- The Weaponization Of January 6
The Weaponization Of January 6
Authored by Jeff Crouere via AmericanThinker.com,
After the disputed 2020 election with questionable results in numerous states, millions of President Trump supporters were enraged. There were election challenges and protests across the country.
The major protest on January 6 in Washington D.C. was the culmination of weeks of rallies across the country. Although estimates vary widely, the January 6 rally featuring President Trump, attracted at least 500,000 supporters.
The overwhelming majority of the participants heeded President Trump’s plea to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Some participants marched to the U.S. Capitol and about 900 people entered the building.
Research from the staff of U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) shows that approximately 40% of those who entered the U.S. Capitol were allowed into the building by the police. Among the rest, those who committed vandalism or assault should be prosecuted. The others may have entered the building illegally, but their actions do not rise to the level of terrorism.
It has not stopped some far-left activists masquerading as analysts from claiming that the events of January 6 were worse than 9/11, the day that the country was attacked by Islamic terrorists, which resulted in the deaths of 2,977 innocent people. According to Steve Schmidt, co-founder of the disgraced Lincoln Project, “The 1/6 attack for the future of the country is a profoundly more dangerous event than the 9/11 attacks, and in the end, the 1/6 attacks are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed in the 9/11 attacks.”
This claim is beyond ludicrous for the 9/11 attack prompted a U.S. military response and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that claimed the lives of over 7,000 brave members of the United States military, 8,000 contractors and an untold number of innocent citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In contrast, five people died on January 6, including four of natural causes. The only person to be killed on that fateful day was Ashlii Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and Trump supporter, who was unarmed. She was killed by a U.S. Capitol Police officer who has been allowed to remain anonymous.
To compare January 6 to a day that led to so many thousands of deaths and serious injuries is an insult to the victims of 9/11. It is minimizing that horrific day and comparing it to an intrusion in the U.S. Capitol that was improper and unwise, but not anywhere close to a jihadist attack.
Another hyperbolic “analysis” was spewed by MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd, who claimed that January 6 was “worse” than 9/11. He said, “To me, though there was less loss of life…. Jan.6 was worse than 9/11 because it’s continued to rip our country apart and give permission for people to pursue autocratic means.”
The insanity of these comparisons is truly astounding, but it is happening with regularity in the leftwing media.
Here is what the analysts refuse to acknowledge:
Trump supporters are not terrorists or threats to America. Almost all of them have a deep and abiding love for America and are extremely patriotic.
They hate what happened to President Trump and the injustices that he suffered from the Deep State and the media and his many political enemies. They also have legitimate questions about how the 2020 elections were handled in numerous states.
Democrats are claiming that this political passion is a threat against the country.
It is why Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has kept National Guard troops and barriers around the U.S. Capitol for so many months. The impression of these actions is that Trump supporters are dangerous.
Democrats will continue to use the events of January 6 as a political weapon to distract from the horrible record of the Biden administration. After the first six months of the Biden administration, the country is in total disarray.
The breakdown at the border has been both shocking and predictable as President Joe Biden discarded every successful policy of the Trump administration. With a staggering total of 180,000 border apprehensions per month and untold numbers of illegal immigrants evading capture, this crisis shows no signs of ending any time soon.
Under Biden, inflation has returned with a vengeance as prices for back-to-school items, lumber, gasoline, and certain groceries are skyrocketing. Schools are beset with toxic teachers espousing critical race theory. Crime is becoming much worse in the major urban areas of the country, all run by Democrats.
The foreign policy of President Biden is no better. While President Trump negotiated historic peace deals, Biden has been unable to stop violent conflicts in the Middle East from erupting. His administration has shown incredible weakness in dealings with China, Russia, and Iran. While tensions exacerbate, our military is sadly going woke and being purged of conservatives.
There is no area that the Biden administration can point to as a success. While the President likes to brag about job gains, the employment numbers were predicted by economists as the nation continues to recover from last year’s COVID-19 shutdown.
While President Biden constantly pushes vaccinations for Americans, he failed to reach his targets for July 4th. Now the administration is proposing a ludicrous and dangerous policy of going door to door to push vaccines on Americans who have refused the shot.
With so many problems, the Democrats need to divert the attention of Americans with more hysteria about Donald Trump and the protests of January 6. The media helped the Democrats by continuing to keep the story alive; however, it is almost never reported that some of the protesters were Antifa infiltrators and FBI informants.
Although the exact number of imposters is not known, the FBI is keeping close tabs on all the Trump supporters who entered the U.S. Capitol. The FBI has been on a crusade to arrest every protester who entered the U.S. Capitol on that day. While a few protesters destroyed property or attacked police officers, the vast majority were non-violent. At this point, approximately 500 people have been arrested. Some of them remain in prison in horrific conditions.
Interestingly, the same level of prosecutorial zeal is not being displayed toward the rioters who rampaged across the country in the summer of 2020. Why are Trump rally goers being treated more harshly than rioters who burned down buildings?
On the day of the protests, Americans were distracted from the congressional debate on the 2020 election. Today, the events of January 6 are being used by Democrats to avoid discussion of the Biden record.
As a result of the January 6 protests, President Trump was impeached again and removed from social media. Clearly, the January 6 narrative is serving a useful purpose for Democrats, and they are not likely to abandon it any time soon.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 23:40 - "Micro-Studio" Listed In Vancouver Is A Bathroom With Bed
"Micro-Studio" Listed In Vancouver Is A Bathroom With Bed
Vancouver’s housing market is one of the least affordable in North America. A recent Craigslist ad for a “micro-studio” illustrated that as a bed was placed in the bathroom and listed for $680 per month.
Local news website “Vancouver Is Awesome,” says the micro-studio is located in the west end of town and boasted in the listing that it’s the “ideal” space for a single person looking to live downtown at an affordable price, “who does not need much space.”
The space, all 160 sq. ft of it, is located on Barclay and Bute Streets for $680 per month. The city of Vancouver defines a micro-dwelling at a minimum of 250 sq. ft.
The listing was recently removed from Craigslist, possibly because it violated Vancouver micro-dwellings guidelines that specify bathrooms must be separated from the central unit.
After a year of plunging rental prices because of the virus pandemic, the Canadian rental market is quickly recovering. Prices are still the highest across Canada and all of North America.
With normalcy returning to Vancouver, low-interest rates via the Bank of Canada sparked a speculative bubble in real estate that is further detached from fundamentals than ever before.
Investors and anyone else are locked in fierce bidding wars, sending prices to astronomical levels. The housing bubble continues to fuel higher rent prices making the metro area one of the most unaffordable areas to live and this may explain why someone listed a bathroom with a bed for $650 per month.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 23:20 - In Many Cities In America, The Criminals Are Starting To Gain Firm Control Of The Streets
In Many Cities In America, The Criminals Are Starting To Gain Firm Control Of The Streets
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
Every week the horrendous crime wave that is sweeping across America seems to get even worse. In some of our largest cities, looting, murder and violence are becoming a way of life, and authorities seem powerless to do anything about it. Is this what we can expect life in the United States to look like moving forward? All over the globe, people are watching us, and they are stunned by what they have been witnessing. Criminals are wildly out of control, and many of our largest cities are being transformed into extremely violent war zones.
For example, just check out what happened in Oakland over the weekend. According to Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, his officers were completely overwhelmed by “the level of violence and gunfire”…
The Fourth of July reeled into “12 hours of non-stop chaos” Sunday night with several victims wounded by celebratory gunfire, a homicide and a massive sideshow marred by gunfire. The night culminated at the sideshow, where more than 200 participants pelted police officers with debris and flashed them with hand-held lasers.
Embattled Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong told reporters that the level of violence and gunfire overwhelmed his officers.
Next door, the shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco has evolved into systematic looting.
Sadly, no retailer is immune. Even though Neiman Marcus has enthusiastically embraced a whole host of “woke” causes, criminals ruthlessly looted one of their stores in San Francisco on Monday…
Looters were captured on video Monday ransacking a Neiman Marcus in San Francisco as thefts continue to plague businesses in the area.
At least nine suspects smashed display cases, snatched handbags, and jetted out of the building before law enforcement arrived to the scene at about 6 p.m., according to footage. The suspects were seen running out of the store with their hands full of merchandise before entering an apparent getaway car that sped off down a busy intersection.
If you have not seen footage of the looters yet, you can watch it right here. This happened in broad daylight, and it is hard to believe that such scenes are actually happening in the United States of America.
At this point, the looting has gotten so bad that some major retailers are taking drastic actions…
Walgreens shuttered 17 of its stores in the San Francisco area in the past five years, and the company said thefts in the area are four times more likely than anywhere else in the country as executives budgeted 35 times more for security personnel to guard the chains.
Target executives in the city also decided to limit business hours in response to an uptick in larceny.
But unless they completely close up shop, the looting is going to continue.
Criminals in California have learned that if they keep the value of the merchandise they steal at each store to under $950, they won’t be charged with a felony even if they are caught.
So now we are witnessing a wave of retail theft that is unlike anything we have ever seen before…
SF Police Lt. Tracy McCray pinned the blame on DA Chesa Boudin (whose parents were part of the radical and violent Weather Underground, and left two police officers dead during a botched heist). According to McCray, Boudin’s “criminals first agenda” is responsible for the uptick in crime.
“What happened in that Walgreens has been going on in the city for quite a while,” McCray said in June. “I’m used to it. I mean, we could have a greatest hits compilation of people just walking in and cleaning out the store shelves and security guards, the people who work there, just standing by helplessly because they can’t do anything.”
Up in Portland, the street violence just continues to get even worse.
Earlier today, I was saddened to learn that a very generous man that had put up a pop-up swimming pool for the homeless during the heat wave had been viciously stabbed to death…
A man whose ingenious pop-up swimming pool kept the homeless cool during the recent heat wave was fatally stabbed in the same spot just one day later, according to Portland police.
Officers identified Tyson L. Morlock as the man who was found stabbed in the inner eastside Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood at Division Street and Southeast Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard around 3:37 a.m. on Thursday, July 1.
He tried to make Portland a better place, and now he is dead.
Of course so many people are being murdered these days that it is extremely difficult to keep up with all of the carnage.
In Chicago, this holiday weekend was the most violent weekend that we have seen in 2021 so far, and that is really saying something…
Every July 4th weekend police in Chicago brace for an uptick in violence – even more than is usual when typical weekends average about 40 shootings – and this holiday weekend was no different, easily registering as the deadliest and most violent this year given the total death count. New York City has also been witnessing a steady uptick in seemingly random shootings and violence, including brazen acts committed in broad daylight in heavily trafficked areas, such as the recent Times Square wounding of a US Marine.
On Monday the Chicago Sun-Times has tallied 92 people shot over the long July 4th weekend, with 16 killed. The Sun-Times database shows the numbers killed to be a weekend high for all of 2021 so far.
There are certain areas of Chicago that are essentially “no go zones” at this point, but of course the same thing could be said about the worst parts of many other major U.S. cities.
As I discussed the other day, it is being reported that murder rates in our largest cities were up by an average of 30 percent in 2020, and as of a few weeks ago they were up another 24 percent so far in 2021.
Ordinary citizens are begging our leaders to “do something” about this enormous wave of violence, but at this point nothing seems to be working.
If things are this bad now while the U.S. economy is in “recovery mode”, how bad will conditions get when the next severe downturn comes along?
It is heartbreaking to watch our society come apart at the seams all around us, and I have a feeling that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 23:00 - Chinese Scientists Want To Use Rockets To Deflect 'Armageddon' Asteroids
Chinese Scientists Want To Use Rockets To Deflect 'Armageddon' Asteroids
Scientists at China’s National Space Science Centre (NSSC) want to send more than 20 rockets into outer space and simultaneously use their kinetic impact to deflect an Earth-bound asteroid, according to Reuters.
NSSC used computer simulations with 23 Long March 5 rockets (each weighing 900 tons) to simultaneously hit and deflect an asteroid dubbed Bennu, a class of rocks that is as wide as the Empire State Building.
Researchers have studied one Bennu, a 78 billion kilogram rock that will come within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth around the year 2271, or about 150 years from now.
The idea is more or less science fiction, sort of like the American film “Armageddon,” when a group of oil rig drillers was sent into outer space by NASA to land on an Earth-bound asteroid, drill a hole, place a nuclear bomb, and save the human race from extinction.
Something more realistic is NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) program that will attempt to alter the path of two minor asteroids using robotic spacecraft sometime later this year or early 2022. The US space agency wants to examine how the kinetic energy from crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid will change the object’s trajectory.
Some scientists have suggested breaking up asteroids with nuclear weapons, but significant risks are involved, such as the object breaking into smaller pieces and still hitting Earth. Using a rocket or spacecraft’s kinetic impact could be a much safer method.
“The proposal of keeping the upper stage of the launch rocket to a guiding spacecraft, making one large ‘kinetic impactor’ to deflect an asteroid, is a rather nice concept,” said Professor Alan Fitzsimmons from the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.
“By increasing the mass hitting the asteroid, simple physics should ensure a much greater effect,” Fitzsimmons told Reuters. However, he added that such a mission’s actual operation must be reviewed in much greater detail.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 22:40 - What If The Next Major Cyberattack Targeted The Internet?
What If The Next Major Cyberattack Targeted The Internet?
Authored by Brandon Smith avia Birch Gold Group,
Over the past few months I have been writing analysis on a planned crisis war game organized by the World Economic Forum called “Cyberpolygon.” The event will be held this week on July 9th, and it’s allegedly designed to simulate a massive cyberattack that somehow disrupts the global supply chain, or at the very least disrupts the supply chain of multiple large economies.
Why am I so interested in this war game? Well, many of my readers will recall that the last major simulation the WEF and the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation held was Event 201, a global pandemic exercise which portrayed a coronavirus outbreak spread by animal carriers to humans killing millions of people while forcing the shutdown of multiple first-world economies. Event 201 was scheduled for October 2019 – two months later the exact pandemic scenario they simulated happened in real life, save a few minor details.
Klaus Schwab, the head of the WEF, was very quick to exploit the COVID-19 outbreak as a rationale for the “Great Reset” agenda: A socialist reconstruction of the world’s financial system and political structure that globalists have been clamoring for since at least 2014. Truly, the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic were the same people that simulated the outbreak only months beforehand during Event 201.
So, of course many people are beginning to wonder if lightning will strike twice for the globalists at the WEF. Will there be a large scale cyberattack that brings down the international supply chain within the next few months? Will there be another miraculous coincidence that destabilizes the world’s trade systems and creates social strife?
Cyber-terrorism is already disrupting the economy
There have already been a few disturbing near-crisis cyberattacks in the past month.
The Colonial Pipeline attack as well as the JBS meat packing attack both had the potential to cause severe supply chain disruptions. The pipeline attack in particular could have created a panic environment had it continued for any longer than a week. Imagine if there was no gasoline to fuel the freight trucks that transport the majority of goods and raw materials across the US for half a month or more? It would be a nightmare, as a majority of Americans have no preparedness supplies and are stocked with no more than a week’s worth of necessities.
That said, I have been considering the adaptability of western supply chains to a cyber event and I’m not so sure another pipeline attack or a similar sabotage would actually harm us for very long. If the goal of the attackers was to create maximum damage, then another target would have to be found. I have been pondering this question for a while now, and it finally dawned on me that the supply chain does not need to be attacked directly in order to break it.
The Fastly outage and Cyberpolygon
Recently when Klaus Schwab commented on the coming Cyberpolygon simulation, he stated that the next cyberattack would be like a “cyber pandemic” far worse in destructive scale when compared to covid. I realized that the next crisis may not need to involve resource manufacturers or suppliers; rather, what if the next cyberattack was on the internet itself?
Let me explain – In June of this year there was an internet outage event that led to large swaths of the web going dark, including a number of mainstream news sites, Amazon, eBay, Twitch, Reddit and a host of government websites went down. All this happened when content delivery network (CDN) company Fastly experienced a bug. Although Amazon had its website back online within 20 minutes, the brief outage cost the company over $5.5 million in sales (and that’s just one website!).
Fastly identified and fixed the problem within two hours, and continues to claim the outage had nothing to do with a cyberattack. However, it did reveal a huge vulnerability for the internet (what von Clausewitz would’ve called a schwerpunkt). A large portion of the web is dependent on only three CDN companies, including Fastly.
Here is what concerns me: If there was a cyberattack on such weak points in the web, and the attack involved a malicious worm or other highly infectious weapon, then Klaus Schwab could very well get his “cyber pandemic.”
The internet plays a much bigger role in daily life than you might think.
Payment networks, supply chains, distribution and communication
Consider for a moment the vast array of economic functions that are now tied directly to the internet, including the supply chain, retailers, information services and even the stock market. If vital pillars of the web were crippled for weeks on end, an economy already weakened by a year of covid lockdowns might not recover.
So what does the internet power? Professor Matthew Zook of the University of Kentucky has a list:
-
Communications (“Ham operators would be kings!”)
-
Banking and finance, including the stock market (“The gold bugs would be feeling very smug…”)
-
Transportation, traffic lights, airlines, some railways and ports (“The entire logistics industry would be in shambles.”)
-
Utilities: electrical grids and water (“I think sewer systems would still work…”)
The internet really is everywhere.
For a high-level overview of the consequences of a total internet failure, Professor Mark Graham at Oxford Internet Institute offers this summary:
If the entire internet was shut down, we would witness an almost immediate global economic collapse. The internet is the nervous system of contemporary globalization. Explicitly digital interactions [like] core banking and payment networks, and so on. But then, even parts of the economy that initially seem relatively disconnected would begin to grind to a halt because of the fact that all contemporary societies rely on long-distance supply chains, and long-distance supply chains rely on the internet. [emphasis added]
“Almost immediate global economic collapse.” That’s frightening.
That part about long-distance supply chains might not sound so important, until you consider that most people live in cities. Most food is not produced in cities. Supply chains get a lot more important when you’re hungry.
Professor Graham continues, “if there are two things that are guaranteed to cause chaos in the contemporary economy, it is an inability for food to be distributed and an inability for people to access money and the banking network.”
Sit with that for a moment. If you had no food and no money, what would you do?
Cui bono?
Consider who would benefit from this scenario and how they would benefit. Just as covid was used as an excuse to quarantine the public from economic participation, and businesses that were deemed “non-essential” were locked down, a cyber pandemic could also be used as a means to forcefully isolate parts of the web that governments do not like.
Alternative news sites like mine could simply be deemed a potential “cyber infection hazard” and shut down while controlled and agreeable mainstream news sites continue to spread propaganda.
The biggest failing of the Great Reset agenda has been that the alternative media exists. We have been effectively countering disinformation about the necessity of the lockdowns. We have also helped to expose the Wuhan lab debate.
The globalists will have to shut us up somehow, and it seems like a cyberattack on the key mechanics of the web might be the trick they need. Or at the very least, they would be grateful for any further “coincidences” that cause their critics to suffer and go silent.
Chance favors the prepared
I suggest that readers watch out for the possibility of a global internet collapse, and prepare accordingly. I imagine any people disenfranchised by internet exclusion would have to turn to alternative technologies such as HF ham radio, digital packet modems and ham based internet systems like AMPRnet or Winlink. As a General Class ham I can say that these are probably our best options for a future in which the internet is no longer available or safe for communications.
Possibly ham internet networks could be adapted for transactions, matching buyers and sellers, and could fill in at some level for broken supply chains.
I also would be wary of relying on cryptocurrency systems during an internet-wide cyberattack. Physical commodities like gold and silver coins would be essential as universal currencies in a world where digital trade is either highly unstable or highly restricted according to your politics or a refusal to comply with various mandates.
Maybe nothing will happen in the next few months. Maybe the WEF’s Event 201 was a fluke. Maybe Cyberpolygon will come and go without much fanfare and the warnings of this article will be treated like “doom and gloom” or “chicken little” paranoia.
Maybe not.
What I do know is that there has been a considerable uptick in the scale of cyberattacks and disruptions just in the past month, and I know that there are certain people out there that would find great benefit in another global crisis so close to the covid pandemic.
Imaging waking up one day and discovering that your internet access is completely cut off and the only sources you can go to for information are CNN or MSNBC. Imagine how a frozen internet would undermine thousands of retailers and freight networks. The effect would be almost the same as if someone deliberately shut down the electrical grid or hobbled multiple gas pipelines. It’s a possibility we should consider.
* * *
With global tensions spiking, thousands of Americans are moving their IRA or 401(k) into an IRA backed by physical gold. Now, thanks to a little-known IRS Tax Law, you can too. Learn how with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals how physical precious metals can protect your savings, and how to open a Gold IRA. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 22:20 -
- Western States Brace For Record Heat Wave This Weekend
Western States Brace For Record Heat Wave This Weekend
We outlined Tuesday that multiple heat waves would plague the Western half of the US. The first round struck early in the week and lasted through mid-week, and the second is just beginning.
The worst of the second wave is expected to affect upwards of 28 million people from California to Washington State.
Excessive heat warnings have already been posted for California, Nevada, western Arizona, and western Utah. Watches have also been posted for interior portions of Oregon and southern Idaho.
Large swaths of the West could experience temperatures 20 or more degrees above average. Below is a temperature anomalies forecast showing the heat dome could last through mid-next week
“Extreme heat will significantly increase the potential for heat related illnesses,” the National Weather Service in Hanford, Califonia, warned. “Confidence is very high for a dangerous heat wave to persist through Monday and maybe into Tuesday.”
The sweltering heat could reach double digits in some areas.
In Hanford itself, temperatures could hit 110 degrees Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Records in Hanford date to 1899, and show that highs of 110 degrees or greater have occurred on four or more consecutive days on only five occasions. That makes the duration and magnitude of the episode a once in roughly 20-year event.
Sacramento is looking at a five-day stretch with highs in the triple digits, including a forecast 110 degrees Saturday. Redding is likely to hit 113 degrees Friday, 115 on Saturday and 113 on Sunday. Highs Monday may be a slightly less inhospitable 110 degrees. The city has never recorded more than three consecutive days at 113 degrees or greater.
Modesto, Calif., will see highs around 108 degrees both weekend days.
Potentially more concerning will be the overnight lows, which won’t be very low at all — temperatures may dip only into the upper 70s or lower 80s in some spots. On Saturday night, Modesto is projected to fall only to 80 degrees before temperatures skyrocket again in the morning. In fact, most of the Central Valley will not fall beneath 80 degrees during the overnight period on Saturday.
Central Valley locations “will be extremely warm overnight, where high minimum temp records may be achieved as well,” wrote the Weather Service in Sacramento. Warm overnight lows are especially dangerous for anyone without air conditioning because they make it difficult for the body to enter its natural cooling phase.
It’s not just central California that will be experiencing saunalike warmth. Salt Lake City could be near 100 degrees each day through Monday. Las Vegas will be scorched by heat that’s extreme even for the Nevada desert, with highs in the 110s likely through Tuesday. Both weekend days could peak near 117 degrees. In Las Vegas, a hint of monsoonal moisture sneaking in from the southwest could help hold overnight lows in the 90s.
A few other long-standing records could topple, like in the Yosemite Valley of California, which is forecast to hit 110 degrees both weekend days. It’s been 106 years since that last occurred.
Saturday’s predicted high of 130 degrees would match the Earth’s highest reliably measured temperature since at least 1931. (Death Valley also reached 130 last August.) On Sunday and Monday, it’s forecast to hit 129 and 127. – The Washington Post
The good news is that positive temperature anomalies should decrease across the Western half of the US by the middle of next week and hopefully return the region to average temperatures.
Meanwhile, heat wave after heat wave in the West is causing concern about a ferocious wildfire season, power prices spiking, rolling blackouts, crop losses, water shortages, grasshopper plague, among other things.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 22:00 - Snyder: 5 Specific Reasons Why You Should Stockpile Food Right Now
Snyder: 5 Specific Reasons Why You Should Stockpile Food Right Now
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
For decades, Americans have not needed to be concerned about food prices. Yes, prices would always go up by a little bit each year, but in general we have been extremely blessed for a very long time. Our supermarkets have always been packed with food, and we could always count on the fact that prices would be about the same a month or two down the road. Unfortunately, things are now changing, and not in a good way. A massive wave of inflation has hit agricultural commodities, and food producers have felt forced to pass those cost increases along to consumers. Unfortunately, many experts are anticipating that the price hikes that we are currently witnessing are just the beginning.
So even though food prices have already become quite painful, they are never going to be any lower than they are at this moment.
Looking forward, there are several factors that are likely to combine to cause food inflation to accelerate even more in the months ahead. The following are 5 specific reasons why you should stockpile food right now…
#1 Supermarkets are feverishly stockpiling food, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that they are doing this in anticipation of “the highest price increases in recent memory”…
Supermarkets are stocking up on everything from sugar to frozen meat before they get more pricey, girding for what some executives anticipate will be some of the highest price increases in recent memory.
This only makes good business sense. If you can get inventory now for significantly less than you will be able to get it for later, that will help your bottom line.
The Wall Street Journal is admitting that all of this stockpiling “is driving shortages of some staples”, but it is expected that these shortages will just be temporary.
I can’t remember a time when we have seen anything quite like this. At this point, some companies are purchasing up to 25 percent more food than normal…
David Smith, CEO of the US’s largest wholesaler Associated Wholesale Grocers, told the Wall Street Journal they have been buying 15 to 20 percent more goods – particularly packaged foods with long shelf lives.
‘We’re buying a lot of everything. Our inventories are up significantly over the same period last year,’ said Smith.
At SpartanNash in Michigan, the retailer has bought up around 20 to 25 percent more than normal including frozen meat.
#2 The U.S. government is going to continue recklessly spending money, and the Federal Reserve is going to keep pumping more giant mountains of fresh cash into the financial system.
The Biden administration doesn’t seem to have an “off button”, and neither does the Fed. The U.S. national debt is moving up toward the 29 trillion dollar mark very rapidly, and the Fed’s balance sheet has more than doubled over the past year.
Unless there is some sort of a dramatic reversal, and I don’t see why there would be, this continual flow of new money will continue to push food prices even higher.
#3 Gas prices keep surging, and this is making it more expensive to transport food around the country.
According to the AAA Gas Price Index, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is up 56 percent from what it was last May…
Transport costs are also rising with gas prices rising 56 percent in May from a year ago.
On Friday, the AAA Gas Price Index pegged the national average gas price at $3.086, up from $2.171 one year ago.
#4 The endless “megadrought” in the western states just continues to intensify.
If you look at the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map, it is a horror show. We haven’t seen anything like this since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s, and water levels are dropping dangerously low.
For example, the water level in Great Salt Lake is expected to hit the lowest level in 170 years this summer…
The lake’s levels are expected to hit a 170-year low this year. It comes as the drought has the U.S. West bracing for a brutal wildfire season and coping with already low reservoirs. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, has begged people to cut back on lawn watering and “pray for rain.”
For the Great Salt Lake, though, it is only the latest challenge. People for years have been diverting water from rivers that flow into the lake to water crops and supply homes. Because the lake is shallow — about 35 feet (11 meters) at its deepest point — less water quickly translates to receding shorelines.
Because there is not enough water, many farmers are having to dramatically reduce the amount of crops that they are growing.
Small farmer Mindy Perkovich is only growing produce on one of her seven acres at this point, and she openly admits that she doesn’t know if she will even have enough water for that…
Perkovich typically grows things like turnips, squash and tomatoes for the local market on seven acres. This season, though, she’s had to cut her crops down to less than a single acre.
“We don’t know if we’re gonna have water to keep that alive,” she says. “Financially, I can’t really even express how dramatic it’s changed in the last couple years, water-wise, because without water, we can’t grow crops without crops, we have nothing to sell to our consumers.”
Agricultural production in the western states will be lower than originally anticipated this year, and that will also put upward pressure on food prices in the coming months.
#5 On top of everything else, an enormous plague of grasshoppers is now causing massive headaches for farmers in our western states.
As I discussed on Sunday, the extremely hot and extremely dry conditions are perfect for grasshoppers, and they have been multiplying like crazy.
In some areas, the swarms are so thick that “it can appear the earth is moving”, and there are times when the swarms are so large that they are actually appearing on radar.
Seven states are being hit particularly hard, and the federal government is going to begin a large scale spraying campaign. The spraying may reduce the plague, but all of the experts agree that it will not stop it.
Grasshoppers will continue to eat our crops on a massive scale for many months to come, and this is another factor that will be driving up food prices.
So, to summarize, the outlook for the months ahead is rather bleak.
A number of factors are going to combine to push prices significantly higher, and so if you can afford to stock up you should be doing so.
Our leaders continue to insist that this bout of inflation is just “transitory”, and you can believe them if you like.
But the truth is that high inflation is here to stay, and what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 21:40 - FBI Agent Sues For Sexual Harassment After Co-Worker Texts Her A Photo Of A "Rainbow Colored Sex Toy"
FBI Agent Sues For Sexual Harassment After Co-Worker Texts Her A Photo Of A "Rainbow Colored Sex Toy"
An FBI agent in Las Vegas has filed a lawsuit that she was subjected to “repeated sexual harassment” at the Bureau’s office, including harassment from a supervior who allegedly once texted her a photo of a rainbow-colored sex toy.
The lawsuit, reported on by the NY Post, was filed last week by FBI Supervisory Special Agent Karen Veltri. Veltri said she was retaliated against for reporting the ongoing sexual abuse to several regulatory agencies.
Veltri reported the harassment to FBI Director Christopher Wray via email, the suit notes, after being subjected to it beginning in November 2019, when she transferred from Newark and Washington to Las Vegas.
The agent claimed that her boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Francis Cucinotta, also “tried to have a sexual relationship” with her and made “several inappropriate comments”.
“I’m sure you know all about the bases, but I’m talking about ground balls,” Cucinotta once texted her, allegedly making a nod toward a sexual innuendo. Cucinotta also once allegedly told her she should wear her hair down more often after she did so one day at the office.
“Your honor, may I present ‘Exhibit A’?” Veltri complained to Supervisory Special Agent Robert Bennett about the harassment, the suit says. Instead of helping, she claims Bennett also subjected her to harassment.
“On November 20, 2020, Bennett sent Plaintiff in a text message on her bureau-issued cell phone, a photograph with a rainbow-colored dildo between his legs,” the lawsuit said, before writing “My Dick pic!!!!!” underneath the photo.
Bennett also allegedly sent her another message days later saying he was looking for “Bieber dick pics”. He also texted her about his alcohol abuse and weapons he owned, the suit alleges.
“I’m out hanging with my buddy Chris had a good time at the Super Bowl party but I’m obviously f–king drunk so I won’t be in til noon or one,” he once texted Veltri. “I just don’t wanna bulls–t you I’m drunk as f–k and I need til noon or one to sober up to show up so handle s–t for me.”
Despite Veltri reporting the harassment to the bureau’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she said no action was taken.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 21:20 - "Remarkable Decision" – Court Rules Air Force Is More At Fault For Mass Shooting Than The Shooter
"Remarkable Decision" – Court Rules Air Force Is More At Fault For Mass Shooting Than The Shooter
There was a remarkable decision by a Texas federal judge this week when U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez for the Western District of Texas ruled that the Air Force was legally at fault for the 2017 mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas by Devin Patrick Kelley.
The Air Force failed to enter a prior offense into the federal background check database to bar him from purchasing a firearm.
The liability alone is notable but Rodriguez found the Air Force more at fault that Kelley for the killing of 26 people and wounding of 22 others in the massacre at the First Baptist Church.
Judge Rodriguez found that Kelley was 40 percent responsible for the shooting while the U.S. government was 60 percent responsible.
The failure to enter the data allowed Kelley to make four separate firearm purchases in preparation for his attack. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) showed Kelley as eligible to buy such firearms despite his 2012 conviction by a general court martial of domestic assault on his wife and child. That should have made him ineligible.
The court ruled that
“The trial conclusively established that no other individual — not even Kelley’s own parents or partners — knew as much as the United States about the violence that Devin Kelley had threatened to commit and was capable of committing. Moreover, the evidence shows that — had the Government done its job and properly reported Kelley’s information into the background check system — it is more likely than not that Kelley would have been deterred from carrying out the Church shooting.”
The ruling of liability is a major victory for those who want tougher gun enforcement.
Such a judgment against a federal agency is exceptionally rare.
The division of responsibility however seems inversive to logic. To say that the Air Force is more responsible than a mass murderer is bizarre. It reminds me of the case of Alisa Prueitt, 43, who killed another driver in 2013 in a drunk-driving case. Prueitt had been sent home by her employer, Southlake-based Senior Living Properties, for showing up intoxicated. The family sued both Prueitt and the company. A jury then awarded $16.7 million to the family of Sam Graham, including $5 million in punitive damages, in a wrongful-death lawsuit. However, it found Pruiett only 35 percent responsible while finding Southlake-based Senior Living Properties 65 percent responsible.
This was likely a clerical error with tragic results. It is not clear that Kelley would not have succeeded in acquiring weapons regardless of the error. However, there is clearly fault and a nexus present in this case to the fatalities. The failures of the Air Force were documented in an Inspector General report. Yet, it is otherworldly to suggest that the Air Force is more responsible for these deaths than the murderer himself. The ruling makes Kelley look more like a mere accomplice to an Air Force murder spree.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 21:00 - "Biggest Demand Ever" – Americans Spend Big Money On Backyard Pools
"Biggest Demand Ever" – Americans Spend Big Money On Backyard Pools
The virus pandemic forced millions of Americans to work remotely. In return, those with economic mobility ditched city life for rural areas. Once they arrived at their new home in suburbs and or rural communities, many could not go on vacation due to the pandemic. As a result, these new homeowners and existing ones opted to install swimming pools in their backyard.
Pool and spa companies across the country are experiencing unprecedented demand with massive backlogs of orders to build backyard swimming pools.
“This is the biggest demand we’ve ever seen for our products in recent memory,” Randy Budd, owner of Budd’s Pools & Spas in Woodbury, New Jersey, told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Budd warned the “industry experiencing unprecedented shortage in every component almost of what we sell and build while the demand is there.”
NYPost reports “new focus on suburban living” has increased the demand for pools in the tri-state area, but due to skyrocketing commodity prices, labor shortages, and cost of materials, average pool costs have surged.
Glen Baisley, the marketing director of Neave Group Outdoor Solutions, whose work includes construcing pools in the Hudson Valley and Fairfield County in Connecticut, told NYPost that the average pool cost is $85k this year versus $60k to $65k in 2019.
Across the Northeast, mainly in suburbs and rural towns, pool companies are experiencing months and months of backlogs for orders. Some pool companies are even reporting a couple of years of backlogs due to impressive demand.
Anthony & Sylvan Pools in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, has huge waiting list of customers requesting a backyard pool. Tom Casey, Anthony & Sylvan’s vice president of sales, told The Inquirer that “hundreds” of people are waiting for a pool to be built.
“It’s a very personal thing for folks for why they find themselves in the market,” Casey said. “The COVID restrictions have thrust a bunch of people into that space where they weren’t there before. … People still don’t feel quite confident in taking some of those vacations and are still inquiring in great numbers about backyard swimming pools.”
CNBC reports retailers and distributors such as Leslie’s and Pool Corp. are capitalizing on the rapidly increasing pool supply market as the backyard pool industry has become a big moneymaker.
COVID has transformed the way people work, travel, and enjoy luxuries – all of these things are now revolving around the home in the suburbs.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 20:40 - Biden Inc.: Hunter, Joe, & The Mexican Oligarchs
Biden Inc.: Hunter, Joe, & The Mexican Oligarchs
Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClearPolitics.com,
The indictment of the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer has received a lot of press, and properly so. But while the media has been focused on the former president, they have ignored another corruption story involving the sitting president and his family.
Like so much news that has been buried, the latest comes from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
You know, the one the Bidens and their allies in Congress and the media suggested was a “Russian plant” and disinformation campaign, before that cynical claim was demolished by the director of national intelligence.
The latest buried story involves some photographs, taken in Joe Biden’s office in 2014. They include the then-vice president, his son Hunter, and Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico (and once the richest in the world), plus some of Slim’s associates.
Why are the pictures newsworthy? Not because some U.S. officials met with some rich foreign businessmen. That happens all the time. Their real significance is that the vice president met with these guys and included his son at the same time Hunter was working on lucrative business deals with the same people. That looks like self-dealing by the Biden family, despite Joe’s repeated insistence that he knew nothing about his son’s business.
Hunter had other meetings with Carlos Slim and associates in Mexico. Those came after he flew there with his father on Air Force Two, just as he had flown to similar business meetings in China. When you arrive on Air Force Two, when your father is the second-highest official in the U.S. government, and when you bring your business associates to meet him, you are sending a clear signal to potential partners around the world: “I’m incredibly well connected and, if you do business with me, I can open the biggest and best doors in the U.S. government for you.”
Since Hunter has no other marketable skills, opening those doors is the only thing you are paying him for. In country after country, the oligarchs Hunter was wooing had the good fortune to meet with the vice president, meetings that Hunter apparently arranged. Some were held in the host countries, some on the White House grounds.
When you have connections like this in Chicago, you whisper, “I know a guy.” Hunter virtually shouts it. He knows a guy: the “Big Guy,” as one of his secret notes describes his father. That note laid out how the lucre from another deal would be divided, with the “Big Guy” as a silent partner. A partner in that deal, Tony Bobulinski, has publicly stated that all the partners knew the “Big Guy” (or BG) was Joe Biden.
It seems that Joe Biden was the key to all Hunter’s business deals.
What’s wrong with the picture?
Aside from the unseemly grifting and the dubious denials from the White House that Joe Biden had even the slightest inkling about these deals, there are two things:
The first problem, which should be obvious by now, is that the Biden family has gotten rich from plying all these political connections. Actually, they have only one connection: Joe Biden. His prodigal son has no appreciable skills and raises more red flags than a Beijing parade. His one job is monetizing his father’s power and influence.
Hunter is not alone. Joe’s two brothers, Jim and Frank, have been credibly accused of doing the same thing. Politico termed it “Biden Inc.” and laid out the seamy connections in an extensive 2019 investigation. “Over his decades in office,” Politico reported, “‘Middle-Class Joe’s family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.”
Not that the most influential newspapers in the country will tell their readers anything about this. Carlos Slim is the largest investor in the New York Times, so maybe its editors have a vested interest in ignoring the stench. What’s the Washington Post’s excuse? The story about Hunter’s deals in Mexico, like the previous ones about Biden family corruption, is missing from its news pages. To paraphrase their self-serving mottos: The story dies in darkness, unfit to print. To read it, you’ll need to check out the New York Post and Britain’s Daily Mail. This suppression of legitimate news is a scandal in its own right.
Monetizing political connections is standard practice in Washington, where politicians and senior bureaucrats move seamlessly from their government positions to K Street lobbying. Gone are the days when retired members of Congress or presidential aides returned home after stints in government. Too much money is floating around the Swamp for the taking. Both parties have their “insider” wings of lobbyists, lawyers, and think tanks, much to the disgust of populists, left and right. In that sense, the Bidens’ influence peddling is just standard practice, conducted on a far smaller scale than the Clintons’ industrial-strength operation.
But that’s not the only problem raised by Joe and Hunter’s photos with Carlos Slim. The photos deal yet another body blow to President Biden’s customary tale that he knows absolutely nothing, zero, zip, nada about his son’s business dealings. The more often Joe is seen meeting with Hunter’s business contacts, the less plausible the president’s “I know nothing” story sounds. As the Daily Mail put it in its headline:
EXCLUSIVE: Joe Biden entertained Hunter’s Mexican billionaire business associates in the vice president’s office in 2014 and even flew with his son to Mexico City on Air Force 2 so Hunter could attend meetings over a ‘flippin gigantic’ deal
The Mail reached the obvious conclusion: “The revelations, laid bare in photos and emails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, suggest Joe’s claim that he never spoke about business with Hunter was false.”
Biden White House aides have yet to explain these photos and emails. Why should they bother when journalists are not pushing for answers? The apathetic press is behaving just like it did during the 2020 campaign, when it rarely questioned Biden about his family’s deals in Ukraine and China. When the New York Post did report on them, the social media giants blocked the story. Too toxic for their users to see before the election. It’s almost like they had a favorite candidate and controlled the information flow as an in-kind contribution.
Despite Joe’s “see no evil, hear no evil” denials, he took Hunter with him on multiple official trips and kept meeting his son’s business associates at his request. Not once or twice, but repeatedly. These business meetings yielded big payoffs for Hunter, including a huge investment from a Chinese state bank that Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan couldn’t snag. Yet Hunter Biden reeled it in, despite having no investment experience.
To believe Joe’s denials, we have to believe Hunter never even mentioned his enormous success in China on a 20-plus-hour return flight with his Dad. Ask yourself this: “If your child just landed a multimillion-dollar profit on one of your business trips, and if you spent the next day flying home with him, do you think he would never mention it?”
Although President Biden seldom speaks to the press unscripted, when a pointed question does crop up (a rarity), he spews anger at the questioner, says how proud he is of Hunter, and orders an ice cream cone. The reporters dutifully ask, “What flavor?”
Hunter’s private correspondence tells a story far different from the White House version. Those emails describe his family’s crucial importance for his influence peddling. As Yahoo News’ Mairead McArdle reported:
In leaked emails from 2014, [Hunter] Biden appears to try to leverage his influence with his father, then-vice president Joe Biden, who was heavily involved in U.S. policy on Ukraine, referring to the elder Biden as “my guy.”
He also attracted criticism for entering into a consulting contract with China’s largest private energy company that initially earned Hunter Biden $10 million a year “for introductions alone,” according to leaked emails.
The White House press team dismisses all this evidence and depicts Joe Biden as if he were Sgt. Schultz, the clueless comedy foil on the old TV sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes.” Schultz was responsible for guarding some prisoners but never seemed to know they were constantly plotting escapes and other mischief. When Schultz’s boss asked about it, the good Sergeant always insisted, “I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!”
Here’s a free tip for the president and his press office: Sgt. Schultz’s defense is not a good motto for you. You can’t be clueless and competent at the same time. It’s not a good look for the White House press corps, either, even though it is a sadly accurate one when their favorite party is in power.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 20:20 - 90s Rapper Reboots 'Back That Azz Up' For Sex-Themed Vaccine Anthem
90s Rapper Reboots 'Back That Azz Up' For Sex-Themed Vaccine Anthem
90s rapper Juvenile has brought his 1999 hit “Back That Azz Up” back from the dead – this time with a vaccine-themed parody encouraging fans to get the jab.
The gist of the new song, Vax That Thang Up, is that if you get vaccinated you’re sure to get laid.
While we can’t offer a full translation (we tried), the song makes clear that those with pent-up sexual frustrations will be able to go buck wild on internet dating apps once they’ve received the vaccine.
“I know you can’t stand it. No holdin’ hands chick. But when we get the shot, we gon’ be romantic. Girl, you can be the queen, at the quarantine. We could meet up at the spot and we could do the thing.
“I love it when you hold me, eggplant emoji, you could be the young hot thang I’ll be the old G.” -Mannie Fresh
There’s a lot going on in this video…
Woman gyrates on a chain link fence in anticipation of post-vaccine coitus 
Looking for an acceptably vaccinated gentleman with whom to copulate 
In the third verse, Mia X tells the ladies “If you wanna smash some dude named Scott, go go – go get the shot.”
Watch the video below:
With just under 2 million views in three days, people seem to be sharply divided (notwithstanding any YouTube ‘adjustments’ which may have been made).
Hopefully all the post-jab sex won’t kick off any cardiac incidents among those most at risk from heart disease.
And of course, the original:
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 20:00 - Buchanan: Is Afghanistan A Failed Mission?
Buchanan: Is Afghanistan A Failed Mission?
As in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973, the year our prisoners of war came home, America did not lose a major battle in Afghanistan.
Yet we did not win the war. South Vietnam was lost.
And contrary to the message awaiting President George W. Bush when he landed on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was flaunting the banner “Mission Accomplished,” America did not accomplish its mission.
President Joe Biden said as much Thursday, when he responded to a reporter’s question, “The mission has not failed — yet.”
As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 impends, and with it our final exit from the Afghan war, the Taliban are overrunning districts at will, and Afghan troops are avoiding battle in what many see as a lost cause.
Monday, 1,000 Afghan soldiers fled into Tajikistan rather than face advancing Taliban forces.
Why did we not succeed? And what does our failure there portend?
We failed, first, because our initial mission, once accomplished, was altered and enlarged to where it became unattainable.
We went into Afghanistan in 2001 to deliver retribution to the al-Qaida terrorists of Osama bin Laden who perpetrated the 9/11 massacre and to overthrow the Taliban regime that had provided them sanctuary.
This we could and did do. We succeeded.
That mission was indeed accomplished by May 2003, when Bush landed on the Lincoln, as Biden said yesterday:
“We went for two reasons. One, to bring Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell … The second reason was to eliminate al-Qaida’s capacity to deal with more attacks on the United States from that territory. We accomplished both of those objectives. Period.”
But by June 2003, Bush and his neocon advisers had expanded their horizons. A global crusade for democracy was now the great new mission. We were going to remake the country. We were going to build a new nation, along Western lines, out of a fundamentalist Muslim country in Central Asia with a long and proud history of fighting and expelling foreign invaders.
Some knew this and said so. For, in the eight years of the Reagan era, with our military aid funneled through Pakistan, Afghan mujahideen had driven out the mighty Soviet Union that had invaded in 1979.
By 2003, we had moved on to Iraq, where we had stormed in and ousted Saddam Hussein. Brutal dictator though he was, Saddam had not attacked us, did not want war with us, and had offered to bring inspectors in to roam around his country to prove he did not have the weapons of mass destruction we said he was planning to use against us.
We were also going to remake Iraq into a model democracy, this one in the heart of the Arab world.
What was clear in a few years was that the U.S. military could knock over hostile regimes and rout their regular armed forces. But we could not eradicate a resistance that had time on its side, plus tradition, tribalism, nationalism and an abiding faith that martyrdom and paradise awaited those who died in the cause.
As Napoleon said, “In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one.”
The Taliban were willing to fight as long as necessary to expel us and topple the regime we had helped to impose in their place. But we were growing increasingly reluctant to invest the blood and treasure for as long as necessary to impose our will upon what is, after all, their country, not ours.
Truth be told, Afghanistan was never a vital interest of the United States but has always been the most priceless possession of the Afghan people. But how the Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara of Afghanistan rule themselves, 8,000 miles away, is not our business.
There never was a vital U.S. interest in Afghanistan worth a war of the cost in blood, treasure and time that we have just fought.
Because any collapse of the Afghan government would occur on Biden’s watch, and be traceable to his April decision for a pullout of U.S. forces by the 20th anniversary of 9/11, what happens there this summer and fall will now become his to explain and defend.
For certain, we are going to read and hear of more defeats for the Afghan forces we trained, of the surrender of districts and provincial capitals, of atrocities against those who sided with us, and of horrors against those who embraced our “Western values.”
Many who cast their lot with us are going to pay with their lives, as will their families. And the enemies of the United States are likely to be energized by what they perceive, not wrongly, as a strategic defeat of the USA.
We did it to ourselves.
Hubris was our failing, as it often is of great powers, the mindset exhibited by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when she declared: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 19:40 - Japan "Digging Its Own Grave" & Its "Survival" On The Line: China Warns Over Taiwan Stance
Japan "Digging Its Own Grave" & Its "Survival" On The Line: China Warns Over Taiwan Stance
China’s English language state-run Communist party mouthpiece Global Times has responded to the earlier surprising words of Japanese Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso, who for the first time said Japan and the US should defend Taiwan together, given that any Chinese invasion of Taiwan would trigger Japan’s Self-Defense Forces’ ability for collective self-defense.
Nikkei Asia had cited the deputy PM on Tuesday: “If China invades Taiwan, Tokyo may interpret the move as a ‘threat to Japan’s survival’ and deploy the Self-Defense Forces to exercise collective self-defense,” Aso stated. The expected denunciation from Beijing says Tokyo has “gone too far” and “stretched its hands too long.”
Global Times asserted in its ultra-inflammatory headline: “Japan will dig its own grave if it crosses red line of Taiwan question” and in the article invoked historical atrocities part of Japan’s WWII-era “colonial ideology” to assert “Japan needs to remember that its survival depends on whether Japan understands its situation correctly – not on how China is prepared to resolve the Taiwan question.”
During the March 16, 2021 official visit, via Economic Times At the moment Japan is locked in its own direct standoff with China over the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, recently giving its coast guard looser rules of engagement in dealing with Chinese fishing vessels, believed used of China to attempt a quiet de facto takeover of the disputed territory. Recall that in the very first phone call early this year between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Japan’s Defense Minister, the Biden administration had reaffirmed a previously agreed upon US commitment to defending Japanese sovereignty over the Senkakus.
The GT op-ed references the contested islands issue as the reason why there’s a growing hawkish, and somewhat unprecedented outlook (given its post-world war pacifist constitution) coming from Tokyo:
For the hawks in Japan, especially the extreme right wings, they are actually focused on two issues, one is the Diaoyu Islands, and the other is the island of Taiwan. If Taiwan secedes from China, China’s overall comprehensive strength will be greatly weakened. Japan does not want to see a strong China nearby. So it is more in Japan’s practical interest, especially of certain politicians, to separate the island from China.
The author, Hong Kong-based pro-China military commentator Song Zhongping followed with stating the obvious that “Japan does not dare to confront China alone” given it’s weak military status and lack of independent combat capability… hence Aso this week urging for greater US-Japan military cooperation, which has also lately been demonstrated in joint military drills. “If Japan involves itself in the Taiwan question militarily, it will be Japan digging its own grave…Japan itself is powerless against the Chinese military,” GT wrote.
How to make friends and influence people. https://t.co/PDleK1DqiK
— Vic B’Stard (@VicBStard) July 8, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
…leading to this ultimate conclusion and specific threat: However, if Japan cooperates with the US to carry out military actions against China, especially over the island of Taiwan or Diaoyu Islands, Beijing will view the move as engaging in a military conflict with China. In this sense, Japan will become the target of China’s military strike. This will endanger Japan’s survival.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 19:20 - Federal Government Does Not Have Database Of Who Has Received COVID-19 Vaccine: White House
Federal Government Does Not Have Database Of Who Has Received COVID-19 Vaccine: White House
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The White House’s effort that involves people going door-to-door to try to boost COVID-19 vaccination rates does not rely on a database, the Biden administration’s press secretary said Thursday.
“The federal government does not have a database of who has been vaccinated. That is not our role,” press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington.
“We don’t maintain a database along those lines. And we have no plans to.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki holds a press briefing the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on July 8, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) White House officials, as well as President Joe Biden, said Tuesday that a key focus in the coming weeks was knocking on doors to deliver information about COVID-19 vaccines to Americans.
“We need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oftentimes, door to door—literally knocking on doors—to get help to the remaining people,” or those who have not received a vaccine, Biden said in remarks from the White House.
The plan triggered staunch pushback from Republicans, with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich warning the administration against using medical records to ascertain which Americans have not gotten a jab.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson added on Thursday that he informed the state’s health department “to let the federal government know that sending government employees or agents door-to-door to compel vaccination would NOT be an effective OR a welcome strategy in Missouri!”
Psaki told reporters in Washington that the effort will utilize data on where vaccination rates are lagging and that the messengers are not government employees.
“These are grassroots voices across the country. They are not members of the government. They are not federal government employees. They are volunteers. They are clergy. They are trusted voices, and communities who are playing this role in door knocking,” she said. “So in our view, this is is a way to engage and empower local activists, trusted members of the community.”
“The best people to talk about vaccinations with those who have questions are local trusted messengers. Doctors, faith leaders, community leaders. As part of our efforts, trusted messengers may go door to door,” White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeffrey Zients said in a separate, virtual briefing.
The comments came on the same day a top administration official, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, argued on television that the federal government has the right to know who has been vaccinated and who has not.
The door-to-door knocking actually started way back in April, White House officials are saying. A network called the Community Corps was launched then by the Department of Health and Human Services. The announcement did not detail volunteers going to door-to-door, but said the corps would be provided with public health information and resources so they could “help get friends, family, and followers vaccinated.”
A volunteer listing told prospective applicants that they would get “fact sheets on vaccine safety, tips on how to talk with friends and family about the importance of vaccination, and hints for planning and attending community events.”
A smattering of local news stories later detailed how some volunteers were knocking on doors to promote vaccination. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told volunteers on a phone call last month that he’d heard from students who were knocking on doors, CNN reported. And the Biden administration said in a fact sheet in early June that the administration would mobilize people to make calls and texts to those in areas with low vaccination rates, as well as going door to door to try to get Americans to visit nearby clinics to get a jab.
Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson (L) accompanies volunteers and staffers during a door-knocking outreach effort to inform residents about an upcoming COVID-19 vaccination event in Birmingham, Ala., on June 30, 2021. (Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images) Still, the remarks this week, especially Biden’s, set off a firestorm after appearing to some to be a new program.
“President Biden wants to send people to knock on your door to bully you into taking an ‘optional’ vaccine. Anyone who wants a vaccine is able to get one. Leave everyone else alone! Americans don’t need the federal government telling them how to live,” Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) wrote on Twitter.
“The Biden Administration wants to knock on your door to see if you’re vaccinated. What’s next? Knocking on your door to see if you own a gun?” added Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Approximately 47 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, with another 7.5 percent getting at least one dose as of July 7, according to federal data. The two most widely used vaccines in the United States require two doses.
Experts differ on what percentage of the population needs protection to reach herd immunity, especially given the variants that keep emerging. Some point to a growing body of evidence showing those who have had COVID-19 and recovered enjoy a level of immunity similar to that provided by a vaccine.
Door knockers will merely present people with details on vaccines but will not try to compel them to get a shot, White House officials have said.
“I will say the thing that is a bit frustrating to us is that when people are critical of these tactics, it’s really a disservice to the country and to the doctors, faith leaders, community leaders, and others who are working to get people vaccinated,” Psaki said. “This is about saving lives and ending this pandemic.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 19:00 - "Choose Another Living": Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick Slams Junior Bankers Complaining About Long Hours
"Choose Another Living": Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick Slams Junior Bankers Complaining About Long Hours
Cantor Fitzgerald’s CEO, Howard Lutnick, is pushing back on junior bankers that think they have life too tough.
Lutnick said that junior bankers complaining about long hours and stressful demands should “rethink their career choice”, according to a new Bloomberg article.
Lutnick’s comments follow 13 junior bankers at Goldman Sachs complaining about their workload earlier this year in a slide deck that was released to the public. They claimed to be working 100 hour weeks and experiencing declining physical and mental health.
The public scrutiny caused other banks to offer bonuses and rewards to retain their younger talent (and, more importantly, stave off a PR crisis).
But when interviewed on Bloomberg Thursday, Lutnick broke from the crowd, stating: “Young bankers who decide they’re working too hard — choose another living is my view. These are hard jobs.”
He continued: “There is a path to becoming an investment banker that requires an enormous amount of work including late nights and weekends. Clients want their deals finished under tight deadlines. You should know that going in.”
Lutnick also broke from the majority by stating he wanted his key employees back at their desks. The pandemic, combined with complaints from junior bankers, had led to some banks relaxing rules on working from home.
“That is our model. Front-office people are going to be working from the office and that will be a competitive advantage for the firm. Back-office staff, such as technical support, compliance and legal, can be more flexible.”
Cantor’s employees have been in the office since last summer and were given a June 1 deadline to come back to the office.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 18:40 - Michigan Attorney General, Police To Probe People Who Made Election Fraud Claims
Michigan Attorney General, Police To Probe People Who Made Election Fraud Claims
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Michigan’s attorney general, with assistance from police officers, will investigate people who claimed election fraud happened during the 2020 contest.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel walks to the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Mich., on Dec. 14, 2020. (Elaine Cromie/Getty Images) A spokeswoman for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told news outlets on July 8 that the Democrat will probe people who allegedly made false claims, with help from Michigan State Police.
The spokeswoman said Nessel decided to launch the probes on a request from Republicans in the Michigan Senate.
A Republican-controlled Senate panel last month issued a report saying it “found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in Michigan’s prosecution of the 2020 election.”
A portion of the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee report focused on Antrim County, where the county clerk falsely reported on the morning after Election Night that Democrat Joe Biden had beat former President Donald Trump by thousands of votes. The senators said their review backed the position of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Antrim County officials, which is that the false reporting was due to human error and was ultimately rectified.
The committee recommended that Nessel “consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”
“The Committee finds those promoting Antrim County as the prime evidence of a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election place all other statements and actions they make in a position of zero credibility,” it said.
Benson said her office looked forward to partnering with Nessel “on this critical investigation into the real fraud that took place in 2020: efforts to deceive Michigan citizens about their vote with misleading, false statements about the accuracy & integrity of our elections.”
Attorney Matthew DePerno and his client, William Bailey, have raised money for a case brought against the county that alleged Dominion Voting Systems machines used in the county “were shown to miscount votes” cast for Trump, counting them for Biden. The case was dismissed in mid-May.
Dominion has denied the allegations, including details in a forensic report from a firm hired by DePerno that alleged Dominion’s machines and software were “purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.”
Patrick Colbeck, a former state senator, an aerospace engineer, and a poll challenger, sits down for an interview in Detroit, Mich., on Nov. 27, 2020. (Bowen Xiao/The Epoch Times) “There were no software ‘glitches’ that ‘switched’ votes in Antrim County or anywhere else,” Dominion responded at the time. “The errors identified in Antrim County were isolated human errors not involving Dominion.”
DePerno didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Patrick Colbeck, a former Michigan senator, has a website where he hosts content he says back his election fraud claims. Users must pay a monthly fee to see some of the content.
Colbeck recently started a petition to censure McBroom and the other Republican senators who signed onto the report and denounced what he described as legislators’ “attempt to marginalize those exposing election fraud.”
In a lengthy post on his site, Colbeck said the panel’s report “consistently repeats the flawed assertion that the integrity of the election can be demonstrated simply by running ballots through the tabulator.”
“The Committee appears to be operating under an extremely unique definition of ‘election fraud’ that dismissed any evidence of fraud if it did not add up to the 154,188 votes promoted as the margin of victory for Joe Biden. This failure of reasoning dismisses the cumulative effect of breaches in the chain of custody and violations of existing statute,” he said.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 18:20 - White House Outlaws Arrest Of Pregnant And Postpartum Illegal Immigrants
White House Outlaws Arrest Of Pregnant And Postpartum Illegal Immigrants
President Biden is pushing a new immigration policy directive that will hamper the ability of ICE and the American border patrol to detain and deport undocumented migrants: he’s ordering new restrictions barring the arrest or detention of any undocumented migrants who are pregnant, or gave birth during the past year.
How ICE agents are supposed to know whether a woman (or a man, since the Biden Administration’s language, is gender-neutral, acknowledging that “trans men” can also give birth) has recently given birth, or not, isn’t explained in the NYT report. Apparently, the number of pregnant undocumented migrants held in American detention rose sharply under President Trump after the White House reversed a policy from the Obama Administration that helped to limit detention of pregnant women.
The Obama policy was memorably put in place to prevent ICE from discriminating against pregnant undocumented women looking to give birth in the US, ensuring that their child would become a US citizen. The practice, once known as having an “anchor baby” (until progressives deemed this phrase “racist”), is relatively common. ICE has apparently arrested 4K pregnant migrants since 2016, although right now the Biden Administration says there are fewer than 20 such detainees in custody.
Like all of Biden’s other immigration policies since taking office, the order not to detain pregnant women will be implemented via executive order.
The problem with forging policy by executive fiat is that the next administration can easily undo whatever Biden did, using the same executive authority.
“Any change in presidential administration can materially change people’s lives, especially immigrants and folks who are kind of trying to navigate their way through the immigration system,” said Breanne J. Palmer, a lawyer with UndocuBlack Network, which advocates for current and formerly undocumented Black people in the United States. “People who endure detention when they’re pregnant or nursing, you know, they really have very little recourse,” Ms. Palmer said.
The NYT notes that the policy could aggravate some conservatives who supported President Trump’s proposal to eliminate birthright citizenship. The issue also gained traction after a young Honduran mother gave birth to a stillborn child in US detention.
Supporters applauded Biden for going further than President Obama to limit detention of pregnant women. But they insisted there is more work to do, adding that detention of any woman accompanied by a minor should be outlawed. This would make it illegal for ICE and the border patrol to enforce immigration law when confronted with families of migrants (though, to be sure, the majority of undocumented migrants are men looking for work).
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 18:00 - Get Ready For The 100-Dollar Cheeseburger
Get Ready For The 100-Dollar Cheeseburger
Authored by Jazz Shaw via HotAir.com,
I suppose we can simply flag this story as the latest entry in our series on how the pandemic has changed America and what the “new normal” looks like.
And we’re once again looking at issues involving the restaurant industry, arguably among the hardest hit during the lockdowns. Out in Chicago, diners are encountering some new policies put in place by restaurants after the city began to reopen, and eateries in other areas are quickly following suit. “Mandatory minimum” bills are now becoming a regular feature.
If you show up at some high-end restaurants and are seated, your bill begins with a $100 charge before you even order. And that’s not for the table, either. It’s 100 bucks per person. And then there are the “reservation deposits” that we’ll get to in a moment. (CBS Chicago)
When Howard Tolsky went online to book a dinner at Steak 48, at 615 N. Wabash Ave. near the Mag Mile, he immediately started losing his appetite for any experience there.
“It’s a shame,” Tolsky said.
It was all because there was a $100 minimum for himself, his wife, his and mother-in-law – each, per person.
“I figured, well, we’re not going to spend $300,” Tolsky said. “We might spend $250. But I don’t want to spend $300 dollars on a meal that costs $250.”
I suppose we should hear from the restaurant owner first and find out why these minimum bill policies are remaining in place even after the establishment is fully reopened. Their statement reads,
“Like many in our industry, we had to make some updates to our policies. The $100 per person minimum will remain in effect to provide the ability to be successful as a steakhouse designed for the full sit-down experience and support our restaurant’s operations and staff.”
As I alluded to above, other Chicago restaurants are demanding some sort of insurance against cancellations. At another eatery called Maple & Ash, when you call or go online to make a reservation, you’ll be asked for your credit card number and charged a non-refundable $100 per person deposit. If your plans change and you want to cancel or simply don’t show up, they keep the money. Maybe it’s just me, but that sort of policy would probably make me less likely to make a reservation and either take my chances by showing up without one or simply going to a less popular place to eat.
I suppose the owner of Steak 48 and the other restaurants doing this can set their own policies as they wish and let the dining public vote with their wallets. But the first question that comes to mind is how they managed to turn a profit before the pandemic without minimum bills and reservation deposits, but now they can’t. During the government-mandated shutdowns and partial reopenings, I could understand it. It’s a very competitive industry and when you can’t fill all of your tables and don’t know how many workers will show up on any given day, you need some sort of security. But if we’re returning to “normal” now, this seems like an odd and likely unpopular policy to make permanent.
My wife and I admittedly don’t live in or near one of the bigger cities, so restaurant prices tend to be a bit lower than you’ll find in Chicago or New York City. But still, when we go out to one of the nicer steak houses in the area, it’s not unknown for us to run up a bill in the range of $100 each. (That depends if we order wine, an appetizer, dessert, etc.) And we tend to be generous tippers. But what if one of the people in your party is in the mood for something light and just orders a salad or some appetizers and a cup of coffee? What if they just want a cheeseburger? I would imagine that getting handed a bill for $100 for that is going to generate a lot of resentment, not to mention negatively impacting the tip that the wait staff receives. And if your eatery wants to hit me with a $100 “deposit” as soon as I ask about a reservation, I’ll probably start eating elsewhere.
If this is part of the “new normal,” I don’t think it’s going to go over very well. But the free market should handle this issue as well. If the restaurants not having such policies in place have lines of customers forming around the block and the ones charging these fees are sitting mostly empty, the problem will correct itself soon enough.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/09/2021 – 17:40
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...
