economically much larger and much more intertwined.  

  For reasons previously explained, the Russia-Ukraine war is minor by comparison, though the two conflicts are related and the Russia-Ukraine war, like all wars, is having terrible consequences. For example, consider that China’s share of world trade is over seven times larger than Russia’s [1] and constitutes about 19% of all American manufactured goods imports. [2] Imagine if importing goods from China and doing business with China became the same as they are with Russia now. Imagine what the supply chain and economic impacts on the world would be. Imagine what sanctions on China would be like for the world. Supply chains would collapse, economic activity would dive, and inflation would soar. And that’s just what would happen to economies due to economic warfare which would pale in comparison to the impact that military warfare, which we are obviously dangerously close to, would have.

  For reasons explained in my book, the situation that now exists between the United States and China is very similar to that which existed between powers immediately prior to World Wars I and II and many other immediate prewar periods. The chart below shows my US-China conflict gauge since 2000. As you can see, the readings for conflict between the US and China are the highest ever.

  

  This index is composed of many indicators such as changes in military spending, personnel, and deployment; sentiment of each country’s people about the other country; media attention given to the conflict, etc. The combination of military spending and attitudes toward each rival country has been particularly indicative. The chart below shows the shares of global military spending for the US and China which significantly understates China’s military spending because much government spending that supports the military is not included as direct military spending. Also, American military spending covers the world while Chinese military spending is more focused in the region. Knowledgeable parties tell me that China has significant military superiority around Taiwan.

  

  The chart below plots recent Gallop poll data and shows that 80% of Americans now have an unfavorable view of China—which is now on par with how Americans view Russia (and is up meaningfully over the past few years).  

  

  To put the existing level of conflict between China and the US in perspective, the table below compares the current US-China conflict gauge reading to past readings of other great conflicts. As shown, the current reading for the US and China is nearly 1.2 standard deviations above the average, which is a reading in the high end of the range of major conflicts. While this conveys a high level and risk of conflict, it should not be misinterpreted to mean that a worsening is to come. Sometimes, these moments of heightened conflict are followed by a stepping back from war. For example, the period leading into the Cuban Missile Crisis had a relatively high reading of 0.9, but wise heads prevailed, so a potential disaster was avoided.

  

  There are many more measures that convey the changing picture that are explained in my book which I don’t have the space to show you here, but will continue to plot along with the historical analogies I outlined in the book.   I will use them to paint as accurate a picture as I can about what’s happening and put it into an historical context. The dot plot will speak for itself as to which path we are on.

  As for what’s now happening, the Chinese are responding to Nancy Pelosi’s visit by cutting off most relations and demonstrating that they can militarily control the area around Taiwan, which implies that China could shut Taiwan off from the rest of the world. Imagine that and its implications, e.g., imagine if semiconductor chips couldn’t get out of Taiwan. China is also displaying its military power and it is crossing previously uncrossed lines of demarcation, thus closing in on Taiwan. [7]

  Pelosi’s visit was perceived by China as a move in favor of Taiwan’s independence rather than toward one China with Taiwan part of China, and it is essentially challenging the US to stop it from doing what it is doing. The question is whether the US will respond with another escalation that will prompt another Chinese response, in the classic tit-for-tat acceleration into war, or if the sides will step back.

  To gain a picture of the past and the forces that are driving the evolution of the US and China toward war (i.e. the Big Cycle) I suggest that you review Chapter 13 “US-China Relations and Wars.” I suggest that you pay particular attention to my explanation of previous Taiwan Straits crises and why I said I would worry if we had a “Fourth Taiwan Crisis” which is the crisis that we are now having. To understand what is happening you must understand these things.  

  As I summarized on page 455 of that Chapter in the section “The Risk of Unnecessary War:” Stupid wars often happen as a result of a tit-for-tat escalation process in which responding to even small actions of an adversary is more important than being perceived as weak, especially when those on both sides don’t really understand the motivations of those on the other side. History shows us that this is especially a problem for declining empires, which tend to fight more than is logical because any retreat is seen as a defeat. Take the issue of Taiwan. Even though the US fighting to defend Taiwan would seem to be illogical, not fighting a Chinese attack on Taiwan might be perceived as being a big loss of stature and power over other countries that won’t support the US if it doesn’t fight and win for its allies. Additionally, such defeats can make leaders look weak to their own people, which can cost them the political support they need to remain in power. And, of course, miscalculations due to misunderstandings when conflicts are transpiring quickly are dangerous. All these dynamics create strong pulls toward wars accelerating even though such mutually destructive wars are so much worse than cooperating and competing in more peaceful ways. There is also risk of untruthful, emotional rhetoric taking hold in both the US and China, creating an atmosphere for escalation.

  While the power of the forces behind the Big Cycle explained in “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order” can be overwhelming, people still have choices that will affect the outcomes. This conflict is still a low-grade military conflict (which I call a Category 2 military conflict) because 1) it has not yet produced an exchange of bloodshed of people from the two major sides i.e., Chinese and/or Americans and 2) it is not taking place on either country’s homeland (though the Chinese would say Taiwan is part of their homeland even though it’s not part of mainland China). If either of these were to change, that would be the next big step up toward unimaginable all-out war which I still consider improbable.

  A good thing is that sensible people on both sides are scared of war even though they don’t want to look like they are. A bad thing is that some people on both sides want to intensify the fight because to not do so in the face of the provocation wound be perceived as a sign of weakness. That dynamic of upping the ante to avoid looking like one is backing down has throughout history been shown to be a very dangerous dynamic. We have seen many historic cases which have led to terrible wars because neither side wanted to back down and only few in which sensible people stepped back from the brink when faced with the prospect of unacceptable destruction. 

  My hope is that China’s escalation will not lead to the next US escalation which will lead to the next Chinese escalation which, despite the strong desire of sensible people on both sides to avoid war, would lead to a war. But hope is not a strategy, so I will try to be as realistic as possible, navigate accordingly, and communicate well with you.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 23:05

• Couple Leave City, Transition To Homestead Life In The Mountains
  Couple Leave City, Transition To Homestead Life In The Mountains

  Authored by Louise Chambers via The Epoch Times,

  After receiving a cancer diagnosis, a couple from a city in Southern California gained a new perspective on life and began to question their lifestyle. They then made the huge decision to move to the mountains of North Carolina for a more intentional life. Six years on, they are growing their own food, homeschooling their daughter, and living their dream life.

  

  Jason and Lorraine Contreras, and their daughter, Penelope, currently have a 14-acre homestead in western North Carolina. They have learned to grow the majority of their own food, raise their own meat, improve the land and soil they live on, and thrive without electronic distractions.

  Transition to Homesteading Lifestyle

  “Twelve years ago I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Jason told The Epoch Times. “After chemotherapy, losing my hair, and a whole year of feeling completely sick from all the treatments, my wife and I began to question everything, from the food we brought into our home and put into our bodies to the products we used on our skin.”

  During this time, Lorraine, who worked in the fashion industry, loved the idea of climbing the corporate ladder and was driven by ambition.

  “I loved clothes and they defined me,” she said.

  However, after Jason’s cancer diagnosis and visiting doctors for various appointments, she realized a few things. She found she wanted to be with Jason at every appointment as well as when he was home sleeping off nausea from chemotherapy. She also wanted to cook him the most nourishing meals, yet had no idea where to begin. She also thought of having children after all, but questioned whether it was too late.

  “I looked at our life and we were so far from that,” she said.

  

  She felt as helpless as Jason in the face of his cancer diagnosis, so the couple took back control where they could—in their choices of what to eat, how to work, where to live, and how to spend their leisure time.

  They first made a small garden, tuned out the noise of the city by getting rid of their TV, started cooking meals from scratch, and daydreamed of leaving the California city life behind to own a bigger piece of land. One day, Jason quit his office job of 16 years, and the couple started to make their dream a reality.

  “No more days spent sitting under artificial lights and hunched over a computer,” he reflected; “I was free to dig my hands in the soil and get dirty!

  “Slowly but surely, we made the transition into this homesteading lifestyle.”

  In 2016, the couple sold the majority of their belongings and left California when Penelope was just 4 years old. In North Carolina, they had no friends or family nearby. Unaware of whether it would all work out, their only plan was to “figure it out.”

  

  According to Jason, their only goal at that time was, “to grow food, build a homestead together as a family, and to never go back to an office job.”

  They initially started out on a 1.5-acre plot. Jason created a YouTube channel, SowTheLand, to chronicle the family’s journey as novice homesteaders.

  A 14-Acre Plot

  After almost six years at their first homestead, and many lessons learned, the family had the skills and confidence to graduate to a much larger plot. They now have a 14-acre plot and share the land with two steers, a pair of breeding kunekune pigs, meat chickens, egg-laying chickens, two geese, and eight turkeys.

  “We found an amazing fixer-upper horse property,” said Jason. “The pastures have been over-grazed and soil is beaten down over the years from too many horses; some run-down barns need a lot of attention.

  

  “We grow most of our own food. We would love to get to a point where we grow almost all of it. We have a small community of like-minded farmers around us where we can barter for things that we cannot produce on our own.

  “Our goal is to have a fruit orchard; we have started one, but we need to build a fence to keep the deer out and continue planting.”

  

  In the new homestead, the family have also gained access to a creek and a private well, and masses of space to expand their gardens and animal husbandry. They plan on turning the old stables into a barn for hosting educational workshops, to teach others how to plant and harvest farm-to-table food, and raise and butcher animals.

  “We are absolutely thrilled to have this old farm,” said Jason, “and we are already hard at work, rolling up our sleeves, turning it into a working homestead and, day by day, healing the soil.

  “I guess that’s why we chose the name ‘Sow The Land; we are restoring the land, making it better than we found it, and growing the healthiest food from it.”

  

  Jason, who has been in remission since completing six months of chemotherapy is tasked with continual building, gardening projects, animal husbandry, troubleshooting on the homestead, and creating social media content for SowTheLand, including filming and editing their videos for the channel.

  He said that he feels more active and is in better shape today than ever before.

  Another major change that came with homesteading was the decision to homeschool Penelope. Luckily, Jason and Lorraine have the support of their local community, which comprises other homesteading families and homeschooled children.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 22:45

• Something Just Doesn’t Add Up In Chinese Trade Data
  Something Just Doesn’t Add Up In Chinese Trade Data

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live commentator and reporter

  An unusual discrepancy has showed up in two sets of trade data in China. Depending on which official sources you use, China’s trade surplus, could either be overstated or under-reported by a staggering $166 billion over the past year.

  China watchers cannot fully explain the mystery. It’s as if Chinese residents bought a lot of stuff overseas, and instead of shipping the items home, they were kept abroad for some reason.  

  China’s exports have been surprisingly resilient, despite a slowing global economy and Covid disruptions. On Monday, General Administration of Customs data showed China’s exports increased 18% in July from a year earlier. In contrast, imports grew only 2.3%, reflecting weak domestic demand.

  The result is China’s trade surplus keeps swelling, which has underpinned the yuan by offsetting capital outflows. The surplus over the past year amounted to a record $864 billion, more than double the level at the end of 2019.

  But when comparing the Customs data with that from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), a different picture emerges. The SAFE data shows the surplus is growing at a much slower pace — about 20% less than the customs figure. 

  

  The two data sets used to track each other closely. SAFE typically reports fewer imports, thus a higher surplus, because it excludes costs, insurance and freight from the value of goods imported, in line with the international standard practice, Adam Wolfe, an economist at Absolute Strategy Research, noted.

  The other adjustments that SAFE does include:

  • It only records transactions that involve a change of ownership;
  • It adjusts for returned items;
  • It adds goods bought and resold abroad that don’t cross China’s border, but result in income for a Chinese entity — a practice known  as “merchanting.”

  The relationship between the two data sets has flipped since 2021, as SAFE reported higher imports, resulting in a smaller surplus than the Customs data.

  It’s particularly odd because it happened at a time when shipping costs skyrocketed. When SAFE removes freight and insurance costs, it would have resulted in even lower, not higher, imports.

  Taken at face value, the discrepancy suggests that somebody in China “bought” lots of goods from abroad, but they have never arrived in China. These transactions would be recorded by SAFE as imports, but not at the Customs office.

  Craig Botham at Pantheon Macroeconomics, suspects that Covid-19 may be playing a role here. Foreign firms unable to manufacture in factories elsewhere during the pandemic might have transferred materials to China for assembly, a transaction excluded by SAFE.

  Could Chinese buyers overstate their foreign purchases to SAFE, which regulates the capital account, so they can move money out of the country? The cross-border transactions show there was widespread overpaying for imports in 2014-2015, during a period of intense capital flight, but not at the moment, Wolfe pointed out.

  

  The bottom line is that there aren’t many good explanations. As Alex Etra, a senior strategist at Exante Data, said, there’s “no smoking gun” to suggest something fishy is going on.

  It’s another mysterious puzzle waiting to be solved.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 22:28

• Elon Musk Quietly Dumps A Massive $6.9 Billion In Tesla Shares
  Elon Musk Quietly Dumps A Massive $6.9 Billion In Tesla Shares

  Remember way back in April 2013 when Elon Musk vowed at the Tesla annual shareholders meeting that “just as my money was the first in, it will be the last out.” No? Good, because fast forwarding to Tuesday night, we learned that Musk just took 6.9 billion steps to be among the first to get the hell out of Dodge.

  Forgot to say one thing at Tesla annual shareholders meeting: just as my money was the first in, it will be the last out.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2013

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  According to four Form 4 filings filed late on Tuesday night, Elon Musk sold a total of 7.92 billion (or $6.9 billion) of shares in Tesla, the first time he has sold stock in the carmaker since April, when he was allegedly selling TSLA shares to help him “fund” the Twitter acquisition… for which he dropped his bid shortly after, almost as if the TWTR deal was just a pretext.

   According to the new filings, Musk dumped the shares on Aug. 5, the day when TSLA stocks tumbled some 8%.

  

  The sale took place shortly after Musk’s latest taunt to shorts, who it appears were right – judging by Musk’s own sale – but were squeezed nonetheless.

  Heatwave in Shortville 🥵

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2022

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  With the latest sale, Musk has now sold around $32 billion worth of TSLA stock in the past 10 months.  

  Tesla’s stock slumped late last year as Musk offloaded more than $16 billion worth of shares, his first sales in more than five years. The disposals started in November after Musk polled Twitter users on whether he should trim his stake.

  The shares have risen about 35% from its recent lows in May. Some have noted how every time Musk dumps a boatload of stock, an unexplained gamma squeeze kicks in just before the sale, affording Musk a far higher sale price.

  Crazy how $TSLA gamma squeezes 30-50% everytime right before he dumps billions…

  Luckiest guy ever.

  — Stephen Geiger (@Stephen_Geiger) August 10, 2022

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  It is surely also a coincidence, that just as Musk was about to dump his shares, a massive burst of retail buying emerged in recent weeks, which it is safe to say, spilled over into meme stonks and forced the latest WallStreetBets short squeeze. As a reminder, last Wednesday we wrote that “Explosion In Retail Buying Revealed As Source Of Latest Tesla Stock Surge.” Perhaps some regulator will finally look into this.

  

  Of course, there is a less sinister explanation: Musk and Twitter have reached a settlement agreement, and Musk was quietly prefunding the balance of his purchase commitments, which means that Twitter employees are about to have a very unpleasant night. Then again, if not one can add this latest Tesla mega-dump to the long list of bizarre events Musk will have to explain in court in a few months…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 22:11

• Google Search Hit With Outage On Monday, Hours After Iowa Campus Electrical Incident
  Google Search Hit With Outage On Monday, Hours After Iowa Campus Electrical Incident

  Tens of thousands of users were affected by a Google search outage that struck on Monday this week. 

  At about 9PM Eastern Time, reports started hitting DownDetector that the site had stopped working for some users. In addition to the U.S., problems were also recorded in Taiwan and Japan, Bloomberg wrote in a follow up report.

  More than 40,000 reports of service interruption came through on DownDetector, the report says. 

  It is also worth noting is that there were scattered reports of an “electrical incident” at a Google facility in Iowa Monday. Three people reportedly went to the hospital as a result of the incident, the report says. It isn’t clear whether the two incidents are related.

  

  Three electricians were critically injured, according to SF Gate:

  Three electricians were critically injured and transported to a local hospital after an “electrical incident” at a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, according to the Council Bluffs Police Department and Google.

  The incident occurred at 11:59 a.m. local time on Monday, the Council Bluffs Police Department told SFGATE. Three electricians were working on a substation close to the data center buildings when an arc flash (an electric explosion) occurred, causing significant burns to all three electricians.

  The outage was almost 10 hours later, so it is difficult to draw a straight line between the two incidents. 

  Google said on Monday: “We are aware of an electrical incident that took place today at Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, injuring three people onsite who are now being treated. The health and safety of all workers is our absolute top priority, and we are working closely with partners and local authorities to thoroughly investigate the situation and provide assistance as needed.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 22:05

• Previewing The "Historic" July CPI Report, And Why A Miss Will Make Powell's Life Extremely Hard
  Previewing The “Historic” July CPI Report, And Why A Miss Will Make Powell’s Life Extremely Hard

  As Bloomberg’s Sebastian Boyd writes, it’s hard to overstate the importance of Wednesday’s US inflation report to a market that’s split between two different views of the economy, and the Fed’s plans for dealing with it.

  The report is critical because – among other things – two weeks ago, at his July 27 press conference, Powell said the Fed would slow the pace of hikes at some point… but he also made clear that the central bank thinks the labor market remains strong and that is offsetting the slowdown in demand. Friday’s nonfarms payrolls data bore that out in a stunning way, with the US economy creating far more jobs than any of the 71 economists in Bloomberg’s survey expected (granted, the Household survey painted an entirely different picture but we’ll cross that bridge in time). For all intents and purposes, the market saw the number as super hawkish, and while Fed funds were pricing in a 36% chance of a 75-bp September hike before payrolls, they’re now looking at a 74% probability.

  There were more pre-CPI signals in the bond market on Tuesday, when the stellar three-year Treasury bond auction proved that if there are any jitters about another big upside surprise, the bond market doesn’t see it. As Bloomberg’s Alyce Andres pointed out, the short end is acutely sensitive to expectations for both rates and inflation, so were traders worried about a surprise on Wednesday, the sale could have struggled. In the event, the auction went fine, and some traders were seen setting themselves up for a downside inflation surprise. Finally, as we noted earlier, the curve bear flattened even more – as it has been doing since the nonfarm payrolls data on Friday – and the 2s10s curve is set a new multi-decade low. That suggests that investors are bracing for more hawkishness from the Fed, as inflation remains stubborn and the labor-market tight, “and that the the market thinks the space for then avoiding a recession is getting narrower and narrower.”

  

  So what does the market expect?

  Consensus expects that headline CPI will rise just 0.2% in July, far below the previous month’s 1.3% increase, largely on the back of a sharp drop in energy prices. Core CPI is expected to rise by a brisker 0.5%, still down from last month’s 0.7%.

  The YoY headline is expected to print 8.7%, also down from the 9.1% last month, while Core CPI will rise 6.1% compared to a year ago, an increase vs the 5.9% Y/Y rise in June. Goldman economists are looking for a slightly higher headline YoY CPI of +8.83% and an in-line Core print of +6.09% (vs +6.1% consensus and +5.9% prior). On a monthly basis, Goldman expects a 0.48% increase in July core CPI, a hair below consensus expectations for a 0.5%. The bank also forecasts a 0.24% increase in headline CPI in July, a bit above consensus expectations for a 0.2% increase (and as noted above, corresponding to a 0.3% decline in the year-over-year rate to 8.83%).

  

  In its CPI preview note (available to pro subs along with a bunch of other pre-CPI reports) Goldman highlights three component-level trends for the July report.

  • First, the bank expects shelter inflation to remain elevated as the official shelter index continues to catch up to the price levels implied by alternative web-based measures of rent inflation (something we were warning about over a year ago).
    • Specifically, Goldman expects OER to increase by 0.6%, as the recent price increases for natural gas and other utilities which the BLS imputes and removes from OER likely lead it to increase by less than rent in July. Going forward, shelter inflation is expected to slow to a 0.4-0.5% monthly pace by year-end and peak at around 7% year-over-year later this year.

  

  • Second, Goldman expects the energy component of the CPI to decline by 3.2%, reflecting a sharp drop in gasoline prices in July.
    • Futures prices point to further declines ahead, suggesting that headline inflation will likely continue to moderate in the near term.
  • Third, the decline in fuel prices has likely contributed to lower airfares, and the bank expects the airfares component to decline by 7% in this week’s report.

  

  Elsewhere in the report, Goldman expects continued increases in auto prices (new +1.0%, used +0.5%, parts +0.8%). Additionally, retailers have noted that they anticipate cutting prices in coming months in order to reduce inventory stocks from elevated levels, and apparel prices are expected to shrink by 0.8%.

  Looking ahead, Goldman expect monthly core CPI inflation to remain in the 0.4-0.5% range for the next couple months before edging down to 0.3-0.4% by December 2022. The bank forecasts year-over-year core CPI inflation of 6.1% in December 2022, 2.7% in December 2023, and 2.8% in December 2024, with the bank’s forecast reflecting a negative swing in health insurance prices and a larger slowdown in goods than in services inflation next year.

  

  That said, even assuming sequential inflation growth slows to a trickle, the chart below from BofA shows how long it will take for inflation to normalize on an annual basis.

  

  In terms of the market reaction, Goldman’s John Flood writes today that “a softer than expected reading (anything better than prior of 9.1%) likely “stops in” more buyers. I think the print will have to be quite HOT (headline well above prior reading of 9.1%) to apply any real pressure to the tape, because sellers are hard to come by. I think this dynamic essentially rings true for remainder of August and then we can reevaluate post labor day. As painful as it is any headline reading that falls btwn soft and very hot (really anything lower than 9.5%?) keeps current trend of choppy and higher going (as corporates and quants continue to methodically buy).“

  In other words, while a CPI miss is likely – especially at the headline level – and it will push risk assets even higher, this is the worst possible outcome for the Fed which will be left with only red-hot jobs as the only “real time data” preventing it from pivoting, and why the next time we get a big NFP miss, stocks will hit escape velocity.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 21:49

• The Chickens Of 'Woke' Are Coming Home To Roost On Business Heads
  The Chickens Of ‘Woke’ Are Coming Home To Roost On Business Heads

  Authored by Scott Shepard via RealClearMarkets.com,

  The chickens of wokeness are coming home to roost on the heads of the business leaders who have done so much to unleash this plague upon us.

  

  There’s a better, and less cliché-ridden, way to frame that…

  Have you seen A Man For All Seasons? If you haven’t, you should. If you have, you’ll remember one of the single greatest scenes in all of film. Sir Thomas More – the one Henry VIII had beheaded because he wouldn’t agree that Henry could head an independent English church – is visited in his home by Richard Rich, who asks him for a job. More roundly refuses, after which Rich slinks away, having made it clear to all that he intends to get revenge on More for this rejection. More’s family can’t believe that he had allowed Rich to leave. They break into horrified cries, demanding that More, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, arrest Rich. More refuses, explaining that he can’t arrest even the devil until he’s broken the law.

  His son-in-law, William Roper, then bellows: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

  More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

  Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”

  More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’ sake!”

  The woke leaders of America’s businesses would have done well to screen that wonderful movie some years ago, and to have thought deeply. And maybe also to have read any of the many, many versions of Doctor Faustus, one of the upshots of which is “when you sign a contract with the devil, make sure to read the fine print, and to expect trickery.”

  This, of course, is exactly what these leaders did when they signed themselves and their businesses up in support of the leftwing suite of policy prescriptions that goes by the shorthand “woke.” They were convinced, or convinced themselves, or pretended to believe, that signing up with the hard left constituted a fight against the devil – a fight against inequality and racism and meanness and climate change, and in favor of harmony and happiness and puppy dogs and joy, and always summertime but never August.

  In fact, of course, they were signing up with the devil (metaphorically, of course, faux factcheckers. Put away your po-faces.). As Thomas More knew, and all of the Doctor Fausti learned (but Doctor Fauci still resolutely refuses to admit), the devil gets you to do all his dirty work for him, and then he turns ‘round on you. Then woe betide.

  Thus has it proceeded. The fight against inequality became the fight for equity-based discrimination in order to achieve an enervatingly socialist equality of outcome. Reasonable concern about climate change became economy-destroying climate-catastrophism. Worries about high levels of imprisonment became city-destroying legalization of crime and criminalization of police. And once all that had happened, with these business leaders’ enthusiastic support, the devil turned ‘round on them. Consider some recent examples.

  Perhaps most trenchantly, Bloomberg of all places recently reported that many ESG funds have been forced to close for poor performance and rapidly eroding investor interest. This is hardly surprising. Many ESG funds have been and are fee-generating frauds; they built their supposed alpha simply by stocking up on tech and underweighting energy when tech was soaring and energy was stuck. When those trends reversed, these funds sunk, and their higher fees became wholly unjustifiable.

  With regard to the real ESG funds – the ones that really do invest in companies that actually implement the chief E purpose of political-schedule decarbonization and the S goal of equity-based discrimination: companies that cut themselves off from reliable energy while embracing race and sex discrimination to achieve socialism are never going to be more profitable in the long run than sane companies. These ESG funds require for their survival investors who are sufficiently committed to those woke goals that they’re willing to take relative losses to support companies that embrace them. In flush times, there may be quite a few of those. In increasingly tight times, there are far fewer, as ESG-fund managers are discovering. The obviously absurd magic formulae that they intoned have brought forth monsters – and the tough times have come because of government policies that also follow the woke line. The devil’s turned ‘round on them.

  Then there are the anecdotal and illustrative developments, such as at Starbucks and the NCAA. Both of these businesses have eaten the whole woke sandwich. Starbucks famously thought that its blue haired baristas were the right people to teach America about race – meaning being avatar instructors of the Kendi-style notions that all white people, and only white people, are immutably racist, and that everything connected with whiteness is evil. The NCAA similarly has happily set about demolishing the very college women’s sports that it is bound to support and protect, allowing young men whose bodies were formed by years of testosterone to declare themselves women and then to romp through the women’s sports – destroying the competitiveness and the dreams of collegiate glory of the genuine women over whom they towered and against whom they so unfairly competed.

  Neither Starbucks not the NCAA appear to have read the fine print in their contracts with the devil: if you sign up for woke, you’ll disarm yourselves from fighting any of the woke program – just as Sir Thomas warned when Roper demanded he cut down all the laws in England. When Starbucks’ repeat and current CEO Howard Schultz adopted the leftwing line about racism, he thereby signed up too for the corollary position that racial inequality in outcome in arrests and jailing were per se racist, regardless of the behaviors of specific people, so that if non-whites were being arrested and jailed at higher rates than whites, policing would have to be abolished. Likewise he failed to realize that his grandstanding about equity included an endorsement of equity-based equality of outcome, and so empowered unionization efforts, including specifically at Starbucks.

  Now, when Starbucks finds itself shutting an initial 16 stores (with more surely to come) in cities like San Francisco and Portland that followed most closely the prescriptions indicated by Schultz’s evangelizing for the devil of woke, he responds with indignation, bemoaning that those cities have become unsafe and that unionization is bad in the long run for both Starbucks and its employees. He’s right, but he of all people will not be heard to mouth these complaints. He was himself a chief lumberjack cutting down the laws, basic economic knowledge and profound underlying moral premises that protected him and Starbucks from what’s befallen them. The devil’s turned ‘round on him. Whom can he ask for help, or to mourn? And note that even at this late remove, Schultz still can’t admit the obvious: that it was the very principles that he so preeningly embraced that have led to all of these problems. After all, once you sell your soul to the devil, he’s hardly going to let you denounce him.

  The case is the same with the NCAA. It too went all in on equity and on the other provisions of modern leftist confusion, including allowing people who were born and constructed as men to dominate women’s sports, rolling back 40 years of progress. How then could it effectively complain when the United States Supreme Court declared that student athletes should be able to earn some money for their efforts, instead of doing all their hard work for the benefit of wealthy schools and a massively profitable NCAA itself? That is hardly an equitable outcome – especially considering the relative racial makeup of the parties concerned. And just as with Starbucks, the NCAA now faces a unionization crisis, as Penn State’s football team leads what will likely be a broad, if perhaps uneven, movement toward student-athlete unionization. That’s just equity at work, right, NCAA? Devil’s turned right ‘round, folks. (Or, since it’s the NCAA, surely folx.)

  Then consider the raft of federal and state legislative proposals that seek to stop the mass resale of stolen goods. The same companies that were happy to sign onto equity proposals that make cities unsafe for their citizens want a special carveout – an additional deal with the devil – to stop their establishments from being burgled while leaving their customers to get robbed on the way home. It’s a special kind of evil – and stupid – that, when the devil turns ‘round on you, you gleefully link arms with him, continuing to do his bidding as long as he leaves you alone for just a little bit longer.

  Additionally, and to keep today’s theme alive, there are the ever-growing pile of stories about companies that are reaping what they have sown not in terms of their own stupid policies being visited against them, but rather in the sense of, as it were, “the wages of sin.” Consider how much, for instance, Warner Bros. Discovery is paying for its and DC Comics’ embrace of woke: the most recent movie in that franchise is so bad that, despite having spent at least $70 million ($90?) on it already, Warner’s new boss David Zaslav is sending it to a cave in the desert southwest somewhere to lie forever unseen. The official story is that it’s so unwatchably bad that it can’t be fixed, but that’s true of quite a lot of modern fare that gets released. The likelier story appears to be that the movie was unfixably the final move toward making the DC Comics movie realm wholly women-powered, with dirty evil toxic men like Batman and Superman killed off forever. Vast piles of recent and not-so-recent market data suggest that the teenaged boys who are the only plausible mass audience for superhero movies (well, them and all the guys who can’t quite figure out adulting) don’t much care to watch endless female-empowerment screeds that treat guys as evil or irrelevant. Go figure.

  Finally, just because it’s so funny: the women of The View invited Governor Ron DeSantis to join them on their program. That’s weird, because within the recent memory even of Joy Behar they have, amongst other things, called him “a negligent, homicidal sociopath,” a “fascist and a bigot,” and “anti-black” and “anti-gay.” He naturally declined this offer to be spat upon, but not because they lied about him viciously. Rather, he refused because no one cares about ABC (or CNN or MSNBC or the rest) anymore. They’ve destroyed their credibility, their respectability, and any conceivable reason to go on their programs. Good job, ladies.

  It’s been a bad month for the Ropers of this world, now they’ve voluntarily flattened all their defenses, coast to coast. Maybe its time for them to start planting some trees and reseeding the forests that used to protect them from the devil. They can’t do that, though, until they acknowledge who the devil is and how they have helped him so much in recent years. Otherwise, he’s just going to keep knocking them flat.

  *  *  *

  Scott Shepard is a fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and Director of its Free Enterprise Project.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 21:25

• 10 Foot Tall SpaceX "Space Junk" Crashes To Earth, Lands On Australian Sheep Farm
  10 Foot Tall SpaceX “Space Junk” Crashes To Earth, Lands On Australian Sheep Farm

  It was just another boring old day on an Australian Sheep Farm…

  That is, until three “large chunks of space debris” that are being attributed to SpaceX, crashed landed from the sky, according to the Australian Space Agency. 

  The “junk” was found embedded in farmlands in New South Wales, according to Live Science. It came from “part of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that likely reentered the Earth’s atmosphere on July 9”, according to the report. 

  On the day of the re-entry, locals said they saw a “blazing light arc” and heard a sonic boom. 

  Among the debris was a 10 foot tall spike that had been charred black from re-entry. It was found by sheep farmer Mick Miners on his farm south of Jindabyne. His neighbor, Jock Wallace, also discovered pieces nearby on his farm. 

  

  Wallace was told by Australian authorities to contact NASA. “I’m a farmer from Dalgety, what am I going to say to NASA?” he said to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation News. 

  The Crew Dragon had been launched in November 2020 with the plan of taking four NASA astronauts on a round trip to the International Space Station. 

  The debris is “from the unpressurized trunk of the Crew Dragon,” according to experts. 

  The trunk was stocked with solar panels and “was intentionally jettisoned upon reentry to make the Crew Dragon’s return to Earth easier”. However, the report notes that “engineers planned for it to hit the ocean, not a farm.”

  “I think it’s a concern it’s just fallen out of the sky. If it landed on your house it would make a hell of a mess,” Wallace concluded. 

  It marks the largest recorded piece of space junk to land in Australia since 1979.  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 21:05

• 4 Guatemalans Indicted For Human Smuggling, Dumping Body In Texas
  4 Guatemalans Indicted For Human Smuggling, Dumping Body In Texas

  Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Four Guatemalan nationals have been charged with conspiring with others to smuggle “large numbers” of illegal aliens into the United States, including one woman who died during the journey and was dumped on the side of a road.

  

  Felipe Diego Alonzo, 38; Nesly Norberto Martinez Gomez, 37; Lopez Mateo Mateo, 42; and Juan Gutierrez Castro, 45, were apprehended in Guatemala on Aug. 2 and extradited to the United States at the request of U.S. officials, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Fifteen other individuals were also arrested during the multi-city sweep.

  “As a result of the search warrants, law enforcement recovered 10 high valued motor vehicles, firearms, and cash,” the DOJ stated.

  On top of the “prolific smuggling” of illegal aliens from Guatemala through Mexico and into the United States, the defendants are being charged in relation to a woman’s death.

  In early April, the defendants allegedly agreed to smuggle a Guatemalan woman from Quiche, Guatemala, to the United States for almost $10,000, according to the indictment.

  The woman died after spending several days trekking through the desert near Odessa, Texas, according to court documents. Odessa is about 200 miles from the U.S.–Mexico border.

  The defendants, along with their co-conspirators, “arranged for the body of [the woman] to be moved from an alien stash house and dumped on the side of a roadway” in Crane County, Texas, the indictment alleges.

  The defendants then tried to pay off the woman’s family, according to the DOJ.

  The charges against the four include conspiracy to bring an alien to the United States resulting in death, bringing an alien to the United States resulting in death, conspiracy to bring an alien to the United States for financial gain, and conspiracy to encourage and induce an alien to come to the United States for financial gain.

  “Transnational criminal organizations continue to recklessly endanger the lives of individuals they smuggle for their own financial gain with no regard for human life,” said Customs and Border Protection Deputy Commissioner Troy Miller in a statement.

  Recently, several men were charged after the deaths of 53 illegal aliens in the back of a sweltering semi-trailer near San Antonio.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 20:45

• Worried About Curve Inversion? There's More To Come
  Worried About Curve Inversion? There’s More To Come

  by Ven Ram, cross-aset strategist for Bloomberg’s Markets Live

  The inversion in a key segment of the US yield curve may deepen to levels not seen since the 1980s as competing concerns about higher policy rates and their economic impact play out in the markets.

  Ten-year Treasuries now offer a yield of around 2.78%, compared with about 3.28% on two-year maturities, leading to a differential of minus 50 basis points. That spread may invert further to minus 65 basis points, and beyond, in the coming months as front-end bonds sell off more than longer maturities.

  

  Employers stunned economists by adding more than half a million jobs in July. That print is likely to add to the Fed’s conviction about the economy’s resilience. Chair Jerome Powell remarked before the report that the “strong labor market makes us question the GDP data” that pointed to a recession.

  Should that momentum in the economy continue to hold and inflation not abate as much as the markets are factoring in, the Fed is likely to take its policy rate into restrictive territory. Given that we haven’t even reached the neutral rate yet, a restrictive rate would be somewhere north of 3.50%.

  The Fed’s dot plot in June showed the median year-end rate at 3.40% and at 3.80% for 2023. St. Louis President James Bullard, an influential voice on the Fed, has argued for front-loading the rate hikes to this year, meaning we could end 2022 at 3.75%-4% if inflation proves sticky.

  Should that be the case, two-year yields could go well beyond this year’s peak of around 3.45%.

  However, any increase in 10-year yields is likely to lag those at the front end, spurring a deeper inversion in the yield curve. While the economy has proved resilient so far, market skepticism will remain, acting to temper any increase in long-dated yields.

  Indeed, the 10-year maturity is now trading at a premium of almost 68 basis points over its implied value of 3.4792% based on realized inflation and the Fed’s benchmark rate. While the 10-year yield may climb in sympathy with a higher Fed funds rate, I expect the security to still trade at a premium.

  Those factors will mean that the spread between 10- and two-year yields may become the most inverted since the early 1980s, when then Chair Paul Volcker was wrestling with mammoth inflation by raising rates successively.

  While a search for duration would have proved to be a failure earlier in the current cycle, now may be the time to get set for a meaningful quest.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 20:25

• Judge Who Signed Mar-A-Lago Search Warrant Exposed As Associate of Jeffrey Epstein
  Judge Who Signed Mar-A-Lago Search Warrant Exposed As Associate of Jeffrey Epstein

  By BlueApples

  If there were any question as to whether or not the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence was rife with corruption, details from the search warrant authorizing it should clear any doubt. Although information is sparse given that the warrant remains under seal, one piece of information that couldn’t be kept confidential sheds new light on the motives behind the raid.

  The judge who signed off on the search warrant was Bruce E. Reinhart, United States Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of Florida. Before assuming his office as a federal judge, Reinhart was an attorney who represented associates of Jeffrey Epstein implicated in his human trafficking conspiracy, namely; Sarah Kellen and Nadia Marcinkova. 

  Kellen worked for Epstein as his scheduler for years and was referenced in deposition testimony given during the defamation case between Virginia Guiffre and Ghislaine Maxwell. Marcinkova was a more prominent member of Epstein’s entourage as she served as one of the pilots of his infamous aircraft dubbed “The Lolita Express.”

  Reinhart assumed his role as Kellen and Marcinkova’s attorney once he set up a criminal defense firm after resigning from his post as a senior prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida as it was negotiating a non-prosecution agreement for Epstein. Reinhart would officially begin his legal representation of Epstein’s accomplices within days of leaving his position as a senior prosecutor within the district.

  

  While Reinhart’s association with Epstein hadn’t resurfaced until his was thrust back into the spotlight as the Federal Magistrate who authorized the search warrant for the Mar-A-Lago raid, it was a matter of considerable controversy in the wake of his resignation in 2007. In 2013, the US Attorneys states that “while Bruce E. Reinhart was an assistant U.S. attorney, he learned confidential, non-public information about the Epstein matter.’’ in response to his claims against any impropriety. Reinhart’s rejection of any wrongdoing on his part was made in a 2011 affidavit as part of a civil court case filed by two of Epstein’s victims in 2008 which named Former Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta along with two other federal prosecutors, one of whom was Reinhart.

  Reinhart’s representation of Marcinkova best conveys his ties to the human trafficking enterprise that Epstein and his network assembled. Marcinkova is presently the Founder and CEO of Aviloop. The company’s website states that it harnesses Marcinkova’s experience as a pilot for the consulting firm’s focus on companies based in the aviation industry. Marketing, social media services, and event management are listed among the services which are offered. As is an explicit mission to “help employers diversify their crews.”

  While the Aviloop website is rather innocuous, other than the fact that it is operated by an associate of Jeffrey Epstein’s, its YouTube Channel portrays a different image. The YouTube channel is sparse, containing only 4 videos, each of which were posted 8 years ago from the date of this article and only has 34 subscribers. Yet, the content of the videos is suspicious even with the low volume made available. Each video is a brief, 40 second or so monologue from a young woman dressed in a suggestive, pilot-themed outfit. Their sultry voices attempt to entice potential customers into a membership with Aviloop whether they are looking for deals on pilot training courses, aviation services or simply want to “see more girls like me.” Oddly enough, memberships with Aviloop are completely free according to the promotional video.

  No direct contact information for Aviloop is disclosed on the company’s website. However, the website of Aviloop’s sister company, Aviatri, listed a phone number. However, upon this being brought to light in an investigative report of mine which Marcinkova and Mark Esptein became aware of, the phone number was removed from the site.

  Within days the Aviatri site was listed as “under construction,” though a simple redirect to the URL of its homepage showed it was still operational. When this was brought to Marcinkova’s attention by me, she removed the site all but entirely, only leaving its placeholder page in its place. The physical address mentioned on the Aviloop website belonged to a building managed by Ossa Properties, a property management company owned by Jeffrey’s brother Mark Epstein

  

  The automated voicemail for Aviatri states that callers have reached actually reached Aviloop. Delineating between the 2 businesses is difficult as Aviatri does not appear to be incorporated with the New York Department of State’s Division of Corporations like Aviloop is. Aviatri extends the mission of Aviloop to aspiring female pilots directly by acting as a recruiting agency for them. The agency’s website states that it offers online courses, flight training, and financing to aspiring female pilots.
   
  Marcinkova’s other business, Global Girl, LLC, had its incorporation with the New York Department of State’s Division of Corporations completed in 2005, years preceding Aviloop’s establishment at a time when Marcinkova was in the midst of her association with Epstein. Unlike Aviloop, Global Girl does not appear to currently maintain a website. Its social media channels have all been deactivated as well. A vague reference to Global Girl is mentioned on Marcinkova’s personal website before listing herself as a pilot, fashion model, and the CEO of Aviloop. As such, it is unclear if the company is still operating or even what the basis of its operations entail. The business entity’s filing with the New York Department of State  was sent to Adam B. Kaufman & Associates, PPLC at 585 Stewart Avenue in Garden City, NY. Kaufman & Associated  has not responded to a message regarding an inquiry into the businesses current operational status or a means by which to contact Ms. Marcinkova.

  What is known about Marcinkova is how deeply enmeshed she was with Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the crimes they committed. Consequently, Reinhart was likely well-aware of those crimes given his representation of Marcinkova and Kellen on top of his position as a federal prosecutor in the district which tendered Epstein with a non-prosecution agreement. While his decision to leave the office could have been construed as a rejection of its decision to sweep Epstein’s crimes under the rug, his position as Marcinkova’s attorney shows that he was likely more concerned with maximizing his benefit in committing the cover up.

  If Reinhart’s association with the likes of Marcinkova and Kellen reveals anything, it is that the inner machinations of Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking network live on, even if he does not. The permutations of insulating those involved with Epstein have resulted in the very people who enabled, if not outright participated in his crimes, be rewarded for their efforts by being placed in the highest echelons of federal government. The exposure of that fact should shake those institutions to their core. This is a daunting reality that those who would be brought down with the ship know all too well. The mere premise of that foreboding future is enough to explain why the Southern District of Florida has removed any contact information for Reinhart entirely from his website – an act which serves as a tacit admission of the blatant corruption behind the search warrant he signed off on.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 20:00

• EU Submits Final Text of Iran Deal: "Five Minutes From Finish Line"
  EU Submits Final Text of Iran Deal: “Five Minutes From Finish Line”

  European Union efforts to salvage a rebooted Iran nuclear deal appear to have produced a “final text” which is described as tackling all remaining issues. The Vienna talks are now being declared definitively over. 

  “After 16 months of torturous on-and-off indirect negotiations to restore the deal, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell suggested there was no more room for negotiation on the draft now on the table,” the Associated Press writes of the fresh announcement.

  

  Yet a final decision for sign-off and implementation of a restored JCPOA remains in both Washington and Tehran’s hands, with the Islamic Republic long blaming the United States for stalling and seeking to sabotage a finalized deal. 

  “What can be negotiated has been negotiated, and it’s now in a final text,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell announced on Twitter. “However, behind every technical issue and every paragraph lies a political decision that needs to be taken in the capitals.”

  Borrell has in the last weeks been traveling between capitals, including Tehran, in hopes of salvaging negotiations and a finalized draft deal. For Iran, the chief priority remains getting an inquiry on uranium particles found at undisclosed sites resolved in its favor. 

  The Wall Street Journal detailed at the start of this week, “However, Iran came into last week’s talks insisting that the U.N. atomic agency’s three-year probe into undeclared nuclear material found in the country must be closed down if the nuclear deal is revived.”

  The report noted further that “Several Western diplomats said Sunday that Tehran has doubled down on this condition in the past few days of talks and there is no agreement on the issue.” Israel has been the most outspoken country, though not a signatory to the JCPOA or part of the Vienna process, charging that Tehran is pursing a nuclear bomb. Israeli leaders have long been lobbying the Biden administration to reject a restored JCPOA, seeing it as Iranian cover for a hidden nuclear weapons program, a charge which Iran’s leaders have denied.

  Meanwhile, Russian envoy Mikhail Ulyanov briefed reporters, saying optimistically that “we stand five minutes or five seconds from the finish line.” But it will be interesting to see where the White House officially stands during press briefings and follow-up statements in the coming days.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 19:45

• "The FBI Is Corrupt": Mark Levin Goes Nuclear Over Trump Raid, Slams 'Silent' GOP Leadership
  “The FBI Is Corrupt”: Mark Levin Goes Nuclear Over Trump Raid, Slams ‘Silent’ GOP Leadership

  Fox News host Mark Levin went nuclear on Monday night in response to the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday, reportedly in connection with documents that the former president took home after leaving office in 2021.

  

  “This was well orchestrated, so this has been going on for weeks,” Levin told host Sean Hannity. “Now, you keep asking your guests, what’s the justification? There is no justification. What’s he going to say tomorrow, the attorney general? Here’s my guess: ‘We’ve been negotiating with Trump and his lawyers since February when we found out they had this information. We were getting nowhere, and then we know or we heard that some documents were being destroyed.”

  Levin also noted that photos shared by New York Times columnist Maggie Haberman purporting to show official documents with Trump’s handwriting on them in White House toilets.

  (Except… it isn’t Trump’s handwriting)

  Is there a Toiletgate stenographer out there who’d like to explain this?

  h/t @Titania977 pic.twitter.com/EjJwgz2Gho

  — Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) August 8, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js“There is no justification for sending 30 friggin’ FBI agents to the former president’s compound in Mar-a-Lago in early morning and conducting themselves this way or in any other cases in which they’ve done exactly the same thing,” Levin continued, adding “The FBI is corrupt.“

  Levin called it “the worst attack on this republic in modern history,” before slamming GOP leadership. (h/t Mediaite)

  “This is the worst attack on this republic in modern history. Period,” he said. “And it’s not just an attack on Donald Trump. It’s an attack on everybody who supports him. It’s an attack on anybody who dares to raise serious questions about Washington, D.C., and the establishment in both parties. I haven’t heard a damn thing from the Republican leadership in the Senate! Have you? Not one of those guys has put out a statement. Because they’re weak. That’s why.”

  The Great One Mark Levin goes SCORCHED EARTH over FBI Raid of Trump: “This is the worst attack on this Republic in Modern History” 🔥 pic.twitter.com/aR0bd2UfGg

  — Benny Johnson 🍊 (@bennyjohnson) August 9, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 19:33

• The Guardian Accuses Republicans Of 'Weaponising' Trump-Raid
  The Guardian Accuses Republicans Of ‘Weaponising’ Trump-Raid

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  Following the news of the FBI raiding President Trump’s home, The Guardian suggested that REPUBLICANS are ‘weaponising’ the situation to make unfounded claims of a deep state and a politicised justice department.

  

  The leftist newspaper’s headline reads Republicans dust off familiar playbook to weaponise Mar-a-Lago FBI search, with a sub headline of GOP accusations of ‘deep state’ and politicization of justice department likely to foment an intense backlash.

  

  So the FBI, under Democrat guidance, break into a former President’s home and ransack through his belongings and it’s somehow the GOP that is responsible for the ‘weaponising’.

  Remarkable.

  The article quotes several Democrats waxing about how ‘justice is being served’, and then claims that Republicans are engaging in “florid rhetoric” that will “enflame America’s political divisions” and encourage Trump supporters to further point to a “deep state conspiracy”.

  Armed federal agents in the dead of night cracking open a former President’s safe in an attempt to steal documents. Nothing Deep Statey or conspiracy like about that is there.

  The piece concludes by quoting ‘never Trumper’ Joe Walsh who tweeted “The Republican Party has abandoned the rule of law. Just listen to them tonight. They’re at war with the rule of law.”

  Who is at war with the rule of law?

  As several Trump allies noted, the rule of law seems to be AWOL when it concerns Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden:

  Executing a warrant against ex-POTUS is dangerous. The apparent political weaponization of DOJ/FBI is shameful. AG must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended w/ this raid. I served on Benghazi Com where we proved Hilliary possessed classified info. We didn’t raid her home

  — Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) August 9, 2022

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  The FBI raid on former President Trump’s home is unprecedented and highly concerning. If the FBI is looking for classified info or incriminating evidence, they should start with Hunter Biden’s laptop. #Demdoublestandard

  — Rep. Barry Loudermilk (@RepLoudermilk) August 9, 2022

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  Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Countless times we have examples of Democrats flouting the law and abusing power with no recourse, including Hunter Biden. Democrats continually weaponize the bureaucracy against Republicans. This raid is outrageous.

  — Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) August 9, 2022

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  The shocking raid of Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, stands in stark contrast to the many Trump opponents that the FBI has not raided despite public evidence of alleged misconduct. @joelpollak’s latest: https://t.co/jpgMipncyo

  — Wendell Husebø (@WendellHusebo) August 9, 2022

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  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch.  We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 19:25

• Australia's Central Bank Working With BIS To Launch Digital Currency System
  Australia’s Central Bank Working With BIS To Launch Digital Currency System

  Australia’s Reserve Bank is launching a pilot program over the course of the next year in collaboration with the Bank for International Settlements (the central bank of central banks) to test the “benefits” of a blockchain ledger based digital currency system.  The central bank is added to a long list of participants in BIS efforts to introduce CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) with the target goal of launching them globally by 2025-2030.

  It’s important to note that substantial economic changes would have to occur within the next few years in order to make CBDC a viable option for the general public.  Though many people use electronic transactions as a matter of convenience, a large portion of the population still prefers cash.  In the US, surveys within the last few years show that at least 37% of Americans still choose cash over other methods of payment like credit and debit cards.  In Australia, the number stands at around 32%.  

  The usage of digital payment systems also does not necessarily denote a societal shift away from the idea of cash, it only shows a preference for convenience.  People still like to know that cash exists as an option if they need it or want it, but central banks are working diligently to remove physical cash as a choice within the next 8 years.  

  CBDCs, much like all blockchain based currency mechanisms, are inherently devoid of privacy.  By it’s very design, blockchain tech requires a ledger of transactions than can be tracked by governments if they so choose.  Physical cash, though fiat in nature, is at least anonymous.

   

  With the advent of widespread CBDCs the very notion of privacy in trade would utterly disappear from society within a generation.  Not only that, but if these currencies are tied into a social credit system like the one used in communist China, then there is a good chance governments will be able to freeze accounts or even erase your savings at the push of a button.  And, without physical cash there would be no recourse for trade.  A person deemed “problematic” could be locked out of the economy on a whim.    

  The fact that the BIS is so heavily involved in national digital currency programs suggests that the ultimate goal of CBDCs will be an eventual global digital currency – A one world currency mechanism that all other digital currencies are eventually absorbed into.   This collaboration extends to the IMF and World Bank as well. 

  With so many physical currencies in use around the world and at least 30% of each western nation preferring cash, there is little chance that central banks will be able to force the issue of CBDCs unless there is an economic downturn or crash that inspires a public outcry for alternatives to existing currencies.  Meaning, banking elites will need a crisis that damages the very buying power of multiple currency systems in order to get people accept an aggressive shift to a cashless society before 2030.

  The pitfalls of such a framework are many and the potential for abuse goes far beyond the idea of fiat printing.  CBDCs would give banks and governments ultimate power of influence over the populace, inspiring fear in individuals as they consider the threat that their access to the economy could be severed at any moment should they say or do anything in defiance of the authorities.

  Banks and politicians will try to sell CBDCs as the pinnacle of convenience and a necessary transition in order to stabilize the economy.  What they will not mention is the pervasive level of control they will gain in the process.    

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 19:05

• Republicans Say Americans Will 'Fire The Democratic Majority' In Midterms For Passing Reconciliation Bill
  Republicans Say Americans Will ‘Fire The Democratic Majority’ In Midterms For Passing Reconciliation Bill

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Senate Republicans lambasted their Democrat colleagues for passing a $740 billion health care and climate spending bill, warning the economic package will not help the sagging U.S. economy.

  “Democrats under Joe Biden have spent trillions, creating the worst inflation in over four decades, and now their answer to this disaster of their own making is to tax us into a recession,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement after voting against what he called a “radical proposal.”

  

  Inhofe said it is not right to tackle the spiraling inflation by raising “taxes on small business and middle-class Americans,” as well as spending money on the “Green New Deal” agenda.

  “This proposal could put more than 100,000 American jobs at risk and inflict a severely disproportionate economic impact on natural gas producing states, like Oklahoma,” Inhofe said.

  

  On Aug. 7, the Senate passed the economic package, officially known as the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022,” by a party-line vote of 51 to 50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. Senate Democrats were able to get the legislation passed without any Republican support by resorting to a reconciliation process, which allows budget-related bills to pass on a simple majority and avoids the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

  Before the final passage of the bill, Democrats rejected more than 30 Republican amendments, points of order, and motions during a “vote-a-rama,” a procedure that is part of the reconciliation process when senators can introduce an unlimited number of amendments to budget-related measures.

  Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a U.S. advocacy group, said the Senate bill “will drive up the cost of household energy bills,” according to a commentary published on Aug. 7. It pointed to a provision to levy a 16.4 cents-per-barrel tax on crude oil and imported petroleum products, a cost the group said will be “passed on to consumers in the forms of higher gas prices.”

  The bill is now being sent to the House for a vote, likely on Aug. 12, when House lawmakers reconvene briefly from summer recess. President Joe Biden has issued a statement urging the House to pass it “as soon as possible” and he looked forward to signing the bill into law.

  American Rescue Plan

  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, both reminded Americans where the U.S. economy is now, after Biden signed into the law the “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021” in March last year.

  “My Democratic colleagues who are assuring you this bill [Inflation Reduction Act of 2022] will help you are the same people who said that in 2021,” Graham stated according to a statement from his office.

  “The American Rescue Plan–a $1.9 trillion tax and spend proposal passed in 2021–was disaster for the American people,” Graham continued. “At the time of its passage, inflation was 2.6 percent. It is now 9.1 percent. And it’s no accident that the American Rescue Plan caused this problem.”

  

  On July 13, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the consumer price index (CPI) soared 9.1 percent from a year ago, reaching the highest level since November 1981.

  On a monthly basis, the CPI rose by 1.3 percent, higher than economists’ estimates of 1.1 percent. Food prices jumped by 10.4 percent, while energy prices surged 41.6 percent. Meanwhile, Americans’ real wages dropped 1 percent from May to June.

  “Republicans warned Democrats in 2021 that if you pass the massive tax and spend bill called the American Rescue Plan, you will not rescue America. You will create a recession,” Graham added. “Unfortunately, we were right then and we are right now.”

  “Where are we today?” Crapo asked in a statement, pointing to the state of the U.S. economy after the “American Rescue Plan” went into effect. “​​Gas prices have doubled. Economic stagnation.”

  Crapo added the “Inflation Reduction Act” was “mislabeled,” for it “does nothing to address the significant inflation we are facing, or to ease burdens born today by low- and middle-income Americans.”

  

  Graham and Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, both predicted a disaster for the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.

  “In November the American people will fire the Democratic majority who have created the chaos in their lives,” Graham said. “Every problem we had before the Inflation Reduction Act was introduced is only going to get worse because of the policies in this bill.”

  McDaniel said, “Democrats will pay the price in November for raising taxes on families during a recession.”

  ‘Wars’

  Some GOP senators suggested that their Democratic colleagues are waging “wars” with their massive spending bill.

  Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), ranking member of the Senate Energy Committee, pointed out how Democrats voted against “commonsense Republicans” amendments to the bill, such as banning strategic petroleum crude exports to China, and expediting consideration of permits for infrastructure and energy projects.

  “The Democrats’ war on American energy continued today,” Barrasso added. “These proposals would have unleashed American energy and lowered costs for families.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 18:45

• Taibbi: Welcome To The Third World
  Taibbi: Welcome To The Third World

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  

  [The Justice Department] must immediately explain the reason for its raid and it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives, or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation and legitimacy of January 6 investigations.

  — Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

  Headline from Politics Insider this morning:

  Feds likely obtained ‘pulverizing’ amount of evidence ahead of searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, legal experts say.

  Pulverizing! Hold that thought.

  We’ve reached the stage of American history where everything we see on the news must first be understood as political theater. In other words, the messaging layer of news now almost always dominates the factual narrative, with the latter often reported so unreliably as to be meaningless anyway. Yesterday’s sensational tale of the FBI raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of former president Donald Trump is no different.

  As of now, it’s impossible to say if Trump’s alleged offense was great, small, or in between. But this for sure is a huge story, and its hugeness extends in multiple directions, including the extraordinary political risk inherent in the decision to execute the raid. If it backfires, if underlying this action there isn’t a very substantial there there, the Biden administration just took the world’s most reputable police force and turned it into the American version of the Tonton Macoute on national television. We may be looking at simultaneously the dumbest and most inadvertently destructive political gambit in the recent history of this country.

  The top story today in the New York Times, bylined by its top White House reporter, speculates this is about “delayed returning” of “15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives.” If that’s true, and it’s not tied to January 6th or some other far more serious offense, then the Justice Department just committed institutional suicide and moved the country many steps closer to once far-out eventualities like national revolt or martial law. This is true no matter what you think of Trump. Despite the early reports of “cheers” in the West Wing, the mood in center-left media has already drifted markedly from the overnight celebration. The Times story today added a line missing from most early reports: “The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.” There are whispers throughout the business that editors are striking down certain jubilant language, and we can even see this playing out on cable, where the most craven of the networks’ on-air ex-spooks are crab-crawling backward from last night’s buzz-words:

  MSNBC’S Frank Figliuzzi says ‘FBI agents do not like the term “raid”‘. Moments later, MSNBC updates their lower third to “executes search warrant” pic.twitter.com/KHCXTzJf6p

  — Kayvon Afshari (@KayvonAfshari) August 9, 2022

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  The hugeness of the story has become part of its explanation. An action so extreme, we’re told by expert after expert, could only be based upon “pulverizing” evidence.

  Throughout the Trump years we’ve seen a numbing pattern of rhetorical slippage in coverage of investigations. The aforementioned Politics Insider story is no different. “Likely” evidence in the headline becomes more profound in the text. An amazing five bylined writers explain:

  Regardless of the raid’s focus legal experts quickly reached a consensus about it: A pile of evidence must have backed up the warrant authorizing the search.

  They then quoted a “former top official in the Justice Department’s National Security Division” — you’ll quickly lose track if you try to count the named and unnamed intel spooks appearing in coverage today — who said, “There’s every reason to think that there’s a plus factor in the quantum and quantity of evidence that the government already had to support probable cause in this case.”

  Politico insisted such an action must have required a magistrate’s assent “based upon evidence of a potential crime.” CNN wrote how authorities necessarily “had probable grounds to believe a crime had been committed,” while the New York Times formulation was that “the F.B.I. would have needed to convince a judge that it had probable cause that a crime had been committed.” Social media was full of credentialed observers explaining what must be true. “The affidavit in support of the MAL search warrant must be something else,” said Harvard-trained former Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Signorelli, one among a heap of hyperventilating names:

  

  It’s amazing how short our cultural memory has become. Apparently few remember all the other times this exact rhetoric was deployed in the interminable list of other Trump investigations, only to backfire later. Does anyone remember this doozy?

  TK News subscribers can read the rest here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 18:25

• Sen. Lindsey Graham: States Should Decide On Same-Sex Marriage
  Sen. Lindsey Graham: States Should Decide On Same-Sex Marriage

  Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Aug. 7 that states, not the federal government, should decide whether same-sex marriage should be legally recognized.

  

  Graham’s comments came during a panel discussion on CNN’s “State of the Union” after HR 8404, the proposed Respect for Marriage Act, passed the House of Representatives 267-157 on July 19 with the support of 47 Republicans. The bill is pending in the 50/50 Senate where it is expected to enjoy the support of Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Susan Collins (R-Maine.)

  Among the Republicans voting for the bill were House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Scott Perry (R-Penn.), who chairs the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Voting no were Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).

  Lindsey Graham on CNN says that “I think states should decide the issue of marriage,” but when Dana Bash asks him if states should also decide whether interracial marriage is legal, he dismisses the question as a distraction from inflation pic.twitter.com/L1rGv6ZGBi

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 7, 2022

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  The bill would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman and allowed states to refuse to accept same-sex marriages recognized under other states’ laws. After then-President Bill Clinton signed DOMA, about 40 states banned same-sex marriage. DOMA was found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), a ruling that held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license and recognize same-sex marriage.

  The new bill would also codify the Obergefell ruling.

  Respect for Marriage Act supporters say the bill is needed because the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision overturning 49-year-old abortion precedent Roe v. Wade potentially opened the door to the future reversal of Obergefell by the court.

  Although Graham said he did not believe the Supreme Court would actually reverse Obergefell, neither the court nor the federal government should be deciding the issue of same-sex marriage for the entire nation.

  “I’ve been consistent. I think states should decide the issue of marriage and states should decide the issue of abortion,” Graham told CNN.

  “I have respect for South Carolina. South Carolina voters here I trust to define marriage and to deal with [the] issue of abortion and not nine people on the court. That’s my view.”

  The proposed Respect for Marriage Act is a distraction from the problems Americans are really facing, Graham suggested.

  “We’re talking about things that don’t happen because you don’t want to talk about inflation, you don’t want to talk about crime,” Graham said, with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) at his side.

  Blumenthal said the Obergefell ruling must be codified because “there’s a real danger of it being overturned” by the high court.

  “This Supreme Court has indicated it has a hit list, beginning with marriage equality, contraception, possibly others as well, Loving v. Virginia,” the senator said.

  In Loving, the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that laws forbidding interracial marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

  In his concurring opinion (pdf) in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade, Justice Brett Kavanaugh specifically wrote that the Dobbs ruling “does not threaten or cast doubt” on Loving or Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 Supreme Court decision recognizing the right to use contraceptives.

  In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court, now that it has overturned Roe, should also reconsider its “demonstrably erroneous” rulings in cases such as Obergefell and Griswold. Thomas did not identify Loving as a precedent that should be overturned.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 18:05

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• Russia Suspends US Inspections Of Its Nuclear Arsenal Under New START Treaty
  Russia Suspends US Inspections Of Its Nuclear Arsenal Under New START Treaty

  While the world is creeping closer toward a DefCon 1 exchange with every passing day, should Russia launch tomorrow there will be no way of knowing just how many warheads and ICBMs Putin is letting loose (not that he needs all that many). The reason is because on Monday, Russia informed the US that it is temporarily suspending American inspections of its nuclear weapons sites under the 2010 Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START).

  “On August 8, 2022, the Russian Federation officially informed the United States via diplomatic channels that our country is temporarily exempting its facilities from inspection activities under the New START Treaty,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding it also covers “facilities that can be used for demonstrations under the treaty.”

  According to Anadolu, the statement stressed that the measures had a “temporary character” but everyone knows there is nothing more permanent in this world than a “temporary” government mandate.

  It added that the exemptions would be immediately canceled in case of a “resolution of the existing problems and issues regarding the resumption of inspection activities under the treaty.”

  The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, START I, was signed in 1991 between the US and the USSR at a time when there were many thousands of nuclear warheads and took effect in 1994.

  In 2010, former US President Barack Obama and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a successor agreement called New START which set a limit of no more than 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 missiles, including inspections to verify compliance with the deal.

  Days before it was set to expire on Feb. 5, 2021, the two countries agreed to extend it for another five years.

  Russia’s obfuscating move harkens to the depths of the cold war when every Russian nuclear move was shrouded in secrecy, and clearly what this means is that it’s time for a Spies like Us sequel.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 02:15

• France Looks To Keep Nuclear Power Plants Running Despite Heatwave
  France Looks To Keep Nuclear Power Plants Running Despite Heatwave

  By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

  

  French authorities have allowed five nuclear power plants in France to continue operations and discharge hot water in rivers even during another heatwave as the country looks to keep its electricity generation stable and conserve natural gas for the coming winter.

  Power giant EDF has warned that it might have to reduce nuclear power generation this summer because of environmental regulations as the water levels of rivers are low and water temperatures high. Water from rivers is typically used to cool reactors, while environmental regulations usually set limits on nuclear power output because hot water re-entering rivers could endanger the local flora and fauna.

  However, under exceptional circumstances this year, the French nuclear energy regulator, ASN, said on Monday that it is temporarily changing the rules on hot water discharge at the nuclear power plants Blayais, Bugey, Golfech, Saint-Alban, and Tricastin.

  The regulator thus prolonged the waivers for those plants, considering that the government has requested that nuclear power generation be maintained at as high levels as possible, in view of preserving gas and hydropower for the autumn and the winter, ASN said.

  France’s EDF has warned for weeks that nuclear power generation in France would be reduced as high temperatures of rivers Rhone and Garonne make them too hot to cool reactors.  

  France has had issues with its nuclear power generation this year, which has reduced the available electricity supply in France and Europe and sent French power prices for next year surging. Half of all reactors EDF is operating are currently offline for planned maintenance or repairs.

  France’s nuclear power generation accounts for around 70 percent of its electricity mix, and when its reactors are fully operational, it is a net exporter of electricity to other European countries. Prolonged maintenance at several nuclear reactors this year, however, means that France—and the rest of Europe—have less nuclear-generated power supply now.   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/09/2022 – 01:30

• Marko Kolanovic Says It's Time To Shift Away From Stocks To Commodities
  Marko Kolanovic Says It’s Time To Shift Away From Stocks To Commodities

  Heading into August, we had over 7 full months where every. single. week, JPM’s equivalent of Goldman’s Abby Joseph Cohen, the resident in-house permabull  (and one time value-added quant) Marko Kolanovic, would tell the bank’s sellside clients to just keep buying stocks no matter how much the market crashed the day, week or month before… or was about to crash. We even charted it two months ago, showing his weekly invocations to what was left of JPM clients with actual disposable income, to buy stocks.

  

  And yet, try as hard as he might to influence market sentiment – an ability he lost long ago when he traded in the bloomberg for the corner office – Marko’s weekly sermons from the latest market dip failed to have any impact. In fact, some joked that for stocks to turn higher, Marko would have to finally turn bearish.

  Kolanovic says go underweight corporate bonds over equities.

  The crash will not end until he turns bearish

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 11, 2022

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

  All joking aside though, stocks are finally screeching higher and – guess what – Marko, or mARKo as he is also known, has just turned ever so slightly bearish.

  In a note published on Monday, Kolanovic – while still a bull – has become less bullish writing that “given diminishing risks of a more negative shift in behaviour, low positioning in risky assets and widespread negativity in sentiment, as well as robust nominal GDP and revenue growth, risky assets have seen a recovery” and as a result “with commodities lagging other risky assets, we shift some of our risk allocation from equities to commodities.“

  As a result, the team’s overall overweight recommendation on risky assets stays the same. They also remain underweight fixed income and cash.

  

  As Bloomberg notes, “telling clients to cut back on stocks is a notable shift for Kolanovic, voted the No. 1 equity-linked strategist in last year’s Institutional Investor survey.” Well sure, just look at the top chart where every green arrow indicates a time when Marko said to buy, buy the dip, or buy the rip. Far from having any market timing skills, the Croatian’s strategy is to hope he is like the broken clock and be right at least twice in 2022… supposedly that will offset all those other times he was wrong.

  Then said, since Marko is if not genetically then certainly contractually incapable of being openly bearish, his gentle shift away from raging permabull, doesn’t mean that he expects stocks will actually fall. Far from it: the JPMorgan strategist – as always – sees equities rising through year-end, bolstered by robust corporate earnings. Yet with commodities weakening of late, the strategists view it as a chance to pounce. Oh and it’s really a CYA type of note, one where if stocks surge Marko can say “i told you so“, and if stocks plunge Marko can say “I told you to rotate out of stocks.” He’ll just never tell you when to sell ahead of the next bear market.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 23:00

• "We Can't Let Them Do This": Taibbi Talks With Russell Brand
  “We Can’t Let Them Do This”: Taibbi Talks With Russell Brand

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  Had a long, enjoyable discussion with the inestimable Russell Brand last week, part of which is shown in his free preview above. It’s been amazing to watch his show expand since we last spoke, a testament to many things I think, two in particular. He obviously has unique wit and enviable communications skills, which can take anyone far in a YouTube-driven media landscape, but his secret sauce is the easy, accepting vibe of his politics. When talking about issues he focuses on whether he finds humility, honesty, or joyfulness in the picture and celebrates accordingly, but if he finds nothing but meanness and narrowness, he just makes a note of it and moves on.

  The old, dead measuring sticks of left and right are mostly left behind, and you don’t miss them. The sheer cheerfulness of his show has made it difficult for critics to pigeonhole him as any kind of reactionary, and the ballooning growth of his following is an amusing poke in the eye of traditional media that still tries to corral audiences with fear and division, a strategy that’s not just wrong but has a built-in ceiling.

  We talk a little about censorship here, but the full discussion ranged all over. If and when that’s posted, I’ll let you know. You can find his podcast, Under My Skin, here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 22:30

• Dalio's US-China Conflict Gauge Is Off The Charts
  Dalio’s US-China Conflict Gauge Is Off The Charts

  By Ye Xie Bloomberg Markets Live commentator and reporter

  Ray Dalio’s take on US-China tensions over Taiwan contains some alarming warnings.

  While the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund wrote that an all-out war is still considered “improbable,” a gauge he uses to track the conflict between the two countries has surged to a record and is comparable to previous major wars. He warned that the tit-for-tat escalation could easily get out of control, as has often happened in history.

  As far as markets are concerned, the fallout from US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan appears to be more noise than signal. But for Bridgewater Associates’s Dalio, the “fourth Taiwan Straits crisis” is not something to be taken lightly, and the situation is “very similar” to the environment immediately prior to the two world wars.

  That’s the message from his gauge of US-China conflict, which is composed of indicators such as changes in military spending and the views of people in each country toward the other, according to an essay published Monday. The current reading is nearly 1.2 standard deviations above average, in the high end of the range of major conflicts.

  

  Dalio isn’t predicting that a war is inevitable. In fact, he thinks an all-out confrontation is unlikely, at least for now. Yet, the risk is an eye-for-an-eye escalation of tensions as we witnessed during the trade war in the Trump era.

  

  From Dalio:

  Pelosi’s visit was perceived by China as a move in favor of Taiwan’s independence, rather than toward one China with Taiwan part of China, and it is essentially challenging the US to stop it from doing what it is doing. The question is whether the US will respond with another escalation that will prompt another Chinese response, in the classic tit-for-tat acceleration into war, or if the sides will step back.

  Even though the US fighting to defend Taiwan would seem to be illogical, not fighting a Chinese attack on Taiwan might be perceived as being a big loss of stature and power over other countries that won’t support the US, if it doesn’t fight and win for its allies. Additionally, such defeats can make leaders look weak to their own people, which can cost them the political support they need to remain in power.

  An all-out confrontation between the two superpowers would have a much larger global impact than the Russia-Ukraine war. All we can do is hope it doesn’t come to that. Yet, as Dalio said, hope is not a strategy.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 22:02

• Cruz To 'Wait And See' Whether Trump Runs In 2024 Before Deciding On White House Bid
  Cruz To ‘Wait And See’ Whether Trump Runs In 2024 Before Deciding On White House Bid

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he, like everyone else, is going to “wait and see” whether former President Donald Trump is going to run in 2024, before making his own decision about a possible bid for the White House.

  “Everyone is going to wait and see what Donald Trump decides and make decisions from there,” Cruz told Fox News on Aug. 5 at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas.

  “I am grateful for his leadership,” Cruz continued. “He’s going to decide what he wants to do. And frankly, he’s going to decide on his own timeframe.”

  “He’s going to decide when he damn well wants to, and the rest of the world will react accordingly,” Cruz added.

  In 2016, Trump garnered 1,441 delegates in state primaries and caucuses, before being officially nominated as the Republican presidential candidate. Cruz finished second with 551 delegates.

  

  Trump has not made public announcements about running for president in 2024. However, during a speech at CPAC on Saturday, he hinted at a possible 2024 run when he said, “We may have to do it again.” Last month, he told New York Magazine that he has made up his mind about whether to run in 2024, but the “big decision” is when to make the announcement.

  The former president is currently the favorite for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. According to the results of a CPAC straw poll announced on Saturday, Trump won 69 percent of the vote, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with 24 percent. Cruz finished a distant third with 2 percent.

  In a head-to-head matchup for the 2024 race, President Joe Biden and Trump are locked in a “statistical dead heat,” according to a July poll by San Francisco-based data insights company Premise. The poll found Trump with 53 percent support compared to Biden with 47 percent.

  Cruz has previously said he was thinking about the 2024 race for president. In an interview with Newsmax in July, Cruz said he was “certainly looking at it.”

  “2016 was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life,” he continued, reflecting on his last presidential campaign. “We came incredibly close, had an incredible grassroots army.”

  Speaking to Fox, Cruz said he is focusing on the 2022 elections at the moment.

  “I’m spending practically every waking moment on the campaign trail, focusing on retaking the house and retaking the Senate,” Cruz said. “I think we’re gonna win votes. I think we’re gonna see a Republican majority in the House. I think we’re gonna see a Republican majority in the Senate.”

  Late last month, Cruz took part in a campaign rally in Cottleville to support Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who advanced to the November general election on Aug. 2 after winning the state’s Republican Senate primary. Schmitt is endorsed by both Cruz and Trump.

  Schmitt will face Democratic primary winner Trudy Busch Valentine in November, to fill a Senate seat to be vacated by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who decided not to seek a third term in office.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 21:30

• Watch: Italian Army Detonates WWII Bomb Found In Dried Up River
  Watch: Italian Army Detonates WWII Bomb Found In Dried Up River

  The Italian Army detonated a World War II bomb uncovered by fishermen on the drought-stricken Po River.

  “Fishermen found the bomb on the bank of the River Po due to a decrease in water levels caused by drought,” Colonel Marco Nasi told Reuters. 

  Army specialists defused the 240 kg (530 pounds) U.S.-manufactured bomb found on Po’s river bank near the northern village of Borgo Virgilio, close to the city of Mantua, last week. 

  

  About 3,000 people in the surrounding area were told to evacuate during the disposal operation.

  

  Borgo Virgilio’s Mayor Francesco Aporti said many residents were not pleased with the evacuation orders: 

  “At first, some of the inhabitants said they would not move, but in the last few days, we think we have persuaded everyone,” Aporti said. 

  On Sunday, army specialists carried out a controlled explosion of the bomb in a quarry in Medole, about 45 km (30 miles) from where it was discovered. 

  

  Watch the army remove the bomb from the river bank and then blow it up at the quarry. 

  We noted in early July that Italy declared a state of emergency in five northern regions surrounding the Po due to a dangerous heatwave and drought. The country’s longest river snakes around 405 miles in northern Italy and is used for drinking water, crop irrigation, and hydroelectric power. 

  According to the European news outlet Euronews, this is the sixth water emergency for the Po River basin in two decades. 

  Who knows what else will be found as water levels drop to dangerously low levels… 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 21:00

• Fourth "Discovery Of Human Skeletal Remains" At Lake Mead Since May
  Fourth “Discovery Of Human Skeletal Remains” At Lake Mead Since May

  Since May, the fourth set of human remains has been discovered at Lake Mead as water levels recede amid a severe drought. 

  The National Park Service tweeted rangers received an emergency call reporting the “discovery of human skeletal remains” at Swim Beach in Nevada on Saturday.

  🚨 ALERT: National Park Service rangers received an emergency call reporting the discovery of human skeletal remains at Swim Beach at Lake Mead on Saturday, August 6.

  Read the full news release here: https://t.co/XoGXPxeXgf

  📸: NPS/CJohnston pic.twitter.com/6MtvfrNg8d

  — Lake Mead (@lakemeadnps) August 7, 2022

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

  The cause of death and the identity are a mystery, and no other details have been released by the rangers. 

  

  The Clark County Medical Examiner is currently determining the cause of death as the investigation is ongoing. 

  This is the fourth discovery of human skeletal remains at Lake Mead since May and probably won’t be the last as water levels drop. 

  The first body, discovered on May 1, was stuffed in a barrel, likely a murder victim who died “sometime in the mid-’70s to early ’80s, based on clothing and footwear the victim was found with,” according to a press release from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police. Paddleboards discovered the second body on May 7 and the third on July 26. 

  As of Monday, Lake Mead’s water level was at 1,041 feet, approximately 173 feet below its level in 2000 when the great drought began. 

  

  “Continuing a 22-year downward trend, water levels in Lake Mead stand at their lowest since April 1937, when the reservoir was still being filled for the first time,” NASA wrote in a report last week. The U.S. space agency also released satellite images of the lake’s water level falling over time. 

  

  “We will likely find additional bodies that have been dumped in Lake Mead” as the water level continues to drop, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said in May. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 20:35

• Biden And Pelosi Give Wrong 'Facts' About 'Assault Weapon' Ban
  Biden And Pelosi Give Wrong ‘Facts’ About ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban

  Authored by Emily Miller via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are trying to reinstate the federal assault weapon ban that was in effect for 10 years because—they claim—it reduced gun crime. The bill, which just passed the House, will soon get a vote in the Senate.

  In the effort to get it passed, Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made some grand claims, which they called “facts,” about the previous ban on rifles leading to decreasing crime. But those facts don’t appear to be backed up by evidence.

  “Supporters of the bans are calling their assertions ‘facts,’ in an effort to mislead the public,” Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) told The Epoch Times. “Many of the Democratic Members of Congress were purposefully misleading in their assertions that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban reduced crime. This level of willful ignorance would be comical if the effects of what they are trying to do wasn’t so blatantly unconstitutional.”

  The ban was in effect from 1994 to 2004.

  Pelosi

  During that time, “we witnessed gun crime with assault weapons drop by up to 40 percent,” Pelosi said on the House floor during the recent debate.

  “The number of murders with rifles actually increased slightly when the ban went into effect,” John R Lott Jr., the president of Crime Research, told The Epoch Times, referring to data from the FBI’s annual release of reports from law enforcement agencies on homicides by weapon type. Lott also pointed out that no one collects data on all crimes committed with so-called assault weapons.

  The term “assault weapon” is a political phrase referring to semi-automatic rifles with various cosmetic features. The House bill calls an “assault weapon” a rifle that has one feature such as a pistol grip, folding stock, or grenade launcher.

  While Pelosi makes it sound like there’s a grave risk of being killed by a rifle, it’s actually a rare crime. Lott has reported that the percentage of firearm murders with any type of rifles was 4.8 percent prior to the ban starting in September 1994. During the 10-year ban, homicide by rifle was 4.9 percent of all murders. Then rifle homicides dropped to 3.6 percent after the ban expired in 2004.

  The speaker did not cite the source of her statistics. She could be referring to how all violent crime went down since the spike in the 1980s, which would include the small number of murders by rifles.

  You can see this in this graphic of the FBI data. The decrease was dramatic.

  There were 15,463 homicides by gun in 1994 when the ban went into effect and 724 were by rifles. When the ban expired in 2004, there were 9,385 homicides and 403 of them were by rifle.

  “The falling crime rates are more likely due to many other factors than firearm ownership, including a concerted effort and focus on prosecuting criminals,” explained Keane.

  Pelosi’s press office did not respond to a request for information on the source of her data.

  Studies

  Furthermore, there is no study that has proven that the gun control law had a direct effect on crime reduction. Quite the opposite, Rand’s “Study of Gun Policy” in 2018 (pdf) looked at various studies on the impact of the law on violent crime and concluded that “available evidence is inconclusive for the effect of assault weapon bans on total homicides and firearm homicides.”

  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) also published a report in 2003 on evaluating the effectiveness of firearms laws and studied the assault weapon ban. It said that studies were “inconsistent” and thus concluded that, “evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness” of the law.

  Ownership of these so-called assault weapons increased during the ban. Keane, the powerful gun lobbyist, pointed out that during the ban, what his organization calls Modern Sporting Rifles continued to be legally manufactured and sold if they did not have two of the cosmetic features necessary for the rifle to be banned.

  Biden has been pushing incessantly for it to be reinstated since he took office on the basis that it decreased mass shootings. He said in July: “Assault weapons need to be banned. They were banned. I led the fight in 1994. And then, under pressure from the NRA and the gun manufacturers and others, that ban was lifted in 2004.”

  NRA stands for National Rifle Association.

  Biden also said on June 2, “In the 10 years it was law, mass shootings went down. But after Republicans let the law expire in 2004 and those weapons were allowed to be sold again, mass shootings tripled. Those are the facts.”

  But an Epoch Times investigation into mass shootings showed that they are extremely rare and went up and down during the time period in question. As you can see in this graphic, there was no pattern of mass shootings in that 10-year period.

  The White House press office did not respond to a request for the source of the president’s data.

  Pelosi echoed Biden with her own statistic, saying in a speech that “since the ban expired, the number of mass shooting deaths has grown by nearly 500 percent.”

  That’s not true.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 20:10

• US To Join Military Drills Near India's Disputed Border With China
  US To Join Military Drills Near India’s Disputed Border With China

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  The US will participate in war games with the Indian military in an area of India that is less than 62 miles away from the country’s disputed border with China, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAN).

  The drills will be held from October 18-31 and will be the eighteenth iteration of annual exercises between the two militaries known as Yudh Abhyas, which is Hindi for “war practice.” They will be held in the Auli area of the Indian state of Uttarakhand in the Himalayas mountain range.

  

  The Yudh Abhyas drills are meant to train for fighting in high altitudes. The last iteration of the exercises was held in the mountains of Alaska in October 2021.

  Tensions have been high between India and China in the Himalayas since June 2020, when clashes in the Galwan Valley killed 20 Indian troops and four Chinese soldiers. Since then, China and India have been engaged in talks to reduce tensions, but they have also reinforced their militaries along the LAN.

  The US has been increasing military ties with India in recent years with hopes of using New Delhi as a counter to Beijing. After the Galwan Valley clashes, the US and India signed a new military pact, known as the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA).

  Under BECA, the US can share more intelligence and satellite information with India. US military leaders have said that since signing the pact, the US has been able to help India with surveillance of the Chinese military along the LAN. The intelligence could also potentially be used for Indian missile strikes in the region.

  Location of the major June 2020 border clash which left 20 Indian troops dead, via BBC:

  

  News of the drills comes not long after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made her provocative trip to Taiwan, which China responded to by launching its largest-ever military drills around the island.

  Beijing also responded by cutting off military talks with Washington, and tensions between the US and China continue to soar.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 19:45

• Norway To Limit Electricity Exports, 'Cannot Rule Out' Rationing
  Norway To Limit Electricity Exports, ‘Cannot Rule Out’ Rationing

  Norway on Monday announced that due to an ‘uncertain and demanding situation’ over sky-high electricity prices – caused by low water levels at hydroelectric stations (in what they refer to as a “weather-dependent power supply”), as well as the “dramatic situation in Europe” regarding Ukraine, the government will be limiting electricity exports “when the water level in the reservoirs drops to very low levels.”

  

  Norway has notably been referred to as the “battery of Europe” thanks to its ability to generate and export massive quantities of hydroelectric power.

  They also won’t rule out the ‘low probability’ of having to ration electricity in the spring.

  So far this year, far less electricity (11.6 TWh) has been produced in southern Norway than at the same time last year – 18 per cent less. In South-West Norway, the total production of adjustable hydropower last week was the lowest we have seen so far this year.

  Collectively, this results in historically high electricity prices and a situation where, for the first time in many years, we cannot completely rule out a period of electricity rationing in the spring. But our professional authorities emphasize that the probability of this is low. -Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Norway

  MUST READ: Statement from the Norwegian government on the electricity situation in the country (exports controls are coming, and for the first time, it flags risk of “rationing” in spring).

  Only available in Norwegian, so link here is Google Translate: https://t.co/EIWY6I0wMy

  — Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) August 8, 2022

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

  “This is not something people can afford to pay,” said Morten Frisch, a Norwegian energy consultant based in the United Kingdom, in a statement to the Daily Telegraph, adding that the cost of energy in Norway has already risen between 10 and 20 times the price people were paying last year.

  “When they run dry, they run dry, and it’s likely to take a minimum of three months, possibly six months, before they can be refilled by rain,” Frisch continued.

  As Torkel Nyberg of OilPrice.com writes:

  A cut in Norwegian power exports would be felt in Northwest Europe, which itself is grappling with issues at coal and nuclear power generating plants due to the low water level in rivers limiting coal supply via barges and warm river water unsuitable for cooling nuclear reactors.

  As a result of these issues and the uncertainty over natural gas supply from Russia, power prices in Germany for the year ahead jumped to a record on Friday.

  This summer’s dry weather across Europe has affected Norwegian hydropower, which accounts for 90% of Norwegian power generation. The remaining around 10% of the electricity supply in Norway comes from wind power.

  While Europe scrambles to procure natural gas for winter power generation and heating, Western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer, Norway, has a whole different power problem this summer—dry weather, which depletes water reservoirs for hydropower.

  Although Norway doesn’t use gas for power generation, Europe’s gas and energy crisis is felt there, too. In recent weeks, hydropower producers have been discouraged from tapping more water for hydropower generation to save water for the winter. Operators were also asked not to export too much electricity to the rest of Europe as reservoirs are not as full as in previous years, and not to rely on imports from Europe, which is struggling with energy supply. Some Norwegian utilities, including top electricity producer Statkraft, have followed the plea from transmission system operator Statnet not to produce too much electricity now.  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 19:20

• DeSantis Slams 'Weaponized Federal Agencies' For Raid On Trump's Mar-A-Lago
  DeSantis Slams ‘Weaponized Federal Agencies’ For Raid On Trump’s Mar-A-Lago

  Update (2053ET): Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) came out with a blistering response to the Monday FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, reportedly in connection with materials Trump brought with him after leaving office.

  

  “The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves,” said DeSantis. “Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.”

  The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.

  — Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantisFL) August 9, 2022

  Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar. pic.twitter.com/dStAjnwbAT

  — Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) August 9, 2022

  If they can do it to a former President, imagine what they can do to you.

  — House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) August 8, 2022

  

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

  BREAKING: @dbongino goes off on the FBI Raid on Donald Trump:

  “This is some Third World BULLSH*T” pic.twitter.com/2e9jryfVOi

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 8, 2022

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

  If DoJ has the goods on Trump, then charge him. But raiding his home for a violation of the presidential records act on the anniversary of Nixon’s resignation smells like partisan bullshit and an abuse of power.

  — Eli Lake (@EliLake) August 9, 2022

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

  …That is why, again, we cannot assume that criminal charges are inevitable after such a raid . On MSNBC, a host said that the “orange jumpsuit may be coming.” That is rather premature given history of prosecutions in this area and the absence of confirmed evidence.

  — Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) August 9, 2022

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

  Trump supporters have begun gathering outside Mar-a-Lago.

  🚨#BREAKING: Trump supporters gather outside Mar-A-Lago protesting the FBI raid

  📌#PalmBeach | #Florida

  Right now Multiple trump supporters have started to gather as large crowds grow near Mar-A-Lago Florida after the 45th president Donald trump was raided by FBI this evening pic.twitter.com/WHgWZFjsfr

  — R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) August 9, 2022

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

  *  *  *

  Moments ago, Donald Trump – who is still banned by Twitter – published a statement on Truth Social in which he said that his Florida home, Mar A Lago is “currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents“, an assault which according to Trump “could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries.” He is probably right. He also claims the Fed’s presence was unannounced and the reason was politically motivated.

  

  His full statement posted on his Truth Social account is below:

  Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the

  United States of America

  These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.

  The political persecution of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years, with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level!

  Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 E-mails AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress. Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable. She even took antique furniture, and other items from the White House.

  I stood up to America’s bureaucratic corruption, I restored power to the people, and truly delivered for our Country, like we have never seen before. The establishment hated it. Now, as they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories, and see my dominance in all polls, they are trying to stop me, and the Republican Party, once more. The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped.
   
  I will continue to fight for the Great American People!

  

  Local reporters confirmed the raid, saying the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. “They just left,” although it isn’t clear what the search was about.

  Scoop — The Federal Bureau of Investigation @FBI today executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, two sources confirm to @Fla_Pol.

  “They just left,” one source said.

  Not sure what the search warrant was about.

  TBH, Im not a strong enough reporter to hunt this down, but its real. pic.twitter.com/hMsGhlVp3d

  — Peter Schorsch (@PeterSchorschFL) August 8, 2022

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  Social media was predictably full of kneejerk reactions.

  BREAKING: The U.S. government is currently raiding an opposition party leader’s home, as seen in tin pot dictatorships.

  If this were happening in another country, the State Department would condemn it and fund the opposition. https://t.co/CKp7P9yRsz

  — Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) August 8, 2022

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  Trump said the FBI is *raiding* Mar-a-Lago, not *raising* it. 😬

  — Tim O’Brien (@TimOBrien) August 8, 2022

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  This is disgraceful and it happens because Republicans refuse to weaponize their prosecutors as Dems do.

  Chris Wray is a Democrat operative. https://t.co/RK2Ld2Ahel

  — John Cardillo (@johncardillo) August 8, 2022

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  We live under a morally repugnant Gestapo regime.

  Our Founders would puke.

  This is NOT America.

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 8, 2022

  So you’re saying we’re a Banana Republic…??? https://t.co/iJFdRavEjt

  — Kuppy (@hkuppy) August 8, 2022

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  According to the New York Times:

  The search, according to two people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, after he left the White House. Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents.

  Mr. Trump delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, only doing so when there became a threat of action being taken to retrieve them.

  As Techno Fog notes, the politics of the search can’t be ignored. If the New York Times is to be believed, Trump’s purported crime – the delay of returning materials – could have been resolved in another manner not involving raiding his home and breaking open a personal safe. No doubt the search is an escalation by a desperate Regime confronted by their own failures at home and abroad.

  This doesn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t another reason for the search. Could it have to do with the DOJ’s ongoing January 6 probe (although, given the politicization of Biden’s DOJ, that is no guarantee)? Maybe not, but it might be too soon to tell. Last week there was reporting that a federal grand jury investigating January 6 had issued subpoenas to the Trump White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, and his top deputy, Patrick Philbin.

  According to the author, it is possible that the roadmap for the DOJ comes from the January 6 Committee, “which has poured out the thin gruel of purported criminal charges against Trump, alleging he and others, including attorney John Eastman, could be charged with”:

  1. Obstruction of an Official Proceeding (18 USC 1512(c)(2)); and
  2. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (18 USC 371).

  Each of these counts, as well as the DOJ’s pursuit of Trump and his attorneys and advisors, amounts to the criminalization of politics, or as Technofog puts it, “arguments of law that might fail in the courts are now prosecutable offenses. Attempts to delay a vote count based on novel, and not corrupt, interpretations of the law can put you in prison. Issues surrounding the counting of state results or whether the Vice President can refuse to count electoral votes is a matter to be decided through the civil or political process, not through charges brought by vindictive opponents.”

  Meanwhile, we are still waiting for an official comment:

  No comment yet from either @TheJusticeDept or @FBIMiamiFL.

  — Steve Herman (@W7VOA) August 8, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 19:08

• China’s Economy Slumps Further, Raising Fears Of Layoffs
  China’s Economy Slumps Further, Raising Fears Of Layoffs

  Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  Both official and independent data show that China’s economy has slumped further in the second quarter of the year, with manufacturing slowing down unexpectedly and a downturn in the real estate sector intensifying. This has raised fears of a wave of layoffs in the second half of the year adding to already severe unemployment issues in China.

  China’s economy deteriorated further in July, said a China Beige Book International (CBBI) report in early August, which provides independent economic data. Factory outputs and new production orders in China reached their slowest since mid-2020, and retail employment was at its worst in more than two years, according to the latest CBBI survey. Deterioration in revenue growth for manufacturers and retailers curtailed profits, the report said.

  On Aug. 1, official data revealed even worse numbers in manufacturing and real estate. Data released by the Chinese regime’s statistics bureau showed that the purchasing managers index (PMI) of China’s manufacturing industry for July was 49.0 compared with 50.2 in the previous month, a decrease of 1.2 percentage, which is below the critical level of 50.

  In July, with more cases of COVID-19 emerging in parts of China, the communist regime continued its strict “zero-COVID” measures, putting many cities in lockdown, including industrial centers and economic hubs.

  Manufacturing activity had rebounded in June after the lockdowns were lifted in parts of mainland China but have now slumped again.

  The China Real Estate Index Research Institute publicized that in July, the average price of new residential buildings month-on-month in 100 cities in mainland China dropped instead of increasing, and the average price of homes further plummeted. Price drops for new houses were greater in cities, especially in the Yangtze River and Pearl River deltas, where housing prices had been increasing in previous years.

  

  Property sales in the 17 cities tracked by the Index Research Institute fell 33.4 percent month-on-month in July, compared with an 88.9 percent jump in June as lockdowns lifted.

  High Unemployment Rate

  According to a report by major Chinese finance website Caixin, employment in the domestic manufacturing sector has continued to shrink, with the employment index falling to its lowest point in 27 months. The report attributed the layoffs to cost-cutting measures of factories, weak sales, and a “cautious attitude toward hiring” across industries.

  In addition, nearly 11 million college students in mainland China graduated in the summer—a record high. According to official data released by the Chinese regime, the unemployment rate for urban youth aged 16-24 climbed to 19.3 percent in June, also record high.

  

  Due to widespread uncertainty about employment, consumer confidence remains fragile. For those who still have jobs, many are more reluctant to spend money.

  Official data shows that economic growth in mainland China slowed to 0.4 percent year-on-year in the second quarter. The outside world believes that China’s economy may even already be in recession, as the Chinese regime is known for its lack of transparency and often reports false numbers.

  Dim Prospects

  At China’s ruling Communist Party’s (CCP) Politburo meeting on July 28, the regime acknowledged that this year’s international environment is “complex and severe,” and that domestic tasks are “difficult and arduous.” The CCP leadership remained silent on the 5.5 percent economic growth target it set for this year. Analysts say this suggests that the CCP believes it will ultimately fail to achieve this goal.

  Independent current affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan told The Epoch Times that the downturn in Chinese real estate, a pillar industry and the largest sector of local government investment and revenue, has intensified. “Manufacturing employment continues to shrink, and unemployment hits a new high, and manufacturing corresponds to the export of China’s economy. It shows that the mainland China’s consumption stimulus policy has no effect,” he said.

  “These data reflect that the three pillars of China’s economy: investment, exports and consumption, are overall in deceleration or even stalling. On this basis, the CCP authorities still stick to ‘zero-COVID’ policy, which will only hurt the Chinese economy,” Tang said.

  “To make matters worse, China’s economic crisis is not a question of whether it can achieve the targeted growth rate, but whether it can stabilize the economy in the next five or even 10 years.”

  Xu Jian contributed to the report.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 18:55

• Are Bonds Really A Buy
  Are Bonds Really A Buy

  By Russell Clark of the Capital Flows and Asset Markets Substack

  

  Every time I open twitter these days, I see someone saying “Here comes deflation and its time to buy bonds!” and then providing some graph to back up the view. Typically it will involve the price of commodities, or perhaps some variation of PMI that leads core inflation. I think they a probably wrong – and I say that with about 90% confidence. At some point bonds will be a buy, but not today.

  So why is everyone a bond buyer? I think its mainly psychological. When the Federal Reserve first embarked on its QE program, everyone became very bearish long date bonds. Oddly, everyone seemed to ignore the experience of Japan, which had first invented QE, and had never seen a bond bear market. To see this in “asset flows” we can look at TLT US – the long dated treasury ETF. As late as 2014, the short interest in this was greater than the shares outstanding! TLT was actually net short (well not TLT, but it was creating units for people to be short treasuries). Run forward to today, and the long position has double in 6 months, and short position is near all time lows.

  

  Nothing like being short and wrong to convert people to ultra bulls (see bitcoin, Tesla etc…). So what are these converted bulls looking at to make them so bullish bonds? First of all, they have seen the treasury yield curve invert, which has tended to signal recession, so the basic assumption is that the Federal Reserve wont raise rates anymore. This assumption puts interest rates at the heart of inflation, that is high interest rates kills inflation. I think this assumption is wrong.

  

  An inverted yield curve and signs of a top in commodity prices is enough to push people into being bullish bonds.

  

  So why were the bond bears wrong in 2014, and why are the bond bulls wrong now?

  Often when people talk about structural inflation, they talk about budget deficits and low interest rates. Japan has proven that large deficits do not create inflation in of themselves. This has formed the organising idea behind which MMT – or deficits don’t matter – crowd.

  

  Focusing on deficits miss the point. The key issue is whether governments are enacting “austerity” or not. Austerity can come in many different flavours, from reducing government payroll, to cutting or freezing wages, but it is not hard to work out when government is enacting austerity or not. Japan has not seen a public servant pay rise in decades. When we look at the US, we can see that post GFC, we were in an age of austerity. You don’t need a microscope to see that post Covid, US government spending remain elevated compared to pre-Covid.

  

  You also don’t have to be much of a political analysis to make an educated guess that neither the Republicans or the Democrats will cut spending until the bond market tells them to do so. When I look at CPI over over 8% and US 30 Year Treasury sub 3%, I think bond bulls have lost their minds.

  

  The intellectual thread behind all of this, is that capitalism is deflationary, and socialism is inflationary. The problem is that capitalism creates income inequality, the eventually destroys the social contract, And that point “some” socialism is necessary. We are seeing the social contract fray in the UK, where strikes are now commonplace. Perhaps the US is different, but my guess big government is here to stay, and so is inflation. Bonds look like shorts to me.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 18:07

• New Patent May Reveal Russia's Next-Generation Bomber Design
  New Patent May Reveal Russia’s Next-Generation Bomber Design

  New patent details have emerged of what could be the first basic design concept behind Russia’s next-generation stealth bomber intended by Moscow to replace the aging fleet of Soviet-era aircraft, according to The War Zone. 

  

  The patent drawings show what appears to be technology related to an engine intake duct awarded to Russian aerospace and defense company Tupolev. It may provide the first glimpse at the company’s long-in-development PAK DA stealth bomber. 

  “The intake is shown from the front, top, and side. But most interesting is the aircraft in which the intake is incorporated. While it’s worth noting that the plane design depicted is not described as the PAK DA, it’s certainly in keeping with semi-official and unofficial reports of the bomber’s general design,” The War Zone said. 

  

  Based on the drawings, the shape of the aircraft appears similar to the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Spirit. We noted last year that “the strategic bomber race is on…” Here’s a side-by-side comparison of both bombers. 

  

  A source familiar with PAK DA’s development recently told Russian news outlet TASS that the long-range bomber will be assembled in 2023. 

  “Currently, the experimental model is being built. The demonstration model will be ready by 2023,” the source said.

  They also said, “the subsonic PAK DA will be armed with hypersonic weapons. Besides, its flight will be aided by drones.” 

  Yesterday, a possible depiction of PAK DA got some attention. The figures stem from a patent. While it might not be interesting for most people I was getting curious about the patent itself. So a short summary of what the patent explains/what I understood (using Chrome Translate) https://t.co/NmRBboIwKp

  — F: нет войне (@F22124509) August 2, 2022

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  Meanwhile, the public unveiling of the USAF’s next stealth bomber could be later this year. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 17:40

• Ron Paul: Pelosi's Taiwan Trip Exposes US Policy As Dangerous, Deadly, & Dumb
  Ron Paul: Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip Exposes US Policy As Dangerous, Deadly, & Dumb

  Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute,

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “surprise” trip to Taiwan last week should be “Exhibit A” as to why interventionism is dangerous, deadly, and dumb. Though she claimed her visit won some sort of victory for democracy over autocracy, the stopover achieved nothing of the sort. It was a pointless gesture that brought us closer to military conflict with zero benefits.

  As Col. Doug Macgregor said of Pelosi’s trip on a recent episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, “statesmanship involves advancing American interests at the least cost to the American people. None of that is in play here… Posturing is not statesmanship.”

  

  Pelosi’s trip was no outlier. Such counterproductive posturing is much celebrated by both parties in Washington. Neoconservative Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham were thrilled with Pelosi’s stop in Taipei and used it as a springboard to push for new legislation that would essentially declare war on China by declaring Taiwan a “major non-NATO ally.”

  The “one China” policy that, while perhaps not perfect, has kept the peace for more than 40 years is to be scrapped and replaced with one sure to provoke a war. Who benefits?

  Foolishly taking the US to the brink of war with Russia over Ukraine is evidently not enough for Washington’s bipartisan warmongering class. Risking a nuclear war on two fronts, with both Russia and China, is apparently the only way for Washington to show the rest of the world it’s serious.

  The Washington Post’s neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin accurately captures the mindset in Washington DC with a recent article titled, “The skeptics are wrong: The US can confront both China and Russia.”

  For Washington’s foreign policy “experts,” those of us who don’t believe a war with both Russia and China is a great idea are written off as “skeptics.” Count me as one of the skeptics!

  During the Cold War there were times of heightened tension, but even in the darkest days the idea that nuclear war with China and the Soviet Union could be a solution was held only by only a few madmen. Now, with the ideological struggles of the Cold War a decades-old memory, such an argument makes even less sense. Yet this is what Washington is selling.

  The US fighting a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine and Nancy Pelosi provoking China nearly to the point of war over Taiwan is meant to show the world how tough we are. In reality, it demonstrates the opposite. The drunken man in a bar challenging everyone to a fight is not tough. He’s foolish. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose from his display of bravado.

  This is the first time I’ve seen a CNN guest take one of the network’s jingoistic halfwits to the woodshed on Ukraine and Taiwan so comprehensively in such a short amount of time. And it was @rogerwaters. pic.twitter.com/maN4DTdMhO

  — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 7, 2022

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  That is interventionism at its core: a foolish policy that provokes nothing but anger overseas, benefits no one in the US except the special interests, and leaves the rest of us much poorer and worse off.

  There may be plenty to criticize about China’s government and policies. They are far from perfect, particularly in protection of civil liberties. But have we already forgotten that our own government shut down the country for two years over a virus, and then forced a huge number of Americans to take an experimental shot that is proving to be as worthless as it is dangerous? Let’s look at the log in our own eye before we start lobbing missiles overseas.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 17:15

• Semiconductors Emerge As Battleground In US-China Race
  Semiconductors Emerge As Battleground In US-China Race

  Authored by Jessica Mao via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  As every aspect of modern life becomes more and more digitized, not just the economies of nations but their sovereign influence will rely more and more on the command of technology.

  Although the United States and China are not engaged in traditional warfare, they are engaged in a war of ideas, trade, and technology, especially in semiconductor hegemony, where both sides are battling for supply and advancement.

  In recent years, the United States has made a series of moves to hinder and outpace Chinese development in semiconductors, including persuading Asian semiconductor powerhouses to join its alliance, passing a massive spending bill to aid domestic chip production, and banning exports of high-end chipmaking equipment to China.

  In late July, the United States expanded its bans on exports to China of equipment that can make semiconductors up to 14 nanometers in size, according to major U.S. chipmaking equipment suppliers, such as Lam Research Corp. and KLA, who were notified by the government about the expanded restrictions.

  Previously, the United States had banned the sale of equipment that can produce chips of 10 nm or smaller to Chinese chip manufacturers.

  Generally in semiconductor fabrication, the smaller the process technology, the more advanced the chip. The smaller the technology node, the higher the transistor density and the lower the chip power consumption, resulting in higher performance. However, the smaller manufacturing process requires more advanced material and equipment, and will incur a greater cost in R&D and production.

  

  The development follows a historic $52 billion bill passed by U.S. congress on July 27 to aid domestic chip makers in research, development, and production volume. One of the conditions is that the companies receiving the funds will not increase advanced chip production in mainland China.

  The U.S. Department of Commerce said the tightening policies impair “PRC efforts to manufacture advanced semiconductors to address significant national security risks to the United States.”

  Meanwhile, the United States is also reportedly planning to ban the exports of U.S. chipmaking equipment that produces advanced NAND chips to major Chinese chipmakers, such as Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC).

  YMTC is a state-owned company and China’s only storage NAND flash memory manufacturer competing with major U.S. manufacturers. Its global market share is about 5 percent. In a report released by the White House in June 2021, YMTC was identified as the “national champion” enterprise of the Chinese regime, having received $24 billion in subsidies from the Chinese government.

  NAND chips are used to store data in a wide range of electronic devices such as smartphones and personal computers, as well as in the data centers of companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

  If the NAND chip initiatives are officially issued, they will be the first time that the United States uses trade restrictions to contain China’s ability to produce non-military use memory chips, broadening the scope of protecting the U.S.’s national security and dealing a massive blow to Chins’s memory chip industry.

  On Aug. 1, U.S. senators, including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), requested that the Department of Commerce add YMTC to the U.S. trade blacklist.

  The move could further hamper the growth of China’s semiconductor industry and protect American companies; the only two U.S. memory chip makers, Western Digital and Micron Technology. The two account for about a quarter of the NAND chip market share.

  According to a Bloomberg report, the United States is also pushing the Netherlands and Japan to stop the chipmaking equipment suppliers, ASML and Nikon, from selling lithography machines to China. The move could potentially deal a severe blow to major Chinese chipmakers such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) and Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd.

  US CHIPS Act

  On July 26, the U.S. Senate voted to advance its Chips and Science Bill aimed at boosting domestic semiconductor production and improving technological competitiveness with China.

  The bill was later passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 28 and signed into law by President Joe Biden on Aug. 2.

  

  The legislation will provide $280 billion in funding to prop up and kickstart domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research; the price tag is far above previous legislation that aimed to provide just $52 billion to manufacturers.

  Officially dubbed the CHIPS [Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America] Act of 2022, the measure would provide tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks to technology corporations in an effort to spur new market growth, as well as funding for government-backed tech research.

  Proponents of the legislation have long said that it’s necessary in order to maintain a competitive edge with China, which is pouring money into its own domestic chip production.

  The legislation also clarifies that entities receiving U.S. government funding are prohibited from engaging in transactions involving substantial expansion of semiconductor manufacturing in China or any other foreign country of concern for at least ten years after the Act takes effect.

  These restrictions are designed to prevent chipmakers from significantly expanding the production of chips more advanced than 28nm in China within the next decade.

  Even though the 28-nanometer chips are a few generations behind today’s advanced semiconductors, they are still widely used in cars, lower-end smartphones, appliances, and more.

  Chip 4 Alliance

  The United States has also been working to persuade Asian semiconductor powerhouses to participate in its “Chip 4 alliance.”

  The U.S.-led alliance aims to strengthen cooperation in the semiconductors industry among the United States and the East Asian powerhouses of Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan to build a secure supply chain that excludes China.

  Taiwan and Japan have already agreed to participate in the Chip 4 alliance proposed by the United States this March, pending South Korea’s decision to join.

  The United States has reportedly given South Korea a deadline to decide whether it will join the “Chip 4 alliance” by Aug. 31, according to local South Korean reports citing unnamed sources in Washington.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 16:50

• CBS Censors Own Documentary After Ukraine Outraged
  CBS Censors Own Documentary After Ukraine Outraged

  CBS has censored its own documentary investigative reporting after an avalanche of pushback from supporters of Ukraine and its military. The segment highlighted that tons of weaponry shipped from the United States to the country’s military has gone missing, and sounded the alarm as billions in dollars more have been pledged by the Biden administration.

  “CBS partially retracted a documentary in which it said that shipments of weapons to Ukraine from the US had been going missing,” Insider reports Monday. “CBS tweeted on Monday that it had removed a a video promoting the documentary that included a months-old quote saying most aid was not making it to Ukraine’s front lines.” Below is the deleted tweet, with the offending line of “30% of it [US-supplied arms and munitions] reaches its final destination.”

  Terrifying how swiftly and obediently the corporate media walks back facts that are undesirable for the regime. https://t.co/SqafRmOnr0

  — Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) August 8, 2022

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  The segment, titled “Arming Ukraine” was published days ago, and follows on the heels of Pentagon and US intelligence officials issuing similar warnings that there are few mechanisms in place to legitimately track the arms flowing into the country. One admin official even described in April that, “we have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero. It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”

  The fresh CBS reporting added to these concerns, quoting the the head of a Lithuania-based organization supplying the Ukrainian military, Jonas Ohman, who said bluntly:

  “All of this stuff goes across the border, and then something happens, kind of like 30% of it reaches its final destination.”

  Ohman stressed that actually getting the weapons to the designated Ukrainian army units involves having to navigate an array of “power lords, oligarchs [and] political players.” This also as there have been persistent reports that some weapons end up on the black market, or might possibly be moved outside Ukraine.

  Don’t worry, @CBSNews, I saved it. pic.twitter.com/jiJorgw18F

  — Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) August 8, 2022

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  A senior crisis adviser with Amnesty International also told CBS in the documentary, “What is really worrying is that some countries that are sending weapons do not seem to think that it is their responsibility to put in place a very robust oversight mechanism.”

  Officials with the Ukrainian government promptly accused the mainstream US network of playing into “Russian propaganda”.

  Along with a widespread social media backlash from Kiev’s supporters and pundits, this was apparently enough for CBS to announce it is “updating” the segment, with some of the offending lines now dropped…

  CBS claims this documentary is now “being updated” after it received a giant tsunami of trolling from those who were upset at the information being reported. The original link was taken down: pic.twitter.com/b04P5KlRC7

  — Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 8, 2022

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  The Ukrainian government further put out a dubious claim that “all received equipment is accounted for” – this despite months of Pentagon officials warning that this isn’t the case.

  Unsurprisingly, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, has demanded that CBS News conduct an internal investigation to get to the bottom of things.

  The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, demands from CBS News to conduct an internal investigation due to the publication of disinformation that only 30% of the weapons supplied to Ukraine by allies reach the front.

  1/

  operativnoZSU pic.twitter.com/LvPUp98oAo

  — Lynn Thigpen (@Lynski_07) August 8, 2022

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  There’s of late been growing scrutiny placed on the Ukrainian side, after Russia and Putin have long been the main focus of Western mainstream media reporting. It appears that efforts to “police” western MSM reports to deflect any possible criticism of Kiev whatsoever during the war is now ramping up.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 16:25

• Markets In A World Of Pain As Most-Shorteds Squeeze Higher While TSY Curves Invert To Grotesque Levels
  Markets In A World Of Pain As Most-Shorteds Squeeze Higher While TSY Curves Invert To Grotesque Levels

  It was a wasted day in the market, one where stocks ground higher overnight and hit session highs just after the open, before a concerted wave of VWAP selling pushed stocks back to flat for the day…

  

  … with tech shares hit the hardest as buybacks appeared to be oddly missing today…

  

  … while Nvidia’s unexpected earnings preannouncement and guidance cut which sent the stock 6.30% lower, its biggest one day drop since early June did not help…

  

  … as staples, industrial and banks also dropped while energy, homebuilders and small caps traded solidly in the green…

  

  With another red hot (but far cooler than in recent months) CPI looming, bonds were anything but jittery as yields slumped all day led by the back end…

  

  … and with the 2Y roughly unchanged, the 2s10s curve inverted to a mindblowing, grotesque 46bps, the biggest inversion since the year 2000, and set to blow that out of the water in the next few days as longer yields continue to sink:

  

  No wonder hedge funds managers remain extremely bearish – the bond market is screaming not just recession but maybe even depression.

  

  According to Bloomberg, unable to find traction in stocks, hedge funds have shifted to bonds and are engaged in various bets on more flattening in futures, namely 10-year versus ultra bonds and 2-year contracts against ultra 10-years, while mortgage portfolios managed by mutual funds have done it with 2s and 10s in cash Treasuries. Real money too has engaged in assorted bets the inversion will grow.   Flatteners got the green light once again Friday after a huge beat on the July non-farm payroll report. The spread between 2s10s set lows of -44 bps Friday. That level has been surpassed today with an inversion to ~-45 bps.   The next level to target is -50 bps, which is the size of the inversion last set in August 2000 based on a weekly chart.

  The paradox of course, is that even as hedge funds turn increasingly more bearish in bond land, their stock shorts are getting blown out of the water on the back of the previously discussed buyback/CTA/retail bid, which today resulted in the 9th consecutive rise in Goldman’s most shorted tech name basket (BBG ticker SCBMSIT), matching the longest such stretch on record.

  

  The market-wide short squeezes also meant that retail investors have woken from their hibernation slumber and are once again raging and sparking short squeezes, such as those seen today in BBBY, AMC and Gamestop, all of which are sharply higher on the back of powerful squeeze-driven rallies.

  

  What is odd is that the squeeze-driven meltup comes at a time when the market is resetting its expectations of near-term rate cuts by the Fed (we doubt this will last long, especially after a miss in the next CPI report and a long-overdue collapse in the August payrolls) with STIR traders now pricing in just 5bps of rate cuts in Q1 2023 down sharply from a full rate cut as recently as two weeks ago…

  

  … however, far from winning the hawkish argument, the Fed’s day of capitulation is merely being extended, and as Charlie McElligott writes today, “the nuanced dynamic which remains clear is this: the market continues to believe that the longer the FOMC stays on this course to a higher terminal rate and runs “restrictive for longer,” that it will later then lead to higher odds of a harder slowdown thereafter” which is why the next important calendar phase, or EDH3-EDZ3 i.e., Mar23-Dec23, actually sits at its most inverted level yet, implying ~64bps of Fed cuts thereafter—aka “more hiking / more restrictive now, bigger cutting / easing later!

  

  These growing odds that the Fed will have to pivot eventually are likely behind today’s rally in oil prices…

  

  … as well as the jump in cryptos to multi-week highs (much more coming with the ETH merge looming).

  

  Meanwhile positioning – as we have covered all weekend long – continues to trade extremely, extremely short as hedge funds hope and pray that the inevitable flush that will trigger the Fed’s rate cuts comes before the relentless meltup forces them to cover their shorts!

  As Nomura notes, the bearish masses were so grossly underpositioned for a rally after anticipating an earnings wipeout and “cleanse lower” which did not materialize, perversely thanks to the magnitude of just how low those “negative revisions” expectations were—and accordingly, the pain-trade has been “higher”

  

  So with this idea that 1) prices are beginning to contract, that 2) inflation expectations are softening thereafter, and that 3) current labor strength and 4) consumer balance sheet allows for 5) “more rope” to digest this forward state of accumulated / lagged “tightening into restriction”, Nomura’s McElligott says that it all then puts us much close to the actual slowdown and “dovish Fed pivot” that will then merit the aforementioned “even larger easing” thereafter.

  And as all this happens, the relentless buying from systematics keeps lifting the overall tide: similar to Goldman, Nomura estimates that CTA Trend have bought +$60.1B of Global Equities futures in aggregate over the past 1m period on almost entirely “short covering” flows, and now showing an aggregate “Net Long” across the 13 Global equity futures futs positions since the peak of the last large “bear market rally” into start of June—including nascent “+19% Long” signals across all 3 US Equities positions

  

  Finally, adding to the bears’ pain, “Positive Delta” flows are also ripping stocks higher and further leaning into implied Volatility, which has added a ton of Gamma to Dealers who had been “Short,” but are now instead in “Long Gamma vs Spot” territory for all 3 US Equities indices, further insulating the market’s range from large price swings (“Long Gamma” = sell highs, buy lows = MM’s and Dealers as liquidity “MAKERS,” not TAKERS)

  

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 08/08/2022 – 16:24

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• Sperry: Lies, Damned Lies, & The January 6 Committee
  Sperry: Lies, Damned Lies, & The January 6 Committee

  Authored by Paul Sperry via The Epoch Times,

  The Select Committee to Investigate January 6 has adjourned for a well-deserved summer break. Misleading the public is exhausting work.

  

  A careful review of the official transcripts of its eight long hearings shows the committee repeatedly made connections that weren’t there, took events and quotes out of context, exaggerated the violence of the Capitol rioters, and omitted key exculpatory evidence otherwise absolving former President Donald Trump of guilt. While in some cases it lied by omission, in others it lied outright. It also made a number of unsubstantiated charges based on the secondhand accounts—hearsay testimony—of a young witness with serious credibility problems.

  These weren’t off-the-cuff remarks. Panelists didn’t misspeak. Their statements were tightly scripted and loaded into teleprompters, which they read from verbatim.

  In other words, the committee deliberately chummed out disinformation to millions of viewers of not just cable TV, but also the Big Three TV networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—which agreed to pre-empt regular daytime and even primetime programming to air the Democrat-run hearings. And because Democrats refused to allow dissenting voices on the panel or any cross-examination of witnesses, viewers had no reference points to understand how they, along with the two Trump-hating Republicans they allowed on the committee, shaded the truth.

  This charade of an honest investigation appears to have had the desired effect. Polls show the Jan. 6 hearings hurt Trump, who plans to run again, with Independents. Unaffiliated voters have grown more likely to blame Trump for the Capitol riot and to show support for Democrats in the midterms, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey.

  With the November elections fast approaching, Democrats plan to hold another round of hearings next month, hoping voters pay even closer attention. With that in mind, it’s important to examine the false claims and distortions they no doubt will repeat. They are legion. Here’s the fact-checking the viewing public—and electorate—thus far has been denied.

  CLAIM: While committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) excoriated Trump for not calling off the Capitol rioters earlier, he claimed they were “savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers,” according to the transcript of his remarks from the prime-time July 21 hearing, carried live by the networks.

  FACT: No police officer was killed during the riot.

  CLAIM: During the same hearing, committee member Elaine Luria (D-Va.) faulted Trump for his “glaring silence” about the “tragic death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who succumbed to his injuries” suffered during the riot.

  FACT: The D.C. medical examiner ruled Sicknick died of “natural causes,” not injuries, well after the riot. Luria seemed to perpetuate false rumors started by the New York Times that Sicknick was struck with a fire extinguisher, a fable debunked by both the coroner and the Sicknick family.

  CLAIM: Thompson asserted Trump “summoned” a mob that was “heavily armed and angry.”

  FACT: Not a single gun was recovered in the riot. For that matter, the only gun used during the four-hour melee was fired by a Capitol police officer, who killed an unarmed rioter, Ashli Babbitt—whose name was never mentioned in any of the hearings. Despite airing endless footage of rioters breaching the Capitol and fighting police, the committee omitted footage of USCP Lt. Michael Byrd shooting Babbitt from behind a doorway without warning, which was the most violent incident that occurred that day.

  CLAIM: The committee put a former far-right extremist on as a witness to testify that rioters built “a gallows” to allegedly hang then-Vice President Mike Pence.

  FACT:  The witness, Jason Van Tatenhove, was not at the Capitol that day. He had no insider knowledge about the purpose of the flimsy wooden structure erected across from the Capitol. In any case, it was a mock gallows, not a functional one. Even the New York Times recently acknowledged it “was too small to be used.”

  CLAIM: Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) proclaimed in the hearing curtain-raiser—also held in primetime and broadcast live by all three networks—that the panel had evidence Trump said Pence “deserves” to be hanged, a chilling claim if true. “Aware of the rioters’ chants to hang Mike Pence,” she asserted, “the president responded with this sentiment: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea,’ Mike Pence quote ‘deserves it.’”

  FACT: Her “evidence” turned out to be a secondhand retelling by witness Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House assistant fresh out of college who overheard a paraphrasing of what Trump may have thought about the chants, not a direct Trump quote as Cheney implied. Hutchinson later testified Trump said, “something to the effect of,” Pence “deserves it.”

  CLAIM: Hutchinson also swore she wrote a note dictated by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows suggesting a more forceful White House response to the riot.

  FACT: Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann insisted that he actually wrote the note, not Hutchinson, adding a serious chink in her credibility as the committee’s star witness. “The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” said a spokesperson for Herschmann, who noted that Herschmann told the committee that in his deposition. The panel never informed the public that Hutchinson’s claim was disputed.

  CLAIM: Based on Hutchinson’s testimony, the committee also claimed that former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said Trump’s plan to march to the Capitol would cause Trump officials to be “charged with every crime imaginable.”

  FACT: Cipollone did not corroborate the claim in his sworn deposition before the committee.

  CLAIM: The committee relied on another second-hand account by Hutchinson to broadcast to the world the alleged bombshell Trump tried to physically commandeer his Secret Service limo to the Capitol. “When the president got in ‘The Beast’ … he thought they were going up to the Capitol,” Hutchinson testified, relaying what she’d heard from a security official who had heard it from another source. But when Trump was told he had to go back to the White House, she continued, Trump got “irate” and said “something to the effect of ‘I’m the [expletive] president, take me to the Capitol now,’” and proceeded to “grab at the steering wheel.” She claimed he even “lunged” at a Secret Service agent inside the vehicle.

  FACT: Trump rode in a different motorcade vehicle than “The Beast” that day (an SUV, not the famous Cadillac limo), and several Secret Service agents have denied any physical altercation took place, casting further doubt on Hutchinson’s reliability as a key witness for the panel (records show she kept working for Trump in his post-presidential office for nine weeks after he left the White House, even though she claimed to be “disgusted” by what happened on Jan. 6, which she said was based on “a lie” peddled by Trump that the election was stolen). After pushback from the Secret Service, the committee leaked to CNN that a D.C. police officer “has corroborated” Hutchinson’s testimony. But when DCPD Sgt. Mark Robinson testified in the final hearing, he failed to corroborate her tale of Trump grabbing the steering wheel or lunging at a member of his security detail. “The only description I received was that the president was upset and was adamant about going to the Capitol and there was a heated discussion about that,” Robinson said.

  CLAIM: Throughout the hearings, the committee cited Trump’s speech at the Ellipse as the spark that ignited the riot. “There can be no doubt that [Trump] commanded a mob, a mob he knew was heavily armed, violent, and angry, to march on the Capitol to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power,” Thompson said in the last hearing. Emphasized Luria: “Donald Trump summoned a violent mob and promised to lead that mob to the Capitol.”

  FACT: While Trump did urge supporters to “walk” with him down to the Capitol after the rally, he specifically asked them to do so “peacefully.” The committee left that key exculpatory phrase out of the hearings. It never aired the footage or transcript of him saying, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” If it had, it would have ruined the carefully crafted narrative that Trump incited violence. The omission was a critical deception.

  CLAIM: In the opening hearing, Cheney read out loud a tweet Trump sent during the riot where he said: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” She claimed Trump was justifying more violence.

  FACT: But Cheney cut off the next line where Trump called for “peace” and told supporters to leave the Capitol. “Go home with love & in peace,” the rest of the tweet said. Cheney blinded millions of viewers watching to the full picture.

  CLAIM: Cheney, who faces a Trump-endorsed challenger in her Aug. 16 primary race, kicked off the hearing with a bold charge: “President Trump summoned a violent mob and directed them illegally to march on the United States Capitol.” She vowed to show “evidence” to back it up. Thompson said they would prove that Trump was “at the center” of a “seditious conspiracy.”

  FACT: Not only did they fail to deliver any hard evidence that Trump ordered rioters to attack the Capitol as part of a conspiracy, they also began to contradict themselves as the hearings progressed. Thompson later said Trump merely “spurred” the mob and “energized” extremists, which is quite different from directing them. In an unintended revelation, one of their witnesses presented a timeline that suggested the instigators of the breaches of the Capitol had already headed to the Capitol before Trump spoke at the Ellipse. Documentarian Nick Quested testified the Proud Boys marched to the Capitol at 10:30 a.m., which meant Trump could not possibly have incited them. “I was confused to a certain extent why we were walking away from the President’s speech,” said Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys.

  Despite taking more than 1,000 depositions and subpoenaing more than 140,000 documents, the committee never found a smoking gun proving Trump was involved in a top-down organization of the riot. There was no coordination or conspiracy, which tracks with what the Biden Justice Department has found. Of the 874 criminal cases prosecutors have brought against Trump supporters at the Jan. 6 riot, none of them names Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator.

  But don’t take my word for it.

  Former Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a former state attorney general, told ABC News‘s “This Week” that the committee has come up short on proof of conspiracy: “They don’t have a nexus yet [between Trump and the Capitol rioters],” she asserted.

  Senior CNN legal analyst Laura Coates, moreover, said the committee “fell short in trying to establish very clearly that Donald Trump gave a coherent order that then was followed” to storm the Capitol, adding it presented “innuendo” but no proof of “a conspiracy.”

  No one excuses the real crimes committed that day. But the average American deserves to see a fuller picture of what happened, instead of the distorted one lensed by the Jan. 6 Committee, which was charged with presenting all the facts, not just ones that could hurt Republicans or pre-impeach Trump in 2024.

  If the committee really had the goods on Trump, it wouldn’t feel the need to deceive the public to the extent it has with all the embellishments, exaggerations, questionable testimony, omissions, and flat-out lies. Why not just play it straight?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 23:30

• House Dems Say Gun Company Ads Emphasize Masculinity, Make Veiled References To 'White Supremacist' Groups
  House Dems Say Gun Company Ads Emphasize Masculinity, Make Veiled References To ‘White Supremacist’ Groups

  A new report from the House Oversight Committee says that leading gunmakers use “aggressive marketing tactics” which emphasize masculinity, and make ‘veiled references’ to white supremacist groups “like the Boogaloo Bois” (which isn’t a ‘far-right’ group at all) in order to sell guns. In short, a massive gaslighting campaign.

  “The business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative, and reckless,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who chairs the committee.

  

  “The [gun] industry is both creating these customers and marketing to them. And therefore, it’s propagating more of this radicalization,” said Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive who has flipped to anti-gun, and testified before the House committee last week about “the dangerous ways that AR-15s are intertwined with political radicalization.”

  According to Busse, the gunmakers are targeting “this angry, young male, politically active, conservative, aggrieved, dreams of using the AR-15 to ‘make things right in the world,” adding “In other words– people who also fall right into domestic terror groups and radicalization and everything else.”

  Yikes.

  About those “Boogaloo Bois…”

  As Insider reports:

  Some gunmakers have also appeared to make references to far-right groups.

  One example of this political targeting is an AK-47-style pistol, produced by Palmetto State Armory, which is adorned with a pattern resembling the signature Hawaiian shirts worn by the Boogaloo Bois far-right extremist group.

  Except, the “Boogaloo Bois” support BLM and don’t like Donald Trump. Swing-and-a-miss, Dems.

  

  “We are out here supporting the local BLM scene” says one of the Boogaloo Boys before marching towards the Ohio Statehouse building to protest pic.twitter.com/i7KQ3HohqD

  — Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) January 17, 2021

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

  “We are not a pro-Trump group” says one of the speakers for the Boogaloo Boys in front of the Ohio Statehouse pic.twitter.com/mHTMfSlLtk

  — Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) January 17, 2021

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

  “We hope the Proud Boys do not come here, we do not want you here,” armed boogaloo boys protesting outside Ohio Statehouse. Ohio State Highway Patrol and National Guard surround the area pic.twitter.com/99MEtOac3l

  — Lisa Bennatan (@LisaBennatan) January 17, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsMeanwhile, the Democratic committee report knocked gunmakers for ‘preying on masculinity’ by claiming that their firearms will put people “at the top of the testosterone food chain.”

  An example of this is the “Man Card” campaign that AR-15 maker Bushmaster launched in 2010, which marketed its guns to a “Man’s Man” in a “world of rapidly depleting testosterone.”

  Although the campaign ceased after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 where the 20-year-old gunmanwho killed 26, including 20 children aged six and seven, was aremd with a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle , its successes set an example for other gunmakers to follow, Busse wrote in The Atlantic. -Insider

  There are around 19.8 million AR-15 style rifles officially in circulation in the US.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 23:00

• The "Unthinkable" In US-China Crisis
  The “Unthinkable” In US-China Crisis

  Authored by Maria Ryan via Consortium News,

  One aspect of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan that has been largely overlooked is her meeting with Mark Lui, chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). Pelosi’s trip coincided with U.S. efforts to convince TSMC – the world’s largest chip manufacturer, on which the U.S. is heavily dependent – to establish a manufacturing base in the US and to stop making advanced chips for Chinese companies.

  U.S. support for Taiwan has historically been based on Washington’s opposition to communist rule in Beijing, and Taiwan’s resistance to absorption by China. But in recent years, Taiwan’s autonomy has become a vital geopolitical interest for the U.S, because of the island’s dominance of the semiconductor manufacturing market.

  

  Semiconductors – also known as computer chips or just chips – are integral to all the networked devices that have become embedded into our lives. They also have advanced military applications. Transformational, super-fast 5G internet is enabling a world of connected devices of every kind (the “Internet of Things”) and a new generation of networked weapons. With this in mind, U.S .officials began to realise during the Trump administration that U.S. semiconductor design companies, such as Intel, were heavily dependent on Asian-based supply chains to manufacture their products.

  In particular, Taiwan’s position in the world of semiconductor manufacturing is a bit like Saudi Arabia’s status in OPEC. TSMC has a 53 percent market share of the global foundry market (factories contracted to make chips designed in other countries). Other Taiwan-based manufacturers claim a further 10 percent of the market.

  As a result, the Biden administration’s 100-Day Supply Chain Review Report says, “The United States is heavily dependent on a single company – TSMC – for producing its leading-edge chips.” The fact that only TSMC and Samsung (South Korea) can make the most advanced semiconductors (five nanometres in size) “puts at risk the ability to supply current and future [US] national security and critical infrastructure needs.”

  This means that China’s long-term goal of reunifying with Taiwan is now more threatening to U.S. interests. In the 1971 Shanghai Communique and the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. recognised that people in both mainland China and Taiwan believed that there was “One China” and that they both belonged to it. But for the U.S. it is unthinkable that TSMC could one day be in territory controlled by Beijing.

  ‘Tech War’

  For this reason, the U.S. has been trying to attract TSMC to the U.S. to increase domestic chip production capacity. In 2021, with the support of the Biden administration, the company bought a site in Arizona on which to build a U.S. foundry. This is scheduled to be completed in 2024.

  The U.S. Congress has just passed the Chips and Science Act, which provides $52 billion in subsidies to support semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. But companies will only receive Chips Act funding if they agree not to manufacture advanced semiconductors for Chinese companies.

  

  This means that TSMC and others may well have to choose between doing business in China and in the U.S. because the cost of manufacturing in the U.S. is deemed to be too high without government subsidies. This is all part of a broader “tech war” between the U.S. and China, in which the U.S. is aiming to constrain China’s technological development and prevent it from exercising a global tech leadership role.

  In 2020, the Trump administration imposed crushing sanctions on the Chinese tech giant Huawei that were designed to cut the company off from TSMC, on which it was reliant for the production of high-end semiconductors needed for its 5G infrastructure business. Huawei was the world’s leading supplier of 5G network equipment but the U.S. feared its Chinese origins posed a security risk (though this claim has been questioned). The sanctions are still in place because both Republicans and Democrats want to stop other countries from using Huawei’s 5G equipment.

  The British government had initially decided to use Huawei equipment in certain parts of the U.K.’s 5G network. The Trump administration’s sanctions forced London to reverse that decision. A key U.S. goal appears to be ending its dependency on supply chains in China or Taiwan for “emerging and foundational technologies,” which includes advanced semiconductors needed for 5G systems, but may include other advanced tech in future.

  Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan was about more than just Taiwan’s critical place in the “tech war.” But the dominance of its most important company has given the island a new and critical geopolitical importance that is likely to heighten existing tensions between the U.S. and China over the status of the island. It has also intensified U.S. efforts to “reshore” its semiconductor supply chain.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 22:30

• Here's Where Most Homeowners Are Considered Equity-Rich
  Here’s Where Most Homeowners Are Considered Equity-Rich

  Nearly half of U.S. mortgage payers own at least 50 percent equity, according to ATTOM’s Q2 2022 Home Equity & Underwater Report. This means that the balance of loans taken out against the home is less than half the estimated market value of the property.

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck notes, the share of equity-rich homeowners has been rising continuously for the past nine quarters. While it hit 34.4 percent in Q2 of 2021, it rose to 44.9 percent in Q1 of 2022, and finally to today’s figure of 48.1 percent for Q2 2022.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  According to ATTOM, of the 1,624 counties that had at least 2,500 homes with mortgages in Q2 of 2022, 49 of the top 50 equity-rich locations were in the Northeast, South and West.

  Counties with the highest share of equity-rich properties were Dukes County (Martha’s Vineyard), MA (83.2 percent equity-rich); Chittenden County (Burlington), VT (82.3 percent); Gillespie County, TX (west of Austin) (79.4 percent); Nantucket County, MA (78.6 percent) and Travis County (Austin), TX (78.6 percent).

  Meanwhile, counties with the smallest share of equity-rich homes in Q2 of 2022 included Geary County (Junction City), KS (7 percent equity rich); Vernon Parish, LA (northwest of Lafayette) (9.7 percent); Cumberland County (Fayetteville), NC (12 percent); Acadia Parish, LA (outside Lafayette) (13.2 percent) and Greenup County, KY (14 percent).

  At the same time, just 2.9 percent of mortgaged homes were considered “seriously underwater”, meaning that the balance of loans secured by the property exceeded its market value by at least 25 percent. This is down from 3.2 percent in Q1 of this year.

  Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at Attom, said in a statement:

  “After 124 consecutive months of home price increases, it’s no surprise that the percentage of equity rich homes is the highest we’ve ever seen, and that the percentage of seriously underwater loans is the lowest. While home price appreciation appears to be slowing down due to higher interest rates on mortgage loans, it seems likely that homeowners will continue to build on the record amount of equity they have for the rest of 2022.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 22:00

• 'Inflation Reduction Act' Would Make IRS Among The Largest Govt Agencies
  ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ Would Make IRS Among The Largest Govt Agencies

  Authored by Jazz Shaw via HotAir (emphasis ours),

  Tucked away in the hilariously-named “Inflation Reduction Act” that Joe Manchin has been working on with Chuck Schumer is one significant bit of spending that has been mostly flying under the radar. The measure would fund a massive expansion of the Internal Revenue Service to the tune of eighty billion dollars. And we’re not using the word “massive” in a hyperbolic fashion here. This money would go toward hiring an additional 87,000 employees for the detested agency, more than doubling the size of its workforce.

  

  As the Free Beacon points out this week, that would make the IRS larger (in terms of manpower) than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI and the Border Patrol combined. And what do they plan to do with that many people? Do you really need us to tell you?

  If Democrats have their way, one of the most detested federal agencies—the Internal Revenue Service—will employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.

  Under the Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), the agency would receive $80 billion in funding to hire as many as 87,000 additional employees. The increase would more than double the size of the IRS workforce, which currently has 78,661 full-time staffers, according to federal data.

  The additional IRS funding is integral to the Democrats’ reconciliation package. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found the hiring of new IRS agents would result in more than $200 billion in additional revenue for the federal government over the next decade. More than half of that funding is specifically earmarked for “enforcement,” meaning tax audits and other responsibilities such as “digital asset monitoring.”

  So this expansion would turn the IRS into an even larger beast than it already is. And we know that it’s also one of the most heavily armed agencies in the federal government. So what do they need all of those people for, not to mention all of the guns and ammo?

  Democrats always talk about the need to go after “the top one percent” and make them “pay their fair share.” It’s true that we have quite a few wealthy people in this country, but we don’t have so many that you need more than 150,000 agents to keep an eye on them. No, according to one recent study cited in the linked report, this move is being sought to generate more revenue for the federal government. And the vast majority of that new revenue will come from families earning less than $200K per year. In other words, the middle to upper-middle class. Trust us, the IRS already goes over Elon Musk’s taxes with one hundred fine-toothed combs.

  But that’s how they will be getting more revenue. By examining working class people’s tax returns under a microscope, looking for even the slightest error and then slapping them with fines and late-payment charges. And if you don’t pay up quickly enough, the IRS now has more law enforcement officers than the FBI and over five million rounds of ammunition on hand. They’ll get their money.

  So what does all of this have to do with “inflation reduction?” Don’t ask me. But the names of new laws in the country stopped meaning anything recognizable long ago, and most of them seem to actually mean the opposite of what the law is intended to do. The devil is always in the details.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 21:30

• Signs Of Ukraine Export Stability As 4 More Grain Ships Leave Ports
  Signs Of Ukraine Export Stability As 4 More Grain Ships Leave Ports

  This weekend saw four more ships carrying grain and sunflower oil depart Ukraine ports through the UN-brokered safe maritime corridor in the Black Sea, overseen by a joint coordination center in Istanbul staffed by Ukrainian, Russian, Turkish and UN officials.

  This as the Razoni cargo ship which was the first to depart Odesa carrying 27,000 tonnes of corn last week, is making its way to the Lebanese port of Tripoli, though not on time. The latest series of ships departed the ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk on Sunday, and their sailing has given rise to greater hopes of export stability, BBC reports, as millions in Ukraine-grain dependent countries are facing famine conditions. 

  

  Two of the vessels are reportedly bound for Italy, while the other pair are going to China, after they are expected to dock in Turkey for international inspections under the terms of the UN safety corridor deal. In total they’ve been estimated to be laden with 160,000 tons of corn and other foodstuffs.

  The BBC writes, “Ukrainian authorities say there are good signs that the grain exports are safe, and have urged companies to return to the country’s ports.” And further: “The hope is that the exports will help ease the global food crisis while bringing in much needed foreign currency.”

  And according to further details in NBC, referring to the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul, “The JCC said late on Saturday it had authorized the departure of a total of five new vessels through the Black Sea corridor: four vessels outbound from Chornomorsk and Odesa carrying 161,084 metric tons of produce, and one inbound.”

  Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Odessa port to oversee the departure of the first grain ship under the UN deal, though he suggested Russia could be trying to sabotage the agreed upon export mechanisms. 

  Four more ships loaded with grain set off from Ukrainian ports, as Moscow and Kyiv blamed each other for a new strike at a Russian-occupied nuclear plant https://t.co/tspKONHI57

  — AFP News Agency (@AFP) August 7, 2022

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

  “It is important for us that Ukraine remains the guarantor of global food security,” he had said at the time, given a recent Russian missile strike on Odessa.

  The question of the safety of shipping crews also remains a concern, given the ships must navigate waters which have for months seen explosive mines placed off Ukraine’s coast. The Razoni’s safe passage through the Black Sea days ago was a big milestone showing the UN safety mechanisms can work.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 21:00

• 'Peak Berkeley': Protesters Halt Low-Income Housing Project
  ‘Peak Berkeley’: Protesters Halt Low-Income Housing Project

  Authored by Ed Morrissey via HotAir (emphasis ours),

  … come on, you can guess, right? Why would protesters in Berkeley halt construction for low-income and student housing?

  

  Reason’s Emma Camp reports that the demonstrators declaring that “Housing is a human right!” also demanded that new construction cease displacing the homeless that have occupied the construction area.

  No, really, and apparently they made that point violently:

  On Wednesday, protesters flooded People’s Park in Berkeley, California, chanting, “Housing is a human right, fight, fight, fight!” The reason the crowd was protesting? The University of California, Berkeley, was set to begin construction on a student housing project, which would not only house 1,100 Berkeley students at below-market rates, but also provide subsidized apartments for 125 homeless people. And the protesters want to stop this project.

  According to the Associated Press, protesters threw rocks, bottles, and glass at construction workers. They also removed several sections of the chain-link fence surrounding the park. On Wednesday, the university announced that it would pause construction of the park, citing protester violence.

  “All construction personnel were withdrawn out of concern for their safety,” Dan Mogulof, UC’s assistant vice chancellor, said in a statement to NBC News. “The campus will, in the days ahead, assess the situation in order to determine how best to proceed with construction of this urgently needed student housing project.”

  It wasn’t just slogan chanting and drum circles, either. The university shut down the construction after the crowd began assaulting the workers, the Associated Press reported — although readers have to get near the end of the report to find that out:

  After the fences were put up again early Wednesday morning, about 100 police officers, some in riot gear, were at the park as the crew began cutting down trees to the derision of onlookers who were mostly kept outside barricades.

  The police looked stoically at the onlookers amid period chants of “Power to the people!” before the majority of the protesters marched away in unison after the university stopped construction. UC Berkeley police said in a statement that protesters threw rocks, bottles, and glass at crews working at the park, which is considered aggravated assault. The department didn’t say if anyone was arrested.

  It’s not as if UC Berkeley hasn’t tried to put that “human right” ethos into action. Camp reports that the school has tried for five years to add enough student housing to alleviate a shortage so profound that some of their students have to sleep in their cars.

  After reviewing a dozen sites, UC Berkeley chose what’s been known for decades as “People’s Park,” the scene of a riot that left one dead and dozens injured from the police response. The park has become a haven for the homeless, which the school newspaper defended as a “cultural and historical landmark” the day after this protest. Rather than build 125 units for the homeless to live in safety and better comfort — let alone the 1100 fellow students that can’t afford housing in and around the very expensive area of Berkeley — the paper wants to continue to leave the grounds undisturbed as part of the argument for, um … more housing.

  And the best part of this? UC Berkeley offered to find shelter for the 50 or so homeless people in the construction zone — and nearly all of them accepted it. This protest was literally over three people who refused to leave this public space:

  Two or three homeless people who were still at the park Wednesday were offered shelter, transportation, and storage for their belongings. The university didn’t say whether they accepted the offer. Another 46 homeless people who used to live at the park previously accepted offers for shelter at a motel that is being paid for by the city of Berkeley, the university said.

  So UC Berkeley wants to provide housing to students and the homeless. The city of Berkeley is providing shelter for the homeless. And yet demonstrators violently blocked efforts to create permanent solutions to this housing crisis by declaring it a human right so precious that any construction workers helping to solve it should be terrorized. There’s only one way to explain that, as Berkeley Law professor Orin Kerr reminded me last night:

  Berkeley.

  — Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) August 6, 2022

  Well put. 

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 20:30

• Which States Have The Death Penalty?
  Which States Have The Death Penalty?

  According to the Death Penalty Information Center, capital punishment is on the books in 27 states but several don’t actually carry it out.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, in seven states, governors or courts have officially halted executions. While governor-imposed moratoriums are in place in Oregon, California and Pennsylvania, judges have halted executions in Nevada, Montana, Tennessee and South Carolina, mostly in response to controversy around new drugs used in executions by injection. In the case of South Carolina, the state even reauthorized the use of the electric chair and the firing squad in response to growing scrutiny by pharmaceutical companies and the public around how execution drugs are sourced and used. The change has now being challenged in court while executions are on hold.

  Since 2011, the EU has severely restricted exports of the key component of U.S. drug cocktails for executions. In 2016, Pfizer was the last FDA-approved pharmaceutical company to stop selling its drugs for use in the death penalty. As a result, states started to use alternative drugs and sources. Botched executions – for example in Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona using the drug midazolam – received scrutiny and led to court cases.

  Execution halts were recently lifted in Kentucky, which passed a new law excluding the severely mentally ill from the death penalty, and Indiana, where a court case concluded that the state has to release data on its use of lethal drugs. While this technically allows Indiana executions to resume, it makes sourcing new drugs for executions almost impossible for the state. Many other states face the same problem in carrying out the death penalty by injection.

  Out of the remaining 20 states, another eight have not carried out an execution in at least ten years, either because of a lack of death row inmates, a lack of suitable drugs are a combination of the two. Alabama, Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas have all executed prisoners in 2022, while the last execution in Mississippi took place in 2021.

  Colorado in 2020 was the latest state that abolished capital punishment, following New Hampshire, which axed its law in 2019.

  States carry out most executions in the United States, even though their numbers have fallen recently from a high of 98 in 1999 to just 11 in 2021. Federal executions remain exceptionally rare despite several that were carried out in the twilight of the Trump presidency.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 20:00

• Pro-Tax-Hike Dem Continues To Fail To Pay His Own Taxes
  Pro-Tax-Hike Dem Continues To Fail To Pay His Own Taxes

  Authored by Jazz Shaw via HotAir (emphasis ours),

  

  The very wealthy Leona Helmsley was once famously quoted as allegedly saying, ‘We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes.’ Now we have a repeat offender in Congress who may have studied Helmsley’s philosophy at some point. The Free Beacon has discovered that Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Matthew Cartwright is once again in trouble for being delinquent on his property taxes. Cartwright and his wife share a condo in Washington and tax records indicate that they owed penalties and interest from 2021 due to being late in paying their taxes. As a Democrat who has repeatedly voted in favor of tax increases, that probably sends a rather poor message to the working-class voters of his district who have to avoid the wrath of a constantly growing army of IRS agents. With the midterms only a few months away and the country in the middle of a recession and skyrocketing prices for just about everything, people may have taxes on their minds when they go to the polls.

  Rep. Matthew Cartwright (D., Pa.) was hit with tax penalties for late condo payments in 2021, just three years after facing media scrutiny for repeated tax delinquency.

  Cartwright last year owed $436.63 in penalties and interest, stemming from the late property tax payments on his Washington, D.C., condo he shares with his wife, according to D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

  The news could be a problem for the congressman, who is locked in a competitive race against Republican challenger Jim Bognet.

  Granted, we’re not talking about a huge sum of money here. Less than 500 dollars in penalties suggests that the Cartwright family probably paid most of their real estate taxes. But when you’re talking about the IRS, “most” isn’t good enough.

  Also, this isn’t the first time that Cartwright has been in trouble with the Tax Man over his Washington condo. Back in 2018, he was in somewhat deeper hot water with the city. At that point he had run up a tab of nearly $4,000 in penalties and fees over a five-year period. His opponent in that year’s election ran campaign ads highlighting the situation and nearly unseated him.

  Cartwright told reporters at that time that his tax delinquency was simply an “oversight.” He said that being in Congress is “a very busy job that I have and I’m working really hard at it.” That may be true, but do any of you think that the IRS would accept that excuse from you if you fell behind on your taxes? Color me dubious.

  Again, this isn’t a huge sum of money we’re talking about and it’s not hard to see how someone might miss a payment here or there. (Doesn’t the congressman make enough money to pay someone to handle his taxes and keep up with these details, though?) But that’s not really the point. If you are one of the people charged with creating and modifying the tax laws that everyone else in the country has to follow, you are obviously going to be under scrutiny to ensure that you follow those laws yourself. A failure to do so produces some of the worst political optics imaginable.

  And those optics may be on the congressman’s mind at the moment. He is currently in a tight race to keep his seat in November and it’s one that analysts are rating as a “tossup.” The GOP would dearly love to claw that seat back as they try to retake the majority in the house. And Cartwright’s tax headaches are the last thing his party needs to see right about now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 19:30

• Visualizing The Top 25 US Newspapers By Daily Circulation
  Visualizing The Top 25 US Newspapers By Daily Circulation

  A few years ago, you would have unfolded your newspaper and read opinion and analysis like this.

  

  Those days are gone.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop details below, most people today – more than 8 in 10 Americans – get their news via digital devices, doing their reading on apps, listening to podcasts, or scrolling through social media feeds.

  It’s no surprise then that over the last year, only one U.S. newspaper of the top 25 most popular in the country saw positive growth in their daily print circulations.

  Based on data from Press Gazette, this visual stacks up the amount of daily newspapers different U.S. publications dole out and how that’s changed year-over-year.

  Extra, Extra – Read All About It

  The most widely circulated physical newspaper is the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) by a long shot – sending out almost 700,000 copies a day. But it is important to note that this number is an 11% decrease since 2021.

  

  These papers, although experiencing negative growth when it comes to print, are still extremely popular and widely-read publications digitally—not only in the U.S., but worldwide. For example, the New York Times reported having reached 9 million subscribers globally earlier this year.

  The one paper with increased print circulation was The Villages Daily Sun, which operates out of a retirement community in Florida. Elderly people tend to be the most avid readers of print papers. Another Florida newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times, was the worst performer at -26%.

  In total, 2,500 U.S. newspapers have shut down since 2005. One-third of American newspapers are expected to be shuttered by 2025. This particularly impacts small communities and leaves many across America in ‘news deserts.’

  The decline is relentless. Print papers are losing one out of eight subscribers every year. Their daily circulation, over 63 million at its peak in the 1980s, is now about one-third that size. Over 25% of all American newspapers have died in the past 15 years.

  As Charles Lipson observes at RealClearPolitics.com, some observers, especially conservative ones, have cast a skeptical eye on this contemporary media landscape and blamed the decline of print publications on “woke” newsrooms. They are mistaking the cart for the horse. It’s true that most newsrooms are woke, woke, woke. So are elite law firms, consulting firms, social media giants, entertainment companies, advertising firms, university faculty, and so on. Their employees, having completed their ideological training at places like Harvard, Brown, and Oberlin, tell us their pronouns in every email and wonder if Bernie Sanders might be too moderate. They dominate today’s journalism, and their dominance is reflected in their papers’ content.

  In a country that is evenly split between left and right, that tilt leaves a lot of readers unhappy, and some have undoubtedly dropped their subscriptions. Some papers also died during the pandemic, though most were already facing bleak futures. But the coronavirus and ideological bias are not the main reasons why print papers are on the road to oblivion. They are on that road because technological innovation devastated their old business model.

  This technological shift actually encourages newsroom bias. Why? Because, as online sites proliferate, readers can easily gravitate to those that reflect their views. This self-selection reinforces the sites’ incentives to tailor their content to keep those users and attract more like-minded ones.

  In this segmented market, with lots of different niches, news organizations pick their target audience. For MSNBC, that audience is progressive. The channel wants to attract more of them, not challenge their views or garner a few conservatives. By contrast, PJ Media is trying to reach more conservatives, not futilely chasing progressives. That’s Marketing 101. The problem for journalism is that this “niche” logic has distorted general-interest papers, like the Los Angeles Times. It gives free rein to ideological bias among reporters and editors, muddling their editorial perspective with “hard news” coverage.

  The logic behind this bias is powerful. All of us are attracted to sites that confirm our views and buttress them with friendly content. Social scientists call it “confirmation bias.” Now that we have so many alternative news sources, that bias drives our choices, from CNN to Fox News. And it drives those outlets to produce content their viewers find ideologically appealing, not challenging. There are some exceptions, of course, like RealClearPolitics, which aggregates and produces opinion pieces from left, right, and center and hires reporters to write the news of day straight. But this even-handedness is rare. Most outlets have slipped into comfortable ideological niches.

  The result is landscape littered with “news silos,” each appealing to its chosen market segment. The social and political effects are far-reaching. As news consumers, we have more options than ever (good), but we are increasingly insulated from opposing views (bad). The days of general-interest local papers like the Memphis Commercial-Appeal are gone. Those of big-city papers like the Chicago Tribune are fading fast. We are hunkering down in our silos, where never is heard a discouraging word, at least not about “our side.” This insularity is bound to deepen our country’s ideological divide. That’s very bad news indeed.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 19:00

• Former VP Dick Cheney Attacks Trump In Ad For Daughter’s Reelection Campaign
  Former VP Dick Cheney Attacks Trump In Ad For Daughter’s Reelection Campaign

  Authored by Matthrew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former Vice President Dick Cheney has cut an ad for his daughter’s congressional campaign in Wyoming in which he lashed out at fellow Republicans and called former President Donald Trump a “coward” and a “threat” to the nation.

  

  The 60-second campaign ad for the embattled reelection campaign of U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) was posted on YouTube Aug 4. As of press time, it had just over 259,000 views.

  “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Dick Cheney, 81, says while wearing a white cowboy hat in a close-up camera shot. Cheney served as vice president alongside Republican President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009.

  “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” Dick Cheney said.

  “He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and deep down, I think most Republicans know it.”

  Cheney said he was “so proud of Liz for standing up for the truth, doing what’s right, honoring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so.”

  “There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office and she will succeed,” he said. His daughter appears at the end of the ad to say she approves of the message.

  Liz Cheney has become a lightning rod for criticism in Republican Party circles for her attacks on Trump while serving as vice-chair of the U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 security breach at the U.S. Capitol. The breach delayed the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election by several hours and has been characterized by Trump critics as an insurrection and a coup attempt, a charge Trump and his supporters adamantly deny. Trump supporters have compared the committee’s actions to a witch hunt and a Soviet-era show trial.

  Although she traditionally has had a conservative voting record in Congress, Liz Cheney has antagonized Republicans in her home state, where Trump remains popular. She voted to impeach Trump after the security breach and is regularly in the national media spotlight denouncing the former president. The Wyoming Republican Party censured her after the impeachment vote and last fall declared she was no longer a member of the party.

  Read more here…

  Meanwhile, as the Babylon Bee puts it:

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 18:30

• Entertainment Companies Start Dumping Woke Content As Viewership Tumbles
  Entertainment Companies Start Dumping Woke Content As Viewership Tumbles

  They’ll never admit to it openly, but getting woke makes companies broke.  Hollywood has been overtly progressive for decades, but this is nothing compared to the social justice invasion since 2016.  After around five years of an unprecedented leftist onslaught on the entertainment industry we are finally starting to see the rampage lose oxygen.  There’s a weakness within woke productions that the alternative media has been pointing out for a long time – They don’t make a profit because they are designed to appease a minority of leftist zennials that don’t have any money.  This is the wrong crowd to rely on for cash flow.     

  It is fair to say that the entertainment industry was partially conned.  First, there are those tantalizing ESG loans that can be easily had as long a company loudly declares their fealty to the social justice agenda.  Then, of course, there is the fact that many corporate CEOs and marketing people track Twitter trends with the ignorant assumption that Twitter is actually a reflection of the real world.  The woke mob on Twitter is amplified by the company itself, while most contrary voices are stifled and buried.  Anyone using the Twitter echo chamber as a marketing gauge would be led to believe that leftist ideology is the prevailing ideology of the nation.  It’s not even close.

  Some companies are finally realizing this fact and are taking action to reduce their exposure to woke content, or otherwise perish from loss of viewership.  Here’s the thing – Leftists could take over every platform for media distribution (they almost have), but they still can’t force the public to consume woke content.  Eventually, the loss of viewers and profits is going to hurt their bottom line.  

  Warner Media (now owned by Discovery) seems to be on the forefront of the purge of leftist content.  Under chief executive David Zaslav, Discovery is aggressively dissecting Warner to understand why a company with so many iconic brands and franchises is continually failing at the box office and on streaming.  Zaslav is now dumping far left content like the poison it is.  

  Most notably, Zaslav was behind the torching of news service CNN+ after less than a month of operation when it utterly failed to pull in subscribers.  Now, he has shelved the $100 million ‘Batgirl’ movie, a woke travesty with woke directors which test audiences hated.  He is also reportedly cutting the impending Supergirl movie, which rumors indicate was designed to replace the beloved Superman franchise with a female version played by a race swapped actress of Colombian descent (the original Supergirl is supposed to be white and blonde).      

  Another event that shocked leftists was Netflix taking an ax to “First Kill,” a lesbian vampire series that no one asked for and apparently no one watched. 

  This was after Netflix canceled a host of woke programming in the past couple of months, including a show called “Anti-Racist Baby” written by well known Critical Race Theory propagandist Ibram X. Kendi, and another animated show called “Q-Force” (Queer Force).

  

  HBO Max recently canceled their “Gordita Chronicles” after only one season; the show based on a Dominican immigrant family heavily pushed leftist narratives of victim group status and depicted America as a racist and oppressive nation.  No mention of the fact that millions of non-white people try to sneak into the US every year even though it is supposedly “bigoted.”

  The examples of purged woke programming go on and on.  This is a smart move by the entertainment media as audiences make it clear with their dollars and their viewership that they don’t want to watch leftist garbage.  However, is it too little too late?  

  Some companies like Disney have chosen to foolishly double down on woke content (after numerous box office failures) and others like Warner have lost a lot of good will from their customers.  Corporations and marketing people have long sought to entice customers by researching what audiences want.  But, the new model is to simply TELL customers what to buy, and shame audiences into compliance with a product if they don’t like it. Since 2016 the strategy of media has been to ATTACK customers in response to criticism rather than listening and learning.  This hasn’t gone over well.  Today these businesses are paying the price for their trespasses against the free market.  

  It is unlikely that they will be able to win back audiences anytime soon, if ever.  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 18:00

• Dem Congressman's Aide Caught Impersonating FBI Agent, Violating Gun Law: Court Documents
  Dem Congressman’s Aide Caught Impersonating FBI Agent, Violating Gun Law: Court Documents

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

  

  An aide to a congressman impersonated an FBI agent and openly carried a gun, violating the law in Washington, according to court documents.

  Sterling Carter, who worked for Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) at the time, was spotted on Nov. 14, 2020, wearing a black shirt with “Federal Agent” emblazoned across the front and back, and equipped with a full police duty belt that contained handcuffs, a pistol, two magazines, and a radio with an earpiece, according to an affidavit filed by U.S. authorities in District of Columbia court.

  When officers approached Carter to figure out his identity, he pointed to a badge on his belt and said that he was with the FBI. When asked for his credentials, Carter said he did not have them on him, and hopped in his vehicle and sped away despite being ordered to stop.

  The officers were unable to chase the man down.

  Officers and agents with the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Capitol Police, the FBI, and the Metropolitan Police Department launched a joint effort to figure out the identity of the man, and eventually confirmed him as Carter through contact with the seller of the t-shirt and the company from which he obtained a custom license plate.

  The owner of the property at which Carter resided and neighbors told agents that Carter was seen dressing as a member of law enforcement. However, officers found out that Carter was a staffer for a member of Congress. They also learned he did not have a concealed weapons permit or any other firearm registration certificates.

  A search of the residence turned up a Glock 19 semi-automatic firearm, magazines, a holster, cleaning gear, a receipt for siren installation, and an invoice for the shirt.

  Carter was given the option to resign or be fired, and he chose to resign, according to the affidavit. According to other documents, he started with the office in August 2019 and stepped down in January 2021.

  Carter was arrested on Jan. 29, 2021, and charged with false impersonation of a police officer and carrying a pistol without a license.

  In exchange for pleading guilty to the latter charge, the former was dropped.

  Carter was held in jail for 81 days during the case.

  A Washington judge in July 2021 sentenced him to probation and a suspended jail sentence.

  The case was first reported by the Daily Beast.

  Schneider’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

  2nd Case

  A federal case was opened in February after the FBI found Carter had forged Schneider’s signature and given himself temporary raises that yielded him approximately $80,000.

  According to an FBI agent’s affidavit, Carter, as director of operations for the congressman, would fill out payroll forms when an employee was given a raise or bonus.

  Only Schneider and his chief of staff had the authority to authorize a bonus or a raise.

  Carter would fill out one form that reflected a temporary salary increase proportionate to the bonus that was being given, and a second form that returned the employee’s salary to the original level so the bonus wouldn’t turn into a permanent pay raise.

  But Carter gave himself an unauthorized bonus and an unauthorized pay increase.

  He concealed what he had done by presenting to the chief of staff a spreadsheet containing inaccurate data.

  Carter pleaded guilty to the charge, theft of public funds, and faced up to 10 years in prison.

  Jail Time

  Prosecutors recommended a sentence of 12 to 18 months, saying the offense “constituted a serious breach of the public trust” and such a sentence “can be a warning knell for all those public officials who consider using their position in the government to steal taxpayer dollars from the United States Congress.”

  Lawyers for Carter noted his only prior conviction was for carrying a pistol without a license and argued the lack of criminal history outside of that “weighs in favor of a more modest sentence than recommended by the advisory guideline range.”

  “It is a property offense. The offense does not involve any violent acts. There is no evidence that any firearms or weapons were employed to accomplish the offense. No physical injuries were sustained by anyone. While these undeniable factors do not absolve Mr. Carter from criminal liability the nature of the offense again favors a modest sentence,” they added.

  The defendant moved for a sentence of home confinement.

  U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, sentenced Carter in July to nine months in prison followed by 36 months of supervised release. Carter was also ordered to pay $80,491 in restitution.

  “We believe the sentence was harsher than necessary,” Robert Jenkins Jr., an attorney representing Carter, told The Epoch Times in an email, adding that Carter’s “conduct warranted punishment his sentence was more severe than many similar defendants in white collar fraud cases.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 17:30

• North Korea Willing To Send Russia 100,000 Troops For Ukraine War: Report
  North Korea Willing To Send Russia 100,000 Troops For Ukraine War: Report

  During six months of war in Ukraine there have been some instances of Russian satellite states providing “volunteer” forces – with Chechens being a foremost reported group of foreign fighters said to be in Ukraine. But Russian state media recently presented the biggest offer of foreign troops yet, reportedly from an unlikely “pariah” nation also long at odds with the United States.

  North Korea has said it is willing to send 100,000 “volunteer” troops to help Vladimir Putin execute the ongoing war in Ukraine, Business Insider has reported, citing Channel One Russia. Russian military pundit Igor Korotchenko made the claim to the state broadcaster, saying further that the DPRK military could provide a “wealth of experience with counter-battery warfare.”

  

  “If North Korea expresses a desire to meet its international duty to fight against Ukrainian fascism, we should let them,” Korotchenko was also quoted in New York Post as saying.

  This comes amid unverified Western media claims that Russia has suffered huge and unexpected numbers of casualties, to the point of being “desperate” – and reportedly being forced to provide abbreviated and ineffective training to new recruits.

  For example, this is how The Daily Mail presented the supposed Moscow-Pyongyang deal making for additional troops: 

  A desperate Vladimir Putin is considering turning to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un for help in his invasion of Ukraine, and is willing to offer energy and grain in return for 100,000 soldiers, according to reports in Russia.

  North Korea has made it clear through ‘diplomatic channels’ that as well as providing builders to repair war damage, it is ready to supply a vast fighting force in an attempt to tip the balance in Moscow’s favor, reported Regnum news agency.

  They would be deployed to the forces of the separatist pro-Putin Donetsk People’s Republic [DPR] and Luhansk People’s Republic [LPR], both of which Kim has recently recognised as independent countries.

  …In return, grain and energy would be supplied to Kim’s stricken economy.

  The far-fetched sounding reports don’t appear to be sourced at all to North Korean state media itself, however, and the logistical challenge of North Korea actually transporting that many troops to Donbas would make it very unlikely. The “offer” may have been based on mere speculation by the prominent Russian pundit.

  Some Russian media claim North Korea has offered Moscow to dispatch up to 100,000 of its troops to fight in Russia’s special operation in Ukraine. Almost certainly this one is fake. Still, it is not impossible. /1 https://t.co/v7QvqHlBxo

  — Artyom Lukin (@ArtyomLukin) August 6, 2022

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

  The additional challenge to such an immense logistical task – which would also without doubt result in greater ratcheting of sanctions on both countries by the West – would include integrating that many foreign troops within Russian strategy and alongside its units in the middle of an active war, with no prior planning and coordination. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 17:00

• The Big Green Lie Almost Everyone Claims To Believe
  The Big Green Lie Almost Everyone Claims To Believe

  Authored by Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon via The Epoch Times,

  Almost every member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, pays homage to the Big Green Lie. So do all the past and remaining Conservative candidates vying to be prime minister of the UK and every candidate currently vying for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. So does virtually all of the mainstream press. The Big Green Lie—that carbon dioxide is a pollutant—is so pervasive that even those considered skeptics—including right-wing NGOs and pundits—generally adhere to the orthodoxy, differing not in their stated belief that CO2 is a pollutant but only in how calamitous a pollutant it is.

  

  Because everyone now participates in the CO2-emissions-are-bad lie, the debate over climate policy hasn’t been over whether a CO2 problem exists but over how urgently CO2 needs to be addressed, and how it should be addressed. Do we have eight years left before Armageddon becomes inevitable or decades? Do we get off fossil fuels by building nuclear plants or wind turbines? Should we change our lifestyles to need less of everything? Or should we mitigate this evil—the view of those deemed climate minimalists—by shielding our continents from a rising of the oceans by enclosing them behind sea walls?

  With almost everyone across the political spectrum publicly agreeing that curbing CO2 is a good thing, the debate has been between those who want to do good quickly by reaching Net Zero in 2040 and sticks in the mud who want to slow down the doing of a good thing. With discourse careening down rabbit holes, almost everyone gets lost pursuing solutions to Alice-in-Wonderland delusions—and wasting trillions of dollars in the process.

  Until the 2000s, when climate change was still called global warming and the mainstream media still noticed that none of the myriad predictions of a climate catastrophe were being borne out—the polar caps weren’t melting, Manhattan wasn’t about to be submerged, malaria wasn’t infecting the northern hemisphere—many exposed man-made climate change as a hoax. The leaked Climategate emails revealed how scientists had conspired to “hide the decline” in temperatures that didn’t conform to their models. The claim that 97 percent of scientists supported the global warming theory was exposed as a fraud, as was the claim that the 4,000 scientists associated with the IPCC endorsed its report—those 4,000 hadn’t endorsed it, and most hadn’t even read it but had merely reviewed parts of the report and often disagreed with what they read.

  The claim that the “science was settled” on climate change never withstood scrutiny. Scientists around the world signed a series of petitions to dispute that claim. The 2008 Oregon Petition, spearheaded by a former president of the National Academy of Science and championed by Freeman Dyson, Albert Einstein’s successor at Princeton and one of the world’s most preeminent scientists, was signed by more than 31,000 scientists and experts who agreed that “the proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. … Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

  

  COP26 President Alok Sharma (C) speaks during the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, on Nov. 13, 2021. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

  What is settled is the abject failure of the three-decade-long attempt by the bureaucracies of the 195 countries of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to convince anyone other than themselves, a credulous media, and a relatively few gullible people that climate change represents an existential threat. Poll after poll over the decades show the public gives climate change short shrift when asked to rank its importance.

  A Gallup Poll released this week, which asked Americans, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” found that climate change didn’t meet its criteria of the many issues worth listing. As Gallup noted, “Many parts of the nation have suffered record heat in recent weeks, and other regions have received record flooding. But a low 3% of Americans mention the weather, the environment or climate change as the nation’s top problem.” So, too, last month, where “just 1 percent of voters in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll named climate change as the most important issue facing the country …. Even among voters under 30, the group thought to be most energized by the issue, that figure was 3 percent.”

  Although most elites continue to pay lip service to the urgency of curbing carbon dioxide, their actions belie their words, whether judged by their penchant for private jet travel or their disingenuous commitment to climate-related policies. According to an International Energy Agency (IEA) announcement last week, coal is once again king: Global coal demand this year will “match the annual record set in 2013, and coal demand is likely to increase further next year to a new all-time high.” The IEA’s assessment comports with a worldwide embrace of coal that includes the European Union, until recently the world’s most zealous climate scold. The EU is now walking back its Net Zero commitments.

  In some countries, governments are not so much walking back climate policies as unabashedly kicking them out. Calling wind turbines “fans” that harm the environment and cause “visual pollution” without providing much energy, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the government will end the subsidies and stop issuing permits for new wind projects. Israel is also set to pull the plug on the country’s wind industry, its environmental protection minister arguing that wind provides a “negligible contribution” to the country’s power system “compared to the potential for harm to nature, which is high.”

  Recognizing renewables as economic and environmental boondoggles, as Mexico and Israel have done, is a step toward puncturing the lie that a fuel that emits carbon dioxide can be sensibly replaced. The other shoe to drop is the lie that carbon dioxide-emitting fuels should be replaced.

  The fantastical claim that CO2 is a pollutant was cut out of whole cloth. The 2008 statement by the 31,000 experts—that “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate” is as true today as it was then, and as it always has been. No scientist anywhere at any time has shown that manmade CO2 emissions—aka nature’s fertilizer—do any harm to anything.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 16:30

• Goldman Warns Oil Is 'Down But Not Out': The Good, Bad, & Ugly In The Energy Complex
  Goldman Warns Oil Is ‘Down But Not Out’: The Good, Bad, & Ugly In The Energy Complex

  Oil prices have tumbled 25% since early June, driven by low trading liquidity and a mounting wall of worries: recession, China’s zero-COVID policy and real estate sector collapse, the US SPR release, and Russian production recovering well above expectations.

  

  However, Goldman’s Damien Courvalin believes that the case for higher oil prices remains strong, even assuming all these negative shocks play out, with the market remaining in a larger deficit than we expected in recent months.

  The bullish thesis does though require addressing the huge divergence between Brent prices, which averaged $110/bbl in June-July, and the $160/bbl Brent-equivalent global retail fuel price.

  Conceptually, two prices matter for modeling the oil market:

  (1) the retail price of fuels paid by consumers as it drives demand elasticity and

  (2) the crude price received by producers as it drives supply elasticity.

  Up until 2021, retail prices followed a stable relationship to Brent prices but this is no longer the case due to significant distortions to each of the steps required to transform crude oil coming out of the ground into fuels consumed by producers.

  

  Goldman sees three main takeaways from this:

  • The good: retail prices – while not tradable – came in close to our forecasts despite all the current macro uncertainties.

  • The bad: the disconnect between retail and Brent financial prices was much wider than expected, keeping Brent futures well below our forecast.

  • The ugly: our retail price forecast – which proved broadly accurate – did not result in enough demand destruction to end the current, unsustainable deficit.

  The much wider than expected gap between Brent physical prices (i.e. Dated Brent, not ICE Brent futures) and global retail fuel prices in Brent-equivalent terms (c.$45/bbl on average in June-July vs. our c.$25/bbl assumption) can be linked to the Russian energy and EU gas crises.

  Goldman states that growing lack of financial participation in the commodity futures market helps explain this record wide premium as well as the recent new collapse in Brent prices as well as the current extreme level of crude backwardation.

  Market liquidity plumbing new depths…

  

  Courvalin and his team continue to expect that the oil market will remain in unsustainable deficits at current prices.

  Balancing the oil market therefore still requires oil demand destruction on top of the ongoing economic slowdown, where we are more cautious than consensus.

  This requires a sharp rebound in retail fuel prices – the binding constraint to balancing the oil market – back to $150/bbl Brent equivalent prices, equivalent to US retail gasoline and diesel prices reaching $4.35 and $5.45/gal by 4Q22.

  As Goldman concludes, the unprecedented discount of Brent prices, even wider than we expected, can be explained by the worsening Russian energy crisis, as it boosts the costs of transforming crude out of the ground (Brent) into retail pump prices around the world through surging EU gas prices, freight rates, USD and global refining utilization.

  While they assume that the exceptional wedge between retail fuel and Brent futures prices will remain wider than previously expected, Goldman still expects that Brent prices will need to rally well above market forwards, with their 3Q-4Q22 forecasts now $110-125/bbl vs. $140-130/bbl previously (with their $125/bbl 2023 forecast unchanged).

  Concerns about their bullish view are warranted though – as recession risks are rising – but as Courvalin notes, reported oil demand has held up surprisingly well

  Data for our monthly reported demand sample (covering c.81% of global demand for May and 55% for June) shows demand tracking above our expectations following downward revisions in April.

  

  The demand recovery has been led by jet fuel (+1mb/d YoY for the sub-sample), with the expected weakness in gasoline demand (-0.5 mb/d, given higher price elasticity) offset by strength in industrial products potentially being pulled into the power stack.

  The prevalence of retail government interventions such as price freezes/controls (such as those in China and India, versus tax holidays in the OECD) continues to shield oil demand more than expected.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 16:00

• Senate Passes $740 Billion Tax, Climate Package — Will Go To House Next
  Senate Passes $740 Billion Tax, Climate Package — Will Go To House Next

  Update (1532ET): After much wrangling, the Democrats finally passed their sweeping economic package through the Senate on Sunday.

  

  The estimated $740 billion “Inflation Reduction Act” – far less ambitious than their original $3.5 trillion vision – next heads to the House, where its passage is a foregone conclusion. According to Axios, a vote could come as early as Friday before it heads to President Biden’s desk.

  The package includes provisions to address climate change, pharmaceutical costs, and a supercharged IRS.

  “It’s been a long, tough and winding road, but at last, at last we have arrived,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “The Senate is making history. I am confident the Inflation Reduction Act will endure as one of the defining legislative measures of the 21st century.“

  WATCH: Kamala Harris and Senate Democrats cheer as they pass a bill to raise taxes on the middle class. pic.twitter.com/NPpPMGV7Wj

  — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 7, 2022

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

  As the Washington Post notes, “Senators engaged in a round-the-clock marathon of voting that began Saturday and stretched late into Sunday afternoon. Democrats swatted down some three dozen Republican amendments designed to torpedo the legislation. Confronting unanimous GOP opposition, Democratic unity in the 50-50 chamber held, keeping the party on track for a morale-boosting victory three months from elections when congressional control is at stake.”

  And as Axios reports,

  The Senate returned to the Capitol Saturday afternoon, and began voting late Saturday night and into Sunday on a series of amendments — part of the process known as “vote-a-rama.”

  • Senate Republicans offered dozens of amendments aimed at minimizing the bill, including stripping out funding for the Internal Revenue Service and eliminating COVID-19-related school mandates.
  • Democrats held firm in their unity, with the help of Harris, of preserving the core elements of the package and voting down each GOP amendment.

  .  .  .

  The bill includes:

  • $370 billion for climate change – the largest investment in clean energy and emissions cuts the Senate has ever passed.
  • Allows the federal health secretary to negotiate the prices of certain expensive drugs for Medicare.
  • Three-year extension on healthcare subsidies in the Affordable Care Act.
  • 15% minimum tax on corporations making $1 billion or more in income. The provision offers more than $300 billion in revenue.
  • IRS tax enforcement.
  • 1% excise tax on stock buybacks.

  Drilling down on the climate portion – Axios’ Andrew Freedman writes:

  • This includes tax incentives to manufacture and purchase electric vehicles, generate more wind and solar electricity and support fledgling technology such as direct air capture and hydrogen production. 
  • Independent analyses show the bill, combined with other ongoing emissions reductions, would cut as much as 40% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, short of the White House’s 50% reduction target. However, if enacted into law, it would reestablish U.S. credibility in international climate talks, which had been flagging due in part to congressional gridlock. 
  • As part of Democrats’ concessions to Sen. Manchin, the bill also contains provisions calling for offshore oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, and a commitment to take up a separate measure to ease the permitting of new energy projects. 

  *  *  *

  Senate Democrats late on Aug. 6 advanced a mammoth spending bill on climate and energy, health care, and taxes, after overcoming unanimous Republican opposition in the evenly divided chamber.

  

  The procedural vote to advance the Democratic bill – which authorizes over $400 billion in new spending – was 51–50 after Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the Capitol to cast a vote, breaking the deadlock in the Senate over the measure that Democrats say would reform the tax code, lower the cost of prescription drugs, invest in energy and climate change programs, all while lowering the federal deficit.

  The vote means that senators will have 20 hours to debate on the measure, followed by a vote-a-rama, a marathon open-ended series of amendment votes that has no time limit. After that, the bill will head to a final vote. The measure is anticipated to pass the chamber as early as this weekend.

  The House, where Democrats have a majority, could give the legislation final approval on Aug. 12, when lawmakers are scheduled to return to Washington.

  The vote came after the Senate parliamentarian – the chamber’s nonpartisan rules arbiter – gave a thumbs-up to most of the Democrats’ revised 755-page bill.

  But Democrats had to drop a significant part of their plan for lowering prescription drug prices, Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough said.

  The provision would have essentially forced companies not to raise prices higher than inflation. MacDonough said Democrats violated Senate budget rules with language in the bill imposing hefty penalties on drugmakers who raise their prices beyond inflation in the private insurance market.

  As Mimi Nguyen Ly details at The Epoch Times, while the bill’s final costs are still being determined, it includes about $370 billion on energy and climate programs over the next 10 years, and about $64 billion to extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act program for federal subsidies of health insurance for three years through 2025.

  It also seeks generate about $700 billion in new revenue over the next 10 years, which would leave roughly $300 billion in deficit reduction over the coming decade, which would represent just a tiny proportion of the next 10 year’s projected $16 trillion in budget shortfalls.

  A large portion of the $700 billion—an estimated $313 billion—is expected to be generated by increasing the corporate minimum tax to 15 percent, while the remaining amounts include $288 billion in prescription drug pricing reform and $124 billion in Internal Revenue Service tax enforcement.

  According to the current version of the bill, the new 15 percent minimum tax would be imposed on some corporations that earn over $1 billion annually but pay far less than the current 21 percent corporate tax. Companies buying back their own stock would be taxed 1 percent for those transactions, swapped in after Sinema refused to support higher taxes on private equity firm executives and hedge fund managers. The IRS budget would be increased to strengthen its tax collections.

  The White House said in a statement of administrative policy on Aug. 6 that it “strongly supports passage” of the bill.

  “This legislation would lower health care, prescription drug, and energy costs, invest in energy security, and make our tax code fairer—all while fighting inflation and reducing the deficit,” the statement reads.

  “This historic legislation would help tackle today’s most pressing economic challenges, make our economy stronger for decades to come, and position the United States to be the world’s leader in clean energy.”

  Republicans say the legislation is simply an alternate, dwindled version to the Democrat’s earlier Build Back Better bill—a multitrillion-dollar social spending package that was a major agenda of President Joe Biden—that Democrats have now dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”

  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Democrats “are misreading the American people’s outrage as a mandate for yet another reckless taxing and spending spree.” He said Democrats “have already robbed American families once through inflation and now their solution is to rob American families yet a second time.”

  “There is no working family in America whose top priorities are doubling the size of the IRS and giving rich people money to buy $80,000 electric cars,” McConnell said in a separate statement on Twitter.

  “Americans want Washington to address inflation, crime, and the border—not another reckless liberal taxing and spending spree.”

  Democrats have said the measure would “address record inflation by paying down our national debt, lowering energy costs, and lowering healthcare costs,” but Republicans have criticized the measure as having no potential other than to make matters worse, nicknaming the legislation “Build Back Broke,” in part because the bill would fulfill many parts of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.

  “The time is now to move forward with a big, bold package for the American people,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

  “This historic bill will reduce inflation, lower costs, fight climate change. It’s time to move this nation forward.”

  But not every Democrat is buying what Chuck is selling…

  

  As John Solomon reports at JustTheNews.com, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the former presidential candidate and proud socialist, on Saturday attacked President Joe Biden‘s Inflation Reduction Act for failing to live up to its name, after the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office declared it would have a minimal impact on surging prices.

  “I want to take a moment to say a few words about the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that we are debating this evening,” Sanders said just after voting with Democrats to advance the bill to debate on the Senate floor.

  “I say so-called because according to the CBO and other economic organizations that have studied this bill, it will in fact have a minimal impact on inflation.“

  CBO declared this week that the $740 billion piece of legislation would only affect inflation by 0.1% in either direction.

  “I don’t find myself saying this very often. But on that point, I agree with Bernie,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told Insider.

  Overall, economic analysts are divided on the measure, with some having predicted that the bill will worsen inflation and lead to stagnation in growth.

  As Will Cain explained in an excellent monologue reality check, “look at the name of the bill, whatever it is, you can be sure the legislation will do the opposite.”

  Finally, as Goldman details in a new notes, the net fiscal impact of these policies continues to look very modest, likely less than 0.1% of GDP for the next several years…

  

  While the final outcome may still yet differ in details, the fiscal impact is likely to be similar.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 15:32

• Economic Slowdown Now, Recession Coming In 2023
  Economic Slowdown Now, Recession Coming In 2023

  Authored by Lance Roberts via The Epoch Times,

  Economic slowdown but no recession! That message comes from the latest employment report, service sector data, and Federal Reserve.

  “We’re not in a recession right now. We do have these two-quarters of negative GDP growth. To some extent, a recession is in the eyes of the beholder. With all the job growth in the first half of the year, it’s hard to say there’s a recession. With a flat unemployment rate at 3.6 percent, it’s hard to say there’s a recession,” stated James Bullard, St. Louis Federal Reserve president.

  Such a statement certainly belies much of the economic consensus that two-quarters of negative economic growth constitutes a recession. As shown, the latest GDP report indeed met that measure.

  

  Source: St Louis Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Chart: RealInvestmentAdvice.com

  However, as stated, some indicators suggest the economy is in a slowdown but not yet in a recession. For example, our composite Institute of Supply Management (ISM) survey is still in expansionary territory. Since services make up about 80 percent of the economy today, there is currently support for economic growth. However, the data trend is negative and suggests the view of an economic slowdown.

  

  Source: St Louis Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Chart: RealInvestmentAdvice.com

  Employment also remains extremely strong. With the unemployment rate near historic lows, it suggests there is currently not a recession underway. However, historically low unemployment rates are pre-recessionary and reverse quickly as a recession takes hold.

  

  Source: St Louis Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Chart: RealInvestmentAdvice.com

  While neither measure suggests the economy has entered a recession yet, it does not preclude one from occurring. Many indicators suggest individuals “feel” like the economy is in a recession, such as our composite consumer sentiment index. Historically, a recessionary environment was present when consumer confidence and expectations declined below 80.

  

  Source: St Louis Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Chart: RealInvestmentAdvice.com

  Notably, given short-term economic dynamics, we could see a bump in economic growth owing to back-to-school spending in Q3 and holiday shopping in Q4.

  However, I suspect that as the Fed continues its aggressive mission to combat inflationary pressures, a recession in 2023 is likely.

  The Fed’s Dilemma

  While James Bullard and others currently direct the monetary policy regime, suggesting they can quell inflation with only an economic slowdown, history suggests otherwise. The Fed makes its policy decisions based on lagging economic data.

  For example, as noted previously, the Fed is currently basing its ability to continue hiking based on solid employment rates. However, history is clear that as the Federal Reserve hikes rates, there is a point where “something breaks” and low unemployment rates soar higher.

  

  Source: St Louis Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Chart: RealInvestmentAdvice.com

  That breaking point occurs because as the Federal Reserve hikes rates, the real-time economy adjusts to monetary policy changes. However, data such as employment and, importantly, inflation is comprised of data that can take several months to catch up to the actual economy.

  Notably, more than 40 percent of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is Home Owners Equivalent Rent. It takes roughly three months for pricing changes to be accurately reflected in the data. As the Fed continues to hike rates to combat inflation, the actual impact on consumers and economic activity is not reflected in CPI on a timely basis. It creates the possibility of the Fed over-tightening monetary policy, turning an economic slowdown into a more severe economic contraction.

  Of course, this is precisely what history tells us will happen.

  

  Source: St Louis Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Chart: RealInvestmentAdvice.com

  Monetary supply also tells us the Fed is likely making a mistake with its current aggressive stance on inflation. As discussed recently, inflation is the consequence of restricted supply owing to the economic shutdown and increased demand from “stimulus” checks. The massive surge in M2 money supply has reversed and has about a nine-month lead on inflation.

  

  Source: St Louis Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Chart: RealInvestmentAdvice.com

  While the Fed is hiking rates to quell inflation, the contraction of the money supply is doing the job for them.

  Driving With the Rearview Mirror

  There is little doubt we are currently amidst an economic slowdown. With the Federal Reserve focused on combating inflationary pressures by tightening monetary policy, thereby slowing economic demand, logic suggests that current economic data trends will continue to decline. Of course, the only difference between an economic slowdown and a recession is whether the readings can remain above zero.

  As the Fed continues to hike rates, each hike takes roughly nine months to work its way through the economic system. Therefore, the rate hikes from March 2020 won’t show up in the economic data until December. Likewise, the Fed’s subsequent and more aggressive rate hikes won’t be fully reflected in the economic data until early- to mid-2023. As the Fed hikes at subsequent meetings, those hikes will continue to compound their effect on a highly leveraged consumer with little savings through higher living costs. We have shown previously that the consumer is exceptionally unprepared for such an outcome.

  

  Source: St Louis Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Chart: RealInvestmentAdvice.com

  Given the Fed manages monetary policy in the “rear view” mirror, more real-time economic data suggest the economy is rapidly moving from economic slowdown toward recession. The signals are becoming clearer from inverted yield curves to the six-month rate of change of the Leading Economic Index.

  

  Source: St Louis Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Chart: RealInvestmentAdvice.com

  The media and the White House will likely proclaim victory by stating the first two quarters of 2022 were not a recession but only an economic slowdown. However, given the lag effect of changes to the money supply and higher interest rates, indicators are pretty clear recession risk is very probable in 2023.

  From an investment standpoint, it suggests the current market rally is not the beginning of a new bull market. Instead, investors are likely being lured into the clutches of a bear market rally that will probably have rather disappointing outcomes.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 15:30

• World Food Prices Crash The Most Since 2008
  World Food Prices Crash The Most Since 2008

  Central banks and mainstream economists were entirely wrong about the narrative that inflation is “transitory,” but after more than a year of raging inflation to four-decade highs, there are signs that current price spikes are waning. 

  One of those price declines is the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) index of world food declined by 8.6% to 140.9 points in July, marking the fourth consecutive month of declines since hitting an all-time high in March. However, the international price of a basket of commonly-traded food commodities is still 13.1% higher than in July 2021. 

  As shown below, the UN food index recorded the largest monthly decline since the summer of 2008. 

  

  “The decline in food commodity prices from very high levels is welcome, especially when seen from a food access viewpoint; however, many uncertainties remain, including high fertilizer prices that can impact future production prospects and farmers’ livelihoods, a bleak global economic outlook, and currency movements, all of which pose serious strains for global food security,” said FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero.

  Besides slumping food prices, inflation expectations alongside commodity prices (fuel prices) have recently eased and come as recession risks across G10 markets are pulled forward (the US has fallen into a technical recession) as central banks raise interest rates aggressively to fight the inflation storm. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 08/07/2022 – 15:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• The Growing Threat From North Korea
  The Growing Threat From North Korea

  Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

  • China’s urging “flexibility” on North Korea appears to coincide with the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions in the region.

  • “According to unclassified intelligence reports to Congress, there are five key Chinese banks and a specially created holding company that funds the North Korean missile and nuclear technology programs.” — Peter Huessy, Real Clear Defense, August 10, 2017.

  • China’s main strategic concern when it comes to the Korean peninsula is apparently to end the US presence there and keep it out of US hands so that China can finally establish itself as the hegemon in the region.

  • North Korean escalation in the form of increased missile tests and resumption of ICBM and nuclear tests to pressure the US to make concessions — in the shape of troop withdrawals from South Korea — would play directly into the hands of China, enabling it to replace the US and establish itself as the primary power in the region.

  • “They are looking to take actions, which we believe are fundamentally destabilizing, as a way to increase pressure.” — US official in Washington to journalists, France24.com, January 31, 2022.

  • China, however, seems to have no interest in cooperating with the US on North Korea. Attempts to secure “Beijing’s cooperation” to build necessary economic leverage over North Korea are therefore exercises in futility.

  • China clearly cannot be relied on voluntarily to use its leverage over North Korea to persuade Kim Jong-un to give up his missile and nuclear program. To resolve the impasse, it is necessary to employ means that will leave China no choice other than to cooperate on North Korea.

  • A highly efficient way of doing that, Gordon Chang has suggested, would be to cut off the large Chinese banks and businesses that support the North Korean missile and nuclear technology from the global financial system by designating them a “primary money laundering concern” under Section 311 of the Patriot Act.

  • “In short, American policymakers know how to get China to begin acting responsibly.” — Gordon G. Chang, Newsweek, May 10, 2021.

  • The question now is — will the Biden administration muster the political will to designate those large Chinese banks under Section 311 of the Patriot Act?

  North Korea, despite a UN Security Council ban on its ballistic missile tests, continued to develop its nuclear and missile programs in 2021, according to a new UN report. In January 2022 alone, North Korea launched a record 11 missiles, including two hypersonic missiles and the first firing since 2017 of a Hwasong-12 mobile intermediate-range ballistic missile which is within reach of US territory with its estimated range of 4,500 kilometers. In 2017, North Korea tested the Hwasong-15, which has an estimated range of 8,500-13,000 kilometers.

  

  Both US and South Korean officials expressed concern that the Hwasong-12 test indicated that North Korea would resume testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and nuclear weapons.

  In addition, North Korea reportedly has an underground military base, used for keeping ICBMs, just 25 kilometers from its border with China. According to analysts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the location was chosen to deter preemptive strikes by the US against the base, to avoid provoking Beijing. “The position near the Chinese border acts as a potential deterrent to a pre-emptive strike that might impinge on Chinese security equities,” noted Victor Cha, a North Korea expert at the CSIS.

  “In today’s world where many countries waste time dealing with the United States with submission and blind obedience, there’s only our country on this planet that can shake the world by firing a missile with the U.S. mainland in its range,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “There are more than 200 countries in the world, but only a few have hydrogen bombs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and hypersonic missiles.” North Korea has said in the past that the Hwasong-12 can carry a “large-size heavy nuclear warhead.”

  Eight Security Council members — the United States, Albania, Brazil, France, Ireland, Norway, the United Arab Emirates and Britain — and Japan described North Korea’s Hwasong-12 launch as a “significant escalation” that “seeks to further destabilize the region.”

  China, on the other hand, urged “flexibility” on North Korea. “They should come up with more attractive and more practical, more flexible approaches, policies and actions in accommodating concerns” of North Korea, Chinese UN Ambassador Zhang Jun said. “The key in solving this issue is already in the hands of the United States.”

  China’s urging “flexibility” on North Korea appears to coincide with the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions in the region. North Korea’s recent actions were possibly even encouraged by China.

  “China, after all, exercises great influence over the North’s ruling Kim family and can, as a practical matter, require the North Koreans to do what it wants,” wrote China expert Gordon G. Chang.

  According to some analysts, China has been instrumental in bringing about North Korea’s nuclear weapons’ program. According to Peter Huessy, director of strategic deterrent studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies:

  “The North Korean nuclear program started in 1965 with the Soviet construction of a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor. But it was Chinese and Pakistani assistance that enabled the North to begin construction on a 50-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, and a secret reprocessing facility, in the mid-1980s. North Korean construction of a covert uranium enrichment facility around 2000 and North Korea’s first test explosion of a nuclear device in 2006 were likely enabled by assistance from the Pakistani A.Q. Khan, and based on uranium enrichment and nuclear design plans originally obtained from China.”

  Crucially, according to Huessy:

  “According to unclassified intelligence reports to Congress, there are five key Chinese banks and a specially created holding company that funds the North Korean missile and nuclear technology programs.”

  China’s main strategic concern when it comes to the Korean peninsula is seemingly to end the US presence there and keep it out of US hands so that China can finally establish itself as the hegemon in the region. There are currently approximately 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea. That is the third-largest military presence abroad for the US after Japan and Germany. North Korean escalation in the form of increased missile tests and resumption of ICBM and nuclear tests to pressure the US to make concessions — in the shape of troop withdrawals from South Korea — would play directly into the hands of China, enabling it to replace the US and establish itself as the primary power in the region.

  “North Korea will likely escalate pressure on the United States by taking a series of steps toward an ICBM test,” said Cheon Seong-whun, a former head of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-funded research institute in Seoul.

  “They are looking to take actions, which we believe are fundamentally destabilizing, as a way to increase pressure,” a US official in Washington told journalists.

  In response to North Korea’s test of the Hwasong-12, the US has called for direct talks with the country “without preconditions.”

  “We believe it is completely appropriate and completely correct to start having some serious discussions… It requires a response. You will see us taking some steps that are designed to show our commitment to our allies … and at the same time we reiterate our call for diplomacy. We stand ready and we are very serious about trying to have discussions that address concerns on both sides.”

  If the Biden administration wants to resolve the growing North Korean threat, it will have to start doing things differently. It will have to abandon “the same basic North Korea strategy that Washington has used for over two decades,” as pointed out by Markus Garlauskas, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, who served nearly 20 years in the U.S. government dealing with North Korea.

  “This strategy has focused on achieving a ‘strategic decision’ from Pyongyang to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program and on securing Beijing’s cooperation to build the necessary economic leverage.”

  China, however, seems to have no interest in cooperating with the US on North Korea. Attempts to secure “Beijing’s cooperation” to build necessary economic leverage over North Korea are therefore exercises in futility. A new strategy must finally acknowledge China’s role as backer of North Korea for the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic purposes in the region. China clearly cannot be relied on voluntarily to use its leverage over North Korea to persuade Jong-un to give up his missile and nuclear program. To resolve the impasse, it is necessary to employ means that will leave China no choice other than to cooperate on North Korea. A highly efficient way of doing that, Gordon Chang has suggested, would be to cut off the large Chinese banks and businesses that support the North Korean missile and nuclear technology from the global financial system by designating them a “primary money laundering concern” under Section 311 of the Patriot Act.

  “And as big as Bank of China is—it is the world’s fourth-largest bank, as measured by assets—it is surely not the largest Chinese bank cleaning up cash for Kim,” Gordon Chang wrote.

  “That honor may belong to China’s—and the world’s—largest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Moreover, the remaining two of the Big Four, the world’s second- and third-largest banks, have also been implicated in handling dirty money for the Kims. In short, American policymakers know how to get China to begin acting responsibly.”

  The question now is – will the Biden administration muster the political will to designate those large Chinese banks under Section 311 of the Patriot Act?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 23:30

• The Cost Of Mining Bitcoin In 198 Different Countries
  The Cost Of Mining Bitcoin In 198 Different Countries

  It takes an estimated 1,449 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy to mine a single bitcoin. That’s the same amount of energy an average U.S. household consumes in approximately 13 years.

  Given the high amount of energy needed to mine bitcoin, it can be a costly venture to get into. But, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, exact prices fluctuate, depending on the location and the cost of electricity in the area.

  Where are the cheapest and most expensive places to mine this popular cryptocurrency? This graphic by 911 Metallurgist provides a snapshot of the estimated cost of mining bitcoin around the world, using pricing and relative costs from March 23, 2022.

  

  How Does Bitcoin Mining Work?

  Before diving in, it’s worth briefly explaining the basics of bitcoin mining, and why it requires so much energy.

  When someone mines for bitcoin, what they’re really doing is adding and verifying a new transaction record to the blockchain—the decentralized bank ledger where bitcoin is traded and distributed.

  To create this new record, crypto miners need to crack a complex equation that’s been generated by the blockchain system.

  Potentially tens of thousands of miners are racing to crack the same code at any given time. Only the first person to solve the equation gets rewarded (unless you’re part of a mining pool, which is essentially a group of miners who agree to combine efforts to increase their chances of solving the equation).

  The faster your computing power is, the better your chances are of winning, so solving the equation first requires powerful equipment that takes up a lot of energy.

  The Costs and Profits of Mining Bitcoin in 198 Countries

  Across the 198 countries included in the dataset, the average cost to mine bitcoin sat at $35,404.03, more than bitcoin’s value of $20,863.69 on July 15, 2022. Though it’s important to note that fluctuating energy prices, and more or less miners on the bitcoin network, constantly change the necessary energy and final cost.

  Here’s a breakdown of what the cost to mine one bitcoin in each country was in March 23, 2022, along with the potential profit after accounting for mining costs:

  Venezuela ranks as the number one most expensive country to mine bitcoin. It costs a whooping $246,530.74 to mine a single bitcoin in the South American country, meaning the process is far from profitable. Energy costs are so expensive in the country that miners would be out $225,667.05 for just one bitcoin.

  

  On the opposite end of the spectrum, the cheapest place to mine bitcoin is in Kuwait. It costs $1,393.95 to mine a single bitcoin in Kuwait, meaning miners could gain $19,469.74 in profits.

  

  The Middle Eastern country has some of the cheapest electricity in the world, with one kWh costing an average of just 3 cents. For context, the average cost of one kWh in North America is 21 cents.

  The Race is On

  Despite the steep costs of bitcoin mining, many people believe it’s worth the upfront investment.

  One thing that makes bitcoin particularly appealing is its finite supply—there are only 21 million coins available for mining, and as of this article’s publication, more than 19 million bitcoin have already been mined.

  While the price of bitcoin (BTC) is notorious for its volatility, its value has still grown significantly over the last decade. And if cryptocurrencies become mainstream as many people believe they will, this could boost the price of bitcoin even further.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 23:00

• Despite Strict Gun Control, California Had The Most Active Shooter Incidents In 2021: FBI
  Despite Strict Gun Control, California Had The Most Active Shooter Incidents In 2021: FBI

  Authored by Jason Blair via The Epoch Times,

  In a report issued by the FBI, California ranked first for the most active shooter incidents in 2021. The state has been in the top spot in three of the past five years.

  

  According to the study, a total of 61 active shooter incidents occurred across 30 states last year with 103 people killed and 140 wounded. This is up from 40 incidents and 38 killed in 2020.

  California had 6 incidents that claimed the lives of 19 people with 9 wounded. Texas and Georgia each had 5.

  California, which has some of the strictest gun laws, saw 0.015 shootings per 100,000 people. Texas, which has very unrestrictive state gun laws, had nearly the same at 0.0167 per 100,000 people. Georgia had 0.045 per 100,000 people.

  Criminal attorney Arash Hashemi told NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times, that in his opinion there’s no easy answer to how gun laws should be handled.

  “We need both sides to sit down and listen to what’s going on. I know one side says we need to ban guns, one side said there would be no regulation. But there needs to be a meeting of the minds in the middle,” Hashemi said.

  California is moving ahead to implement more gun restrictions. The new state Senate Bill 918, which is currently on its way through the legislature, would ban the carrying of guns in most public areas, regardless of whether someone has a carry license or not.

  However Hashemi suggested a slightly different approach. He said the Second Amendment can’t be violated, but he thinks certain people should be restricted from owning a firearm.

  “I think California needs to implement these background checks but at the same time make sure they don’t infringe on people’s rights to bear arms,” Hashemi said.

  He said vetting gun buyers for red flags like mental illness or psychiatric medication is important.

  He added that the importance of the Second Amendment is to give the civilians of the United States a check on the government.

  The greatest number of casualties and injuries at an active shooter incident in 2021 was 15, at both a FedEx center in Indiana and a Kroger grocery store in Tennessee.

  June had the most with 12, and December had the least with 1.

  The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more people engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. The 2021 report is limited to these incidents and does not include other gun-related situations like self-defense, drug violence, or gang violence.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 22:30

• Christian High School In Manhattan Hosted Mandatory Drag Show In Place Of Church Service
  Christian High School In Manhattan Hosted Mandatory Drag Show In Place Of Church Service

  Would leftists actually target a Christian school church service with a sexualized drag show?  Of course they would.  

  Students at Manhattan’s Grace Church High School say they were supposed to attend Wednesday church services on April 27th, 2021 when they were greeted with a surprise substitution show featuring a dancing drag queen in orange go-go boots called “Brita Filter” (the symbolism of the stage name is unknown).  The event was sponsored by “Spectrum,” the school’s LGBT support club and members of the school faculty.

  The students allege they felt pressured to participate and had to pretend they enjoyed the event.  Some Spectrum club members tapped teens on the shoulders and ordered them to stand for the show, while others handed out pride stickers and stated “Take one or you’re homophobic.”  Other kids got involved in the show and began twerking in the chapel.

  After the dancing was over, Brita discussed being “pansexual.”

  

  Said one student, “It’s notable that this person consistently called themselves fabulous and talented and beautiful. Not just once or twice, but over and over this person reassured themselves that way…”

  The inherent narcissism of the pride movement is easily observed.  

  The school website details their pride related programs and Brita Filter’s performance. 

  Beyond the obvious affront to Christian doctrine, the trend of sexualized drag performances for kids sponsored by schools has become an epidemic.  Numerous schools over the past year have been caught secretly hosting drag queen shows without asking parents for permission.  The wider media exposure of these events has been met with attacks from leftists, claiming that there is no sexualization agenda in schools.       

  The gaslighting has been rampant and the goal behind trans indoctrination and school drag shows is openly admitted:  It’s about political activism and normalization.

  On TikTok, Brita bragged about the event:

  “I literally went to church to teach the children today…A Catholic High School here in NYC invited me to their Pride Chapel. Visibility matters and I’m so honored to have had the chance to talk to you about my work as a LGBTQ+ Drag Queen Activist.”

  Grace Church Schools plan to introduce pride events to younger middle schoolers as well, with lessons on the “history of the pride flag” and what it symbolizes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 22:00

• Sowell: The Point Of No Return
  Sowell: The Point Of No Return

  Authored by Dr. Thomas Sowell,

  This is an election year. But the issues this year are not about Democrats and Republicans. The big issue is whether this nation has degenerated to a point of no return – a point where we risk destroying ourselves, before our enemies can destroy us.

  

  If there is one moment that symbolized our degeneration, it was when an enraged mob gathered in front of the Supreme Court and a leader of the United States Senate shouted threats against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, saying “You won’t know what hit you!”

  There have always been irresponsible demagogues. But there was once a time when anyone who shouted threats to a Supreme Court Justice would see the end of his own political career, and could not show his face in decent society again.

  You either believe in laws or you believe in mob rule. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with the law or agree with the mob on some particular issue. If threats of violence against judges — and publishing where a judge’s children go to school — is the way to settle issues, then there is not much point in having elections or laws.

  There is also not much point in expecting to have freedom. Threats and violence were the way the Nazis came to power in Germany. Freedom is not free. If you can’t be bothered to vote against storm-trooper tactics — regardless of who engages in them, or over what issue — then you can forfeit your freedom.

  Worse yet, you can forfeit the freedom of generations not yet born.

  Some people seem to think that the Supreme Court has banned abortions. It has done nothing of the sort.

  The Supreme Court has in fact done something very different, something long overdue and potentially historic. It has said that their own court had no business making policy decisions which nothing in the Constitution gave them the authority to make.

  Get out a copy of the Constitution — and see if you can find anything in there that says the federal government is authorized to make laws about abortion.

  Check out the 10th Amendment, which says that the federal government is limited to the specific powers it was granted, with all other powers going to the states or to the people.

  Why do we elect legislators to do what the voters want done, if unelected judges are going to make up laws on their own, instead of applying the laws that elected officials passed?

  This is part of a very long struggle that has been going on for more than 100 years.

  Back in the early 20th century, Progressives like President Woodrow Wilson decided that the Constitution put too many limits on the powers they wanted to use.

  Claiming that it was nearly impossible to amend the Constitution, Progressives advocated that judges “interpret” the Constitutional limits out of the way.

  This was just the first in a long series of sophistries.

  In reality, the Constitution was amended 4 times in 8 years — from 1913 through 1920 — during the heyday of the Progressive era.

  When the people wanted the Constitution amended, it was amended. When the elites wanted the Constitution amended, but the people did not, that is called democracy.

  Another great sophistry was using the federal government’s authority to regulate interstate commerce to call all sorts of other things interstate commerce. In 1995, elites were shocked when the Supreme Court ruled — 5 to 4— that carrying a gun near a school was not interstate commerce.

  States had a right to ban carrying a gun near a school, and most of them did. But the federal government had no such authority. Nor did the Constitution give the federal government the right to make laws about abortion, one way or the other.

  What both state and federal laws do have the right to stop is threats against judges and their families.

  This is not a partisan issue. The Republican governor of Virginia is providing protection to Supreme Court Justices who live in that state. But the Republican governor of Maryland seems to think that harassing judges and their families is no big deal.

  Voters need to find out who is for or against mob rule, whether they are Democrats or Republicans. We are not going to be a free or decent society otherwise.

  *  *  *

  Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 21:30

• What Is ESG? It's A Leveraging Tool For The Woke Communist Takeover
  What Is ESG? It’s A Leveraging Tool For The Woke Communist Takeover

  The corporate dynamic when it comes to politics has been rather bizarre the past five years.  The general rule for decades in the US was that companies would avoid public sparring over political agendas whenever possible and if they did contribute to election campaigns they would spend money discreetly on candidates in both parties to hedge their bets.  Something changed around 2015-2016, however.  

  Was it the surprise election of Donald Trump?  Trump was probably incidental.  It was more likely the dramatic shift among conservatives away from the controlled Neo-con paradigm and into a more liberty oriented standing.  Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns had a lot to do with this change among Republican voters.  Conservatives and liberty minded independents were returning to their foundations of small government, constitutionalism, independent thought, meritocracy and decentralization.  This is when the corporate world decided (or was perhaps guided) to go full bore leftist.

  That is to say, the leftist cult couldn’t stifle the rise of conservative liberty advocates without consolidating their control in the open, and corporations are a big part of that strategy.   

  Wall Street, Entertainment Media and Big Tech companies donated FAR more to Democrat candidates in recent years compared to Republican candidates.  In the 2020 presidential election, they spent 250% more on Joe Biden’s campaign than Donald Trump’s.  But beyond that, many companies have gone aggressively and openly woke.   Social Justice narratives of “equity, diversity and inclusion” are dominating corporate culture, and though leftist bias has always been a problem among Hollywood elitists and the entertainment media, things got a lot worse after 2016.

  Part of this aggressive leftism could be attributed to the ESG movement (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance), a clear appendage or tool for globalist foundations like the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Economic Forum.  It is also referred to as “stakeholder capitalism” and “mission related investing.”  Stakeholder capitalism is just another term for socialism/communism, and ESG is a related control methodology for dictating how businesses behave politically.  

  The term “ESG” was originally coined by the United Nations Environment Program Initiative in 2005, but the methodology was not fully applied to the corporate world until the past six years when ESG investment skyrocketed. 

  There are some people that will argue that ESG is not a true “communist” mechanism because communism technically involves the state taking control of the means of production.  These people are either ignorant or they are acting deliberately obtuse.  Communism is about controlling culture just as much as it is about controlling the economy.    

  Corporations are at bottom creations of government; they are chartered by governments, receive special legal advantages including corporate personhood, and they often receive special protections from governments including central bank stimulus and a shield from civil litigation.  They call it “too big to fail” because the government and the corporate world work hand in hand to keep certain institutions alive.  

  One could call this an odd mix of communism and fascism; the point is, the lines have blurred beyond all recognition and the ideology of the people in power is specifically leftist/communist/globalist. Corporations already have government incentives to protect the corrupt status quo, but ESG is designed to lure them into supporting vocal political alignment even at the cost of normal profits.

  

  ESG is about money; loans given out by top banks and foundations to companies that meet the guidelines of “stakeholder capitalism.”  Companies must show that they are actively pursuing a business environment that prioritizes woke virtues and climate change restrictions.  These loans are not an all prevailing income source, but ESG loans are highly targeted, they are growing in size (for now) and they are very easy to get as long as a company is willing to preach the social justice gospel as loudly as possible.

  Deloitte’s Insights studies show that ESG assets compounded at 16% p.a. between 2014 and 2018, now account for 25% of total market assets, and they believe that ESG could account for 50% of market share globally by 2024. 

  These loans become a form of leverage over the business world – Once they get a taste of that easy money they keep coming back.  Many of the loan targets attached to ESG are rarely enforced and penalties are few and far between.  Primarily, an ESG funded company must propagandize, that is all.  They must propagandize their employees and they must propagandize their customers.  As long as they do this, that sweet loan capital keeps flowing.  

  It’s enough to keep corporations addicted, but not enough to keep them satiated.  Diversity hiring quotas based on skin color and sexual orientation rather than merit help make the overlords happy.  Pushing critical race theory smooths the way for more cash.  Carbon controls and climate change narratives really makes them happy.  And, promoting trans-trenders and gender fluidity makes them ecstatic.  Each participating company gets it’s own ESG rating and the more woke they go, the higher their rating climbs and the more money they can get.

  The list of companies heavily involved in ESG includes some of the largest in the world, with influence over thousands of smaller businesses.  The ESG rating system is much like the social credit scoring system used in communist China to oppress the citizenry.  The tactic is pretty straightforward – Banking elites are centralizing control of social narratives by incentivising businesses to embrace social justice and globalist ideals.  They control who gets the money and anyone who doesn’t play ball will be at a distinct disadvantage compared to companies that do.  

  They figure, if the corporate world can be pushed to go full woke, then this will trickle down to the general public and influence our behaviors and thinking.  Except, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way.  Resistance to woke propaganda is growing exponentially and many of these companies are losing a huge portion of their customer base.  They cannot survive on ESG alone.               

  The thing is, even ESG money has limits.

  With central banks around the world now raising interest rates these kind of loans will become more expensive and will likely start to phase out.  This is why the most woke corporations out there are also some of the most desperate for revenues this year, and why many of these companies are edging closer and closer to mass layoffs.  The venture capital is gone and the ESG money is going to dry up also unless rates go back to zero and the bailout firehose is turned back on.  Getting woke was once a backdoor tactic of gaining easy wealth.  Now, getting woke really does mean going broke.   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 21:00

• US University Admits It May Have Broken Law In Contract With Wuhan Lab
  US University Admits It May Have Broken Law In Contract With Wuhan Lab

  Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A top U.S. biosecurity lab is assuming responsibility for signing “poorly drafted” agreements with three high-level biosecurity labs in China that they concede may have broken the law.

  

  The three contracts, including one with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), gave the Chinese labs powers to destroy “secret files” from any stage of their collaboration.

  “The party is entitled to ask the other to destroy and/or return the secret files, materials, and equipment without any backups,” stated the 2017 memorandum of understanding (MOU) that the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) signed with the Wuhan lab, which first came to light in April.

  The broad confidentiality obligation, renewable every five years, applied to “[a]ll cooperation and exchange documents, data, details and materials,” the document said.

  Located in the first city where COVID-19 began to spread, the WIV, which for years conducted coronavirus research with U.S. funding, has attracted global attention as a possible source of the virus. The confidentiality agreements, coupled with Beijing’s pattern of suppression of discussion on pandemic origin, raised questions over whether any crucial data may have been erased from the public eye.

  The Texas medical university conceded recently that these confidentiality terms may have violated state laws.

  ‘Oversight’

  The university recently disclosed that it had signed contracts with identical confidentiality provisions with two other top-level biosecurity labs in China: the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute (pdf) in China’s northernmost province Heilongjiang, and the Institute of Medical Biology in Kunming (pdf), capital of China’s southern Yunnan Province, documents first obtained by the investigative research group U.S. Right to Know show. The two facilities, together with the WIV, house China’s only three labs certified with the highest biosafety levels.

  Reached by The Epoch Times, the university attributed the inclusion of the “poorly draftly” provision to an “oversight” on its part.

  “The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) takes responsibility for the oversight in allowing memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to include a poorly drafted confidentiality provision in potential conflict with applicable state laws,” a university spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

  The university added that they “immediately terminated any MOU that contained language that conflicts with law and policy” upon learning of the error. “A review of processes and practices at UTMB is underway and new levels of oversight for procedures are being implemented.”

  

  The UTMB wouldn’t specify when it discovered the “error” nor when it put an end to the MOUs. The documents, however, had said that the confidentiality terms would stay in force even “after it has been terminated.”

  The UTMB’s Galveston National Laboratory, one of two national biocontainment laboratories built with U.S. federal grants, had years of partnership with the three Chinese facilities, providing the Chinese scientists with biosecurity training and conducting joint research projects. It began collaborating with the WIV in 2013.

  The university maintained that the agreements have resulted in minimal material consequences.

  “UTMB confirms no documents or confidential information has been destroyed, nor was there ever any request that any documents be destroyed,” the spokesperson said. “There was no financial engagement with any of the Chinese institutions in question, or collaboration with Chinese scientists concerning coronavirus research.”

  Edward Hammond, a biosafety activist who has called for greater transparency at the Galveston lab, was unconvinced by the university’s stance.

  “It is mystifying to me that this could have happened at all,” he told The Epoch Times. “Is it sloppiness, as UTMB suggests, or is something else going on?”

  LeDuc

  James LeDuc, director at the time for the Galveston lab, signed his name on all three contracts.

  In the months after the COVID-19 broke out, LeDuc had reached out to prominent WIV scientists overseeing bat coronavirus projects, in a bid to help them tamp down scrutiny over the facility’s role in the pandemic, according to recently released emails analyzed by The Epoch Times.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 20:30

• Which Nations Face The Biggest Disruption From China's Taiwan-Trade-Blockade?
  Which Nations Face The Biggest Disruption From China’s Taiwan-Trade-Blockade?

  Following an official visit of U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, relations between the island state known as the Republic of China and its direct neighbor, the People’s Republic of China, have cooled considerably.

  Apart from an increasing number of military exercises off the coast of Taiwan stoking fears of an escalation of the long-running conflict, the People’s Republic also has, to a certain extent, halted trade with Taiwan.

  

  While an import ban on certain Taiwanese fruits and fish is unlikely to become a source of global tensions, China’s export stop on sand, a resource essential for the manufacturing of semiconductors, could prove devastating for countries like the United States.

  <a href=" You will find more infographics at Statista“>As Statista’s Florian Zandt shows in the chart below, based on UN Comtrade data, 62 percent of the United States’ total trade volume with Taiwan came from imports from the island state in 2021. A majority of these goods fall into the IT and electronics sector, with companies like Apple, Qualcomm and NVIDIA relying on chips manufactured in the large-scale semiconductor foundries of Taiwan. Next to the war in Ukraine and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, China’s sand ban could become another exacerbating factor to the ongoing chip shortage.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The United States are not the only one profiting from Taiwanese exports.

  Germany, South Africa, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Japan are Taiwan’s principal trade partners in Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Oceania, respectively. Germany and Japan are especially reliant on the island’s industry, with exports taking up 40 percent of the $21 billion in trade with the European country and 34 percent of the Japanese-Taiwanese trade volume of $86 billion.

  The basis of the tensions between China and Taiwan is the hitherto unresolved question of independence. After the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, the remaining supporters of the defeated Kuomintang retreated to the island. Once established there, they proclaimed the Republic of China, while the People’s Republic sees the island, which is now governed democratically, as its own province.

  Largely ignored in this equation is the role of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, 16 of whom are officially recognized as ethnic minorities. After a long history of colonization by the Netherlands, Spain, China and Japan, they still made up about 2.4 percent of the population in 2019.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 20:00

• Despite Climate-Doomsaying, Great Barrier Reef's Coral Growth Soars To Record
  Despite Climate-Doomsaying, Great Barrier Reef’s Coral Growth Soars To Record

  Authored by Chris Morrison via DailySceptic.org,

  The near vertiginous rise in the annual growth of coral at the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is continuing, with further major increases recorded across large areas.

  

  According to the 2021-22 annual summary from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), levels of coral cover in the northern and central areas of the reef were at their highest levels over the past 36 years of monitoring.

  The growth is of course excellent news for environmentalists, but curiously, at the time of writing, the news is being downplayed in the mainstream media. The demise of the world’s coral reefs has long been a go-to poster scare story for Net Zero promoters. As late as October 2020, the BBC  was telling stories about the Reef losing half of its coral. The Guardian was one of the first to set the coral doomsday ball rolling when George Monbiot told its readers in 1999 that the “imminent total destruction of the world’s coral reefs is not a scare story”. Noting the recent record growth, the newspaper added that “global heating could jeopardise recovery”.

  This notion that global warming will cause corals to die is frankly a big whopping fib. Tropical coral, which is closely related to its cnidarian cousin the jellyfish, thrives in waters between 24°C and 32°C. It is highly adaptable but seems to dislike sudden changes in temperature, often caused by natural weather oscillations such as El Niño events. As the latest results from the AIMS show, coral quickly recovers when normal localised conditions return. In fact, coral often grows faster in warmer waters nearer the equator than the GBR. The big agitprop lie suggests minor long-term sea temperatures changes will wipe out the coral, but the scientific evidence suggests otherwise.

  

  The sensational growth is clearly seen in the above graph for the northern reef. Recovery is said to have continued following a “period of cumulative disturbances” from 2014 to 2020. Only three of the 24 reefs surveyed in the last two years had decreased hard coral cover. The biggest disturbance, of course, arose around 2016 and was caused by a powerful, and natural, El Niño Pacific oscillation that quickly raised surrounding ocean temperatures by up to 3°C. Sudden warming spooks the coral and they expel symbiotic algae in a process commonly known as bleaching. As we can see, this is quickly reversed when sea temperatures stabilise. Corals have been around, in one form or another, for 500 million years. It is likely this natural process extends back that far to the birth of life as we know it on Earth.

  

  In the central reef, the declines seen in 2012 and 2016 were due to natural events, namely Cyclone Yasi in 2012 and El Niño in 2016. The latter led to bleaching to around 2019, and matters were not helped by outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish attacks. Since then, the growth has been spectacular. Last year saw hard coral cover increase to 33%, said to be the highest for this region. Over the last two years, hard coral cover declined on only four individual reefs, and increased on most of the rest surveyed.

  The southern part of the GBR has generally displayed the highest coral cover, but according to the AIMS it has been the most “dynamic” over the 36-year survey history. In recent years there has been good growth after the 2016 El Niño depredations, but there have been major attacks by starfish. AIMS notes that many southern reefs have high coral cover, but starfish continue to decimate some areas.

  Overall, the GBR seems to be in excellent shape.

  The AIMS notes that in the northern and central regions, hard coral cover reached 36% and 33% respectively. Reefs consist of much more than hard coral and contain a diversity of other species along with sponges and algae. The AIMS defines 30-50% as a “high value”, based on historical surveys.

  Nevertheless coral is still too valuable a weapon in the green agenda to be discarded lightly. Despite highlighting some stunning reverses of the recent natural coral declines, the AIMS seems to be sticking to the trendy apocalyptic story.

  “The predicted consequences of climate change, which include more frequent and intense mass coral bleaching events, are now a contemporary reality. Simultaneously, chronic stressors such as high turbidity, increasing ocean temperatures and changing ocean chemistry can all negatively affect recovery rates, while more frequent acute disturbances mean that the intervals for recovery are becoming shorter,” it concludes.

  For what it’s worth, my own hunch is that the little critters will still be around in another 500 million years, maybe longer.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 19:30

• North Carolina County 'Hardens' Schools With AR-15s For Resource Officers
  North Carolina County ‘Hardens’ Schools With AR-15s For Resource Officers

  In response to the disastrous failures and egregious poor decision-making of law enforcement to confront the Uvalde elementary school shooter that killed 21 people, including 19 children, a school system in North Carolina unveiled a new program to beef up security measures for the upcoming school year, including the placement of standard semi-automatic AR-15 rifles in every school, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times.

  Madison County Schools and Madison County Sheriff’s Office agreed to put AR-15s in all schools in the district so that school resource officers can neutralize a threat immediately, unlike the disastrous response time in Uvalde, where video footage shows it took officers 77 minutes to breach the classroom where the shooter was hiding. 

  “Those officers were in that building for so long, and that suspect was able to infiltrate that building and injure and kill so many kids,” Sheriff Buddy Harwood said, referring to the Uvalde shooting. “I just want to make sure my deputies are prepared in the event that happens.”

  “We were able to put an AR-15 rifle and safe in all of our schools in the county. We’ve also got breaching tools to go into those safes. We’ve got extra magazines with ammo in those safes,” Harwood said. 

  All Madison County Schools, including Brush Creek Elementary, Hot Springs Elementary, Mars Hill Elementary, Madison Middle, Madison High, and Madison Early College High, will receive enhanced security before school starts next month. 

  “The reason we put the breaching tools in the safes is that in the event we have someone barricaded in a door, we won’t have to wait on the fire department to get there,” the sheriff said. “We’ll have those tools to be able to breach that door if needed. I do not want to have to run back out to the car to grab an AR, because that’s time lost. Hopefully we’ll never need it, but I want my guys to be as prepared as prepared can be.” 

  “I hate that we’ve come to a place in our nation where I’ve got to put a safe in our schools, and lock that safe up for my deputies to be able to acquire an AR-15. But, we can shut it off and say it won’t happen in Madison County, but we never know. I want the parents of Madison County to know we’re going to take every measure necessary to ensure our kids are safe in this school system. If my parents, as a whole, want me to stand at that door with that AR strapped around that officer’s neck, then I’m going to do whatever my parents want as a whole to keep our kids safe,” Harwood continued.

  Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre recently said President Biden is not interested in beefing up school security protocols. 

  “I know there have been conversations about hardening schools. That is not something that he believes in,” said Jean-Pierre.

  Once the Madison County School story gains momentum in the national press, Democrats will have a meltdown on hardening schools and might even warrant a comment from Biden. But the fact is, a high percentage of all mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones” (areas where guns are prohibited), according to Crime Prevention Research Center. 

  

  A possible security solution to gun violence at schools (gun-free zones) is a resources officer who is properly trained and armed to tackle threats. Not hardening schools could be disastrous and the continuation of crazies slaughtering the innocent. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 19:00

• Biden Wants China Hawks To 'Put The Brakes' On Bill Gutting 40 Years Of Taiwan Policy
  Biden Wants China Hawks To ‘Put The Brakes’ On Bill Gutting 40 Years Of Taiwan Policy

  Authored by Connor Freeman via The Libertarian Institute,

  On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported, as tensions have risen to dangerous levels with China, President Joe Biden’s administration is lobbying Senate Democrats to “put the brakes” on the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022. The bill was recently introduced by the hawkish Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

  Analysts have said the bill which, inter alia, would designate Taipei a “major non-NATO ally,” could see the One-China policy “in effect gutted.” In a New York Times op-ed this week, Menendez said “we are laying out a new vision that ensures our country is positioned to defend Taiwan for decades to come.”

  The bill was supposed to be called up by the Foreign Relations Committee this week, but Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said work on the bill is being delayed until next month and could see revisions. “The White House has significant concerns,” said Murphy, adding “I have significant concerns.”

  

  According to a report in The Dispatch, “[Murphy] planned to introduce changes to make some of its language more ambiguous regarding whether the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of an attack by China. A section of the proposal calls for the Defense Department to conduct a classified review of the U.S. strategy to defend Taiwan. One of Murphy’s amendments would have changed that language to instead mandate a review of the strategy to deter the use of force by the Chinese military.”

  The upshot is that the White House sees provoking China further right now as unwise in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit, which triggered an unprecedented crisis in the Taiwan Strait. A Chinese military official warned the situation could lead to “a real war at any point.” On the Republican side, Graham is accusing the administration of being soft on China. He has declared “it’s a miscalculation of how to keep the world in order.” Graham added “at every turn they take the weakest path.”

  The bill would vastly expand Taiwan’s role in international institutions and, over four years, provide $4.5 billion in military aid to Taipei including potentially long-range missiles capable of striking mainland China. This would make the island the fourth highest recipient of US security assistance behind only Kiev, Tel Aviv, and Cairo.

  In the event of “a significant escalation in hostile action” since December 2021, the legislation would require massive sanctions on a wide swath of China’s financial institutions, key industries, and much of the country’s political elite including President Xi Jinping.

  The Dispatch article says a part of the bill would “block any restrictions on bilateral relations between officials from the United States and their Taiwanese counterparts,” as well as change the name of the island’s de facto embassy in the US from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) to the “Taiwan Representative Office.”

  🇨🇳⚡🇹🇼 Visuals from the going PLA drills#Taiwan #china pic.twitter.com/57knD1JsFz

  — OsintTv📺 (@OsintTv) August 6, 2022

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  When Taiwan opened a diplomatic outpost with the latter name in Lithuania last year, signifying official rather than the “unofficial” status in line with the One-China policy, it caused a major row. The US supported Vilnius, as the Biden administration was “seriously considering” such a move itself. However, Beijing considered it a serious violation of the One-China principle and recalled its ambassador, which the Lithuanians subsequently reciprocated.

  The Dispatch report also suggests that it was not necessarily the Executive Branch’s ambivalence that halted the bill until September. “One Democratic Senate source familiar with the situation told The Dispatch the schedule change was not related to the White House’s concerns, but it came because… [Menendez] had to manage Senate floor debate on an unrelated measure Wednesday night to allow Finland and Sweden to join NATO.”

  The Bloomberg report, citing “people familiar with the matter,” said the White House fears the bill would interfere with the “strategic ambiguity” policy regarding whether Washington, in the event of an attack by mainland China, would intervene militarily to defend the island. Murphy said “I’m not sure this is the moment to throw out 40 years of policy,” while maintaining “it makes sense for us to draw closer to Taiwan.” In Menendez’s op-ed, he wrote “the United States needs less ambiguity to guide our approach to Taiwan.”

  Sen. Jim Risch, the committee’s top Republican, said “Many of us are ready to mark up the Taiwan Policy Act today,” adding the administration has “done enough damage on Taiwan policy, and continues to add to it this week. It should not interfere in the legislative process.”

  “If you put this on the floor of the Senate, it would pass overwhelmingly,” Graham told Bloomberg.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 18:30

• "Deteriorating Situation" Shows Rent Growth "Collapsing" In Sunbelt Markets
  “Deteriorating Situation” Shows Rent Growth “Collapsing” In Sunbelt Markets

  The housing and renting market continues to teeter on the brink, and the newest incoming data doesn’t offer up any clear signs of stabilization. In fact, new data continues to suggest the opposite: that volatility in housing could only be beginning…and that we’re going to have plenty of fodder on deflation, which we have talked about frequently, invoking the effects of a “reverse bullwhip” on the economy. 

  A new report from Apartments.com examining multifamily rent growth trends for July 2022 shows that the Sunbelt markets are set up for what is being called a “a significant collapse of demand” heading into the back half of 2022. 

  Sunbelt cities, which had previously “dominated the top 10 rent growth markets in July with eight out of 10 located within the region” are now setting up for the fastest pullback.

  Palm Beach is singled out as an example. The city has seen year over year asking rents falling from growth of 30.6% to now just 12.7% at the end of July 2022. Tampa and Las Vegas have also seen double digit pullbacks in rent. 

  

  Jay Lybik, National Director of Multifamily Analytics, CoStar Group, who owns Apartments.com, stated: “Throughout the month of July, while multifamily yearly rents continued to perform well above historical averages, the deceleration of rent growth quickened at a time when markets typically post their best results.”

  He continued: “The deteriorating rent situation highlights a significant collapse of demand in the sector when new unit deliveries are projected to hit 230,000 in the second half of 2022.”

  Over in the utopia brewing on the West Coast, places like San Francisco are bucking that trend. Rents in San Fran are just $18 below their all time peak of $3,116 that they set in Q2 2019, the report says. Rents were actually up by 40 bps over the last 30 days to grow 5%. 

  We’ll see how long that lasts…

  Overall, however, the rental picture is “deteriorating”, according to the release:

  Analysts have found that, looking sequentially, 12 markets saw absolute asking rents decline over the past month, the first occurrence since 2020. Miami led the charge with average asking rents down $11 during July, in addition to five markets that reported no change in rents over the last 30 days.

  The stark reversal for Sunbelt markets can be seen vividly in the month over month chart. Markets that saw negative or flat rent growth in July are dominated by Sunbelt locations, including Fort Lauderdale, Austin, Orlando, Charlotte and Tampa, amongst others.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 18:00

• Ethereum Neoclassic: Recap Of The Biggest Crypto News In The First Week Of August
  Ethereum Neoclassic: Recap Of The Biggest Crypto News In The First Week Of August

  By Donovan Choy of Bankless

  Ethereum Neoclassic (aka ETH PoW) chain

  As the Merge nears, one related point of discussion is emerging around a potential hard fork for an “ETH PoW” (Ethereum Proof-of-work) chain which some miners are voicing their support.

  I’m calling this the Ethereum Neoclassic (ETN) chain, because “ETH PoW” puts readers to sleep and there already exists a PoW-based Ethereum Classic from 2016.

  So why is the Ethereum Neoclassic hard fork potentially a thing? For the simple reason that the Merge is about to render an estimated $5B worth of mining rigs obsolete. That presents Ethereum miners with two choices:

  1. Redeploy their rigs toward mining Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum Classic, or some other PoW chain
  2. Protest the Merge by forking into the new ETH Neoclassic chain that retains PoW validation

  Should enough miners support the second option, it would likely be Ethereum’s second high-profile hard fork. The first one of course was in 2016 after the infamous DAO hack that saw a minority group of miners protest the Ethereum foundation’s decision to negate the theft of 3.6M ETH, thereby giving birth to Ethereum Classic (ETC). 

  There were die-hards then, and there are die-hards now. People like the status quo, especially if they have a stake in seeing it preserved.

  But today’s die-hards that threaten to hard fork face an even larger challenge for a few reasons.

  First, for the new Ethereum Neoclassic chain to thrive requires that the existing state of DeFi is successfully “ported” over to the new chain. That would require hundreds of asset providers and bridging protocols to honor claims on users’ assets — stablecoins, Lido’s staked ETH, all forms of wrapped tokens — that currently exist on the Neoclassic chain.

  Tether is likely going to enable redemptions for USDT on the new PoS Ethereum chain rather than a Neoclassic chain, given the strong social support for the Merge. If so, then decentralized exchanges and lending platforms on Neoclassic will collapse in the absence of liquidity.

  Of course, there is a chance that something maybe goes catastrophically wrong with the Merge, then a new Schelling point might gravitate around the Neoclassic chain. Then a minority of users maybe wants to redeem their USDT on the Neoclassic chain, and Tether maybe honors them. But that is a lot of maybes. It’s a classic collective action problem and no protocol wants to be stranded alone in a highly fractured DeFi landscape where trading infrastructure is broken and all other assets are dead.

  A short thread about EthPoW and what is quite likely to happen:

  Spoiler TL;DR: Galois et Guo delenda est

  🧵👇

  — Marc “Aavechan.lens” Zeller 👻 💜 (@lemiscate) August 1, 2022

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  Second, a Neoclassic chain would come with the difficulty bomb, a built-in mechanism by Ethereum developers to disincentivize the original chain from functioning post-Merge by making mining increasingly difficult. Ethereum Neoclassic miners would have an insurmountable task of gathering consensus twice: Once to hard fork the Merge, then hard fork the previous hard fork again to remove the bomb. 

  Third, an Ethereum Neoclassic chain doesn’t only face competition for developer talent and users from the new PoS chain, but also the old Ethereum Classic (ETC) chain. Incidentally, ETC’s price has been rallying 32% in the past two weeks as speculators anticipate that the hash rate may be redirected to. 

  For all of these reasons and more, most analysts and researchers don’t foresee an Ethereum Neoclassic chain taking off.

  Will it happen? Likely.

  Will it succeed? That’s another question.

  Nomad bridge hack

  There are two major hacks rippling across DeFi this week. The first is the Nomad bridge racking up 5th place on the Rekt leaderboards with a ~$190M loss. 

  Nomad is a decentralized cross-chain bridge protocol supporting asset transfers across five chains: Avalanche, Ethereum, Cosmos’ Evmos, Cardano’s Milkomeda, and the Polkadot Moonbeam network. On the eve of its hack, Nomad was the 6th largest Ethereum bridge holding ~$169M of value.

  

  What happened? A flaw in a Nomad smart contract allowed users to spoof transactions and withdraw money from an open vault (it was open for 43 days 🤯) on the bridge.

  That opened the door to hundreds of hackers for a cash grab by copy-pasting the transaction call data used by the original hacker, and replacing the wallet address with one of their own to siphon funds.

  1/ Nomad just got drained for over $150M in one of the most chaotic hacks that Web3 has ever seen. How exactly did this happen, and what was the root cause? Allow me to take you behind the scenes 👇 pic.twitter.com/Y7Q3fZ7ezm

  — samczsun (@samczsun) August 1, 2022

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  Unlike the centralized Axie Infinity Ronin bridge $650M hack in March where private validator keys were stolen, the Nomad hack stems not from a flaw in design architecture i.e., the degree of trust required, but from a smart contract flaw. In short, Nomad’s design focused on trust-minimization and was more in line with the decentralized nature of Web3, but still came up short.

  The silver lining here is that because the exploit was a free-for-all, some ethical hackers accumulated at least $9M of the spoils, which have been returned to Nomad.

  Nomad exploit onchain activity, visualized. pic.twitter.com/WqjcbQfWKW

  — Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) August 1, 2022

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  It’s probably worth reiterating for the hundredth time on Bankless that cross-chain bridges come with their own risks (different from multi-chain bridges like Cosmos).

  If the crypto that you own sits only on its native network, then its security relies exclusively on that network’s validator security. But there’s a new exciting dapp on another chain running liquidity-mining-fuelled 100% APYs, so the smart investor thing to do is wrap and transfer your crypto around different chains to stake for greater returns, while at the same time watch number go up on your original collateral— win-win right? 

  Cross-chain bridges enable that kind of capital efficiency but it also introduces new attack vectors and smart contract risks as your crypto traverses different chains.

  Lesson: If you use a bridge, use it with your eyes wide open.

  With the recent hack of @nomadxyz_ I think it is time to reflect more broadly on bridges security as by now they became by far the most critical piece of blockchain infrastructure. Here are some things to consider: 👇🧵https://t.co/se3eU95olY

  — bartek.eth (@bkiepuszewski) August 2, 2022

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  Solana wallet hack

  The second hack this week is taking place within the Solana ecosystem, affecting at least 8,000 Solana wallets with total losses of up to $6M, particularly popularly used wallets like Phantom, as well as Slope and Trust.

  In the early stages of the hack, it wasn’t clear what the security issue was. Both the Solana Foundation and Phantom alleged that the problem may be related to Slope Finance, a Solana Web3 aggregator platform that offers iOS and Android mobile wallets. The uncertainty led Solana users rushing to push funds to a hardware wallet or even centralized exchanges.

  Well, it turned out that the root cause of the problem simply stemmed from… Slope Wallet is a terrible service provider. Slope stored wallet seed phrases on a centralized event logging service and then that service was exposed. 

  Correction – the Slope wallet did not send seed phrases to external partners, but may have logged them on their own centralized servers. Apologies for getting a bit ahead of myself, postmortem still in progress. Wait for an announcement from the team for true confirmation.

  — foobar (@0xfoobar) August 3, 2022

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  Slope’s official statement doesn’t tell us much, safe for “we dun goofed”, “we know it hurts, and “wait for pending investigation”.

  Three Arrows Capital fallout

  You thought the fallout was over but it isn’t. Celsius sees a data breach that leaks its customers emails.

  The Block reports that Babel Finance, a crypto bank that halted withdrawals last month lost at least $280M in trading during the June market downtown.

  Other news:

  Aave moves to freeze Fantom markets due to recent bridge exploits; Rainbow Wallet supports NFTs on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimism; Starknet launches NFTs; Robinhood gets fined $30M by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 17:30

• Indiana Enacts Near Total Abortion Ban
  Indiana Enacts Near Total Abortion Ban

  Following on the heels of a ban in Georgia, Indiana is the latest state to end abortion after the Supreme Court ruled that the practice is not a constitutional right and that laws regarding abortion must be decided by the states.

  Media pundits were quick to attack the decision while applauding Kansas for its blocking of similar restrictions. 

  There are numerous claims that abortion laws are a losing proposition for conservatives going into the November election and that Republican candidates face sure defeat.  However, pro-abortion protests have been far smaller than many expected after the Supreme Court confirmed what illegal leaks had hinted at – That Roe v. Wade was about to be undone.  Activist groups have left little impression that conservatives face some kind of “reckoning” in the fall.  

  

  Abortion as a convenient form of birth control is perhaps not as appealing a notion as the far-left imagines.  Indiana’s near total abortion ban will take effect on September 15th.

  At least 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion in the coming months.  Though Kansas was seen as a “surprise” given its reputation as a conservative state,  the fact that they have a Democrat governor and they supported pandemic lockdowns well after most red states ended them should have been clear signs that Kansas is more blue than many people believe.  It was never even on the list of states that are seen as a threat to abortion activists. 

  Far from being a crushing policy for conservatives, abortion bans are more likely to act as a litmus test for state governments and their dedication to conservative causes (such as the right to life for all innocent individuals including the unborn).  Red state governments that don’t act to reverse abortion practices would be seen as suspect.  By the end of this year most Americans will know exactly what kind of state they are living in. 

  If the covid lockdowns and restrictions didn’t make this clear, the battles over Roe v. Wade will certainly clarify things.     

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 17:00

• The Greatest Value Investor You've Never Heard Of
  The Greatest Value Investor You’ve Never Heard Of

  By the MacroOps Substack

  “We can have no finer role model. First and foremost, he was a value investor — a member of that eccentric tribe that believes it’s better to underpay than to overpay.”

  Those words by James Grant were in reference to one of the greatest value investors the world has ever seen. It’s not who you think it is. And no, you couldn’t guess him given fifty chances. This investor remains off the beaten path, absent from many investors’ Mt. Rushmore of allocators.

  The investor is Floyd Odlum.

  

  Buried somewhere in the junk drawer of investing lore, Odlum’s story remains unknown. A quick Google search reveals his Wikipedia and IMDB pages. Yet in typical deep-value fashion, the last link on the page revealed Odlum’s investing story.

  The Holy Financier’s blog post was that last link. The blog proved an excellent springboard for a deeper investigation into Odlum’s early life, initial career and his path to market fortunes. Although Odlum (pictured on the right) and Ben Graham never met, their investment philosophies are one in the same.

  We’ll journey through his upbringing, his days as a struggling lawyer and his initial attempt at market speculation. Then we’ll see how Odlum turned $39,000 into $700,000 in two years.

  Life Before The Markets

  Floyd Bostwick Odlum was born on March 30, 1892 in Union City, Michigan. When Floyd was 16, his father — a Methodist minister — moved the family to Colorado. Floyd stayed close to home, studying law at the University of Colorado. He received his degree in 1914. Floyd bounced around in his first few years after college. After marrying his first wife, Hortense in 1915, Odlum accepted a job as an attorney for the Utah Power and Light company in Salt Lake City, UT.

  Three years later, he found himself off the ski slopes and in the throes of New York City. Between 1917 and 1918, Odlum worked for the Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett law firm, as well as the Electric Bond and Share Company. He settled down with Electric Bond and Share Company long enough to gain the role of vice president.

  Dipping His Toes in Speculation

  With a decent income from his job as a law clerk, Odlum started trading in the stock market. He initially saw the market as a rich, fertile ground for speculative profits. Far from his cemented legacy as a deep value investor. Yet like most beginning speculators, Odlum too paid his fair share of market tuition.

  After losing all his $40,000 starting capital, Odlum retreated from the markets. One newspaper revealed it, “took [Odlum] a while to pay back that sum”. Yet It was this early $40K loss that turned Odlum from speculator to investor. From tape reader to business analysis. Lawyer to Wall Street Legend.

  Soon enough, Odlum would be back. The starting capital would be the same. The approach, anything but similar.

  The United States Company

  Odlum wasn’t just a great investor. He also had a knack for choosing the most generic partnership names, such as his first “The United States Company”. The partnership, formed in 1923, was a couple’s affair. Odlum, George Howard and their wives seeded the partnership with $39,000 ($573K adj. for inflation).

  What followed over the next two years was nothing short of incredible. According to Odlum’s biography, The United States Company grew 17x from 1923 – 1925. What started as a small partnership amongst friends turned into a $660,000 behemoth ($9.47M adjusted for inflation).

  Odlum’s two-year CAGR is mind-numbing. If that wasn’t impressive enough, he generated these returns while working full-time as a law clerk!

  How did he generate such outsized returns?

  Well, he was a deep value investor. He searched for fifty-cent dollars and  scoured every corner of the market. According to documents from the Eisenhower Library, Odlum preferred two kinds of investments:

  • Utility stocks
  • Special situations

  He defined a special situation as “an investment […] involving not only primary financial sponsorship, but usually also responsibility for [the] management of the enterprise.” The former lawyer wasn’t interested in flipping a business for a quick buck, either.

  Embedded in Odlum’s strategy was the determination to see a special situation through until success, “[We will] stay with the investment until the essentials of the job have been done, and then move on [to] another special situation”.

  Between 1925 – 1928, Odlum steadily grew the partnership. By investing in utilities and special situations, The United States Company AUM grew to $6M (over $88M adjusted for inflation). It was around this time that Odlum began sensing euphoria in the market. He smelled a top and he decided it was time for him to act.

  The Formation of Atlas Corporation

  In 1929, he rolled his original partnership into a new vehicle, The Atlas Corporation. Wary of a market top, Odlum sold half his assets. He stayed in cash and issued $9M worth of Atlas Corporation securities. With $14M in cash, Floyd sat on his hands. Waiting for the next market crash, which shortly followed.

  

  Odlum was prepared and took full advantage once fear had fully gripped the market and there was blood in the streets… His subsequent operations were chronicled in an old newspaper article (courtesy of NeckarCap on Twitter):

  “After the crash, Odlum, looking around quietly with more ready money than almost anybody in Wall Street except [a] few of the big banks, noticed that the trend in trusts had reversed.”

  Odlum’s 1929 Strategy: Sit. Wait. Attack.

  Along with his traditional investments, Odlum dabbled in a number of other industries, including:

  • Mining
  • Oil and gas
  • Motion picture production and distribution
  • Aircraft and airlines
  • Department stores
  • Manufacturing
  • Broadway stage productions
  • Hotels and buildings

  But his bread and butter during the Depression was buying investment trusts. His strategy was simple. He found investment trusts that had fallen so much their stock prices were trading less than the value of their marketable securities. A good example of this in today’s markets is Manning & Napier (note: I do not hold shares).

  He discovered he could buy these trusts, liquidate their assets, and reap large profits for his stakeholders. He was buying dollar bills for $0.60 and he milked this strategy for all it’s worth. He ended up buying and merging investment trust twenty-two times. The newspaper article profiled these dealings:

  “He figured out that by buying all the outstanding shares of a particular trust, he was really buying cash or its equivalent at sixty cents on the dollar.”

  When he didn’t have the cash to buy the trusts, he sold shares in his own company, Atlas, to fund the purchases. After exchanging his stock for the trust’s stock, Odlum would merge or dissolved the existing trust, keeping the cash and assets within Atlas Corp.

  This strategy helped grow his assets to $150M ($2.2B adjusted for inflation).

  Between 1929 and 1935, Odlum invested (and controlled) many diverse businesses. He owned Greyhound Bus, a little motion picture studio named Paramount, Hilton Hotels, three women’s apparel companies, uranium mines, a bank, an office building, and an oil company.

  Taking It All In

  Odlum started with $40,000 and lost it all speculating in the market. He then pooled together another $39,000 to form his first partnership. That original $39,000 grew to $150M in controlled assets. All that during a span of just twelve years.

  The math is incredible. Odlum grew assets 384,515% in a bit over a decade. That’s a 32,042% CAGR for asset growth.

  And his early partnership returns are just as impressive. Odlum grew assets from $39,000 to $6M between 1923 – 1929. That’s a cumulative 15,284% return. In other words, Odlum compounded capital at an annual rate of 2,547%.

  Life After Markets: A Love of Aviation

  Odlum’s life was unique. His extracurriculars sprinkled with high-profile relationships, a pioneer wife and bountiful philanthropy. After his divorce in 1935, Odlum married Jacqueline Cochran. Cochran (pictured below) was a pioneer in the field of women’s aviation. And while Amelia Earnhart garners most aviation lore, Cochran’s track record is nothing to scoff at. Some of her achievements include:

  • Flying solo on the ninth day of flying lessons
  • First woman to complete the Bendix race, a cross-country race from LA to Ohio
  • Set flight duration record in 1937 flying from NY to Miami, FL
  • First woman to make a blind landing (1939)
  • Broke 2,000km international speed record (1940)

  The list goes on. At the time of her death, Cochran held more speed, distance and altitude records than any living pilot.

  Odlum played a key role in women’s aviation and space flight. He financed a majority of his wife and Earnhart’s flights. He also pumped millions into the US missile development program because, “I think the money could have been spent better otherwise. But it’s too early to tote up the value of its products. My wife thinks the moon shots were terrific.”

  Health and Retirement

  Odlum battled rheumatoid arthritis most of his adult life. The pain got so bad he had to stop working. Yet even in retirement, Odlum conducted business. One section in Odlum’s obituary shines light on his relationship with business:

  “He often [took[ telephone calls on a rubberized receiver while floating in his Olympic-sized swimming pool.”

  Odlum entertained (and housed) some of America’s most prolific leaders and talents. He dined with General James Doolittle, Bob Hope, Gloria Swanson, Walt Disney, Nelson Rockefeller and Howard Hughs.

  But of all these guests, none were more famous than President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He and Eisenhower shared a close relationship. So close, in fact, that Odlum carved out a piece of land for Eisenhower to live during the winters. Eisenhower’s small piece of property on the Odlum Estate was known as Eisenhower Cottage.

  Bringing It Back To Investments: Three Takeaways

  I want to finish this essay with three takeaways from Floyd Odlum’s investing career:

  1. You don’t need to be 100% invested 24/7

  2. Boring is beautiful

  3. Be a dumpster diver (with standards)

  1. You Don’t Have To Be 100% Invested 24/7

  Odlum wasn’t a market timer. He was a deep value investor. When value ideas dried up, Odlum went to cash. He didn’t force investments or lower his underwriting standards. He simply sat in cash.

  Jesse Livermore, a man whose made (and lost) millions in the markets, praises sitting on cash. Seth Klarman is known for his 40% cash balances during periods of market froth.

  If you want to beat the markets you must do things differently. Passive investors are 100% invested, but they’re not worried about beating the market.

  2. Boring is Beautiful

  The United States Company invested in utility stocks and special situations. These are boring corners of the market. Yet it’s these areas that catapulted Odlum’s returns into the stratosphere. How can we apply this ‘boring is beautiful’ philosophy?

  In today’s tech-driven market, many investors forget about the boring, slow-growing cash producers. These companies are toll road operators, electrical component producers, road builders. Boring businesses with not-so-boring returns.

  3. Be a Dumpster Diver (with Standards)

  The stocks Odlum bought were the ones others hated. These companies traded around 52-week and all-time lows. You wouldn’t find anyone talking about these stocks at cocktail parties.

  Yet they offered outsized returns simply because nobody bothered to look at the (potential) hidden value. Be a dumpster diver with standards. You’ll find many companies trading around all-time lows that aren’t as bad as Mr. Market thinks.

  Sources Used:

  https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/finding-aids/pdf/odlum-floyd-papers.pdf

  https://www.advisorperspectives.com/newsletters09/pdfs/James_Grant-A_Positive_Lesson_from_the_Great_Depression.pdf

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Odlum

  https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e85e/5bb20ac461ed6ef05a5fa0590bab214fd3ef.pdf

  http://theholyfinancier.com/floyd-odlum-deep-value-investor-never-heard/

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 16:30

• "Situation Is Really Precarious": World's Largest Rice Exporter Faces Output Decline Amid Heatwave
  “Situation Is Really Precarious”: World’s Largest Rice Exporter Faces Output Decline Amid Heatwave

  The effects of elevated food prices have rippled worldwide and forced governments to impose price controls and trade restrictions. Price increases are due to supply constraints driven by several variables, including high energy prices, geopolitics, and weather. Ukraine restarted maritime transport of crops to the rest of the world, forcing grain prices to slip, though the food crisis is far from over. 

  We pointed out in April that the next challenge for the global food supply could be a plunge in rice production (read: here). Fast forward months later, and our suspicions appear to be right as India, the world’s largest rice exporter, has seen planting areas of the crop decline by 13% due to heatwaves and drought. 

  

  India accounts for 40% of the global rice trade, and a decline in production will complicate India’s domestic inflation fight. It could result in export restrictions, leading to few supplies for the rest of the world. 

  

  In the last two weeks, prices in India have soared more than 10% in top growing states such as West Bengal, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh due to lack of rainfall and crop output concerns, Mukesh Jain, a director at Sponge Enterprises Pvt., a rice trader, told Bloomberg. He expects export prices to reach $400 a ton by next month from $365 this week. 

  Rice feeds half of humanity and is vital for political and economic stability across Asia. Supply disruptions due to potential trade restrictions by India could create shortages and rising prices elsewhere. 

  There’s still hope crop output could recover as the monsoon season is expected to produce normal rainfall through September. However, some farmers sounded the alarm output is expected to drop significantly. 

  Farmer Rajesh Kumar Singh operates a small farm with seven acres in Uttar Pradesh planted on only half the land because of the lack of rain in June and July. “The situation is really precarious,” he said.

  Himanshu, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, who goes by only one name, said rice prices would continue to rise because of adverse weather conditions that would help boost overall inflation. 

  The question remains if a further rise in food prices would derail India’s inflation fight. 

  “Lower area of rice sowing amidst increased demand of imports from Bangladesh and other Middle Eastern countries have pushed up rice prices of different varieties to as much as 30% since June,” said Deutsche Bank Economist Kaushik Das. “This poses challenges for the food inflation outlook.”

  The Reserve Bank of India is set to hike interest rates Friday to subdue the hottest inflation in a decade.

  The next food price shock could be from India, though it’s difficult to estimate the exact level of production loss. 

  Global food prices are still well above 2011 levels when Arab Spring resulted in revolutions across the Middle East. Signs of inflation riots have already materialized in several emerging market countries, including bankrupt Sir Lanka. 

  

  All eyes are on India’s rice production, which is set for harvest in mid-September through October. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 16:00

• Doctors Criticize Fauci For Saying COVID Vaccines Induce 'Only Temporary' Menstrual Irregularities
  Doctors Criticize Fauci For Saying COVID Vaccines Induce ‘Only Temporary’ Menstrual Irregularities

  Authored by Enrico Trigoso via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recent comments on menstrual irregularities met with serious rebuttal from gynecologists, who say COVID-19 vaccines should not have been injected into pregnant women without adequate safety testing.

  “Well, the menstrual thing is something that seems to be quite transient and temporary, that’s one of the points,” Fauci said in an appearance on Fox News on July 25, upon being asked about the effect of vaccines on menstrual cycles.

  “We need to study it more,” Fauci added.

  

  Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and has been a frontman for COVID vaccine information in the United States.

  Dr. Christiane Northrup MD, a former fellow in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, remarked to The Epoch Times on Fauci’s comments: “Unfortunately the menstrual problems we are seeing are far from transient and temporary. Many women have been bleeding daily or having heavy, irregular, painful periods for an entire year. And some of these are well past menopause. Something is way off here. ”

  Dr. James Thorp is an extensively published 69-year-old physician MD board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, as well as maternal-fetal medicine, who has been practicing obstetrics for over 42 years.

  “The significant and dramatic changes in menstrual patterns occurring after COVID-19 vaccines should not be marginalized. It is indicative of major adverse effects on women of reproductive age. The stakeholders claimed that the vaccine would remain at the injection site in the deltoid muscle. This was misinformation. The lipid nanoparticles (LNP’s) are now known to be distributed throughout the entire body and to be concentrated in the ovaries, according to at least two studies. Schadlich and colleagues demonstrated concentration of the LNP’s in ovaries of different mouse species and Wistar rats, in vivo, in vitro and by sophisticated microscopic imaging in 2012,” he told The Epoch Times.

  A lipid nanoparticle is an extremely small particle, a fat-soluble membrane that is the cargo of the messenger RNA.

  Pfizer’s Internal Documents

  Pfizer’s internal documents, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show a 118-fold increase in the concentration of LNPs from the time of injection to 48 hours.

  “The LNP’s are known to include toxic substances including polyethylene glycol and pseudo-uridinated mRNA. The limited number of ovum in the ovaries (about 1 million) are exposed to potentially toxic substances and could potentially have catastrophic effects on human reproduction,” Thorp said.  

  “The stakeholders claimed that the pseudo-uridinated mRNA could not be reverse transcribed into the human DNA. This was misinformation,” he added, referring to a Swedish study published in February 2022 that concluded that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is able to enter human liver cells and is converted into DNA.

  Thorp and former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon believe that the medical industrial complex had unequivocal evidence on the vaccine’s danger in pregnant women.

  “This is proven not only by VAERS but also by Pfizer’s own internal document ‘Pfizer 5.3.6 post-marketing experience’” Thorp said.

  Within the first 90 days of trials, there were 1,223 deaths, multiple severe adverse effects, and a 45 percent complication rate in pregnancy cases (274) that occurred in vaccinated mothers (124).

  The 2012 study, mentioned by Thorp earlier, says that after testing with different mouse species and Wistar rats, “a high local accumulation of nanoparticles, nanocapsules and nanoemulsions in specific locations of the ovaries was found in all animals.”

  Yeadon believes that the pharmaceutical industry “definitely knew,” since 2012, that the lipid nanoparticles would accumulate in the ovaries of women that took the vaccines.

  “No one in the industry or in leading media could claim ‘they didn’t know about these risks to successful pregnancy,’” Yeadon told The Epoch Times in April.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 15:30

• NHTSA Investigating Potential Tesla Autopilot Crashes That Left Two Motorcyclists Dead
  NHTSA Investigating Potential Tesla Autopilot Crashes That Left Two Motorcyclists Dead

  In the midst of an already ongoing investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot and Full-Self Driving claims, the NHTSA is now investigating two new accidents involving Teslas that took place over the last month.

  The Tesla’s were “apparently running on Autopilot”, according to APs coverage of the story. The accidents wound up killing 2 motorcyclists, the report says. The NHTSA is now looking at whether or not Tesla vehicle automation stops the vehicles for motorcycles. 

  Both accidents were similar in nature: the NHTSA said it “sent investigation teams to two crashes last month in which Teslas collided with motorcycles on freeways in the darkness”. In both instances, the motorcyclists were killed. 

  The agency now has suspicions “that Tesla’s partially automated driver-assist system was in use” during both accidents. 

  

  The first accident was at 4:47am, July 7 on State Route 91, on a freeway in Riverside, California, the report says. A Model Y collided with a green Yamaha V-Star motorcycle that was ahead of it and the driver of the bike was ejected from his motorcycle. 

  Another crash happened at 1:09am on July 24,  on Interstate 15 near Draper, Utah. A Model 3 was behind a Harley Davidson, the Utah Department of Public Safety said. 

  “The driver of the Tesla did not see the motorcyclist and collided with the back of the motorcycle, which threw the rider from the bike,” the statement says. The rider of the Harley was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver told authorities he had Autopilot on, the report says. 

  Michael Brooks, acting executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, has been pushing for a recall of Tesla’s Autopilot. He concluded: “It’s pretty clear to me, and it should be to a lot of Tesla owners by now, this stuff isn’t working properly and it’s not going to live up to the expectations, and it is putting innocent people in danger on the roads.”

  The investigations add another layer of scrutiny on Tesla’s flagship vehicle selling point by regulators. While Elon Musk continues to deal with Chancery Court in Delaware over his Twitter deal, he is also being scrutinized by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Any blow to the company’s Autopilot feature, including a potential recall, could wind up having profound financial consequences for the automaker. 

  So far, however, regulators have sat idly by on their hands – and so the game of “chicken” with Elon Musk continues…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 15:00

• CDC Suggests Gay, Bi Men Take "Temporary Break" From Sex To Curb Monkeypox Spread
  CDC Suggests Gay, Bi Men Take “Temporary Break” From Sex To Curb Monkeypox Spread

  Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times,

  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday updated its monkeypox advice to suggest people most at risk, namely men who have sex with men, “take a temporary break” from those behaviors to help “contain … the outbreak.”

  

  Among the updates are suggestions that people “take a temporary break” from sexual activity until considered vaccinated; limit their number of sexual partners; avoid “spaces” for anonymous sex with multiple partners; use condoms; and wear gloves during particular sexual activities.

  These five suggestions to reduce the chance of spread were added to the seven that appeared on the webpage when it was updated on July 12. In that previous update, the CDC offered suggestions for sexual activities for people who have (or think they have) “monkeypox and … decide to have sex.”

  Friday’s update contains stronger messaging, with the CDC now saying “the best way to protect yourself and others is to avoid sex of any kind … while you are sick.” People should especially “avoid touching any rash.”

  Public Health Emergency

  The updates come a day after the Biden administration declared a public health emergency for monkeypox in a bid to unlock funding and more powers to deal with the virus. Some states, including New York, California, and Indiana, have declared their own public health emergencies for similar reasons.

  

  The stages of Monkeypox. (UK Health Security Agency)

  The updated advice appears on the CDC’s “Safer Sex, Social Gatherings, and Monkeypox” webpage which contains detailed and specific information tailored to lowering the risk of transmission during particular sexual activities.

  “While CDC works to contain the current monkeypox outbreak and learn more about the virus, this information can help you make informed choices when you are in situations or places where monkeypox could be spread,” reads a statement on the webpage which wasn’t there in July.

  “Monkeypox is not considered a sexually transmitted disease, but it is often transmitted through close, sustained physical contact, which can include sexual contact.”

  The CDC has also advised people to consider the chances of skin-to-skin contact when attending festivals or raves.

  “Festivals, events, and concerts where attendees are fully clothed and unlikely to share skin-to-skin contact are safer. However, attendees should be mindful of activities (like kissing) that might spread monkeypox,” the CDC webpage reads.

  “A rave, party, or club where there is minimal clothing and where there is direct, personal, often skin-to-skin contact has some risk. Avoid any rash you see on others and consider minimizing skin-to-skin contact.”

  The CDC especially noted the increased risk of spread at these events in “enclosed spaces” where people go for “intimate, often anonymous sexual contact with multiple partners.”

  LGBT Community Outreach

  The White House has identified a vital need for education about monkeypox and outreach to the LGBT community, which is most affected by the outbreak, in order to combat the virus.

  White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that there is a need to make sure the LGBT community and public health officials “know exactly what to look for and what the treatment is.”

  The CDC’s updated suggestions come three days after President Joe Biden picked Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who runs the CDC’s HIV prevention division, as one of two officials to lead the nation’s response to the monkeypox outbreak.

  Daskalakis, who will be deputy to FEMA’s Robert Fenton, has expertise with issues that impact the LGBT community, making him an appropriate pick, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser.

  

  Dr. Demetre Daskalakis speaks at the press conference for New York City Pride on June 27, 2021. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)

  The 2022 monkeypox outbreak has so far primarily spread via the sexual activity of gay and bisexual men, a major study has found. The virus can also spread through contaminated bedding, clothing, towels, according to the CDC and World Health Organization.

  After the United States’ fifth pediatric monkeypox case was reported in Long Beach on Thursday, a Californian health department has also said transmission can occur via household items such as cups and utensils.

  The CDC’s updated webpage for safer sex amid the monkeypox outbreak noted that vaccines will be “an important tool in preventing the spread of monkeypox.”

  “But given the current limited supply of vaccine, consider temporarily changing some behaviors that may increase your risk of being exposed,” the webpage reads. “These temporary changes will help slow the spread of monkeypox until vaccine supply is adequate.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/06/2022 – 14:30