Today’s News 11th September 2022

• Jan. 6 Prisoners And Families Expose Brutal Truth About Jail Lockdown
  Jan. 6 Prisoners And Families Expose Brutal Truth About Jail Lockdown

  Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  It began without warning. A Jan. 6 prisoner had emerged from his cell without a mask. When it was all over, the jail was in lockdown and several inmates had been pepper sprayed, handcuffed, and thrown into solitary confinement. Inmate tablets were quickly confiscated, but not before several prisoners had time to send text messages, exposing the brutal truth of what happened. Many of those messages were obtained by The Epoch Times. In exclusive interviews with The Epoch Times, the family members of several Jan. 6 prisoners share their stories.

  

  The identities of those in the inmate text exchanges obtained by The Epoch Times have been redacted for fear they will suffer further retaliation.

  ‘[Expletive] Just Went Down’

  According to the text message sent by one Jan. 6 prisoner to a family member, “[Expletive] just went down” at the Correctional Treatment Facility in Washington, D.C., around 9:46 a.m. on Sept. 5. One of the guards had just “assaulted McAbee because he wasn’t wearing a mask.”

  The prisoner’s name is Ronald Colton McAbee. His wife, Sarah, described to The Epoch Times what happened.

  McAbee had just been let out of his cell by a pod officer in order to receive his medications. Inmates, Sarah explained, have to take their meds in front of the nurse to prove they swallowed the pills. The med cart was about 25 feet from the door of McAbee’s cell. When he walked out of the cell to go get his meds, he was not wearing his mask. Lieutenant Crystal Lancaster began yelling at him and ordering him to put his mask on. He said he was going to get his medication and didn’t need his mask. It was after McAbee had taken his medication it is alleged that Lancaster doused his face with OC spray.

  While pepper spray and OC spray are essentially comprised of the same ingredients, the higher concentration of Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) is what sets them far apart. A March 1994 report (pdf) issued by the United States Department of Justice acknowledged the more potent and potentially lethal properties of OC Spray when used outside of recommended guidelines or on someone with pre-existing respiratory conditions, such as asthma.

  With McAbee on the ground in pain, Lancaster ordered the pod officer to handcuff him. As McAbee was being handcuffed, Lancaster sprayed him again, point blank, in the face.

  Sarah’s account is validated by the texts sent by other Jan. 6 prisoners to their family members.

  

  By now, Sarah said other Jan. 6 prisoners had emerged from their cells. Three of them, Ron Sandlin, Bart Shively, and Ryan Nichols, began yelling at Lancaster, telling her to stop her assault on McAbee. Sandlin was then handcuffed. He and McAbee were taken away to solitary confinement. Shively and Nichols were also sprayed, cuffed, and placed in isolation pods. According to Sarah, there are no cameras in the isolation pod area.

  “It’s very concerning because the guards can come in and do whatever they like to these people with no accountability,” she said.

  Messages sent by two more Jan. 6 prisoner provides corroboration and more detail.

  

  A History of Abuse and Sub-Human Conditions

  Sarah then recalled that the facility has a long history of sub-human conditions. She also noted that Lancaster, notorious among Jan. 6 prisoners and their family members for being particularly vulgar and brutal, had been banned from the Jan. 6 pod for verbal abuse and for stealing the inmates’ mail.

  “I don’t know if that ban was lifted or why she was in that pod,” she said.

  Her account was again validated independently by the messages from other Jan. 6 prisoners.

  

  

  

  According to Nicole Reffitt, the targeted abuse of Jan. 6 prisoners is nothing new at the “D.C. Gulag.” Her husband, Guy Reffitt, has suffered there for nearly 20 months. Guy, Nicole explained, was the first Jan. 6 defendant to go to trial and the first one they tried to charge with the domestic terrorism enhancement.

  “Luckily, the judge did not grant that,” Nicole told The Epoch Times, adding that her husband never entered the Capitol building, touched anyone, or damaged anything. “He was still sentenced to seven and a half years,” she lamented. “We’re still trying to wrap our brains around that.”

  “I have been unable to talk to my husband,” Nicole said further, adding that the tablets the prisoners use to communicate with their family members were suddenly confiscated. “He has not been able to send me a message. The last message he sent me was that they were being assaulted and officers had taken off their body cams.”

  A text message from a prisoner’s family member confirmed that the inmates’ tablets had been confiscated.

  

  She also revealed that the prisoners’ electronic grievance system has been turned off and they have not been able to file grievances with the jail for over a month. This means none of the incidents of abuse are being documented, and no one is being held accountable. Even the paper grievances filed by prisoners are “torn up in front of their faces.”

  The history of abuse was validated by the message of another Jan. 6 prisoner.

  

  In the meantime, Sarah said her husband was in his cell drenched in OC spray for over 12 hours before he was taken to medical and “thrown into a hot shower.” Afterward, guards made him put the same OC spray-soaked clothing back on before putting him back in his cell. Four hours later it began to reactivate on his skin and in his eyes. He begged to be allowed to shower with soap and water. He was told to “suck it up.” It wasn’t until around midnight that he was allowed to shower with soap and water and put on clean clothes.

  Mistaken Identity or Intentional Retaliation?

  Despite repeated pleas to U.S. senators, representatives, the Bureau of Prisoners, and U.S. marshals, Bonnie Nichols says nothing has changed. As reported by The Epoch Times in July, her husband Ryan faces 11 charges, including multiple infractions with the words “Deadly or Dangerous Weapon” attached. The “Deadly or Dangerous Weapon” was pepper spray.

  In the early morning hours of Sept. 7, Bonnie received heartbreaking series of text messages from Ryan describing both his physical and mental state after he was assaulted by Lancaster and thrown into solitary confinement. He believes he was attacked by Lancaster in a case of mistaken identity.

  

  However, Bonnie is convinced the assault on her husband was a matter of intentional retaliation for the lawsuit that was filed Aug. 10 “that named her specifically.”

  According to the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus Under 28 U.S.C. 2241 and Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief (pdf), Lancaster—the guard in charge of the solitary confinement area known as “The Hole”—”verbally and mentally abuses inmates.”

  “She also oversees officers and guards who do the same, and is suspected of bringing drugs into the prison,” the complaint states further. “The presence of drugs in the prison was confirmed by both the U.S. Marshals’ report and the testimony of the DC City Council Chair on the Judiciary and Public Safety.”

  According to reports, one correctional officer was already arrested at the D.C. facility in February for allegedly accepting bribes to bring drugs, knives, and cell phones to inmates. There have also been multiple drug overdoses and two drug-related deaths “that further corroborate the presence of drugs in the DC Jail.”

  Bonnie also noted that Lancaster had been banned from the Jan. 6 pod “for weeks.” She would taunt the inmates, calling them names like “white cracker [expletive]” and telling them she’s going to “[expletive] your daddy and give you a little sister.”

  The last time Ryan was thrown in solitary was apparently in retaliation for a grievance he had filed. Because he suffers from PTSD, due to the traumas suffered during his military service, Ryan was placed on suicide watch However, he was not allowed to see a nurse or to receive mental health counseling. They simply put him in a straight jacket and “strapped him to a bench.”

  Now Ryan is again in solitary. The pod is still on lockdown. Because he was not allowed to shower for 48 hours after the assault, he has chemical burns all over his body from the OC spray. The Emergency Response Team told him to “stop being a [expletive].”

  

  “I’m angry at this point, over what’s continuing to happen,” Bonnie told The Epoch Times. “It’s like this jail is untouchable. It’s aggravating that these men are still in the same situation after two years.”

  Aside from the abuse and abhorrent conditions, Bonnie said her husband’s “discovery was taken from him.”

  All of the work he’s been doing on his case, all of the motions, everything he has been working on for his case for the past 19 months was on a thumb drive that has now gone missing from his cell for the second time. The guards claim to know nothing–again.

  ‘There Will Be Hell to Pay’

  Don Nichols, Ryan’s father, was with Bonnie when she spoke with The Epoch Times.

  Don had been on the phone all morning. He contacted the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the United States Marshals Service. He has been advised that “the best bet is to get a hold of your Senators and Congressman.”

  “[Rep.] Loui Gohmert has already done everything he can do,” Don told The Epoch Times, praising the Texas Republican congressman for his dedication to the plight of Jan. 6 prisoners. Bonnie said Gohmert “has been doing more than anyone else has.”

  Don wants to know why so many Jan. 6 prisoners have been charged with using a “dangerous or deadly weapon” called pepper spray but guards can douse “pre-trial detainees who have not been convicted of any crime, multiple times, before they’re shackled and after they’re shackled” and suffer no consequences.

  “I ask one simple question,” Don charged angrily. “Can I file criminal charges against Lieutenant Lancaster on behalf of my son? That’s the question I want someone who’s in charge of this system to answer. Because I’m willing to fly to Washington D.C. on whatever day saying I am ready to file charges against each and every person who perpetrated this crime against these men.”

  For Bonnie, her concern is, “How much can a human being take until it’s too much?” She recalled how several Jan. 6 defendants who weren’t even incarcerated had already committed suicide. Christopher Stanton Georgia, 53, of Fulton County, Georgia, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound just days after the Capitol breach. At 5:30 in the evening on Friday, Feb. 25, just weeks before his sentencing, 37-year-old Matthew Perna went into his garage and hung himself. On July 20, 47-year-old Mark Roderick Aungst of South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, became the third Jan. 6 defendant to kill himself.

  “I am telling you,” Bonnie vowed, her voice breaking. “If my husband takes his life over this, there will be hell to pay.”

  The President Made Hate a ‘Patriotic Duty’

  According to Joseph McBride, the attorney representing Nichols and several other Jan. 6 prisoners and defendants, the prison guards are retaliating against Nichols because of the habeas petition filed against Lancaster.

  “There is no other explanation,” McBride told The Epoch Times. “Our plan is to argue for his release today.”

  According to a motion (pdf) filed on the morning of Sept. 8 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, McBride petitioned “the Court to dismiss all charges against” Ryan Nichols “for the reason that the government, in the person of the President, has intentionally and irreparably poisoned the jury pool.”

  Citing 31 separate statements Biden made against MAGA Republicans during his 24-minute speech on Sept. 1, McBride charges that “The President has incited the entire nation to hate the January 6th defendants as a patriotic duty.”

  According to the Defendant’s Emergency Motion for Immediate Pre-Trial Release and Request for an Emergency Hearing (pdf) McBride also “moves the Court to order the immediate temporary release” of Ryan Nichols “from pretrial confinement” because:

  1. the DC Jail is presently retaliating against Defendant for filing a civil case against the Jail
  2. the length of Defendant’s pretrial confinement is a violation of his due process rights
  3. the Defendant is being held in conditions of confinement that violate his civil and human rights.

  McBride has also petitioned the court (pdf) for a change of venue.

  Nowhere Else to Go

  In the aftermath of the assault against their loved ones, each Jan. 6 family member is dealing with the situation in their own ways. Sarah has requested the CCTV video footage so she can see for herself what happened. Bonnie and Don want answers. Nicole Reffitt is heading to D.C. “to stand in vigil with some other 1-6ers outside the jail” to sing with the prisoners.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 23:30

• Americans Love The NFL, But Change Is Looming
  Americans Love The NFL, But Change Is Looming

  While Baseball is often referred to as “America’s favorite pastime”, the NFL has long surpassed the MLB as the nation’s favorite professional sports league.

  As Statista’s Felix Richter notes, for several reasons, including first and foremost its better suitability for television, football flew by baseball as Americans’ favorite sport to watch in the 1960s and hasn’t looked back since. In recent years, baseball has even been surpassed by basketball, as younger audiences prefer the action-packed, star-studded NBA over what many young viewers consider the dragging affair of a three-hour baseball game.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  According to findings from Statista’s Global Consumer Survey, the NFL remains the number 1 among major professional sports leagues in the U.S., at least for now. While 52 percent of self-declared sports fans follow the National Football League, compared to 42 percent for the NBA and 31 percent who follow the MLB, looking at the youngest group of respondents reveals a worrying trend for NFL executives.

  Among 16- to 25-year-olds, the NFL only plays second fiddle to the NBA, with just 33 percent of young sports fans following the league. The NBA reaches 40 percent of Gen X fans, who are overall less likely to follow any professional sports leagues than their older compatriots.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 23:00

• New Merchant Code Approved For Card Purchases Of Guns, Ammunition
  New Merchant Code Approved For Card Purchases Of Guns, Ammunition

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

  An international standards body has approved the creation of a merchant category code for gun retailers to identify credit card sales of guns and ammunition.

  

  The International Organization for Standardization (ISO)—a non-governmental body based in Geneva, Switzerland that creates standards across various industries, including the financial services industry—has approved the new merchant category code for gun and ammunition stores, according to a Sept. 9 announcement from Amalgamated Bank, a New York-based bank that had applied to ISO for the merchant category code.

  The approval took place at a meeting on Sept. 7, ISO confirmed to Payments Dive in an email. A subcommittee of the organization approved the code, an ISO spokeswoman told Reuters.

  Merchant category codes comprise four digits and are used to classify retailers across various industries.

  The approval from ISO enables banks that process payments from gun retailers to decide whether they should assign the new category code to gun merchants. The code could help monitors track where a person spends money via card, but wouldn’t show what specific items were purchased.

  Currently, credit card companies classify retailers with other merchants as either “5999: Miscellaneous retail stores” or “5941: Sporting Goods Stores,” according to CBS News. While a new merchant category for firearm stores has been approved, it doesn’t have a code value assigned just yet, as of late Sept. 9.

  Amalgamated Bank, which calls itself “America’s socially responsible bank,” said that its decision to push for creating the new code is “the result of nearly three years of research and partnership with issue experts at Guns Down America and Giffords Law Center and broad support from elected officials, pension funds, and others across the United States.”

  Amalgamated Bank was founded by union workers nearly 100 years ago. The bank first tried to apply to create the gun merchant code in July 2021, but the application had been denied twice by the ISO, after which it applied again for the new merchant category code in June this year, reported CBS News.

  Bank Urges Card Companies to Adopt New Category Code

  Following the ISO approval, Amalgamated Bank is calling for credit card companies that typically follow the ISO standards to implement the new merchant category, but it is unclear whether the companies will adopt it.

  Priscilla Sims Brown, the president and CEO of the bank, said on Sept. 9: “We all have to do our part to stop gun violence. And it sometimes starts with illegal purchases of guns and ammunition.”

  “The new code will allow us to fully comply with our duty to report suspicious activity and illegal gun sales to authorities without blocking or impeding legal gun sales,” she said in a statement.

  “This action answers the call of millions of Americans who want safety from gun violence and we are proud to have led the broad coalition of advocates, shareholders, and elected officials that achieved this historic outcome.”

  …

  Some groups have criticized the ISO approval.

  Mark Oliva, the managing director for public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a U.S. trade association for the firearms industry, told The Center Square that the code’s creation was “flawed on its premise.”

  “Those who believe it will help law enforcement do not provide details on what should be considered suspicious purchases,” Oliva told the outlet.

  He separately told Gothamist: “This decision chills the free exercise of constitutionally protected rights and does nothing to assist law enforcement with crime prevention or holding criminals accountable. Attaching codes specific to firearm and ammunition purchases casts a dark pall by gun control advocates who are only interested in disarming lawful gun owners.”

  Lars Dalseide, a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), the lobbying arm of the gun rights advocacy group NRA, told The Center Square:

  “Implying that firearm purchases are suspicious demonstrates an obvious bias these attorneys general hold against anyone who chooses to exercise a fundamental constitutional right.

  “Creating specific credit card codes for firearms lays the groundwork for a de facto firearm registration. Suggesting otherwise is either shortsighted or deceptive,” Dalseide added.

  “The true travesty is that New Yorkers and Californians must continue facing the violent criminals pushed back on the streets thanks to these two attorneys general reckless soft-on-crime policies.”

  …

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 22:30

• Slava Raytheon: Zelensky To Headline Conference Of US Defense Companies
  Slava Raytheon: Zelensky To Headline Conference Of US Defense Companies

  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has throughout much of the six-month long Ukraine war been busy rallying support to his side by addressing dozens of Western countries’ parliaments, for which Ukraine has since been rewarded with billions of dollars in foreign defense and humanitarian aid. His foremost theme has been a constant refrain of his military urgently needing more, more and more weapons. He’s even requested advanced fighter jets, months ago asking Congress to “close the skies” (or in essence a No Fly Zone).

  Now for the first time it seems he’ll go straight to the source, as he’s set to be the keynote speaker, via video link, to a major meeting of American defense contractors later this month. The Hill is confirming that “he headlines the annual Future Force Capabilities Conference and Exhibition hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA)” in Austin, Texas on September 21.

  

  Ukraine’s defense minister Oleksii Reznikov is also scheduled to address the conference. Naturally, both are expected to emphasize a message that more and heavier arms are needed if Ukrainian forces hope to sustain their eastern and southern counteroffensive, which in the last days has been widely reported as successful – at least so far.

  Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov has on Saturday admitted his army has had to “regroup” troops from Balakliya and Izyum in Kharkiv Oblast. This is being taken as a sign Ukraine’s military is being pushed back from Kharkiv and could be taking heavy losses, with the day prior Zelensky announcing Ukraine has taken back over 30 settlements in the region.

  “We are gradually taking control over more settlements, returning the Ukrainian flag and protection for our people.” Zelenskiy said. “Our army, intelligence, the Security Service of Ukraine continue active actions in several operational directions. They continue successfully.”

  This is the message he’s expected to stress in addressing the major arms expo in August. In the audience will be representatives from the leading military weapons manufacturers in the US: 

  News of the Ukrainian president’s speech to the NDIA — whose membership includes defense industry giants like Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics — comes as Kyiv looks to fend off Russia’s invasion as it drags through its sixth month.

  Eight defense contractors — including Raytheon, Lockheed and General Dynamics — attended a meeting at the Pentagon in April to discuss how the U.S. could speed up production to help Ukraine fend off Moscow’s war.

  The U.S. has committed $15.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including $14.5 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

  A number of independent observers are noting just how obviously this brings to the fore one of the key motives of US hawks, especially officials tied closely to the military-industrial complex, who have shown no interest in pushing both warring sides to the negotiating table. In fact, evidence has recently emerged strongly pointing to Washington and London playing the role of behind-the-scenes saboteurs to prior ceasefire talks.

  Fresh off his appearance at Wall Street, where he pitched corporations on the plunder of his country’s assets, Zelensky will appear at a conference of arms makers in Texas to present his country’s war as a fantastic business opportunity. #SlavaRaytheon https://t.co/zSNTT6Kcp3

  — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 9, 2022

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  Instead the past months have seen these officials by and large argue for Congress to sign off on essentially a “blank check” bonanza of Ukraine arms procurement. Like other recent conflicts, for example in the Middle East, they see the Russia-Ukraine war as fundamentally an opportunity.

  Journalist Max Blumenthal sums up the unspoken reality nicely: “Fresh off his appearance at Wall Street, where he pitched corporations on the plunder of his country’s assets, Zelensky will appear at a conference of arms makers in Texas to present his country’s war as a fantastic business opportunity.”

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  And Zelensky will without doubt continue to get the red carpet rolled out for him by the world’s wealthiest defense firms, given he singularly remains the arms contractors’ #1 foreign client – and all at the expense of the common US taxpayer to boot.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 22:00

• "Nothing To Do With Man" – Astrophysicist Says Climate-Cultists "Are On A Gravy Train" To Make Money
  “Nothing To Do With Man” – Astrophysicist Says Climate-Cultists “Are On A Gravy Train” To Make Money

  This year’s heat waves and subsequent droughts resulted in the hottest summer in recorded European history, according to a report by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) – an EU-funded Earth observation agency.

  “We’ve not only had record August temperatures for Europe, but also for the summer, with the previous summer record only being one year old,” said Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

  Of course, this ‘record’ heat in the summer has prompted activists to trot out the same old tropes that this ‘confirms climate change’ is having a catastrophic effect on the world already. With the energy crisis facing Europe, this is not a particularly comfortable topic as numerous nations abandon – albeit apparently temporarily – their green policies in favor of not letting their citizenry starve or freeze.

  Given that it’s all ‘settled science’, the following RT News anchor was probably expecting a rote response to his questions about climate change.

  

  He was in for a big surprise…

  Piers Corbyn – physicist, meteorologist, and elder brother of former UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – explained to the shocked RT anchor that the climate “has always been changing, but this has nothing to do with man”

  The astrophysicist instead believes that changes in the Earth’s climate and its weather are dictated primarily by cyclical activity on the surface of the sun (and not, pointedly, by the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere). 

  “For one thing science doesn’t do settled opinions,” Corbyn says.

  “And for another they are all wrong.”

  “Surely man has something to with this,” exclaims the struggling new anchor, to which Corbyn responds:

  “No, the only connection is that man is here at the same time as the sun and the moon are doing things.”

  The frustrated anchor falls back to consensus, asking “so how come then that so many climate change scientists disagree with you and they get so much support for that?”

  Corbyn’s laughing response was straightforward:

  “…those that say this are just trying to make money… They’re on a gravy train for heaven’s sake.”

  Watch the brief interview below:

  This guy is a legend 😆 pic.twitter.com/Gt50kCU320

  — Art TakingBack 🇺🇸 (@ArtValley818_) September 9, 2022

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  Finally, we note that in former UK PM Boris Johnson once lauded Corbyn as “the world’s foremost meteorological soothsayer”.

  We suspect this is the last time Mr.Corbyn will be allowed on TV…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 21:30

• DC Mayor Declares Public Emergency After Busloads Of Migrants Overwhelm Nation's Capital
  DC Mayor Declares Public Emergency After Busloads Of Migrants Overwhelm Nation’s Capital

  The Mayor of Washington DC has declared a public emergency after the sanctuary city received more than 9,400 illegal aliens from the states of Texas and Arizona.

  “Our response involves how can we live up to our values and make sure we have a humane, efficient process to deal with a crisis not of our making,” Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) told reporters during a briefing.

  

  The emergency was declared on Sept. 8, and enables Bowser to spend $10 million establish the Office of Migrant Services, in order to help migrants arriving from border states. The city also hopes to snag some federal funding, or to be reimbursed for the expenditures.

  According to Bowser’s office, the new system is necessary “so that our homeless services system can continue to function in support of DC residents and so that we can properly respond to the ongoing humanitarian crisis and provide a humane assistance to migrants.”

  According to Ranae Eze, press secretary for Texas Gov. Greg Abbot, Bowser is a hypocrite.

  “In a city with a population over 700,000, she’s claiming an emergency for just over 7,900 migrants being bused into her sanctuary city,” Eze told the Epoch Times. “That’s barely 1 percent of the population of Washington, D.C. The true emergency is on our nation’s southern border—not in our nation’s capital—where small Texas border towns are overrun and overwhelmed by hundreds of migrants every single day as the Biden Administration dumps them in their communities.

  “Instead of fearmongering and complaining about a few thousand migrants in her sanctuary city, Mayor Bowser should call on President Biden to do his job and secure the border—something the President continues failing to do. Governor Abbott’s invitation is still open for Mayor Bowser to visit the border and see the actual crisis firsthand.”

  More via the Epoch Times‘ Zachary Stieber:

  Thousands of Immigrants

  Texas and Arizona have been busing thousands of illegal aliens who were released by U.S. authorities to Washington since the spring. Approximately 9,400 illegal immigrants have been bused to the nation’s capital since then.

  Most of them move on to other destinations, according to Washington officials. Many of the immigrants are being housed in shelters and hotel rooms.

  Texas has also sent illegal immigrants to New York City and Chicago.

  The Republican governors of Texas and Arizona, Abbott and Doug Ducey, respectively, say the busing will continue indefinitely. They have said they are trying to trigger a stronger response to border enforcement from President Joe Biden.

  Bowser said officials thus expect hundreds more buses to drop immigrants off in Washington during the fall.

  The mayor has repeatedly criticized the governors.

  Bowser has twice asked the Department of Defense for National Guard assistance but has been denied both times.

  “I’m very disappointed in that,” Bowser said on Sept. 8. “And I’m very disappointed in not having a federal site that we can use.”

  She said conversations with the Biden administration are ongoing.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 21:00

• China Creates 'Digital Twin' Of Americans: Former DoD Cybersecurity Expert
  China Creates ‘Digital Twin’ Of Americans: Former DoD Cybersecurity Expert

  Authored by Hannah Ng and Tiffany Meier via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As reports have emerged that Chinese military-linked firms gather American DNA, these firms are now capable of creating digital replicas of Americans, according to John Mills, former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense.

  “They have the capacity to create these complex models of each of us. They’re making digital twins of us,” Mills told the “China in Focus” program on NTD News, sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.

  

  Digital Twins

  He pointed to BGI Group, formerly Beijing Genomics Institute, which is the leader of the CCP’s genome project, as well as a leading producer of COVID-19 tests.

  In 2017, the company’s leader boasted that it had reached an industrial level of success in progressing through genetic reform and gene editing, to gene synthesizing, and mass-producing multiple viruses, bacteria, and large yeasts.

  “They can do all kinds of nefarious things with no constraint or loss. They have our data.” That data could be used to tailor a follow-up virus to target certain non-Han ethnicities, Mills warned.

  Mills referred to Beijing’s military-civil fusion policy, calling Chinese companies “extensions of state security, state intelligence.”

  That includes every Chinese company and every company that is incorporated in China, even if it is American in origin, he stressed. “They are the eyes and the ears and the collectors.”

  That means when Americans give information to these companies, their data is essentially going to Chinese intelligence, Mills said.

  “So they know about every one of us … I would presume that I have a file in China,” he added.

  BGI Targets American Researchers

  Mills raised further concerns about BGI’s group’s record of targeting distinguished American researchers.

  “They have a long history of targeting some of our best researchers … there is a proven track record that almost immediately veers into national security concerns with China,” he noted.

  The cybersecurity expert pointed to Chinese recruitment programs such as the “thousand talents plan,” allegedly to lure foreign academics to work in China, a process that facilitates the transfer of technology and know-how to the regime.

  “China was just using money to essentially buy off professors and academics. So they have a very active program to go after our intellectual property, and essentially, to co-opt some of our leading researchers,” he said.

  Mills referred to the Biden administration’s canceling of the “China Initiative” launched by the Trump administration in 2018 to combat the Chinese regime’s state-sponsored espionage and theft of trade secrets, calling the move “ridiculous and silly.”

  “It’s going to [take] many years for … the CCP to demonstrate they can be trusted in these circles because right now, all the evidence is leaning against them,” he said.

  Americans, Safeguard Your Medical Records

  In his opinion, Americans, especially those related to the government sector, should not do DNA tests. Furthermore, he suggested that Americans closely safeguard their medical records.

  “Be aware that anything you do digitally … is being vacuumed up,” he warned.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 20:30

• China Reveals Discovery Of New Lunar Mineral As Space Mining Race Accelerates
  China Reveals Discovery Of New Lunar Mineral As Space Mining Race Accelerates

  One day after Chinese state media published a story about discovering a new phosphate lunar mineral, China National Space Administration (CNSA) (equivalent to NASA) released a mission timeline for future moon exploration trips.

  

  On Friday, state media outlet Global Times announced that lunar samples collected in 2020 during the Chiang’e-5 million contained a small amount of a new lunar mineral called “Changesite-(Y)” in rock and dust samples.

  The single crystalline particle measured around 10 microns in diameter – or around one-tenth of a human hair, according to SCMP, citing Chinese official Wang Xuejun of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC)

  A new mineral, Changesite-(Y), was discovered from the moon samples retrieved by #China‘s Chang’e-5 probe, making China the third country to discover a new mineral on moon, Chinese authority said on Friday. pic.twitter.com/XjatWOtraY

  — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) September 9, 2022

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  Changesite-(Y) is a phosphate mineral found in lunar basalts. The discovery of the new mineral was confirmed by Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification of the International Mineralogical Association.

  “[The discovery] provides more basic scientific data for the evaluation and development of lunar resources and has deepened mankind’s knowledge of the moon and the solar system,” Dong Baotong, vice-chairman of the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA), said. 

  Separately, the lunar sample also contained helium-3, a rare element on earth that it known to be abundant on the moon. The isotope has a wide variety of uses – including as a potential fuel source.

  Xuejun said the findings within the 2020 sample “provides fundamental scientific data for future assessment of Helium-3 in lunar samples and their exploration.“

  Following the announcement, Liu Jizhong, an administrator with the China Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center, was quoted by state media outlet CCTV as saying three lunar orbiters would be sent to the moon in an accelerated exploration program over the next year years.

  So what’s so special about Helium-3? 

  The European Space Agency (ESA) explained the idea of mining a “clean and efficient form of energy from the Moon” is entirely possible because the lunar surface has “large quantities of Helium-3.” 

  “It is thought that this isotope could provide safer nuclear energy in a fusion reactor, since it is not radioactive and would not produce dangerous waste products,” ESA continued. 

  The race to mine the moon and extract all sorts of minerals is well underway, and China is proving that. We have pointed out mining could start as early as 2025. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 20:00

• Florida Watchdog Groups Allege Mail-in Ballot And Voter Roll Violations In 2020, 2022
  Florida Watchdog Groups Allege Mail-in Ballot And Voter Roll Violations In 2020, 2022

  Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A citizens’ group called the Florida First Freedom Alliance (F3A) last week presented evidence to election officials and law enforcement officers that more than a thousand mail-in ballots were voted from undeliverable addresses in Orange County in the Aug. 23 primary election.

  The group also released evidence alleging that across the state serious irregularities occurred involving thousands of unrequested changes of addresses being recorded on voter registration rolls without the knowledge or consent of the affected voters.

  

  A separate citizens’ group called the Lake County Election Integrity and Voter Protection Coalition (LCEIVPC) collected the data from public source information.

  F3A spokesperson Christopher Gleason, of Clearwater, told The Epoch Times, “Based on an analysis of the 2020 election and the data that we have thus far for the 2022 primary, we are seeing Supervisor of Elections Offices sending out envelopes with vote-by-mail ballots enclosed to mailing addresses that cannot receive these vote-by-mail ballots.

  “The resulting problem is that there are thousands of completely undeliverable vote-by-mail ballots that were later turned in to election officials as legitimately cast vote-by-mail ballots.”

  F3A has made available to election officials a spreadsheet containing the results of a computer crosscheck conducted by LCEIVPC of what Gleason calls “only a small sliver” of those who requested mail-in ballots in Orange County.

  

  The data allegedly reveals that almost 1,100 vote-by-mail ballots were sent to and cast from undeliverable addresses in that small sample alone.

  “This is what happens when dirty voter registration rolls result in massive numbers of undeliverable ballots,” Gleason told The Epoch Times.

  “The question is, who is voting them?”

  The Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

  LCEIVPC spokesperson Kris Jurski told The Epoch Times in a recent phone interview:

  “There are thousands of people across Florida listed on the voter rolls whose address is flawed with either incomplete or inaccurate information—missing a digit in the zip code, an apartment complex with inaccurate, incomplete, apartment numbers, or none at all, and misspelled words. Small errors. But just enough to render a mail-in ballot undeliverable.

  “The whole game is to generate undeliverable ballots—a portion of which are somehow being obtained and voted by somebody else,” alleged Jurski.

  “And the volume of those undeliverable ballots also serves the purpose of muddying the waters, creating confusion, and overwhelming the system,” he said.

  After analyzing the July 2022 voter rolls, Jurski’s group informed Florida elections officials that in just one of the state’s 27 U.S. congressional districts (District 11) nearly 60,000 residential addresses were in need of updating and correction.

  The group found over 30,000 residential addresses that were designated by the United States Postal Service as undeliverable.

  Jurski stated there were thousands of address splits in which voters had their addresses temporarily altered in 2020 and that the practice continues today.

  “Performing the switch is how an unauthorized actor could get a person’s mail-in ballot without his or her knowledge.

  “This may be why there are so many obviously faulty addresses kept on voter registration rolls.”

  It may also explain the experience reported by many in-person voters who showed up at their polling places to vote on election day and were told by the election worker they had already voted, Jurski said.

  “Thousands of these ballots are being voted by someone—then just in time for the election, the addresses are electronically switched back, making the scheme all but undetectable by local election officials.

  “This is classic identity theft,” alleged Jurski.

  He explained that the voter’s name, ID number, house number (but not his street name), and all other information in his voting records remain the same on the registration rolls.

  He said the switches are done in low volume over a wide area of jurisdictions, and that there is less such activity during primaries because fewer votes are needed to impact the outcome of races than in general elections.

  “Many elections in Florida are decided by less than one percent or even by just a handful of votes, so the situation is very concerning,” he said.

  Jurski told The Epoch Times that a citizens’ canvass of 12th Street in the city of Clermont in Lake County, conducted on Aug. 27, just days after Florida’s Aug. 23 primary election, found residents completely unaware of a switch that was made to their voter registration records.

  Without their knowledge, request, or assent, all of the 12th Street voters surveyed had their addresses electronically changed to say Red Belly Road and then changed back again weeks later.

  “We obtained 37 sworn affidavits from the 37 people registered to vote on 12th Street attesting that they never requested a change of address.

  

  “A married couple residing on 12th Street showed us two voter information cards displaying their names and inaccurately listing them as living on Red Belly Road,” Jurski said.

  Alan Hays, Supervisor of Elections in Lake County, told The Epoch Times in a Sept. 5 phone interview that he was aware of the 12th Street incident.

  Hays, a Republican, said he wants to assure people that every change on the Lake County voter rolls was made by “authorized personnel, either directly employed by Lake County or contracted with it.

  “We are not in violation of any law. We completely follow the letter of the law.

  “I don’t question the intent of the citizens’ groups. In fact, I share their desire for pure and clean elections.”

  Hays explained that the 12th Street changes (to Red Belly Road and back to 12th Street again) resulted from the United States Postal Service referring to the block as 12th Street, while the Lake County E-911 System calls the same thoroughfare Red Belly Road.

  “As we were in the process of making our precincts coincide with newly redrawn district lines, the consultant we employed used the E-911 designation of Red Belly Road instead of the name 12th Street.

  “Our office chose to use the E-911 Geo Point Data System for our redistricting work,” explained Hays.

  Greg Holcomb, the director of public safety support and 911 coordinator for Lake County, told The Epoch Times, “We have never referred to 12th Street in Clermont as Red Belly Road. It has never been named Red Belly Road.

  “There was a 12th Street in the Wekiva Falls RV Resort that was renamed Red Belly Road, but that was in Sorrento and has nothing to do with the 12th Street in Clermont. They are on opposite ends of Lake County.”

  United States Postal Service records show the communities have different zip codes.

  In all but the above-mentioned case of the married couple’s voter information cards, the Postal Service considered the block residents’ mail undeliverable if it bore the Red Belly Road address.

  According to Jurski, the long-time personal acquaintance between the couple and their mail carrier may have been a factor in their receiving the misaddressed envelopes containing the inaccurate voter information cards.

  In his letter to election officials, Gleason alleged that the existing safeguards provided by Florida law to prevent the misuse of mail-in ballots are being ignored by many county election supervisors.

  He pointed to Florida statute 101.6103, a law governing mail-in ballot procedure, which says in part, “Ballots shall be addressed to each elector at the address appearing in the registration records and placed in an envelope which is prominently marked Do Not Forward.”

  The F3A provided election authorities with screenshots of mail-in ballot envelopes that were sent out to voters that do not bear what they allege to be the statutorily required instruction “Do Not Forward.”

  Instead, the envelopes only say, “Return Service Requested.”

  “That is a clear violation of the plain language of the law,” alleged Gleason.

  “Specific words have specific meanings in the law and in postal regulations.”

  Gleason contends that the deficient labeling does not clearly and definitively inform apartment managers, RV park managers, or mailroom clerks handling other people’s mail that it should not be forwarded.

  As evidence of the problem, Gleason’s group provided authorities with a screenshot of a vote-by-mail ballot envelope that had been forwarded in Pinellas County.

  Similar evidence of such occurrences in other counties, such as Pasco, has also been sent along to election officials.

  Dustin Chase, the deputy supervisor of elections in Pinellas County, disagrees that the envelopes used by his office violate the statute.

  Chase told The Epoch Times in a phone interview, “From our perspective and that of our attorneys, we are conducting elections legally pursuant to all laws.”

  Chase described F3A as “a very sincere group of patriots that is dedicated to ensuring the integrity of our elections. We respect them.”

  However, Chase went on to state that the group is not understanding that the section of the Florida election law it cites applies only to “all-mail-in elections,” such as referendums, where no candidates or offices appear on the ballot and there is no in-person voting.

  Gleason contends that the plain statutory language governs the handling of mail-in ballots in all elections.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 19:30

• From AOL To Google: Visualizing The Most Popular Websites From 1993-2022
  From AOL To Google: Visualizing The Most Popular Websites From 1993-2022

  Over the last three decades, the internet has grown at a mind-bending pace.

  In 1993, there were fewer than 200 websites available on the World Wide Web. Fast forward to 2022, and that figure has grown to 2 billion.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang shows in this animated graphic by James Eagle provides a historical look at the evolution of the internet, showing the most popular websites over the years from 1993 to 2022.

  The 90s to Early 2000s: Dial-Up Internet

  It was possible to go on the proto-internet as early as the 1970s, but the more user-centric and widely accessible version we think of today didn’t really materialize until the early 1990s using dial-up modems.

  Dial-up gave users access to the web through a modem that was connected to an active telephone line. There were several different portals in the 1990s for internet use, such as Prodigy and CompuServe, but AOL quickly became the most popular.

  AOL held its top spot as the most visited website for nearly a decade. By June 2000, the online portal was getting over 400 million monthly visits. For context, there were about 413 million internet users around the world at that time.

  

   

  But when broadband internet hit the market and made dial-up obsolete, AOL lost its footing, and a new website took the top spot—Yahoo.

  The Mid 2000s: Yahoo vs. Google

  Founded in 1994, Yahoo started off as a web directory that was originally called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.”

  When the company started to pick up steam, its name changed to Yahoo, which became a backronym that stands for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”

  Yahoo grew fast and by the early 2000s, it became the most popular website on the internet. It held its top spot for several years—by April 2004, Yahoo was receiving 5.6 billion monthly visits.

  

   

  But Google was close on its heels. Founded in 1998, Google started out as a simpler and more efficient search engine, and the website quickly gained traction.

  Funny enough, Google was actually Yahoo’s default search engine in the early 2000s until Yahoo dropped Google so it could use its own search engine technology in 2004.

  For the next few years, Google and Yahoo competed fiercely, and both names took turns at the top of the most popular websites list. Then, in the 2010s, Yahoo’s trajectory started to head south after a series of missed opportunities and unsuccessful moves.

  This cemented Google’s place at the top, and the website is still the most popular website as of January 2022.

  The Late 2000s, Early 2010s: Social Media Enters the Chat

  While Google has held its spot at the top for nearly two decades, it’s worth highlighting the emergence of social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

  YouTube and Facebook certainly weren’t the first social media platforms to gain traction. MySpace had a successful run back in 2007—at one point, it was the third most popular website on the World Wide Web.

  

   

  But YouTube and Facebook marked a new era for social media platforms, partly because of their ​​impeccable timing. Both platforms entered the scene around the same time that smartphone innovations were turning the mobile phone industry on its head. The iPhone’s design, and the introduction of the App store in 2008, made it easier than ever to access the internet via your mobile device.

  As of January 2022, YouTube and Facebook are still the second and third most visited websites on the internet.

  The 2020s: Google is Now Synonymous With the Internet

  Google is the leading search engine by far, making up about 90% of all web, mobile, and in-app searches.

  What will the most popular websites be in a few years? Will Google continue to hold the top spot? There are no signs of the internet giant slowing down anytime soon, but if history has taught us anything, it’s that things change. And no one should get too comfortable at the top.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 19:00

• "An Ugly Thing To Watch" – China Is Facing An Employment Crisis
  “An Ugly Thing To Watch” – China Is Facing An Employment Crisis

  Authored by Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research, via TheMarket.ch,

  The implosion of the real estate sector has stalled the Chinese growth machine. As a consequence, unemployment is rising. Western consumer goods companies with a significant presence in the country will feel the knock-on effects.

  

  The projectile that was the Chinese economy has slowed and turned back toward earth. The Zero Covid policies and the real estate crisis brought China’s economy to an unnatural equipoise, seeming to hover in a no-growth zone for a few quarters.

  Now, having failed to reach escape velocity, the rocket ship has turned around. The growth inversion will be an ugly thing to watch: millions of Chinese unemployed, crashing demand.

  Back in the late 1990s, foreign visitors to China were bowled over by the GDP growth rates: 15%, 17%, and with low inflation. Rural people moved to the coast to live in factory dorms and work 80 hours a week making widgets for the world. Farmers planted cash crops and sold the produce in «free markets» that had opened across the country then took the money home and built themselves new houses.

  For decades, the country had been held back, in poverty, with high levels of savings but no investment in industry or infrastructure. Suddenly, all that changed. Commerce became possible. Everyone’s lot in life was improving.

  It was a great run: thirty years of optimism, thirty years of investment-fueled growth. The machine sputtered in 1998 and then in 2008, but leaders doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down, flooding the economy with investment capital.

  When government leaders feared crashing international demand in the global financial crisis, they responded by pouring resources into real estate. Where the investment of the previous decades had largely gone into road, rail, telecom, and computerization that improved productivity, after 2008, the government force-fed the economy on capital to keep the economic machine going, and productivity sputtered.

  Domestic Labor Market Slumps

  It was going to take just a gentle push to make it all end, and that came with the property crash in summer 2021. Now, the news is all about unemployment. The government reports that about one-fifth of young people under 25 who are seeking work cannot find any. Although statistics on employment among older people are opaque, occasional independent surveys in the countryside indicate high levels of unemployment. Civil servants in the wealthiest regions are taking massive pay cuts.

  Foreign investors have long taken a view that only 350 million reasonably prosperous people in the coastal cities matter to the economy. But even these wealthier people are seeing employment erode: banks, private education, brokerages, and other white-collar industries are laying off major portions of their workforce. The press is full of reports of layoffs in tech companies. The pharmaceutical sector is bleeding staff. Individual income tax receipts are falling.

  The shuffling of feet is turning to a stampede. Formerly mighty companies like Tencent are selling off parts. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is selling down its stake in EV maker BYD. The founder of Huawei told employees that the company must focus on «survival.» Chinese real estate companies listed in Hong Kong reported that their earnings have declined by 87% so far in 2022.

  Consumption Slows Down

  To combat this, Chinese banks are furiously lowering rates and pushing out loans. The central bank is fighting the decline of the Renminbi, apparently spending down its stock of foreign exchange reserves but predicting that Renminbi will soon crest the long-feared 7:1 exchange rate against the U.S. dollar.

  An «unemployment rate» is all but meaningless in a country that has not adapted to the workforce changes post 1995. China does not count rural people (about 60% of the population) or most gig workers. It accounts very poorly for people who do not have labor contracts—which is most of the migrants working in cities. We also know China will do its utmost to hide distress from the outside world.

  But that is becoming more difficult, as public company numbers continue to disappoint. High unemployment means lower income, which means less spending, which means higher unemployment. We will see tumbling sales for consumer staples companies like Coca-Cola, Unilever, Tingyi, and Unipresident.

  Smartphone sales are falling sharply. Nike is gloomy. Starbucks saw a 40% drop in sales in the most recent quarter. No more will China be the capital of luxury spending. And demand for commodities like coal and copper and iron ore is already tumbling.

  Executives based in China will be the last to admit the problem. People like the CFO of Adidas continue to profess «commitment» to the Chinese market. One wonders whom they are trying to convince.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 18:30

• Twitter Ramps Up Wrongthink Apparatus Ahead Of Midterms
  Twitter Ramps Up Wrongthink Apparatus Ahead Of Midterms

  As Democrats seek to hobble the competition ahead of the 2022 midterms – between Trump’s ongoing Mar-a-Lago raid drama, a Steve Bannon indictment over fundraising for a private wall, and Biden’s DOJ slapping 35 Trump associates with warrants or subpoenas – ‘Big Tech’ is doing their part to protect establishment narratives from dangerous wrongthink.

  

  Four weeks ago, Twitter announced they would be ‘pre-bunking’ election claims during the 2022 midterms “to get ahead of misleading narratives” and “to proactively address topics that may be the subject of misinformation.”

  Then, on Wednesday the social media giant announced the expansion of ‘Birdwatch‘ – the company’s fact-checking program which has contributors flag “misleading” tweets with “notes that provide informative context.”

  According to the company, users who see a Birdwatch disclaimer are “20-40% less likely to agree with the substance of a potentially misleading Tweet than someone who sees the Tweet alone.”

  As Just the News notes, however, big tech censorship during the 2020 presidential election – ranging from evidence of voting irregularities, to Hunter Biden’s laptop – was essentially election interference.

  Twitter banned MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for claiming the 2020 election was stolen, suspended several accounts linked to state audits of the election, and claimed in fact checks that ‘mail-in voting was secure‘ despite evidence to the contrary.

  Twitter fact checks claimed that mail-in voting was secure despite the warnings about the vulnerability of mail-in voting to election fraud sounded in the 2005 report of the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform cochaired by former President Jimmy Carter, as well as numerous issues with mail-in ballots reported during the 2020 presidential election.

  Following Election Day, Twitter slapped numerous tweets about the 2020 election with the warning “This claim about election fraud is disputed.” The ubiquitous warning eventually became an internet meme, with social media users — including celebrities and corporations — posting random facts or jokes accompanied by their own “disputed” label. –Just the News

  In fact, there’s ample evidence of voting irregularities – so much that Just the News has compiled 26 such examples (excerpted in part below):

  • Corrupt conduct — Ex-Prince William County voter registrar Michele White has been charged by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares with two felony counts alleging corrupt conduct as an election official and making a false statement, and one misdemeanor charge of willful neglect of duty by an elected official. The county’s Office of Elections said White’s conduct “did not impact the outcome of any election contest” and was discovered by her successor.

  • Felons voting — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced in August that 20 convicted felons were charged with felonies for allegedly voting illegally in the 2020 election in the state.

  • Voter fraud in Wisconsin — As many as 22 voter fraud referrals for the 2020 election have been made over the past year by local clerks, according to a Wisconsin Elections Commission report.

  • Missed mail-in ballots — On Aug. 5, 26 mail-in ballots for the 2020 election that had never been delivered to their intended voters were discovered in a U.S. Postal Service in Baltimore. 

  • Illegal voting in Ohio — Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has referred four people for prosecution after they allegedly voted twice, once in Ohio and once in another state. In addition, 11 illegal immigrants were referred to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost for prosecution in August, with 10 allegedly registering to vote and one who may have illegally voted. LaRose also referred 62 people suspected of election fraud for prosecution in February.

  • Illegal ballot drop boxes — The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the 570 drop boxes used during the 2020 election were unlawfully approved by the Wisconsin Election Commission. “Only the legislature may permit absentee voting via ballot drop boxes,” the court declared. “WEC cannot. Ballot drop boxes appear nowhere in the detailed statutory system for absentee voting. WEC’s authorization of ballot drop boxes was unlawful.” State Rep. Janel Brandtjen told Just the News that hundreds of thousands of votes were cast in the illegal drop boxes in the 2020 race, in which Joe Biden was certified the winner over Donald Trump by fewer than 21,000 votes.

  • A foreign intrusion — Federal authorities have confirmed that two Iranian nationals successfully hacked into a state computer election system, stole 100,000 voter registrations and used the data to carry out a cyber-intimidation campaign that targeted GOP members of Congress, Trump campaign officials and Democratic voters in the November 2020 election in one of the largest foreign intrusions in U.S. election history. The defendants “were part of a coordinated conspiracy in which Iranian hackers sought to undermine faith and confidence in the U.S. presidential election,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams declared in an indictment.
  • The laptop lie — More than 50 national security experts, countless news organizations and large social media firms falsely told American voters in fall 2020 that the Hunter Biden laptop with damning revelations about Biden family corruption was Russian disinformation. In fact, the laptop was authentic and already in the FBI’s possession, and Hunter Biden was already under criminal investigation before voters cast their 2020 ballots. The false narrative had significant impact. According to a Polling Company survey for the Media Research Center, 45.1% of Biden voters were unaware of the censored laptop story. “According to our poll,” MRC’s Newsbusters reported, “full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump, giving the President 311 electoral votes.”
  • Alleged bribery — The former state Supreme Court justice appointed by the Wisconsin Legislature to investigate the 2020 election concluded that millions of dollars in donations to election administrators in five Democrat-heavy municipalities from the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life violated state anti-bribery laws and corrupted election practices by turning public election authorities into liberal get-out-the-vote activists. “The Zuckerberg-funded CTCL/ Zuckerberg 5 scheme would prove to be an effective way to accomplish the partisan effort to ‘turnout’ their desired voters and it was done with the active support of the very people and the governmental institution (WEC) that were supposed to be guarding the Wisconsin elections administrative process from the partisan activities they facilitated,” Justice Michael Gableman wrote.
  • Illegal ballot harvesting in Wisconsin — Gableman also exposed an extensive ballot harvesting operation in nursing homes involving third-party activists illegally collecting the ballots of vulnerable residents. State election regulators “unlawfully directed the municipal clerks not to send out the legally required special voting deputies to nursing homes, resulting in many nursing homes’ registered residents voting at 100% rates and many ineligible residents voting, despite a guardianship order or incapacity,” Gableman wrote in his explosive report.
  • Georgia ballot harvesting probe — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger opened a criminal investigation into allegations that liberal activists engaged in ballot harvesting prohibited under state law. Raffensperger said he was planning to issue subpoenas to identify a whistleblower who allegedly admitted he engaged in the operation, and there could be prosecutions. The True the Vote election integrity group alleged in a formal state complaint that the man admitted his role and identified nonprofits who funded it at $10 per ballot delivered. The watchdog group also claimed it had assembled cell phone location records pinpointing the alleged harvesting by as many as 240 activists.  
  • Bad voter signatures? — A review of Maricopa County’s mail-in ballots in Arizona’s 2020 presidential election estimated that more than 200,000 ballots with signatures that did not match voter files were counted without being reviewed, more than eight times the number the county acknowledged.
  • 50,000 Arizona ballots called into question — An extensive audit ordered by Arizona’s Senate officially called into question more than 50,000 ballots cast in the 2020 election — a total nearly five times Joe Biden’s official margin of victory in the state.
  • Foreign voters found on Texas rolls — An audit of Texas voter rolls identified nearly 12,000 noncitizens suspected of illegally registering to vote and nearly 600 cases in which ballots may have been cast in the name of a dead resident or by a voter who may have also voted in another state. Officials are now in the process of removing the foreign voters and deciding whether prosecutions are warranted.

  Read the rest of the claims here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 18:00

• Man Claiming To Be Prince Of Ghana Standing Trial Over $800,000 Fraud Scheme
  Man Claiming To Be Prince Of Ghana Standing Trial Over $800,000 Fraud Scheme

  Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The man known as “Daryl Attipoe” displayed all the apparent hallmarks of success, power, and wealth. He wore nice clothes, exuded charisma, and drove two high-end cars: a sporty red Dodge Viper and a sleek black Mercedes-Benz.

  

  He boasted of exotic business ventures, such as mining for chrome and diamonds. He asserted that he was a member of the royal family in the West African nation of Ghana.

  In addition, authorities said he became a “cult-like” spiritual leader—one who inspired women to bow at his feet and to follow his ministry cross-country, from Ohio to Colorado.

  But he was nothing but a fraudster, prosecutors say.

  Paper and money trails led investigators to the true identity of “Prince Daryl Attipoe,” also known as “Prophet Daryl Attipoe:” Daryl Robert Harrison. He is a convicted felon who, according to authorities, had “no identifiable legitimate income” and acted as a classic “conman” in a bizarre investment scheme.

  

  The 44-year-old is standing trial in U.S. District Court, Dayton, Ohio, for allegedly bilking a dozen people out of more than $800,000. The investors were young and old and came from varied professions, including dentistry, accounting, and personal training.

  Harrison “fraudulently diverted” the investors’ money for his personal use, court records say.

  He and his stepfather used the funds to buy luxury vehicles, airplane tickets, hotel accommodations, trips to Africa, rental cars, and monthly rent payments exceeding $3,000 for Daryl Harrison’s 5,100-square-foot home in Parker, Colo., officials said. He, his wife, and six children lived there.

  But the younger Harrison’s lawyer, Christopher Deal, told jurors: “These investments are legit.”

  A series of “unforeseen setbacks,” including the coronavirus pandemic, prevented Harrison from making good on his business promises, Deal said, adding that his client can rightfully call himself “prince” because a royal Ghanian family befriended and then “adopted” him.

  ‘Borderline Buffoonish’ Contracts

  Harrison, who was indicted almost two years ago, is standing trial on 16 charges: conspiracy to engage in mail fraud and wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, nine counts of wire fraud, and three counts of witness tampering. Harrison’s stepfather, Robert S. Harrison Jr., faces just one conspiracy count; his trial is set for Dec. 5 before Judge Michael J. Newman, the same judge who is presiding over the younger Harrison’s trial.

  As Harrison’s trial launched Sept. 6, assistant U.S. Attorney Dwight Keller told jurors that he intended to present testimony from 17 witnesses, including 12 people who say he financially victimized them.

  Harrison swooped in on them at supermarkets, fitness centers, religious gatherings, and “even a car wash,” Keller said.

  He targeted people who were “vulnerable” in some way—inexperienced, greedy, or “flat-out gullible,” Keller said. “Through fast talking and slick salesmanship, they were hoodwinked into investing with him.”

  Numerous documents and 23 so-called “contracts,” mostly written in Harrison’s own handwriting, support the allegations, Keller said. The contracts were written in a manner that was unsophisticated, “sophomoric” and “borderline buffoonish,” Keller said.

  Harrison promised investors that they could expect outrageously high rates of return, ranging from 28 percent to 33 percent a year, Keller said. Harrison also assured that the investors’ money would remain safe, secure, and accessible to them.

  But when investors asked questions, demanded account statements, or sought refunds, Harrison typically made himself scarce, Keller said.

  The alleged illegal activities date to 2014, after Harrison’s stepfather registered two businesses in Ohio: the nonprofit Power House of Prayer Ministries and a for-profit corporation called New Max Groups. From 2015-2020, Daryl Harrison solicited investors for New Max, sometimes instructing them to make checks payable to the ministry, court records say.

  

  One such investor was Peggy Braun, 58. Braun, who wears eyeglasses and has short salt-and-pepper hair, walked slowly to the witness stand, where she spent hours testifying on Sept. 6–7. Braun described her dealings with Harrison, whom she knew as “Daryl Attipoe.”

  Braun met Harrison in late 2015 or early 2016 because he repeatedly came through her cashier’s checkout lane at the Kroger grocery store in Maineville, Ohio. “He would follow me around,” she said. The two would occasionally chat; they learned a few things about each other’s lives.

  Braun said she is driven to help children. She never became a mother, but she raised a relative’s two children as her own and started college funds for them. She also has made monetary contributions to the March of Dimes and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

  Life Savings Mostly Gone

  The man she now knows as Harrison urged her: “Invest with me. I’ll make you lots of money.” She dreamed of increasing her contributions to the children’s college funds and charities even more.

  Braun said she believed that Harrison indeed was a prince because of the way he behaved, the fancy cars he drove, and the things he told her about lucrative investment opportunities.

  “At first, I was leery about it,” Braun said. But Harrison seemed to have a way to counter all of her concerns. “I said, ‘This better not be fraud.’” His response, she says: “Don’t be silly. This is not fraud.”

  According to Braun’s testimony, she initially offered to invest $50,000—an amount that made Harrison scoff. He needed $400,000 from her, she said.

  After persuading Braun to sign an agreement committing to that amount, Harrison issued a “certificate of ownership,” with a fancy border and handwritten entries listing Braun’s name, dated Nov. 7, 2017, and “K4 Roland Shaft,” purportedly referring to a chrome mine location.

  Another document sets the value of the mine at $650 million. That investment was supposed to start generating $25,000 a month for Braun; Harrison promised she would be repaid her $400,000 within two years, she said.

  “I thought he was a prince. Otherwise, I would not have done this,” she said. Braun said it felt “surreal” that “a prince came to me, trying to help me out.”

  Besides working at Kroger, Braun also worked in an office job for a local factory that went out of business last year; she held both jobs for 21 years. Braun worked hard for all the money and assets she accrued during that time.

  After she and Harrison became acquainted, they would meet at a Chinese restaurant near the Kroger store; Braun would come there after finishing her first job for the day, as she prepared to report for duty at Kroger.

  At the restaurant, Harrison would have Braun sign various agreements. They would discuss business deals, including the chrome mine, a diamond mine, and real estate investments. Harrison also repeatedly called and texted Braun to persuade her to contribute more money.

  Royally Cheated

  At one point in 2019, Harrison got Braun to sign a contract for $100,000 for a diamond mine, which was supposed to generate $10,000 a month for her. On that paper, Braun said she crossed out wording that would have given Harrison the power to manage her remaining stocks and assets.

  “He wanted everything that I had,” she said, including the college funds she had set aside for her young relatives. “He wanted the deed on my house; he wanted everything.”

  Even though her suspicions were growing as time passed and cash wasn’t flowing her way, Braun ended up giving Harrison a total of $553,500.

  “I gave him most of my life savings because I thought I was going to make beaucoup money … and I wanted to help kids,” Braun testified, her voice cracking. “Kids are my life.”

  Braun had liquidated her Kroger stock, cashed in accounts she held with a nationally recognized investment firm, and took funds out of her 401-K retirement account. Harrison promised to pay extra taxes she incurred; that didn’t happen as agreed, Braun said.

  “He got the benefit. I got nothin,’” she said. She got $27,000 back from Harrison.

  Braun said she felt misled, cheated and defrauded. During 2020, she needed help paying taxes, and tried to get back some of her funds for that purpose. Harrison sent her two money orders, one for $1,000; the other for $2,000.

  But he complained to her about the cost of overnight delivery. “You’re a billionaire, millionaire, whatever you want to say, and you’re complaining about a UPS charge?” she said.

  During Braun’s testimony, prosecutors played recorded telephone conversations from May 2020. Harrison can be heard discouraging Braun from contacting a U.S. Secret Service agent who had left a business card at her home.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 17:30

• Navy Denies FOIA Request To Publish Secret UFO Videos, Due To "National Security'" Risk
  Navy Denies FOIA Request To Publish Secret UFO Videos, Due To “National Security'” Risk

  The US Navy published three videos revealing unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) — in 2020. Those stunning videos shot by Navy pilots showed high-tech aircraft maneuvering at incredible speeds that would make supersonic fifth-generation fighters look slow. The service squashed any hope for additional releases of UAP videos because it would “harm national security.” 

  

  In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the government transparency site The Black Vault, the Navy denied the further release of UAP videos. 

  “The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities.

  “While three UAP videos were released in the past, the facts specific to those three videos are unique in that those videos were initially released via unofficial channels before official release … those events were discussed extensively in the public domain; in fact, major news outlets conducted specials on these events. Given the amount of information in the public domain regarding these encounters, it was possible to release the files without further damage to national security,” Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy’s FOIA office, wrote in a response letter.

  It appears the Navy made no attempts to conceal the existence of other UAP videos. Hence the FOIA request denial. 

  In May, the Department of Defense (DoD) held the first hearing on UAPs since the 1960s. The hearing discussed the government’s database of at least 144 UAP sightings since 2004. 

  So it appears the US government doesn’t want potential adversaries to know precisely what their Navy pilots have seen or understand, and for science fiction fans and simple human curiosity about UAPs, well, the official release of additional UAP videos appears over for now. What a total buzzkill. 

  Here’s a copy of The Black Vault’s FOIA denial from the Navy. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 17:00

• Why Did US Torpedo The April Ukraine War Negotiated Settlement?
  Why Did US Torpedo The April Ukraine War Negotiated Settlement?

  Authored by Walt Zlotow via AntiWar.com,

  Most Americans are unaware how close Russia and Ukraine came to ending the current war in April.

  Last March 27, Ukraine president Zelensky told his people “Our goal is obvious – peace and the restoration of normal life in our native state as soon as possible.”

  He was hinting at what went unsaid: Ukraine and Russia, brokered by NATO member Turkey, reached a tentative fifteen-point peace plan to end the month old war.

  Key points were Russia withdraw from all Ukraine except for breakaway Donbas and Crimea. Ukraine would pass on future NATO membership, pledging neutrality between Russia and NATO. Donbas and Crimea would undergo political transition based on self-determination to be recognized by both combatants. Ukraine security would be guaranteed by neighboring countries but no foreign troops would enter Ukraine.

  What’s amazing about this Fiona Hill piece is that it opens saying Putin’s invasion was not about NATO expansion at all and buried in it is that Russia agreed to a tentative deal that would have stopped the war if Ukraine agreed not to seek NATO membershiphttps://t.co/q679798Cqk https://t.co/UtkXSDrRkN pic.twitter.com/jwm0tCDsS0

  — Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) August 31, 2022

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  What’s not to like?

  For the US weapons makers, the end to a weapons manufacturing boondoggle. That $60 billion in free weaponry to Ukraine fighters has depleted our ammo dumps.

  For the US military, the end to a new perpetual war, albeit a proxy one, to relieve the boredom of peace.

  For the political class, the end to the new Cold War with Russia to weaken, marginalize, and keep them from economic integration with Europe.

  Meanwhile…

  Fresh off his appearance at Wall Street, where he pitched corporations on the plunder of his country’s assets, Zelensky will appear at a conference of arms makers in Texas to present his country’s war as a fantastic business opportunity. #SlavaRaytheon https://t.co/zSNTT6Kcp3

  — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 9, 2022

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  So on April 9, Uncle Sam sent Boris Johnson, the latest version of America’s British Prime Minister poodle, to Kiev, to school Zelensky on who’s running the war. The UK, Johnson advised “was in it for the long run,” would not be party to any Ukraine, Russian agreement since the “collective West” saw a chance to “press” Russia and make the most of it. Johnson cannot be accused of subtlety.

  Two weeks later, the US sent Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Kyiv to reinforce Johnson’s warning and make clear the US and NATO were determined to use the war to “weaken” Russia. NATO ally Turkey has blamed the US and UK for sabotaging a promising chance to end the war early on.

  

  When it comes to provoking, preventing and prolonging senseless war, America always fails the test of peace. Getting back to the question posed: Why did the US torpedo the April Ukraine war negotiated settlement?

  Because we can.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 16:30

• Rates To 4% "Come Hell Or High Water" – Fed Has Credibility Crisis & Powell Knows It
  Rates To 4% “Come Hell Or High Water” – Fed Has Credibility Crisis & Powell Knows It

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  …some interesting statements by former Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida and his ducking of questions on the Fed’s role in this mess.

  

  Image of Richard Clarida from video below

  Credibility Problem and Disconnect

  2/3

  This perfectly illustrates both the disconnect and huge credibility problem the Fed has.

  As the chart below shows, 4% is already priced in. This is not a bold “hell or high water call.” It should be a milktoast statement of the obvious. But it does not seem to be. pic.twitter.com/h16XwjvA4x

  — Jim Bianco biancoresearch.eth (@biancoresearch) September 9, 2022

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

  Richard Clarida on Squawk Box

  Q: Is the fed data dependent or are they going to 4% come hell or high water. 

  Clarida Response

  • I think they are going to 4% hell or high water if I had to out it into two boxes.

  • Inflation is way too high. Inflation was way too high last year. 

  • Until, inflation comes down, the Fed is really a single mandate central bank.

  • They are data dependent but the inflation data is too high. So I think they are going to at least 4%. 

  • I agree it’s not a great place to be in. If it was just Putin, you are right. But unfortunately the economy is out of balance now. 

  Clarida ducked hard questions on the Fed’s role in this mess while admitting he got the inflation picture wrong.

  Clarida also supported fiscal stimulus, the last round of which was the big problem. 

  No one at the Fed saw this coming and they ridiculously kept QE going all the way to March of 2022.

  So yes, the Fed has an enormous credibility problem and Powell understands that. 

  As a direct consequence, the Fed is highly likely to make a mistake in the opposite direction. 

  Meanwhile, the big spotlight appears to be on jobs and the unemployment rate. 

  Strong Job Gains? Don’t Count On It!

  

   It’s Increasingly Likely That Alleged Job Strength is a Mirage of Part Time Second Jobs

  If Unemployment Levels Remain Low, How Far Can the Stock Market Decline?

  Here’s the question of the day: If Unemployment Levels Remain Low, How Far Can the Stock Market Decline?

  The answer isn’t pretty given The Fed is Openly Cheering the Stock Market Plunge Following Jackson Hole

  *  *  *

  Please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 15:30

• The "Scariest Paper Of 2022" Reveals The Terrifying Fate Of Biden's Economy: Millions Are About To Lose Their Job
  The “Scariest Paper Of 2022” Reveals The Terrifying Fate Of Biden’s Economy: Millions Are About To Lose Their Job

  For much of the past year (and certainly at the time, more than a year ago, when the so-called experts, central bankers and macrotourists were still yapping about “transitory inflation” and other things they were wrong about and do not understand), we were warning that at some point the Fed will realize that it is simply impossible to contain supply-driven inflation through stubborn rate hikes which instead would lead to a dire alternative – millions in mass layoffs and newly unemployed workers …

  3 mass layoff announcements in the past 3 hours, meanwhile 12 hikes priced in through February. pic.twitter.com/7Q4wfP9J79

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 14, 2022

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  … and will revise its 2% inflation target higher, a move which will send every risk asset – from high-beta trash and meme stonks, to blue-chip icons, to bitcoin and cryptos limit up.

  To remind readers of this coming phase shift, we most recently warned in June that “at some point Fed will concede it has no control over supply. That’s when we will start getting leaks of raising the inflation target“…

  At some point Fed will concede it has no control over supply. That’s when we will start getting leaks of raising the inflation target

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 21, 2022

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

  Well, it turns out that we were right, and not just about the coming mass layoffs, but also about the inflation target leaks. But first, lets back up a bit.

  A little over one year after nobody expected the Fed would be hiking rates like a drunken sailor until some time in late 2023 or 2024, it has now become fashionable to not only predict that the Fed will keep hiking rates at every FOMC meeting and at the fastest pace since the near-hyperinflation of the 1980s, but that the central bank will somehow manage to avoid a hard landing (i.e., the hiking cycle won’t end in a recession or depression), even though every single Fed tightening cycle since 1913 has ended in disaster.

  

  An example of this was the statement by former Fed vice chair (and PIMCO’s “twice-revolving door”) Rich Clarida, who told CNBC that “failure is not an option for Jay Powell,” adding that “I think they’re going to 4% hell or high water. Until inflation comes down a lot, the Fed is really a single mandate central bank.”

  “Failure is not an option for Jay Powell,” says Former Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida. “I think they’re going to 4% hell or high water. Until #inflation comes down a lot, the Fed is really a single mandate central bank.” pic.twitter.com/4hfLCVWZDP

  — Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) September 9, 2022

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  Of course, if one could hike rates in a vacuum that could work – after all, Clarida himself, who admits he got this year’s soaring inflation dead wrong when he was still a daytrading god and part oft he Fed in 2021, said that the Fed may as well have just one mandate, namely to tame inflation. But what so few seem to recall is that the Fed is “hiking to spark a recession“, or as CNBC’s Steve Liesman put it, there is no such thing as “immaculate rate hikes” meaning that rate hikes have dire tradeoffs in other sectors of the economy. In other words, if the Fed’s intention is to spark a recession, it will spark a recession… leading to millions of Americans losing their jobs, something which even Elizabeth Warren appears to have grasped.

  SENATOR WARREN SAYS SHE IS VERY WORRIED THAT FED IS GOING TO TIP ECONOMY INTO RECESSION

  Looks like someone didn’t read Chairman Doom’s speech https://t.co/wQALP1aA3Y

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 28, 2022

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  Yet due to the recency bias of Biden’s trillions in stimmies, and a world where workers – whether working form home or the office – have virtually all the leverage, few today can conceive of a world where inflation is zero or negative and is instead replaced with millions in unemployed workers, an outcome which one could (or rather should) say is even worse for the ruling democrats than roaring inflation. At least, with runaway prices, most people have a job and their wages are rising (at least nominally, if not in real terms).

  However, the higher rates rise, the closer we get to that inevitable moment when the BLS – unable to kick the can any longer – admits what has been obvious to so many for months: the US is facing a labor crisis of epic proportions with millions and millions of mass layoffs. And for those to whom it is not yet obvious, we urge to read a WSJ op-ed published by none other than Jason Furman, who is not some crackpot republican but Obama’s own top Economic Adviser from 2013-2017 and currently economic policy professor at Harvard.

  In “Inflation and the Scariest Economics Paper of 2022“, Furman summarizes a paper written by Johns Hopkins macroeconomist Larry Ball with co-authors Daniel Leigh and Prachi Mishra of the International Monetary Fund released by the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, whose conclusion is as follows: “To bring price increases down to 2%, we may need to tolerate unemployment of 6.5% for two years.“

  In other words, just as we said, inflation – much of which is supply-driven, which the Fed can do nothing about – will force the Fed to crush the economy by keeping rates for much longer, the result of which will be many millions in unemployed workers, or as Furman puts it, the paper “shows why the Federal Reserve will likely need to maintain its war on inflation, even if unemployment continues to rise.”

  What is more remarkable about Furman’s read of the economist paper is that in addition to its primary theme (the lack of labor slack, or labor tightness, is responsible for some 3.4% of underlying inflation in July 2022), the paper admits precisely what we have been saying all along – that the Fed can’t control supply-side variables:

  The paper also argues, convincingly in my view, for a different measure of underlying inflation. Fluctuations in energy and food prices are generally due to factors outside the control of macroeconomic policy makers. Geopolitics and weather have elevated the inflation rate in recent years. Plunging gasoline prices are temporarily lowering the inflation rate now. That’s why economists since the 1970s have focused on “core” inflation, which excludes food and energy.

  But food and energy aren’t the only things people buy that are subject to supply-side volatility. Prices of new and used cars, for example, have gyrated over the past two years for reasons that are mostly unrelated to the strength of the overall economy. Both regular and core inflation are based on taking averages of price increases and can be distorted by large changes in outlier categories. The median inflation rate calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland drops outliers to remove these distortions.

  According to Furman, median inflation – which is a statistically better measure of the underlying inflation that policy makers can actually control – is well above the Fed’s preferred headline inflation print (which fell to zero in July on a sequential basis and has stabilize) and shows no sign of moderating and has run at a 6.6% annual rate in the last three months.

  But the “scariest” part of the new paper, Furman reveals, is when the authors use their model to forecast the unemployment rate that would be needed to bring inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target. He explains why this is so scary:

  The authors present a range of scenarios, so I ran their model using my own assumptions…  Under these assumptions, which are more optimistic than the authors’ midpoint scenario, if the unemployment rate follows the Federal Open Market Committee’s median economic projection from June that the unemployment will rise to only 4.1%, then the inflation rate will still be about 4% at the end of 2025. To get the inflation rate to the Fed’s target of 2% by then would require an average unemployment rate of about 6.5% in 2023 and 2024.

  Under these scenarios if the unemployment rate rises to 4.1% then inflation will stay above 3%. If it rises to 7.5% then inflation will slightly undershot the Fed’s target.

  The unemployment rate needed to hit the Fed’s target in this scenario is 6.4%. pic.twitter.com/ysUDUU6yaG

  — Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) September 8, 2022

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  Where is unemployment now: it’s 3.7% (6.014 million unemployed workers vs 164.746 million civilian labor force). This matters, because according to one of the most erudite economist Democrats, by the end of the Biden admin in 2024, the unemployment will have to soar to 6.5% for inflation to plunge to the Fed’s historical target of 2.0%

  

  What does this mean in absolute numbers? Assuming a modest increase in the US labor force, a 6.5% unemployment rate in 2024 would translate into no less than 10.8 million unemployed workers, an 80% increase from the 6 million today!

  

  Still think that politicians – and especially Democrats – will sit quietly and blindly ignore how high the Fed is hiking rates if it means that to normalize inflation back to 2% it means nearly doubling the number of unemployed Americans (and a crushing recession to boot). Spoiler alert: no, they won’t, and this may be one of the very rare occasions when Elizabeth Warren is actually right to worry about what the coming mass layoff wave means for Democrats… and the 2024 presidential election.

  So what should the Fed do? Well, according to Furman, the Fed has four options:

  1. First, place more emphasis on the ratio of job openings to unemployment and median inflation as it assesses the tightness of labor markets and the underlying rate of inflation.
  2. Second, the new paper shows how much easier it will be to tackle inflation if expectations remain under control. The Fed should follow up on Chairman Jerome Powell’s tough talk at Jackson Hole with meaningful action such as a 75-basis-point increase at the next meeting.
  3. Third, be prepared to accept the unemployment rate rising above 5% if inflation is still out of control.

  While we doubt #3 is actionable, what is more remarkable is Furman’s final proposal: it’s the one that, like the Dude’s proverbial rug, ties the room together and sets the stage for what is coming:

  Finally, stabilizing at a 3% inflation rate is probably healthier for the economy than stabilizing at 2%—so while fighting inflation should be the central bank’s only focus today, at some point the Fed should reassess the meaning of victory in that struggle.

  And just in case his WSJ proves too complicated for some mainstream experts and economists, here it is in truncated, twitter format:

  (iii) Seriously consider raising the inflation target to something like 3 percent

  This one is tricky. On a blank slate a 3% target would be better than a 2% target. But shifting to that could deanchor expectations.

  — Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) September 8, 2022

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  And there you have it: remember what we said on June 21: “At some point Fed will concede it has no control over supply. That’s when we will start getting leaks of raising the inflation target.” Well… there it is.

  And while mainstream economists and the market may require quite a few months to grasp what is coming, it is the only way out of a crisis of commodities – as Zoltan has repeatedly and correctly put it – and which central banks have no control over, and thus will have to move not only the goalposts but the entire football field to avoid a social revolt or something even scarier.

  While we wait, we can’t help but snicker at what the 79-year-old figurehead in the White House tweeted today…

  My first two years in office spurred the strongest economic recovery in recent history. Today, I’m releasing my Economic Blueprint, a look at how our wins are rebuilding an economy that works for working families.https://t.co/eSlr3ymdo8

  It’s long. So here are the big things:

  — President Biden (@POTUS) September 9, 2022

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  … because what Biden calls “the strongest economic recovery in recent history” is – even according to Democrats – about to be the biggest economic disaster in modern history.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 15:11

• EV Market Revenue Set To Hit $384 Billion In 2022
  EV Market Revenue Set To Hit $384 Billion In 2022

  The global sales of electric vehicles are expected to hit $384 billion in 2022, according to data from Statista’s Mobility Market Outlook.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, battery EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs have both seen growing popularity in recent years, with projections estimating that they will reach a shared market volume of $869 billion by 2027.

  According to analysts from the Mobility Market Outlook:

  “It is safe to say that battery-powered vehicles are taking over the automobile market. The growth of the Electric Vehicles (EV) market has been significant despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting supply chain bottlenecks. Despite these recent challenges and rising production costs as a result of increasing raw material prices, EV sales are still going up at a fast rate. If this continues, they are set to surpass the sales of conventionally propelled vehicles (i.e., vehicles with internal combustion engines).”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 15:00

• Idaho LGBT Pride Event Drops Children's Drag Show On 9/11 Anniversary After Sponsors Pull Funding
  Idaho LGBT Pride Event Drops Children’s Drag Show On 9/11 Anniversary After Sponsors Pull Funding

  Via Remix News,

  After multiple sponsors dropped financial support for an LGBT Pride festival in Boise, Idaho – which would have featured children performing in drag on the anniversary of 9/11 –  the organizers have now said that the child drag show has been cancelled.

  

  The Pride festival still features a 9/11 remembrance ceremony, which was originally supposed to be followed by a child drag queen dance event. The Drag Story Hour is still planned to go ahead. According to the schedule published on the website, attendees will be given 15 minutes to remember the thousands of lives lost on 9/11 after terrorists committed attacks on the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon. Immediately afterwards, drag story time will begin, which usually features a man dressed in women’s clothing reading to children. Shortly after, the children drag queen event, known as Drag Kids, was originally scheduled to begin.

  

  However, apparently the inclusion of children was too much for Zions Bank, which dropped funding for the event.

  After Zions Bank dropped its support, Idaho Power and the Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) also dropped out on Thursday.

  Both Zions Bank and DHW committed $18,000 to the event. The two-day festival has a total of 88 sponsors listed on its website.

  Festival organizers said the move to drop Drag Kids was a difficult decision.

  “While the vast majority of our sponsors and supporters have voiced their support for the Boise Pride Festival and the Drag Kids program, we have made the very difficult decision to postpone this performance due to increased safety concerns. The health and well-being of the kids, their parents, and the attendees of the Festival are our priority,” read a Pride press release.

  Zions Bank released a statement explaining its decision.

  “Over the years, Zions Bank has supported a variety of Pride events because they are an important part of our support for our LGBTQ employees and allies and are representative of our efforts to foster an inclusive, diverse and equitable workplace and community,” the statement reads.

  “This support for all of our employees and communities remains unchanged.”

  pic.twitter.com/IHBJxFT0wM

  — Zions Bank (@ZionsBank) September 7, 2022

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  The Boise Pride festival responded to Zions Bank, writing the organization is “saddened to learn this is how they have chosen to respond to clearly anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and actions.”

  Boise Pride’s response to the statement from Zions Bank about pulling their participation in this weekend’s Boise Pride Festival. #boisepride2022 #supportingoursuperhumans pic.twitter.com/Fm16eCHBIP

  — Boise Pride (@boisepride) September 7, 2022

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  The pro-LGBT event will last two days and take place in the State Capitol building and a nearby park. The controversial Drag Kids event was described as “a drag show like none other, the Drag Kids range from ages 11-18 and are ready to bring it all to the Boise Pride Festival Stage! Come and cheer them on as they bring drag to the younger generation!”

  The festival is also sponsored by some of the country’s top corporations, including Amazon, Well’s Fargo, Target, Jack Daniel’s, HP, AT&T, Macy’s, Proctor and Gamble, and Chase.

  The Idaho Republican Party responded to the drag show, with the party asking for residents to boycott the event. Republicans also released a statement with phone numbers of many of the major corporations and organizations involved with sponsoring the event. The statement urges concerned citizens to call and ask them to drop their support.

  The newly elected Idaho GOP Chairwoman Dorothy Moon issued a statement on Wednesday morning calling on “concerned Idahoans” to “disavow this attack on Idaho’s children and invest their sponsorship dollars” elsewhere.

  “To be clear, this is no sleight-of-hand or political wordsmithing: Idaho’s Democrat party believes it is not only okay but laudable to encourage children to engage in public displays of sexuality,” Moon wrote in the email statement. “For those who have been following the radicalization of the Democrat party, this should come as no surprise.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/10/2022 – 14:30

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