- COVID "Conspiracy Theories" Have Now Magically Become "Fact-Checked" Mainstream Narrative
COVID “Conspiracy Theories” Have Now Magically Become “Fact-Checked” Mainstream Narrative
Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance
I started out 2022 by predicting that capitalism and common sense would catalyze a massive pivot in how the mainstream media reports on Covid.
I believed that the media would eventually start the process of pivoting from hysteria and that politicians, understanding full well that they can’t get re-elected during mid-terms this year on a platform of locking people in their homes, would follow.
All I can say one month into the year is holy shit, does it look like I was right.
So far in 2022, innumerable U.S. states, in addition to countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark, are lifting Covid restrictions.
Connecticut and Delaware are planning on lifting school mask mandates by the end of March. Oregon officials have also announced that general mask mandates would be lifted March 31. Even New Jersey and California announced they would ease mandates in coming weeks.
And the media narrative has very quickly changed, too.
Dr Leana Wen, columnist with The Washington Post and CNN medical analyst who has, in the past, gushed non-stop about following the government’s Covid guidance, has now completely changed her playbook for her appearances on CNN.
On Monday of this week, she told CNN:
“There was, and is, a time and place for pandemic restrictions. But when they were put in, it was always with the understanding that they would be removed as soon as we can. And, in this case, circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed. The responsibility should shift from a government mandate imposed from the state or the local district of the school … it should shift to an individual responsibility by the family, who can still decide that their child can wear a mask if needed.”
In addition to sounding like she was erring on the side of freedom of choice, a concept Democrats may only now be conveniently adopting ahead of mid-terms, she also promptly took to Twitter to represent “the other side” of the Covid argument that, days ago, would have been written off as “conspiracy theory”. She Tweeted on Tuesday night:
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“It can BOTH be true both that covid-19 causes illness and harm, and ALSO that its continued prioritization, to the exclusion of other issues, does, too.”
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“It can BOTH be true that masks reduce respiratory infections and ALSO that they can have unintended harms”
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“We must have an honest conversation about masking in schools. Two things can be true at once. Masks work to reduce transmission. And they could cause harm to kids, especially to young learners. There needs to be an ongoing risk-benefit analysis, as there is for any intervention.”
She also retweeted this statement from David Rubin, Policy director at CHOP:
“This is a moment to start removing the restrictions that have been placed on kids. Because the risk to their mental health, learning loss, those types of things are now far greater than the virus itself.”
She’s right: we do need to have an honest conversation. But the question is why are we having it now and why weren’t we allowed to have it just weeks ago?
In fact, where the fuck was this woman 6 months ago?
On New Years, she was urging people to mask up while heading outdoors to watch the ball drop:
“Make sure that you’re vaccinated and boosted. Make sure that you’re wearing a mask even though it’s outdoors. There are lots of people packed around you, wearing a three-ply surgical mask.”
In Spring of last year, she was expressing “fears” about the U.S. not being able to reach herd immunity.
In Summer of last year, she was spreading the narrative that “we can’t trust the unvaccinated”.
Heading into the Fall, she was writing op-eds called “Why Covid-19 Vaccines Should Be Required For All Americans”.
And now – and only now that millions of vaccines have been distributed and the public’s trust in the President and in his Covid response is at all time lows – she has completely and totally changed her tune.
The left is also starting to talk about concepts that they were completely silent on for the last 2 years. Most notably, natural immunity.
It was less than a month ago that I wrote a piece arguing why I thought “Capitalism and Common Sense Would End Vaccine Mandates in 2022”.
As part of that article, I wrote that natural immunity would soon have to be talking point due to omicron potentially acting as “nature’s vaccine”:
First, after this omicron wave passes, it should hopefully stir up a discussion about natural immunity that’s about 18 months overdue. Putting vaccine mandates aside, Omicron, given its extremely infectious nature and mild effects, may wind up acting like nature’s vaccine for almost everybody anyway. People will start to understand this concept and push harder on “the science” as to why it has conveniently ignore the topic of natural immunity – which has been proven to be more robust than vaccination – thus far.
And lo and behold, as The Hill pointed out this week, the CDC is – all of a sudden – starting to talk about natural immunity. A report published by the CDC on January 28, 2022, “finally acknowledges what many have suspected for a long time — that surviving COVID-19 provides excellent natural immunity not only repeat infection but also to hospitalization and death for the delta variant of COVID-19.”
Once again, where was this analysis during the Soviet style campaign to roll out vaccines throughout the country over the last 12 months?
We’re seeing articles like this now:
But we’ve known about the robust immunity provided by natural immunity for many months already. Studies in mid-2021 were showing “durable and robust” immunity from natural immunity. According to a large collection of data and trials by Dr. Larry Istrial in his post “Covid 19 Natural Immunity: A Deep Dive”, studies dating back to 2020 continued to confer that natural immunity against Covid was effective.
His comprehensive collection of sources is worth examining closely – not the least of which is Dr. Fauci’s own e-mail exchanges from the inception of the pandemic in March 2020.
Even Senator Rand Paul was exasperated when he called out the administration’s odd penchant for not mentioning anything involving natural immunity. Speaking about Dr. Fauci’s constant media appearances, Paul said in Fall 2021:
“Hey, this guy [Fauci] has an opinion on baseball, hockey, tinder, and Christmas, but he was asked the other day about natural immunity that you acquire after the disease [COVID-19], he is like, “Oh, that is really interesting thought, I never thought about that. I don’t have an opinion because I haven’t thought about naturally acquired immunity.”
He has and he is lying to you.
The reason he won’t bring up natural immunity is because it foils his plans to get everybody possible vaccinated. He thinks it might slow down vaccination.
And I’m for people getting vaccinated particularly people at risk, but the thing is, if you ignore naturally acquired immunity then you’re saying we don’t have enough people, you have to force it on younger people.”
What then may have seemed more of a conspiracy theory – that Fauci was purposely ducking the question of natural immunity – today starts to look like the most realistic scenario.
If we have FOIA e-mail from Fauci in early 2020, we know it was on his mind essentially as soon as the pandemic started. That begs the question of why were we so quiet about natural immunity for so long?
Today’s blog post has been published without a paywall because I believe the content to be far too important to deny to anyone. However, if you have the means and would like to support my work by subscribing, I’d be happy to offer you 22% off for 2022:
In addition to natural immunity, we have seen a drastic shift on numerous major points of contention by “conspiracy theorists” during the pandemic.
Remember when questioning whether people were in hospitals for Covid or with Covid was written off as a conspiracy theory in 2020?
Rolling Stone went for the exacta by using the terms “anti-vax” and “conspiracy theory” when describing these questions.
Scientific American also took their shot in October of 2020, stating that inflated death counts were “false”.
Well, in early 2022, CDC director Rochelle Walensky took to Fox News and admitted she wasn’t exactly sure “on how many of the COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. were directly due to the virus and how many were individuals who died with COVID-19 yet had underlying conditions.”
Even CNN’s Jake Tapper was astonished about the revelation and called it “misleading”:
Then, of course, there was the lab leak “conspiracy theory” that, after costing many people their social media accounts, has now widely been accepted as the leading likely genesis of Covid-19.
In February 2020, Zero Hedge lost its Twitter handle and its million followers for asking the question of whether or not the virus may have come from the lab:
There was then the wonderful op-ed written by Peter Daszak which charged that the lab leak was a “conspiracy theory”. We would later find out that Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance was at the center of gain-of-function research taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
As soon as June 2021, Forbes was writing that the lab leak was a conspiracy theory.
Of course now what we know, per a report by the Telegraph last month, is that scientists believed that Covid did leak from a lab, but didn’t want to interrupt “international harmony” by discussing it:
Among the other “conspiracy theories” that have become mainstream are the ideas that cloth masks don’t work – now part of the mainstream’s talking points – and what I believe is going to be a massive pivot on the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for use in treating Covid – as has been supported in recent leaked DARPA documents.
Finally, we’re learning that the vaccines, while helpful in reducing harm the first time someone gets the virus, also carry with them substantial side effects and may do more harm than good when administered to people who have already been infected with Covid.
Dr. Rand Paul noted that this week, during an interview with The Dana Show, stating: “If your 15 year-old [boy] has already had COVID and you vaccinate them, you put them at risk for myocarditis.”
“This is without question. The data is in on this. Each subsequent vaccination is a higher risk for myocarditis.”
Other than mass hysteria, if there’s one thing that the pandemic has been littered with, it has been hypocrisy.
What began as a small taste of hypocrisy with house speaker Nancy Pelosi going to get her hair done after shuttering all of the salons in the state she represents eventually turned into what felt like weekly examples of politicians ignoring their own mandates and adopting an elitist “do as I say, not as I do” attitude.
If that was the only extent of the hypocrisy, I might be able to write it off. After all, politicians are extremely well known for being full of shit and, to some degree, we unfortunately expect it at this point.
But the hypocrisy didn’t stop there – the magnitude with which it continued, as the facts of the pandemic started to reveal themselves, became beyond egregious.
Anyone who dared question the “official” findings of the NIH, CDC and WHO was quickly marginalized and sent for social-media-re-education camps in the form of suspensions or outright bans. For some citizens, regular common sense and everyday critical thinking not only had them dismissed as lunatics, but also cost them their jobs.
Looking back on some of these major issues now, it is still stunning to see the pivot – even though I knew it was coming.
In fact, it is both stunning and sickening to look back on and, when presented collectively, it paints a picture of either gross incompetence or nefarious ignorance to advance an agenda.
The one question that remains about the entire narrative, and now the pivot: what was it all for? To get the world vaccinated? Forgive me if I’m skeptical.
Now read:
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Has The Red Carpet Been Rolled Out For A Mainstream Pivot On Ivermectin?
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Cancel Culture Is Now Officially A Snake Eating Its Own Tail
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Shipping Expert Talks His Favorite Stocks For the Supply Chain Crisis
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The St. Louis Fed Thinks $30 Trillion In National Debt Is No Big Deal
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Inflation Is The Kryptonite That Will End Our Decades-Long Monetary Policy Ponzi Scheme
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 23:30 -
- Grizzly Cartel 'Killing Field' Found In Mexican Border State
Grizzly Cartel ‘Killing Field’ Found In Mexican Border State
Mexican authorities said they had discovered a new killing field in the border state of Tamaulipas, just south of the Texas border, an area known for widespread territorial disputes between drug cartels, according to Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles.
The Tamaulipas State Police revealed to Breitbart that the discovery occurred last week in Jimenez, a rural community northeast of Ciudad Victoria, less than four hours away from Brownsville, Texas.
Here’s Breitbart’s reporting on the muder field:
The discovery took place this week in Jimenez, a rural community northeast of the state capital Ciudad Victoria, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Tamaulipas State Police revealed. During the discovery, authorities also found five vehicles, a tractor-trailer with fuel remains inside, and signs of the location having been used as a camp by a drug cartel.
At the narco-camp, authorities collected several charred bone fragments consistent with the incineration of victims. Those samples are expected to undergo testing, authorities revealed in a statement. Authorities did not disclose how long the killing field had been in operation or how many bodies are believed to have been disposed of there.
According to Tamaulipas state authorities, one of the vehicles found at the cartel extermination site is believed to be one that was used in a kidnapping over the weekend. As Breitbart Texas reported, a group of gunmen kidnapped a motorist in Ciudad Victoria and then clashed with state authorities in a series of shootouts.
The violence in Ciudad Victoria comes at a time when the Gulf Cartel has been trying to take over areas that were controlled by their rivals with the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas. The reignited turf war has led to several murders and gun battles in the central part of the state. –Breitbart
Last month, Mexican authorities found 19 charred corpses across the Rio Grande from Texas, also in Tamaulipas.
The north-eastern state is known for violent killings and disappearances, linked mainly to powerful drug cartels fighting for territorial expansion.
Meanwhile, President Biden and the Democrat’s border security has failed as cartel violence and large amounts of illegal immigrants have spilled into the US. Law and order need to be restored on the U.S.-Mexico border.
To combat the terror on the border, the federal government has adopted robo-hounds equipped with advanced sensors to monitor cartel activity and illegal crossings.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 23:10 - Here's How Big Tomorrow's New CPI Adjustments Will Be
Here’s How Big Tomorrow’s New CPI Adjustments Will Be
Earlier today, when previewing tomorrow’s critical inflation number, which JPM said it was hearing “whispers that [it] will print below expectations”, and which Biden – whose approval rating is imploding as fast as inflation is soaring…
… will do everything in his power to show the lowest possible (or impossible) reading, we joked that if the BLS is forced to use the nuclear option once it gets the tap on the shoulder, it may just get a little crazy in revising the January 2022 CPI weights which we previewed back in December, is set to take place tomorrow (similar to last week’s magical payroll “seasonal adjustments“).
Joking aside, it appears our speculation that the seasonal and weights adjustments could have a material (political) impact on tomorrow’s unadjusted number has sparked quite a firestorm within the investing community, and as Goldman’s economics team writes late on Wednesday, “ahead of tomorrow’s CPI release, many clients have asked how the biennial change in category weights and annual seasonal factor update will affect inflation in January and the remainder of 2022.”
Before we share Goldman’s answer, a little background:
Every two years the BLS updates the category-level weights used in the calculation of the consumer price index (CPI). These weights—which are based on expenditure data collected in the Consumer Expenditure Survey—were last updated in January 2020, and tomorrow’s release will be the first to incorporate consumer expenditure data from 2019-2020 (vs. 2017-2018 previously). Tomorrow’s report will also incorporate updated seasonal factors, as is typical in January.
With that in mind, and following our recent concerns that the BLS may once again make generous use of seasonal adjustments to paint the Biden administration in the best possible light, similar to what it did last Friday with the laughable January payrolls report…
… Goldman’s Jan Hatzius writes that “many clients have speculated that the changes in the category weights may be larger than normal due to the pandemic, particularly because the BLS had previously announced that they would not adjust their methodology in response to the atypical spending patterns—namely, the shift in spending towards durable goods—in 2020.” Almost as if the BLS was told to scrap its previous plans and to revise inflation 10 months ahead of the midterms.
Adding to the complexity of tomorrow’s revision, the directional implications of the weight changes were hard to predict according to Goldman, since the standing CPI weights already reflect a spending shift towards categories like durable goods that experienced relatively high price growth since the weights were last updated.
Perhaps to avoid accusations of data manipulation, the BLS has posted updated weights and seasonal factors on their website ahead of tomorrow’s report.
So what to expect from tomorrow’s revisions, which similar to the payrolls adjustments will likely smoothen out the recent spike in inflation data series making recent outlier prints appears much more mild in retrospect? Well, nobody knows for sure until the BLS reveals its latest gimmick, but Goldman has tried to estimate the adjustments.
As shown in the first and second columns of the chart below, changes in weighting are generally modest but imply a larger share of spending on private transportation services (+1.1pp), used cars (+0.7pp), OER (+0.6pp), and new cars (+0.2pp), and lower spending on recreation (-0.5pp), public transportation (-0.4pp), personal care (-0.4pp) and rent (-0.3pp).
Combining these changes with Goldman’s component forecasts for January, the bank has modestly upgraded its January core CPI forecast by +4bps to +0.56%, mainly reflecting a larger contribution from used cars and similarly upgraded the bank’s headline CPI forecast by +3bps to +0.53%, raising year-over-year core CPI forecast to +6.01% and year-over-year headline CPI forecast to +7.33%. In addition to further upward pressure from auto prices, the Goldman forecast also assumes a boost from start-of-year price hikes that should help offset an Omicron-driven drag on virus-sensitive service prices.
The implications for Goldman’s medium-run year-on-year core CPI forecast are also fairly modest, with the new weights implying a peak upward revision of +6bps this spring due to the increased weight on auto prices, but essentially no change at end-2022 and a -10bps downward revision at end-2023 due to a larger drag once auto and durable goods prices start to normalize.
As Goldman concludes, “while the changes in weights have modest implications for our CPI forecast, it is worth noting that there is no read-through for PCE inflation since PCE spending weights are updated each month to reflect the current composition of spending.”
The other implication is that if the BLS’ weight and seasonal adjustments should not amount to almost nothing – as Goldman previews – and if tomorrow’s CPI print ends up being as shocking as what the BLS unveiled in last Friday’s payrolls report, and the CPI print is not just a small miss but an outright collapse designed to somehow make Biden look good, then it will finally become obvious that the fix is in and that no data the US government publishes has any credibility.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 22:50 - Fed Refuses To Release 60 Pages Of Correspondence On Pandemic Trades Scandal
Fed Refuses To Release 60 Pages Of Correspondence On Pandemic Trades Scandal
Having cost the jobs of three top Fed officials, including the Dallas and Boston Fed presidents as well as that of Vice Chair Clarida, one would think that matters relating to (potentially extremely lucrative) insider trading by members of the Federal Reserve should be fully in the public domain. One would be wrong.
In response to a Reuters Freedom of Information Act, the Fed said that there are about 60 pages of correspondence between its ethics officials and policymakers regarding financial transactions conducted during the pandemic year 2020 which have become an extremely sore spot for the Fed, with members of Congress demanding full transparency as to who knew and did what, when. The only problem: nobody is allowed to see them, as the Fed “denied in full” to release the documents, citing exemptions under the information act that it said applied in this case. Exemptions traditionally involve matters of national security, so how exactly alleged insider trading by a bunch of millionaires threatens “US Democracy” is something we would love to understand.
The disclosure of trading by two regional reserve bank presidents during the pandemic led them to resign last fall, and prompted Fed chair Jerome Powell to overhaul Fed ethics rules and request the central bank’s inspector general to investigate.
The FOIA responses to Reuters for the first time quantify how much back and forth may have occurred over policymakers’ personal trading in a year when markets first cratered, then rebounded on the basis of both massive federal fiscal stimulus and an aggressive rescue effort by the Fed.
Reuters reports that it had requested release under the information act of any 2020 communication “regarding the propriety of individual financial transactions” exchanged between the Fed’s general counsel or ethics staff and members of the Board of Governors, then Dallas Fed president Robert Kaplan, or then Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren.
Fed FOIA officer and deputy board secretary Margaret McCloskey Shanks responded to Reuters that staff had identified “approximately 47 pages of information” involving Fed board members and around 13 pages involving either Kaplan or Rosengren. However release of the documents was denied.
“The responsive documents contain predecisional and deliberative information, as well as information that is subject to attorney-client privilege,” she wrote. There was, she said, nothing in the documents that was “reasonably segregable” and not exempt from release under FOIA.
Gunita Singh, a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the FOIA exemption cited by the Fed is meant to “protect agency candor” so U.S. government staff and officials can discuss issues freely as decisions are being made.
The response from Shanks did not detail what current discussions or deliberations warranted withholding the information.
Demands for more disclosure from the Fed about the ethics scandal has been widespread, with public interest groups and elected officials including Elizabeth Warren calling on the central bank to release more details about policymakers’ stock trading and the guidance or opinions provided to them by ethics officials.
The inspectors general’s investigation of Fed trading during the pandemic is still underway. The Fed is also still finalizing the procedures and rules for the new ethics regulations adopted because of the controversy.
The Fed has released the substance of one email sent from its ethics office to policymakers at the height of the crisis. In late October, after a New York Times report, the Fed released a March 23, 2020, email from its ethics officer which noted that Fed rules were meant to avoid even the appearance that officials used their access to market moving information for personal profit.
Policymakers were advised to “consider observing a trading blackout and avoid making unnecessary securities transactions for at least the next several months,” or until Fed meetings and decisions moved back to normal from the emergency footing of that spring.
The advice was ignored by at least three Fed officials.
The ethics scandal blindsided the Fed last fall after reports in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg about Kaplan’s active trading in stocks during the pandemic and Rosengren’s investment in real estate securities.
That activity was noted in the annual financial disclosure reports that Fed policymakers are required to file. Both officials initially responded that their trades complied with Fed ethics rules, but said they planned to divest nevertheless. They eventually resigned.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 22:30 - Pentagon Ramps Up Involvement In Yemen War As Biden Reverses Course
Pentagon Ramps Up Involvement In Yemen War As Biden Reverses Course
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), visited the UAE this week and vowed more support for Abu Dhabi’s war against the Houthis as the US escalates its involvement in the war in Yemen.
In the wake of recent Houthi attacks on the UAE, the US is deploying the USS Cole to the country, and McKenzie said a squadron of US F-22s would arrive next week. “We’re going to bring in a squadron of F-22 fighter jets, the best air superiority fighters in the world,” he said, according to UAE state media.
USS Cole, Wiki Commons McKenzie said the F-22s will work with the UAE to “help defend the nation.” In recent weeks, the US helped Abu Dhabi intercept Houthi missiles. He said the USS Cole will “patrol the waters of the UAE, working closely with UAE air defenders to protect their nation.”
The cooperation is framed as “defensive” in nature, but it’s important to note that the Houthis wouldn’t be attacking the UAE if the country hadn’t been waging war on Yemen since 2015. The UAE’s support for militant groups on the ground in Yemen has brought the Saudi-backed government recent success on the battlefield against the Houthis.
McKenzie said the US is also working to give the UAE the ability to hit Houthi drones inside Yemen before they’re launched. “We are working with our partners here in the region and with the industry back in the United States to develop solutions that would work against drones. We would like to work against drones what we call ‘Left of Launch’, [which means] before they can be launched,” he said.
The Biden administration recently approved a $65 million arms sale to the UAE to upgrade Abu Dhabi’s Hawk, THAAD, and Patriot missile defense systems.
Biden has merely rebranded the brutal war against Yemen. Searing piece from @shireen818 outlining Biden’s duplicity on the war on Yemen and how he should make proper efforts to keep his word and end it #StopArmingSaudi #YemenCantWait https://t.co/zPVn3P5QWz
— London CAAT (@londoncaat) February 9, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Israel is also looking to bolster the UAE’s missile defenses and is reportedly considering selling Abu Dhabi the Iron Dome. On Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Michael Kurilla, who is nominated to be McKenzie’s replacement, said Israel’s cooperation with the UAE and other Gulf nations in missile defense is promising.
“That’s probably the area with some of the greatest opportunity: working toward an integrated air and missile defense. I think the addition of Israel… will help with that,” Kurilla said.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 22:10 - Fashion Houses Use Inflation As Excuse For Massive Price Hikes On Luxury Goods
Fashion Houses Use Inflation As Excuse For Massive Price Hikes On Luxury Goods
As the CEO of one prominent luxury-goods conglomerate said during a recent earnings call, practically every luxury goods brand has been raising prices by larger-than-typical margins over the past year or two. But Chanel’s price hikes have been particularly egregious.
As the WSJ reported in a piece on luxury-goods inflation published over the weekend, few products have seen price hikes like Chanel’s small Classic Flap bag – an item that’s practically ubiquitous in places like Manhattan, Milan and London.
The bag cost $5,200 as recently as 2019. But after three price hikes in 2021, the price tag on a new purse has risen to $8,200.
Wall Street analysts are warning that these egregious price hikes (which outpace those from other brands) might risk alienating consumers. And some megafans of the brand who were quoted in the WSJ story agree. While a Chanel spokesperson insisted that the price hikes were intended to offset increases in raw materials costs, brand superfans insist that the brand is actually producing more products of a sub-standard quality, exposing price hikes for what they – in all likelihood – are: cash grabs spurred by expectations of higher prices in the future.
Dee Gables, a novelist who tracks handbag prices “as a hobby” told WSJ she has seen examples of shoddy workmanship in the products displayed inside the company’s boutiques.
“We expect price increases of a couple hundred dollars,” said Dee Gables, a 32-year-old novelist who lives in Clawson, Mich. “But to go up $2,000 in six months upset a lot of Chanel lovers.”
Gables, who tracks handbag prices as a hobby, said the quality hasn’t kept pace with the rising prices. She has seen bags in Chanel boutiques in recent years with crooked pockets, missing stitches and chain straps that don’t lie flat.
And she wasn’t the only Chanel customer who went on the record to complain. Imagine spending nearly $10K on a luxury handbag only to have the clasp break a few months later. Does that sound like an effective strategy for customer retention?
Valerie Chan, a 33-year-old financial analyst who lives in Forest Hills, Queens, said the clasp on a Chanel camera case broke a few months after she bought it at one of the brand’s boutiques in 2018. “If you’re going to pay such a high price, the materials and craftsmanship should keep up,” she said. “I understand they need to raise prices to keep up with inflation. But lately their prices seem to be increasing at a more rapid pace.”
But as WSJ exposes in its report, the real reason Chanel has been so aggressive with its price hikes is that it wants to place its bags in the same rarefied territory (metaphorically speaking) as those produced by its archrival, Hermès. So while higher raw materials prices are an excuse for these hikes, they’re not the real reason. And as one purse blogger quoted in the story pointed out, while customers have been grumbling, they’re still buying (even if that means buying second-hand).
Chanel’s new prices put it more in line with Hermès, whose Birkin and Kelly bags have waiting lists despite prices that run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Chanel’s brand is about as strong as Hermès but until recently its bags were less expensive, said Mr. Rambourg, the HSBC analyst.
“As much as some people are upset at Chanel’s price increases, they are still buying,” Ms. Mahoney Dusil said. “As the price goes up, it becomes unattainable for some. But the core customers won’t be priced out.”
As a result, prices on second-hand Chanel goods on popular website therealreal have surged 26% since 2020. By comparison, headline inflation as measured by the CPI rose 7% between December 2021 and December 2022, the highest number in 40 years.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 21:50 - Why Newspapers Refuse To Correct Errors
Why Newspapers Refuse To Correct Errors
Commentary authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Politics (emphasis ours),
Many iconic U.S. newspapers sport slogans that seek to explain their mission – and self-image. “All the News That’s Fit to Print” has been called “the seven most famous words in American journalism.” “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was an overtly partisan call to arms. But the most telling section of a newspaper’s true values is its “Corrections” page. That’s where journalism distinguishes itself from just about every other profession, routinely and straightforwardly admitting its mistakes. Who else does that?
It is a soul-crushing enterprise. A single misspelled name is all it takes to ruin an otherwise stellar article. We reporters may forget the topic of the piece we wrote last week, while the error five years ago is seared into our memories. But it is also crucial: Reader trust is the lifeblood of journalism. If you can’t believe what you read, why bother?
And yet, we do get things wrong all the time. Despite the self-righteous claims of too many news outlets, journalists don’t print The Truth. The “first draft of history” is necessarily messy and incomplete. What journalists have long promised readers is that we will do our best to get the story right initially and then set the record straight when better information emerges. This isn’t solely a commitment to high-minded ethics. It is also transactional: Journalists can so readily acknowledge errors because readers honor and reward our honesty. They forgive us our trespasses because we acknowledge them.
Unfortunately, this glorious compact between readers and journalists is evolving in dangerous directions, as news coverage becomes corrupted by the give-no-quarter partisan divide that shapes our politics. Increasingly, readers expect their favored news sources to advance their favored narrative, the facts be damned. And many news outlets, beset by immense economic challenges, seem happy to satisfy them to stay afloat.
A notable example is the stubborn unwillingness of major news outlets to correct clear errors in their coverage of the Trump-Russia investigation.
On Nov. 24, my colleague at RealClearInvestigations, Aaron Maté, wrote a detailed article highlighting a series of stories published by the New York Times and the Washington Post that contained “false or misleading claims.” The pieces he analyzed were either part of the entry the papers submitted to win a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for their Russiagate coverage or were written by reporters who shared in that honor. Significantly, the major errors and misleading assertions identified by Maté were not based on newly discovered information, but on documents and statements long in the public domain.
Before publication, Maté sent multiple detailed requests for comment to the reporters and newspaper representatives. All but one of his queries went unanswered. As of Feb. 7, neither newspaper has appended a single correction or clarification to the articles Maté discussed. Here are two examples from the Times that reflect the problems Maté found.
Example 1: On Feb. 14, 2017, the Times published a bombshell report that seemed to establish a Trump-Russia conspiracy:
Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.
Four months later, then-FBI Director James B. Comey undercut that story when he testified to Congress that “in the main,” the Times report “was not true.” Documents declassified in 2020 show that this view was widely held at the FBI. Peter Strzok, the top FBI counterintelligence agent who opened the Trump-Russia probe, described the article as “misleading and inaccurate.”
“We are unaware,” Strzok wrote, “of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.” Their view was corroborated by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, whose extensive Russiagate report contained no evidence of contacts between Trump associates and Russian intelligence officials, senior or otherwise.
Perhaps the newspaper’s sources had information that the men leading the probe were unaware of. At the very least, the Times should address such questions about the accuracy of its reporting. It has not.
Example 2: On Dec. 30, 2017, the Times reported that the FBI opened its Trump-Russia investigation because of evidence that the Trump campaign knew about an earlier hack of DNC servers:
During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat [Alexander Downer] in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign. …
The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.
The key details of this Pulitzer Prize-winning article have been contradicted by the only two people involved. For starters, the Times creates the impression that intoxication prompted confession. Papadopoulos and Downer agree they each had a single drink. Where the Times specifically ties the conversation to the DNC hack, Downer says Papadopoulos never referred to hacked emails – or even “dirt.” “He mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election, which may be damaging,” Downer said.
Maté also noted that the FBI’s July 31, 2016 electronic communication that officially opened its Russia investigation was similarly vague, reporting only that Downer had told the U.S. government that Papadopoulos had “suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist” it by anonymously releasing damaging information about Clinton and President Obama.
In sum, the Times falsely reported that the FBI had significant and specific reason to take the extreme step of opening a counterintelligence probe of a presidential campaign – a direct link to the stolen emails. Instead, it merely had murky, and apparently second-hand, barroom gossip. As with the first example, it is likely that the Times was misled by its sources. That is no excuse to let stand work whose accuracy has been meaningfully undercut by the facts.
Because the paper has refused to address these issues, we don’t know why it stands by this reporting. Perhaps it knows things we do not. Regardless, it has an obligation to set the record straight. Silence is the enemy of transparency.
The Times is not operating in a vacuum. One reason it is not owning up to its errors is that the people whose goodwill it depends on – its readers and the larger journalistic community, including the board of the Pulitzer Prize – do not seem to care. I think they believe our country is at war with itself and that admitting that the most prestigious news outlets on their side made grave errors in reporting the biggest story of the last five years would give succor to the enemy. Perversely, acknowledging these errors would be an act of betrayal to the larger cause embraced by the increasingly radicalized minority of people who buy their product and pay their bills. Tout pour la guerre.
This sorry situation has been a long time coming. At least since the 1980s, conservatives have actively accused mainstream outlets of liberal bias. In a healthy society, the editors would have taken this seriously, using the criticism that seemed valid (not all of it was or is) to improve their coverage. Instead, over time, they have transformed the complaints into a rationale for becoming even more biased. They dismiss it all as right-wing talking points. Even, apparently, factual errors.
No wonder Gallup reports America’s trust in the media is near an all-time low. If you can’t count on journalists to set the record straight, why bother?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 21:30 - Tesla Cut An Electronic Steering Wheel Unit From "Tens Of Thousands" Of Vehicles To Sidestep Semi Chip Shortage
Tesla Cut An Electronic Steering Wheel Unit From “Tens Of Thousands” Of Vehicles To Sidestep Semi Chip Shortage
Well it looks like we’ve finally found out how Tesla was able to so deftly sidestep the ongoing semiconductor shortage and post record numbers while the rest of the industry struggled from lack of chips.
It was reported yesterday that the company decided to “cut one of the two electronic control units normally included in the steering system” on some Model 3 and Model Y vehicles made in China in order to make up for a shortage of chips, CNBC reported.
The report, which cites two employees and internal correspondence from the company, says that the exclusion of the one electronic control unit had affected “tens of thousands of vehicles being shipped to customers in China, Australia, the U.K., Germany and other parts of Europe” and that Tesla did not disclose the change.
But they key isn’t that didn’t disclose it, it’s that the company can no longer turn all of its existing cars into full self driving cars with a mere software update, CNBC noted.
Elon Musk had recently claimed: “My personal guess is that we’ll achieve Full Self-Driving this year at a safety level significantly greater than a person. So the cars in the fleet essentially becoming self-driving via software update, I think, might end up being the biggest increase in asset value of any asset class in history. We shall see.”
But internal correspondence showed that to add “Level 3” autonomous driving, cars would need the dual electronic control unit system.
The omitted chip helps translate steering wheel movements into wheel turns for the vehicle, via computer.
“There’s still a mechanical component of course. But in today’s vehicles, when you ‘turn the wheel’ you are providing an electronic signal telling your car to go left or right,” said Richard Wallace, principal advisor for HWA Analytics.
The second chip was deemed by Tesla to be a backup and “redundant”.
But Wallace said that removing the unit could pose a safety risk: “If something like a chip or an ECU is not providing additional functionality, if it is truly redundant, you may be able to turn it off or leave it out. With chips and software, there’s a little bit of wiggle room. I can reassign stuff here and there.”
IHS Markit Senior Principal Analyst Phil Amsrud concluded: “I cannot think of a case where an automaker would say ‘You know what? We’ll take a component out of that module, even though it was there for a good reason and we’ll hope nothing happens.’ Going from a dual chip to a single chip variant in a vehicle can make a system simpler and make it better in some cases. But they’d really need to do a lot of validation.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 21:10 - Bitcoin: The Inevitable Path Toward Global Adoption Of The Next World Reserve Currency
Bitcoin: The Inevitable Path Toward Global Adoption Of The Next World Reserve Currency
Authored by Drew MacMartin via Bitcoin Magazine,
A changing of the guard is standard for fiat currencies – but bitcoin is set to supplant them all…
If the last 700 years are any indication, reserve currencies have a shelf life of roughly 100 years. The U.S. dollar (USD) officially became the world reserve currency 77 years ago (Bretton Woods, 1944). Arguably, USD was the reserve as far back as the late 1920s.
Source: “Will a Digital Gold Rush Save America’s Economy?” Cryptokek Blog.
From a historical timeline perspective, the USD is in the twilight of its reserve status. Couple that with the fact that the United States is also expanding the money supply exponentially (devaluing the purchasing power of the existing supply of USD in the process), and to put it politely, this growth rate is unsustainable.
For the record, the U.S. Federal Reserve is not operating in isolation. Most major central banks across the globe are following this trend. Examples include the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of Japan (POJ) and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) to name a few. Frankly, the majority of major central banks are racing one another to see who can debase their currencies the quickest.
Source: Haver Analytics.
Stanley Druckenmiller, who is considered a legendary investor in part due to his study of history and macroeconomics, thinks the USD will lose reserve currency status within 15 years.
“I can’t find any period in history where monetary and fiscal policy were this out of step with economic circumstances, not one.”
– Stanley Druckenmiller
So, if the USD has a shelf life partially due to historical precedence and partially due to fiscal irresponsibility (overprinting of the money supply), what comes next? What replaces the USD? Another fiat currency? It’s possible, but my guess is the days of trusting a centralized party to maintain a stable supply of a currency have come and gone. Why trust, when you can just verify? An argument could be made that gold is today’s reserve asset as it is held by the majority of central banks.
For me, gold is the past, while Bitcoin is the future. Bitcoin is decentralized, easily verifiable, immutable, divisible with a known supply and is easily amalgamated into an ever-increasing digitizing global economy. Bitcoin is already legal tender in El Salvador, a status that will be difficult for gold to parallel based on its transportation and divisibility limitations. There is a groundswell of Bitcoin adoption happening from different sectors of the economy.
Retail, institutions, governments, pension funds, REITS and banks are all accumulating bitcoin. The diversity of accumulation produces “game theory” adoption, accumulation which is occurring far quicker than most would have predicted. For example, El Salvador became the first government to make bitcoin legal tender in September 2021. Today, there are more residents with Bitcoin wallets than traditional bank accounts. As of October 2021, exports of goods grew 34% in 2021 in El Salvador, while gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to be greater than 10% in 2021, making El Salvador one of the fastest growing economies in central America.
Source: @DylanLeClair_
El Salvador continues to acquire bitcoin at a fast pace, now owning approximately 1,220 bitcoin at the time of writing this article. Bitcoin adoption is an accumulation race. The thing is, most do not realize that the gun has already gone off and the race has started. Ask Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy if they plan to sell, let alone stop accumulating more bitcoin.
From a government level, Laos mines bitcoin. They expect to earn $190 million dollars from bitcoin mining in 2022. Tonga is actively drafting legislation to make bitcoin legal tender in the fall of 2022. Panama, Zimbabwe and Ukraine are all looking into possible adoption. Singapore seeks to become a Bitcoin hub.
“We think the best approach is not to clamp down or ban these things,” said Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The president of El Salvador is currently in Turkey, the first G20 country to experience near hyperinflation. I would guess Nayib Bukele would bring up the benefits that adopting bitcoin as legal tender could do for the Turkish people.
For every case like China, which chose to close its doors to Bitcoin, there are two other countries ready to embrace it. You cannot ban Bitcoin, a country can only choose to ignore it, but Bitcoin is not going away. Ignore at your peril. Bulgaria owns 213,518 bitcoin, Ukraine owns 46,351, Finland 1,981 and El Salvador, at the time of writing, 1,220.
Source: Buy Bitcoin Worldwide.
Even in countries where governments do not present favorable policies toward Bitcoin adoption, high levels of citizen adoption can force the government’s hand. Nigeria and Turkey are two prime examples. Grassroots citizen adoption (retail) is taking hold in countries all over the world. In 2020, per the Statista global survey, 32% of citizens in Nigeria, 21% in Vietnam, 20% in the Philippines and 16% in Turkey and Peru have indicated they have used or owned “cryptocurrencies.”
Source: Statista.
Corporate accumulation is also taking place. As of June 2021, 34 public companies collectively hold over 213,000 bitcoin. MicroStrategy and Tesla being the largest. The majority of companies who have adopted bitcoin have done so in the last 18 months.
Source: Buy Bitcoin Worldwide.
Google has partnered with Bakkt to provide Bitcoin payment solutions. Twitter has enabled tipping via the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Bitcoin has the capability of being the native currency of the internet, as predicted by Milton Friedman in 1999.
One of the most prominent U.S. real estate investment trusts (REITS), SL Green Realty Corp. (NYC Office REIT), has dipped their toes into bitcoin with a $10 million investment in a bitcoin fund. Banks are another corporate sector actively embracing bitcoin after trying to ignore and fight the asset for years. Banks make their money by lending out their assets. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has enabled 6 million of its customers to buy bitcoin. Banks must choose to adopt bitcoin or risk becoming irrelevant.
Pension funds and insurance companies are also beginning to gain exposure to bitcoin. The Houston Firefighters Relief and Retirement Fund (HFRRF) in partnership with NYDIG has purchased $25 million in bitcoin (and ether) in October 2021. MassMutual also purchased $100 million in bitcoin in December 2020.
The reason why pension funds and insurances are drawn to bitcoin is because they need to save their monetary energy (purchasing power) for the future. With inflation levels at decade highs, cash savings (in fiat) are being devalued. These funds are forced to take on riskier investments in search of higher yields, to maintain their purchasing power that is being devalued through inflation.
Holding bitcoin is simpler, as bitcoin enables the ability to save due to its deflationary nature.
The toothpaste (Bitcoin adoption) can’t go back in the tube. Adoption has grown to a saturation level (in terms of scale and diversity) which makes a future bitcoin standard for the world inevitable. The majority of the world has blinders on and cannot see this or the groundswell of adoption and accumulation taking place.
Source: Visual Capitalist.
Paul Tudor Jones says it best,
“Bitcoin has this enormous contingent of really, really, smart sophisticated people who believe in it…. You’ve got this group — which by the way is crowdsourced all over the world — that are dedicated to seeing Bitcoin succeed in becoming a commonplace store of value and transactional to boot.”
It might make sense to get some, in the event that the rate of adoption continues to accelerate.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 20:50 - As Oil Hits $90, High Cost Shale Basins Are Hurriedly Coming Back Online
As Oil Hits $90, High Cost Shale Basins Are Hurriedly Coming Back Online
Energy companies are once again starting to “kick the tires and light the fires” at high-cost shale basins, which have once again become economically feasible thanks to oil’s dramatic rise in price over the last 12 months.
The same projects that were shuttered during the beginning of the pandemic are once again “buying properties and adding rigs and frack crews”, according to Reuters.
This is as benchmark oil prices rose over $93 last week, marking a stunning 65% move higher in a year and the highest prices since 2014. The report notes that this has catalyzed U.S. producers to spend “at double-digit rates as fuel demand has soared and fears have waned that OPEC will again punish them by flooding the market with crude”.
Executives are calling the economics of the industry “the best in years”.
Chris Wright, chief executive officer of Liberty Oilfield Services, told Reuters: “Drilling economics today are better than they’ve ever been since the shale revolution started.”
Names like Colorado’s DJ Basin, Wyoming’s Powder River, Louisiana’s Haynesville and North Dakota’s Bakken shale have all seen new activity in the last few months.
Budgets for U.S. oil producers have rise about 13% year over year, Cowen noted.
Bob Phillips, chief executive of energy pipeline company Crestwood Equity Partners, added: “When you look at the oil prices in the Bakken, the prompt price is close to $90 a barrel. That doesn’t happen very often.”
The economics have spurred mergers and acquisitions, as well, Reuters noted:
Crestwood completed a $1.8 billion deal to purchase Oasis Midstream Partners’ oil, gas and gas-processing assets in North Dakota and Texas as part of a plan to become a top-three midstream operator in the Bakken, Powder River and Permian shale fields.
Oil M&A specialist Andrew Dittmar stated: “Most of the selling private companies are ones that bring inventory as well as production to the table.”
“The DJ has been particularly profitable,” said Ben Dell, interim CEO at Colorado’s Civitas Resources.
In fact, gains are happening so quickly that production forecasts for some areas have been too low. For example, there are 42 active rigs in Haynesville, beating estimates of ~40 rigs that were made by analysis firm East Daley Capital.
Rob Wilson, a vice president at East Daley, said: “There is further upside to our current forecast.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 20:30 - LA County Sheriff's Department Could Lose 4,000 Employees Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate
LA County Sheriff’s Department Could Lose 4,000 Employees Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is set to lose 4,000 employees who have not been vaccinated against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.
The LA County Board of Supervisors is set to vote on the potential termination of 18,000 employees who have not complied with the COVID-19 vaccination requirements on Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department posted on Twitter Monday.
Of those 18,000 non-compliant employees, 4,000 belong to the Sheriff’s Department.
“These are the same law enforcement professionals, fire professionals, medical & health care professionals, mental health professionals, and others who we called HERO’s just a short time ago,” the department said. “Call the Board meeting tomorrow to share your public safety concerns and stop this social experimentation!”
The Board of Supervisors began establishing a policy requiring all LA County employees to submit proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 in August 2021.
Officials said employees needed to be vaccinated in an effort to “combat the elevated risk presented by the highly transmissible Delta variant and to prepare for the County’s imminent reopening of its buildings to the public.”
A COVID-19 vaccination policy was then implemented in October and requires that all LA County employees be fully vaccinated and submit proof of vaccination unless they have been granted a medical or religious exemption.
As of Feb. 1, 2022, 81.5 percent (82,298) of LA County’s approximately 100,000 employees are fully vaccinated, Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl said.
More than 90 percent of those vaccinated are employed by approximately a dozen LA County departments, while less than 60 percent of the employees in the Sheriff’s Department are fully vaccinated, Kuehl said.
“Unsurprisingly, approximately 74 percent of the more than 5,000 COVID-19-related workers’ compensation claims filed by County employees as of Jan. 29, 2022, have been filed by employees in the Sheriff’s Department,” the supervisor said.
The LA County Board of Supervisors says that this data illustrate the “vaccinations’ vital role in limiting the spread of COVID-19” and the “urgent need to increase vaccination rates across the entire County workforce.”
They have agreed to “discipline the employees of any County department for noncompliance” with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate and will be suspending or terminating such employees.
The Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs in December sued the Board of Supervisors, claiming that it does not have the legal authority to suspend or fire LA County sheriff’s deputies for noncompliance with the county’s mandatory vaccination order.
But the board maintains it has the legal authority to do so.
The Epoch Times has contacted the LA County Board of Supervisors for comment.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has been a vocal critic of the county’s vaccine mandate and repeatedly said he will not force his employees to get vaccinated, while calling the issue of COVID-19 vaccines “politicized.”
In October, Villanueva said that the termination of so many Sheriff’s Department employees could have dire consequences to public safety as the department was already struggling with “barebones” staffing issues due to “defund the police” efforts.
Prior to that, the sheriff also said that forcing vaccinated individuals and those who have already contracted COVID-19 to wear masks indoors is “not backed by science and contradicts the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 20:10 - North Korea Boasts Of Testing Missiles That Can Strike US Mainland
North Korea Boasts Of Testing Missiles That Can Strike US Mainland
Days after North Korea’s Kim Jong Un was featured in the country’s latest propaganda video on a white horse prancing around in a forest and on a beach, he’s issued a new threat, saying advanced missile technology possessed by Pyongyang will “shake the world.”
The statement was issued Tuesday through the DPRK’s Foreign Ministry. It said according to Reuters: “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.”
NK state media image of a recent test. Effectively, Pyongyang says it has the capability of launching a long-range missile to strike the US mainland. “There are more than 200 countries in the world, but only a few have hydrogen bombs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and hypersonic missiles,” the statement continued.
The specific missile in question is believed to be the Hwasong-15, unveiled as under development starting in 2017, though it’s thought to not have been tested yet. The Hwasong-15 is widely acknowledged as the north’s longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
However, there’s also widespread speculation that North Korea could be greatly advancing its hypersonic glide vehicle capabilities, after the Pentagon was reportedly caught off guard by alleged successful tests in the late summer of last year, though this is uncertain.
Amid stalled engagement with either the US or South Korea on nuclear talks, and a near compete lack of communication between Washington and Pyongyang since the rare, in-person summits with Kim during the Trump administration, North Korea started the year by flexing its missile capabilities.
.@DPRK_News has put out a bizarre video of Kim Jong Un riding a white horse. pic.twitter.com/AXviGPkTeb
— Jonathan Franks (@jonfranks) February 4, 2022
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In January alone it launched no less than seven missiles during a series of tests. The tests purportedly included another hypersonic glide projectile, as well as the intermediate-range ballistic missile Hwasong-12.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 19:50 - North Carolina Board Asserts Right To Disqualify Madison Cawthorn As An "Insurrectionist"
North Carolina Board Asserts Right To Disqualify Madison Cawthorn As An “Insurrectionist”
The North Carolina elections board declared this week that it has the power to bar Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) from running for office due his actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. It insists that it can enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment and declared that he is an insurrectionist. It is a position that, in my view, is wholly outside of the language and intent of this provision. Cawthorn is right to challenge any such action as unconstitutional.
In a filing to dismiss a lawsuit by Cawthorn, the board wrote
“The State does not judge the qualifications of the elected members of the U.S. House of Representative. It polices candidate qualifications prior to the elections. n doing so, as indicated above, States have long enforced age and residency requirements, without question and with very few if any legal challenges. The State has the same authority to police which candidates should or should not be disqualified per Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The asserted authority would invite partisan and abusive practices by such boards. It is also wrong on the purpose of this constitutional provision. Moreover, there is a vast difference between enforcing an objective standard on the age of a candidate and enforcing the subjective standard whether that candidate’s views make him an “insurrectionist.”
As I have previously written, (here and here and here), Democrats are playing a dangerous game with the long-dormant provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — the “disqualification clause.” The provision was written after the 39th Congress convened in December 1865 and many members were shocked to see Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, waiting to take a seat with an array of other former Confederate senators and military officers.
Ironically, it was Justice Edwin Reade of the North Carolina Supreme Court who later explained, “[t]he idea [was] that one who had taken an oath to support the Constitution and violated it, ought to be excluded from taking it again.” So, members drafted a provision that declared that “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
The mantra that this was an insurrection does not meet the standard. The Constitution fortunately demands more than proof by repetition. In this case, it requires an actual rebellion. The clause Democrats are citing was created in reference to a real Civil War in which over 750,000 people died in combat. The confederacy formed a government, an army, a currency, and carried out diplomatic missions.
While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell this week called it an “insurrection,” there are ample legal reasons to reject that characterization in court. (I agree with McConnell in his other comments criticizing the sanctions against Republicans supporting the House committee investigating Jan. 6th).
Jan. 6 was a national tragedy. I publicly condemned President Trump’s speech that day while it was being given — and I denounced the riot as a “constitutional desecration.” However, it has not been treated legally as an insurrection. Those charged for their role in the attack that day are largely facing trespass and other less serious charges — rather than insurrection or sedition. That’s because this was a riot that was allowed to get out of control by grossly negligent preparations by Capitol Police and congressional officials. While the FBI launched a massive national investigation, it did not find evidence of a conspiracy for an insurrection. Only a handful were charged with seditious conspiracy, a broadly defined offense.
I still believe that Jan. 6 was a protest that became a riot. That is not meant to diminish the legitimate outrage over the day. It was reprehensible — but only a “rebellion” in the most rhetorical sense. More importantly, even if you adopt a dangerously broad definition of “insurrection” or “rebellion,” members of Congress who supported challenging the electoral votes (as Democrats have done in prior years) were exercising constitutionally protected speech.
Before the riot, Cawthorn declared “The Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice,” he said. “Make no mistake about it, they do not want you to be heard.”
While he later voted against certifying President Biden’s victory, he also later signed a letter congratulating Biden on the win.
That does not make Cawthorn an insurrectionist and this Board is not tasked with enforcing the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause. The board’s position is itself a threat to democracy and free speech. It is only the latest first anti-democratic measure being used in the name of democracy.
The board interpretation would allow partisan members to toss opponents from ballots to prevent voters from making their own decisions. That is something that has been a practice in countries like Iran, not the United States. Hopefully, a court will make fast work of any such effort in this case. If Democrats believe Cawthorn to be an insurrectionists, they are free to use that label in the campaign. However, the voters, not board members, should be the final arbiters of such questions in a democratic system.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 19:30 - Russia Draws 'Red Line' On Possibility Of US Sending Anti-Air Missiles To Ukraine
Russia Draws ‘Red Line’ On Possibility Of US Sending Anti-Air Missiles To Ukraine
Russia has for a couple months insisted that it has no plans to invade Ukraine, even as positioned extra forces in the south near the border, but the Kremlin is now issuing fresh warnings on its ‘red lines’ after reports emerged that Ukraine has requested THAAD missile defense systems from the US military.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov responded to the reports Wednesday, saying the missile request if true would mark a serious “provocation” and that it would be a significant setback for the Ukraine crisis, according to RIA news agency.
Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missile battery (THAAD): US Army photo However, Ryabkov admitted that at this point the US THAAD deployment remains “hypothetical” and appears to the be speculation among the media. Reports suggested they would be deployed around the large northeast Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which Ryabkov dismissed as “blackmail and a provocation,” according to TASS news agency.
“Everything that is happening in this field from the standpoint of supplying Ukraine with military equipment, ammunition and weapons, including lethal weapons, is an attempt to exert extra pressure, including military-technical pressure, on Russia. Obviously, there is a great deal of blackmail involved, too,” Ryabkov said.
Referring to Ukraine’s military and its Western backers in NATO, he said “this group of [Russia’s] opponents has virtually nothing left in its arsenal by and large.”
“Instead of de-escalation, including an unconditional demand Kiev comply with the Minsk agreements to the full extent there have followed all sorts of media fakes. Some of these are obviously addressed to the incompetent public at large, which is eager to buy any such news, in particular, negative sensations. But we do not yield to provocations. What he have seen is a provocation of the first water,” Ryabkov added.
The THAAD system is capable of intercepting both high-altitude and intermediate-range missiles. But so far the main weapons entering Ukraine from the West appear to be smaller anti-tank and anti-armor munitions, using for closer range combat.
The AN/TPY-2 radar system, which is part of the THAAD complex, is capable of watching the aerospace situation over a significant part of Russian territory and can allow Kiev and its NATO allies to ‘peek’ deep into Russian territory for up to 1,000 km,” https://t.co/K1cGzQDl9p
— M.E (@MikeElmurranie) February 8, 2022
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Meanwhile, President Putin reportedly complained to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron when the two met in Moscow for some five hours that NATO is continuing to “pump Ukraine with weapons.”
“NATO member countries continue to pump up Ukraine with modern types of weapons, allocate significant financial resources for the modernization of the Ukrainian army. They send military specialists and instructors,” Putin said at a press conference immediately following the summit with Macron, which was aimed a finding a path toward de-escalation.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 19:10 - The CDC's Study On Natural Immunity Explained
The CDC’s Study On Natural Immunity Explained
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) published by the Centers for Disease Control has released a fascinating study on comparing hospitalization with Covid-19 immunity status, thus addressing a topic of pressing concern for public health.
The study, published in the January 28, 2022 weekly, carries the self-explanatory title “COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations by COVID-19 Vaccination Status and Previous COVID-19 Diagnosis — California and New York, May–November 2021.”
The key contribution is the following chart, which illustrates the effectiveness of the vaccine (for the duration of the study) and plots that against the effectiveness of natural immunity with and without the vaccine.
What it reveals is a point that has been strangely disputed or at least too often left unacknowledged: the power of natural immunity to serve as protection against severe outcomes from reinfection.
This reality bears strongly on the question of vaccine mandates.
Brownstone has kept a running list of studies that confirm the same: that list is now up to 150 studies.
Here is the chart.
Below, you can watch a video by Vinay Prasad who explains it in some detail.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 18:50 - GM And Ford Warn Dealerships: Stop Charging Over Sticker Price Or We'll Cut Off Supply
GM And Ford Warn Dealerships: Stop Charging Over Sticker Price Or We’ll Cut Off Supply
Both Ford and GM are directing their dealers to stop charging so much for autos, according to a new report by the Wall Street Journal. Dealerships have been marking up vehicles over sticker price as a result of a drought of inventory, attributable to supply chain issues and the semiconductor shortage, combined with increased demand.
But Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley said this week that dealers who gouge prices will “face consequences” that may include losing supplies of future models. “We have very good knowledge of who they are,” he said on his company’s earnings call, talking about these dealerships.
Farley noted that around 10% of the roughly 3,000 dealerships in Ford’s U.S. network are charging above the sticker price, the report said. Ford will punish those who don’t stop with “punitive action”, the report said.
GM also called out “a small minority of bad actors” engaging in the practice, and said it could also withhold vehicle shipments as a result.
Most dealerships are franchise dealerships, the Journal notes, “which are independent businesses that purchase cars from the factory”. While they control the final transaction with the customer, the auto companies still control supply and can offer promotional programs.
The practice of overcharging has been rare in the past, and companies have said before that they disapprove of the tactic, claiming it reflects poorly on the brand.
But the practice has become routine over the past year thanks to supply chain lockups and shortages in computer chips.
A spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association commented: “This is simply a temporary symptom of supply and demand being entirely out of whack. Dealers and consumers have always been free to agree on the price of the vehicle.”
Jon Harding, a project manager for a utility company in Southern California, told the Journal that while shopping around he got more than 12 quotes that were above sticker price. He said the experience was harrowing and left him considering buying another Tesla, a purchase that comes directly from the company, and not through a dealer.
He concluded: “The dealer represents the manufacturer, it’s the person you deal with. Right now, they’re not representing the brands very well by trying to jack people around.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 18:30 - GoFundMe And How The Left Came To Despise The Working Class
GoFundMe And How The Left Came To Despise The Working Class
Commentary authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
What irony!
Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger must be turning over in their graves.
Bernie Sanders must be having sleepless nights.
The left-wing anthem “Which Side Are You On?” is no longer about whether you’re a “union man” or a “thug for J.H. Blair.” It’s about the size of your stock portfolio or when to go public with your start-up.
Huge crowds gather on Parliament Hill during the trucker convoy protest against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions, in Ottawa on Jan. 29, 2022. (Jonathan Ren/The Epoch Times) The oh-so-progressive GoFundMe crowd-funding site—run by about as pure a group of upscale lefty elitists as you could invent, with its CEO being a former a consultant for the multimillion-dollar drug pushers at McKinsey—has turned against those lowly 16-hour-a-day working-stiffs, the Canadian truckers, for deigning to risk their jobs and livelihood to protest vaccine mandates.
At first, calling the truckers occupiers and accusing them—without the slightest proof—of violent acts, GoFundMe essentially absconded with the US$8 million donated to the truckers through its site and peremptorily decided to distribute the money to charities of its choice (one can only imagine).
Sounds like “misappropriation of funds,” at the minimum, and possibly fraud. Don’t these people have lawyers? But worse than that, it was one of the more clueless readings of public sentiment in recent years—and there have been many.
Maybe it’s because those lefty elitists on their board don’t do much shopping on their own, send assistants to the supermarkets for food, and don’t see the empty shelves, so they think they can push the truckers around. That’s an explanation, anyway, but blowback happened fast enough that GoFundMe quickly rescinded its “charitable” decree and promised to return the money to the donors.
Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called for an investigation of GoFundMe (when are we going to start calling him “America’s governor”?), as have officials in Georgia.
Good for them, but what interests me here is how it came to be that supposedly left-leaning organizations, indeed basically the entire modern-day American left, came to be so anti-working class.
It could be a “Just So Story” in a style reminiscent of “How the Camel Got His Hump” or “How the Leopard Got His Spots,” although far less beguiling and humorous than Rudyard Kipling would have made it. (Kipling, whose stories many of us enjoyed as children, has become a particular target of those fun suckers known as the “woke.”)
GoFundMe versus the truckers may prove to be a paradigm case for our time—and it’s about class.
To understand it, you have to go back to the man who started it all, Karl Marx, who expected his communist revolution to begin in heavily industrialized Germany.
He was wrong, of course. It began in the much less developed and largely agrarian Russia. In Germany, the working class was not nearly as attracted to his theories as he had hoped. The majority rejected them.
This trend continued as communism did better in poorer countries (China, Cambodia) than it did in the industrialized West, where it was supposed to take hold.
This failure was not lost on a group of intellectuals known as the Frankfurt School, who brought their revised Marxian theories designed to succeed where the working class approach had failed—notably via the so-called march through the institutions (media, entertainment, education)—to the United States at the end of World War II.
This indeed was an intellectuals-first revolution, and it has succeeded almost completely in our university system, where their “critical theory” dominates. They also succeeded, to lesser but still powerful degrees, in turning the media and entertainment, pretty much destroying Hollywood in the process. Why would the Chinese object?
This was clearly a top-down revolution, with elites dictating to hoi polloi what they should think and how to behave. In the way of the world, those elites also became increasingly rich, richer than anyone else in the history of the human race (the likes of Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, et al.). They knew best. (Someone should write a book about that.)
In the process, the working class, what Amity Shlaes earlier called “The Forgotten Man,” was forgotten.
Which brings us to the truckers. This time—I think, hope, and pray—these elites have gone too far. The yawning gap between them and the people they lord over has become too great. People are sickened, as they should be, by the arrogance.
Thank you, GoFundMe, for blowing it. This is a teaching moment. Let’s use it.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 18:10 - Microsoft Looking To Hire 'Head Of Crypto'
Microsoft Looking To Hire ‘Head Of Crypto’
The race to be a leader in the domain of “Web3” intensified on Wednesday as Microsoft published a job opening looking for a director of crypto development.
According to the posting, the software giant is looking for a business development director to assist the company in the field of cryptocurrencies and – most importantly – “Web 3.0”. The individual will join the company’s AI and Emerging Technologies business development team.
Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us achieve our mission.
The AI and Emerging Technologies business development team is responsible for the inorganic growth of Microsoft’s products and services, in these key areas. This role requires an understanding of the Web 3.0 market and you will drive collective impact on growing the business.
Among other responsibilities, Microsoft’s head of crypto would be tasked with the “evaluation of potential acquisitions” and improving “the use of our products and increas[ing] adoption.”
The role would be a senior-level position requiring the individual to work with other “senior members of the Business Development organization” to create “data-driven strategies that will impact both short- and long-term engineering plans and product ideas.”
You will also work cross-company with Product, Finance, Marketing, Legal, and other stakeholders to ensure a well-thought-out and executable plan is delivered and help drive executive approval on key initiatives. This is a role with potential for high impact and direct exec level visibility (CVPs, EVPs).
Other requirements and responsibilities of the role will include:
- Lay the foundation to support and inform Microsoft’s Web 3.0 strategy
- Advise leadership on key technology and product roadmap considerations
- Work with engineering teams across the company to understand when existing infrastructure can be leveraged, enhanced or built
- Develop the vision, strategy, and roadmap for Microsoft’s web 3.0 partnership model including infrastructure and APIs
- Collaborate cross-functionally with engineering, and other cross-functional teams to develop a business development build, buy, partner view
The job posting also includes more in-depth descriptions of the role’s responsibilities, including people management, customer and partner focus, partnership strategy, negotiation and – most importantly – deal management.
It’s just the latest sign that Microsoft intends to grow its footprint in the world of decentralized finance via an acquisition-focused strategy.
Confused about Web3.0 and its relationship to the world of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and decentralized finance? Well, in a recent post on his substack “Moment of the Deep”, Deep Pulusani offers a helpful and in-depth explanation:
Some notes before we start: the term web3 today is sometimes used synonymously to mean cryptocurrency, blockchain tech, virtual reality/augmented reality & the metaverse. I find that people already have a more intuitive understanding of how VR/AR may change the future. Therefore, I’ll only be writing about how crypto & blockchain tech in the context of web3 will transform the future, since it’s a bit more challenging to understand and abstract in its concepts.
Often this subject is explained with technical specifications or more commonly with political terms, ideas about liberty, decentralization, censorship, and power. These are all important; but what ultimately determines if web3 powered by crypto is the future lies in the economic and productive value it brings, the increases in quality of life it can achieve. These are the aspects I hope to make clear.
Where we’ve come from and where we are
All of the iterations of the web are digital revolutions, i.e. not only do more of our analog (physical) lives move to the digital realm, but new digitally native (digital-first) experiences are invented as well.
Web1 (1990s): a revolution in information availability.
Information and content from the real world is put online. Information is no longer a local phenomena nor a physical one, but is available for anyone with an internet connection to access. Early web protocols also allow for file transfers, emails, and web pages.
Examples: personal web pages, Encyclopedia Britannica & Encarta online, FTP, MapQuest
Web2 (2000-): a revolution in creation, experience, and connection.
The static becomes dynamic, and a convergence of hardware and software technologies enable us to experience rich interfaces and interactions on the web. Our lives start to become increasingly digital – compare what percent of your daily attention is focused online in 1999, then 2009, and then 2019. The ecosystem and interface of web2 is now rich enough where people can spend the majority of their lives online – from their careers, relationships, hobbies, investments, etc. – we now spend much of our lives in digital space. We also consume most of our content digitally, create much of our output digitally, and connect most frequently with others through messaging apps and social networks.
Examples: YouTube, Google Docs, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Robinhood, smart home & smart health devices
Web3 (2015-): a revolution in coordination, ownership, and value transfer.
I’ll break down each of these web3 revolutions in the ‘Web3 Paradigm Shifts’ section further below. It’s important to note first, however, that much of what will happen in web3 has its roots in web2. What’s often lost in all the web3 talk is that the web2 era is not over and will continue to produce enormous value and new companies. Let’s see how web3 powered by crypto is the next logical step to some of the revolutions of web2.
Web3 Extensions of Web2.
New and more powerful networks.
In web1 times, your networks might’ve included your local community, your job, your family, and friends you grow up with. Maybe you were part of a mailing list or a forum if you were savvy online. In web2, networks proliferated rapidly, and continue to explode. You might have networks on FB, telegram groups, IG niches, corners of Twitter, or varied family/friend WhatsApp groups.
This network creation continues in web3 with the introduction of the value network. Examples include Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot, countless others – each currency representing its own individual network of users. In addition, you have the tokens built on top of these programmable currencies, tokens that any individual or business can issue. The result is a proliferation of value networks that are themselves nested into a larger, more powerful network that it can communicate with and transfer between. This is an extremely powerful new invention because a value network can be added to all of our existing networks in web2 – to our existing social networks, messaging networks, and content networks – or to brand new networks entirely. Essentially any network can be monetized, tokenized, or incentivized, creating supercharged versions of our already rich variety of networks.
Explosion of creative activity, niches, and formats.
Even if we just include web2 companies launched in the past few years alone – TikTok, Substack, Clubhouse, etc. – there’s so many creative and productive niches for individuals to occupy. Couple that with increasingly easier ways to distribute content among a proliferation of platforms (aka networks), it’s no wonder there has been an explosion of creative activity and individual power over the past 20 years. In the web1 world, we still mainly had movie stars and bestselling authors. In web2, we have stars and activists in every genre, category, and format you could ask for. What progresses in web3 is the further expansion of platforms, niches, and content types. Most notably, you will see more purely digital creation and digital reward (e.g. create an opera in a virtual world that’s monetized by a virtual currency that’s easily tradeable into other virtual currencies or goods). Furthermore, the platforms that creators and producers use will be less intrusive, less expensive, and more malleable than the monolithic platforms of today.
Ease of global collaboration
Cloud storage & editing, powerful front-end frameworks, and ever-increasing browser strength have made it possible to collaborate effectively with anyone, anywhere, and in practically any field. Figma and Airtable are just two examples of recent web2 companies that have accelerated the ease of collaboration with individuals halfway around the world. The pandemic has further accelerated this phenomena. With web3, we now have organizations that can be independently formed with no underlying platform dependence. These organizations, dubbed DAOs, can be both incentivized to work towards a common goal and govern themselves through tokenization. Anonymous, pseudonymous, or fully public individuals can have their work measured and verified through a publicly available blockchain.
Disintermediation and distribution.
Web3 will continue the trend of removing distance between producer and consumer. There is a continual disintermediation happening on the web. During web1, to release a successful music album you had to go artist → label → distributer → retailer → consumer. At each step there is profit loss and gatekeepers deciding whether you can continue onward to distribute. In web2 you got to go either 1-step closer (artist → label → platform → consumer) or 2-steps closer for those fully independent ( artist → platform → consumer). Web3 continues this disintermediation, as the platform merely becomes the underlying network or protocol the connection is made over (artist → consumer via protocol or network). There’s no longer gatekeepers or an expensive take-rate. There can still be curators to guide consumers (the difference being that a curator can make money independently of the artist’s margin). The end goal is that all service providers or product creators have the option to be connected directly with service seekers and product consumers.
Disintermediation is only possible because of the increasing ability to self-distribute. In the past, middle men at each step were essential to ensure wide distribution. Web2 gave us powerful tools of self-distribution through platforms like Amazon, Shopify, Google Ads, Social Media, SoundCloud, etc. In web3, we can maintain all the tools of web2, but now we introduce tokenized systems. By creating tokens that somehow represent your business or art in your chosen way, early fans and early users become incentivized to spread your art by holding those tokens. Those fans will now distribute that art for you through their own individual networks and tools.
Web3 Paradigm Shifts
Users become owners.
Employee stock options made many tech employees rich with the advent of web-first tech companies. However, for companies that rely on network effects – which is all social media, all sharing economy e.g. Uber, all marketplaces e.g. Amazon, all cloud tools, all games – the early users are equally as important. Without the early users, later users don’t join in, and a company never gains traction. Today, however, early users are not compensated for this essential contribution. In web3, through both fungible and non-fungible tokens, users & early evangelizers will win when a company wins too.
In common press about web3, what’s often talked about is that we’ll now be compensated for our data. This is true – unlike our data being owned by the platforms (Twitter, FB, etc.) it will travel with us and be owned by us. However, the more valuable and scarce asset that users give over to apps is their attention, and this will be the far greater reward to users. Power users and heavy users of games, cloud tools, and content platforms, will eventually either be incentivized by the app or move on to companies that do incentivize their valuable attention.
Any agreement becomes possible.
At each era of the web, we can code increasingly powerful experiences (i.e. code becomes more abstracted from the binary 0s and 1s that the computer actually runs). When web2 rolled around, internet connections were fast enough and devices strong enough to have rich streaming & content experiences. In web3, the game-changing abstraction is smart contracts. Smart contracts essentially allow any agreement between individuals, groups, protocols, or mix of the bunch. Relying on the legal system to enforce billions of agreements small and large on the web is neither desirable nor realistic. A smart contract’s ability to allow for agreements between two untrusted individuals without burdening the legal system creates a major shift in a human’s ability to coordinate behavior and form agreements between groups. In web3, code enforces the agreements and the blockchain infrastructure protects against manipulation of this code. Smart contracts are natively digital, meaning they can be combined and stacked with other contracts to create powerful systems and infrastructures. The implications of this are not yet fully realized, but one hint to the power of smart contracts is the emergence of decentralized finance, which has disrupted a giant sector in a very short period of time. Smart contracts can now be embedded in all the software and hardware we use – any object can be embedded with operating rules, sharing terms, & financial agreements between parties. Combine this with the ability to interface with any other contract on the network, and the creative, collaborative, and productive uses of these contracts become limitless.
Everything can be a financial instrument.
People often ask why not just use fiat currency through PayPal or Stripe – what’s the functional point of an open-source digitally native currency like Ethereum? The answer is that you can program it, build on top of it, and integrate it with anything digital – whether a smart hardware device or a software application. Even everyday items like your chat groups, gifs, or your writing journal can be made into a financial instrument. That universe becomes bigger when imagine digitally native assets and services that have not even been invented yet. Any individual can perform this integration, not just institutions. Usually when people think of financial instruments, we think of ownership, of buying and selling. But these aren’t the only functions of financialization – we can integrate all financial functions including borrowing, lending, insurance, and merging. With financial functionality, also comes executive functionality, like governance and direction. Now imagine these functions available to any asset or network, both digital and physical.
A new identity emerges.
Tokens don’t necessarily have to represent money or value – we can use tokens to verify productive work done, or personal and career milestones reached. Because web3 transactions are stored on a publicly available network, our web3 wallet can not only represent transactions we’ve made and tokens we own, but organizations we’re apart of, events we’ve attended, people we know, content we’ve created, and work we’ve done. We can carry this history around to any app connected to the network that we grant access to. Those concerned with privacy never have to expose their physical identity, as wallets are simply avatars which maintain the right to hide or expose the physical identity behind it. Instead of our creative and productive output being spread out and siloed over various companies – LinkedIn, Twitter, IG – our web3 wallet can be carried with us wherever we go. Apps, games, and experiences can then interact with the specific identity the user brings to create tailored and one-of-a-kind experiences for the user’s history. Collaborators and employers can verify your expertise, your skill, your network, and things you’ve created or worked on through your wallet, without requiring a resume or contacting references.
Postscript: Why did I write this?
There’s something odd about writing articles that predict the future. If the writer is correct, the future is going to happen anyway, so what’s the point of writing an article about it now? What’s the point of another article hyping up a future that is certain?
Because web3 is so widely misunderstood, the future is uncertain. The economic and productive value that web3 can bring is deeply threatened by governments and regulators around the world. This is somewhat expected from authoritarian governments that will naturally crack down on web3 because of what it entails – shared equity and decision making, mass participation and organization – as retaining centralized power is essential to their literal survival. This has already become apparent in China. What’s essential is that major democracies, especially the world’s wealthiest USA and the world’s biggest India, foster the web3 experiment. It’s essential that we let things develop before overzealously legislating in the name of protection. Unfriendly governments could have firewalled the web1 internet and set progress back a decade because it was now easier for criminals to communicate and spread criminal information. Undoing legislation and regulatory burdens is much harder than waiting to pass them in the first place. Web3 built on crypto has the possibility to be the major boon for wealth inequality (see paradigm shifts listed above), an issue all sides of the political spectrum claim to want to solve. Democratic governments: let’s let web3 grow, develop, and make mistakes. We’re still so early.
* * *
Follow me on twitter @momentofdeep for more content like this.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/09/2022 – 17:50 - Luongo: And The Rock Cried Out, You Can't Hide From Yourself
Luongo: And The Rock Cried Out, You Can’t Hide From Yourself
Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
“There’s no hiding place down here,
There’s no hiding place down here,
Oh I ran to the rock to hide my face
The rock cried out, ‘No hiding place’
No hiding place down here.”— TRADITIONAL GOSPEL SONG
It seems there’s a whole lotta hidin’ goin’ on out there, folks. While I’d like to spend a thousand words chronicling my disappointment with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for his hypocrisy over the Joe Rogan controversy, that would miss so much of the point.
Not that Dwayne doesn’t deserve our derision for abandoning Rogan. He does. For a guy who’s built his persona around embracing everything that came before, good or bad, watching him reconsider his friendship with Rogan publicly is the ultimate betrayal of that carefully crafted persona.
Respect is hard to earn and very, very easy to lose.
Especially since it took the internet all of five minutes to dig up performances as “The Rock” which are cringe-worthy by any recent standard and him deleting tweets which were, by his own standard today, unacceptable.
So, how many rocks do you have to hide behind in your glass mansion, Dwayne?
But, again, this article isn’t about Dwayne’s flirtations with mendacity. I could literally give zero shits about his past, even though what he did as The Rock in the ring was far more venal and debasing to himself and his audience than anything Joe Rogan ever said on his podcast about black people.
Because there are no good guys in this scenario. Johnson should have stuck by Rogan. Rogan shouldn’t have apologized.
Everyone is making mistakes left and right and it will cost them more than millions of dollars.
Casting Stones
But it wasn’t because Rogan used the word that rhymes with bigger in honest inquisitions on racism and the fearlessness of those comics who blazed a trail before him.
It was because he vastly underestimated the scope and scale of the operation being run on him.
Rogan handled the initial onslaught well. As Jordan Peterson pointed out a few days ago:
That was early last week. But then the next hammer dropped. He committed the unforgiveable sin.
He apologized.
Joe caved to the pressure. His self-image and basic decency was cynically used against him to get that apology for being a successful white guy who doesn’t know his subordinate place in the new order.
This is both a strategical and tactical error on his part that will hurt him more than Peterson sees here. Because they won’t stop until he’s destroyed, now that he’s given them something to throw at him. They know his weakness now.
I’m sure that Rogan thought, “I’ll just tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.” That is consistent with his personality and his persona, since they are one and the same, unlike apparently Dwayne.
Never Give Up, Never Apologize
But there’s no hiding from the mob, especially an unforgiving mob obsessed with power and the need to take Joe Rogan down now that he nearly single-handedly destroyed the COVID-19 vaccine narrative with the truth and a couple of podcasts.
It’s easy for those behind this targeted smear campaign to gin up some fake outrage which empowers the false virtue of their cult members to attack Rogan and Spotify. When all you believe in is power, when humanity is nothing but a wall to project your own self-loathing onto, then there are no restraints on your behavior.
My intuition here is that this is not just Davos at work, but specifically this bus is being driven by Obama, who pulls the strings of the Biden administration and who, it looks like, has now corrupted Dwayne Johnson since Dwayne’s being courted as the Democrats’ 2024 savior.
(and I’m happy to have Dwayne disabuse me of this accusation)
One only has to look at the arc of Johnson’s character in the latter seasons of Ballers to see where he’s personally headed: to take on the “old boy’s club of the NFL (Wall St.) and be a champion of the people.” If there was ever a job interview masquerading as entertainment you couldn’t have asked for a better example. (Again come at me bro! mahalo!)
The difference between these two guys couldn’t be clearer. Johnson was chosen by the Old Boys’ Club while still thinking he’s the one making the choice to be a leader of the people.
On the other hand, Rogan was chosen by the people to be their proxy for keeping the lights on in the cave, screwing up the shadow play on the wall so they can make up their own minds.
Leaders are Made, Not Born
And while Joe can deny that responsibility, or more importantly, refuse to play the game, the game came to him when he signed a $100 million contract with Spotify last year.
I told you then that he blew up the Death Star with that contract. He moved off YouTube and gave his content to Spotify to distribute, validating them and providing a counterpoint to Apple, Amazon and everyone else.
But he had to know spitting in their eye repeatedly would bring the hammer down.
Joe Rogan has now told the entire country that he’s had enough. And we needed someone like Joe to do this.
That said, Rogan is only one half of the story, however. Because at the same time, one of these platforms needed to break away from the herd and welcome the dissenters.
For Spotify, Joe Rogan is the ‘killer app’ they needed to differentiate themselves as non-partisan and begin the exodus away from the big platforms who have become nothing but partisan.
I don’t know if the board at Spotify know what they’ve just unleashed but they better realize it quick. They’re Echo Base and the walkers will be landing real soon now
And this is why Rogan’s apology is so damning. He had the world ready to follow him. But he did the one thing you can never do in this Age of Rage, apologize to them for who you were or who you are.
If they can’t handle all of you then they can’t have any of you.
So, Joe, I know you feel terrible about this, but why? No one owns any word. Words are not violence if they aren’t meant that way. Anyone who thinks that is the one with the problem.
No matter how big your voice, you can’t be responsible for people’s reactions. Their emotions are their own to process. And if they choose to process them as temper tantrums on Twitter or Instagram then let their actions be their judge.
You gained my respect speaking honestly. You lost it, apologizing because that honesty hurt the feelings of people who already despise you.
A Race Already Run
The truth is that this was a fight lost two generations ago when it became verboten for white people to use that word out of deference to try and heal a real divide within society.
It was an apology for a past that many of us did not engage in nor are proud of. But, it was never about that. It was always the camel’s nose under the tent. Political correctness and self-censorship are the very essence of totalitarianism. It is Marxist power theory 101.
But, where does it end? Should I, as a second-generation Italian immigrant (with black curly hair when I had any and a dark complexion), be held accountable for U.S. slavery which ended legally 40 years before my grandparents fled their homeland’s poverty for a better life in Brooklyn and Queens?
That apology then has grown into the virus we have today, where everyone left of Karl Marx is a fascist and we’re taking our societal cues (this week) from the people who believe men can have babies.
It’s not just that we shouldn’t apologize for who we aren’t but that apologies based on any kind of collective identity is antithetical to civil society. Joe Rogan knows that. Dwayne Johnson was supposed to know that.
Joe. You apologized to people without shame or conscience.
And what is missing in all of this frustration and fake outrage is that everyone, all of us, are being played for even reacting to this nonsense in the first place.
Keep on Truckin’
Controversies like this are meant to drive a reaction, to grant legitimacy to a non-issue and give people a chance to be self-righteous. The NPC’s screaming for Rogan’s censorship refuse to admit they are just pawns in Davos’ ugly game of division while the #ungovernables are disappointed that Rogan didn’t rise to the occasion and give them a little more courage.
Ultimately, though, none of this Rogan nonsense matters. I would have loved for Joe to stand tall, but he didn’t. He’s to be commended for taking the ball this far.
Because while Obama and Davos were busy attacking a podcaster for being a bigger-man than anyone in the dying media space, Canada’s truckers provided that leadership to the world.
And that has truly lit the fire of resistance in a way that Rogan standing up to false accusations of racism cannot douse.
Canada’s truckers are not domestic terrorists or white supremacists or menaces to society. They are simply people who have no other options left given that Davos’ lil’ buddy, Prime Minister Justin “Blackface” Trudeau has mandated, extra-constitutionally, a two-tiered society that even his RCMP personal guard cannot abide.
There is no amount of fake sincerity for the well being of the people you govern that can cover the naked authoritarianism of cretins like Trudeau. The ‘Freedom Convoy’ was en route for days and what does he do the moment the trucks show up in Ottawa?
He runs into hiding while leaving his civil servicemen to deal with the problem. It isn’t just that Trudeau is a venal little prick who can’t stand tall and lead his cadre of government thugs into battle against a bunch of peaceful protestors. I’d almost respect him for that.
If you act on beliefs that strongly and can lead men to action, that counts for something. But leading from behind the shadows is the most shameful act of all. Joe Rogan’s mistake was not grasping leadership when it was presented to him.
Trudeau’s mistake was in accepting the leadership in the first place when he wasn’t strong enough to wear the crown when things went a little off script.
Now the City of Ottawa and the “laptop set” are angry they can’t get a good night’s sleep after they took away the rights of people whose only crime was not obeying an unlawful edict from a over-reaching government.
You can’t take everything away from someone and expect them not to react to it. These people have had their lives ripped from them and you can’t sleep because their honking their horns?
How about trying to listen to them as opposed to acting like you have the right to tell them to shut up?
Trudeau can hide from the truckers but he can’t hide from us. He can talk down to them (and us) all he wants but he stands naked (shudder) in the light of something far worse than The Rock’s weakness, his lack of shame.
No matter how many jerrycans of diesel fuel the cops confiscate, or millions of dollars GoFundMe steals or traffic citations issued, what’s happening in Ottawa is beyond their control.
This is the real issue, not The Rock’s 10-year-old transphobic tweets or Joe Rogan triggering a bunch of self-obsessed ninnies. The real issue is that we see them for what they are and now that they’ve crossed the line their legitimacy is gone.
The truckers in Ottawa have already moved far past just lifting the vaccine mandates or anything having to do with COVID-19 restrictions.
They want Justin Trudeau’s government to resign. They want the globalist shills that infect the upper echelons of all the major Canadian parties unemployed like they are. After all, fair is fair, right?
They’ve already gotten one scalp, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole. The only move left for Trudeau is violence.
And they’ve done something Joe Rogan wasn’t willing to do, inspire people to get past the fear of losing something in order to truly gain something the Trudeaus and the Obamas of the world don’t want them to ever have, their self-respect.
I can only hope that the police and military there see this for what it is, an opportunity to stop hiding behind their badges and their ‘duty’ and remember who they remember themselves being.
The truckers have done the heavy lifting. They lifted rocks. Now it’s time to move mountains.
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Join my Patreon if you like lifting rocks.
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Wed, 02/09/2022 – 17:30
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