Dec 21

Today’s News 21st December 2022

  • Kyle Bass: China's Xi Intentionally Crashing Property Market, Preparing For War
    Kyle Bass: China’s Xi Intentionally Crashing Property Market, Preparing For War

    Authored by Liam Cosgrove via The Epoch Times,

    Dallas-based hedge fund manager Kyle Bass is predicting big economic issues for China throughout 2023, stemming from an overleveraged financial system, collapsing property market, and unsustainable birth rates.

    China, a nation accustomed to greater than 7 percent real GDP growth for the past 10 years, is seeing signs of economic sluggishness. “The volume of exports could actually shrink by 6 percent on average in 2022 and 2023,” predicted the BlackRock Investment Institute in an October report.

    Bass, founder of the asset management firm Hayman Capital and prominent China hawk, claimed the Chinese are in a financial conundrum of their own making. “They have architectural problems,” the fund manager said in a Dec. 17 interview on the podcast Forward Guidance.

    Blaming the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) incentives and monetary policies for creating an environment of “riverboat gambling in their property sector,” Bass warned of real estate’s burgeoning share of Chinese GDP. Estimates of the property market’s share in the nation’s economy vary, but economist and Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff estimated it to be around 30 percent, as of September 2021.

    The growth of the property sector has ushered in an unprecedented drop in housing affordability.

    Last year, according to Bass, the median home price-to-income ratio in tier-one Chinese cities exceeded 36—meaning it would take more than three decades for the working class to accumulate the necessary income to purchase a home. The fund manager juxtaposed these figures to those of the U.S. housing bubble in 2008.

    “Just to put these into perspective, in the United States, median home prices got to be just over six times median income when our subprime crisis collapsed.”

    A commercial housing community is seen under construction in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China, on April 15, 2022. Since March, due to weakening market demand, banks in more than 100 cities across the country have voluntarily lowered mortgage interest rates. (Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

    Xi’s War on Housing

    Despite its lofty heights, the Chinese property is cooling off. National home prices have declined for the preceding 16 months, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics in China.

    Property developers are feeling the sting. S&P Global Ratings estimated in September that the Chinese real estate market needs a bailout of almost $100 billion to ensure projects can continue.

    These real estate pains are intentional, said Bass. They are part of CCP leader Xi Jinping’s mission to solve the country’s worsening demographic crisis.

    “What Xi figured out is the average birth rate of the average Chinese woman has dropped from over 2.1 to now 1.2,” the fund manager explained. Bass connected birth rates to house prices by pointing out that home ownership is essential to family formation.

    “They can’t marry in the basement of their parent’s house, so they don’t,” he added. “The birth rate started collapsing, and we all know the demographic curve of China looks terrible because of the one-child policy, but this supercharged the problem.”

    The “one-child policy” refers to China’s population curbing initiative, implemented in 1980 by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaopeng, which punished parents for having more than one child. The policy drastically reduced the country’s younger population, led to a stark gender imbalance, and was repealed in 2015.

    According to Bass, Xi recognizes the severity of China’s demographic problem and has decided to reverse the trend at all costs.

    “Xi decided to squash real estate. He knows it has to come down and stay down.”

    Taiwan Invasion Risk Factor

    The Texan fund manager has long been sounding the alarm about the communist regime’s plans to invade Taiwan and has warned western capital allocators to divest from China while they still can. Such an invasion is a matter of “when” not “if,” as Bass sees it.

    “If you listen to Xi … He is battening down the hatches,” Bass said in the interview. “There’s no question that he moves on Taiwan.”

    Bass sits on the board of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) fund, a newly launched investment fund founded by insiders from Washington, Australia, Japan, and India. The goal of Quad is to advance initiatives that give the West competitive advantages over China.

    If China were to invade Taiwan, Bass believes the United States should not hold any punches, specifically advocating for their removal from the SWIFT system—a move taken against several Russian banks earlier this year. “We can collapse their economy in a matter of months or maybe even weeks,” the fund manager said.

    Some economists disagree that the United States has the upper hand in an all-out trade war scenario as they believe Beijing can weaponize its U.S. Treasury bonds by dumping them. China owns just over $900 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds as of October, according to data from the Treasury Department.

    However, Bass believes China cannot sell bonds all at once, since doing so would cause economic distress for Beijing.

    “You need dollars running your economy … 86 percent of their settlements are in dollars, so they desperately need dollars to deal with the rest of the world,” Bass said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 00:05

  • Elon Musk's Starlink Now Has One Million Active Subscribers
    Elon Musk’s Starlink Now Has One Million Active Subscribers

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced it had reached the million “active subscribers” milestone, up from 250,000 in March. 

    “Starlink now has more than 1,000,000 active subscribers — thank you to all customers and members of the Starlink team who contributed to this milestone,” SpaceX tweeted on Monday. 

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    Over two years and dozens of successful launches later, SpaceX has more than 3,600 Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit. The Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 1 granted Starlink partial approval to operate 7,500 of the nearly 30,000 planned satellites. In a Dec. 16 regulatory filing with the FCC, SpaceX said it “anticipates that it will begin launching Gen2 satellites [second-generation Starlink satellites] before the end of December 2022.”

    Starlink’s significant jump in subscribers sounds impressive, but it has come at the cost of slower speeds. A recent report via Ookla shows that Starlink download speeds have continued to slide as new users come online. 

    In addition to adding Gen2 satellites to increase capacity for expanding Starlink’s customer base, the company plans direct-to-smartphone services with T-Mobile next year. 

    As for now, there’s still a long waitlist to receive a Starlink in some regions, though people have opted for the RV Starlink [available almost immediately] that can be transported to different locations. With RV Starlink, customers don’t get priority on the network (meaning slower speeds). 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 23:45

  • CVS, Walgreens Limit Sales Of Children's Pain Meds Amid Shortage
    CVS, Walgreens Limit Sales Of Children’s Pain Meds Amid Shortage

    Be Jeremy Tanner of Nextar Media

    As the country slogs through a “tripledemic” wave of COVID-19, influenza and RSV infections, CVS and Walgreens confirmed Monday that they are limiting purchases of children’s pain and fever medication. A Walgreens spokesperson told Nexstar that the decision was due to “increased demand and various supplier challenges,” and that pediatric fever reducing products are “seeing constraint across the country.”

    There is currently no widespread, national shortage so supplies may vary from one community to another.

    “In an effort to help support availability and avoid excess purchases, we put into effect an online only purchase limit of six per online transaction for all over-the-counter pediatric fever reducers,” the spokesperson added.

    The company encourages customers looking to buy an item in-store to check the Walgreens website for inventory by location.

    CVS spokesperson Mary Gattuso said the drugstore chain created the product limit to ensure “equitable access for all our customers.”

    There is currently a two product limit on all children’s pain relief products at all CVS Pharmacy locations and cvs.com, Gattuso confirmed.

    “We’re committed to meeting our customers’ needs and are working with our suppliers to ensure continued access to these items,” Gattuso said.

    How did we get here?

    Experts are blaming the early, widespread arrival of flu cases in the U.S., in combination with other respiratory illnesses, for the overwhelming demand for over-the-counter medication.

    “There are more sick kids at this time of year than we have seen in the past couple years,” said Dr. Shannon Dillon, a pediatrician at Riley Children’s Health in Indianapolis.

    Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson says it is not experiencing widespread shortages of Children’s Tylenol, but the product may be “less readily available” at some stores. The company said it is running its production lines around the clock.

    “At this point, it’s more like toilet paper at the beginning of the (COVID-19) pandemic,” Dillon said “You just have to look in the right place at the right time.”

    Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Sunday that shortages of children’s cold medicine, as well as an ongoing shortage of antibiotic drugs, are the result of unanticipated levels of demand, not a problem with the supply chain.

    “Demand went up this year, they anticipated some increase in demand, but not as much as we’re seeing and not this early in the season,” Gottlieb said. “So it’s not any kind of disruption in supply. This isn’t like what we had with baby formula where manufacturers have been taken out of the market.”

    Gottlieb anticipates that the pharmaceutical industry’s “sophisticated supply chain” should catch up soon.

    In the meantime, parents of sick children may want to explore other options if they find bare shelves at their local pharmacy, experts say. To start with, you may want to check different locations, consider generic versions of name-brand drugs or even ask the family doctor where to find a well-stocked supply.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 23:05

  • El Paso Mayor Warns 20,000 Illegal Aliens Waiting In Mexico To Cross Border When Title 42 Ends
    El Paso Mayor Warns 20,000 Illegal Aliens Waiting In Mexico To Cross Border When Title 42 Ends

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

    Roughly 20,000 illegal aliens are waiting to cross the border into El Paso, Texas, as soon as the Trump-era Title 42 program ends, Mayor Oscar Leeser said on Monday.

    Leeser made the comments at a press conference just two days after declaring a state of emergency amid an influx of illegal aliens that have crossed the southern border and been released into the city. Many of them are sleeping in downtown streets while temperatures are freezing, according to officials.

    “We’ve been talking to some of the partners in Mexico, and we’re talking also to the Border Patrol and those are the numbers that have been fed back to us,” said Leeser.

    “The shelters in [Ciudad] Juarez are completely full today, and they believe there are about 20,000 people ready to come into El Paso.”

    Leeser, a Democrat, added that his office has been working with local agencies to ensure that the city is prepared to handle the wave of illegal immigrants.

    Title 42 allowed Border Patrol agents to turn illegal aliens back to their country immediately if they were deemed to pose a health threat amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

    A U.S. Border Patrol agent instructs immigrants who had crossed the Rio Grande into El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 19, 2022 as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (John Moore/Getty Images)

    El Paso Declares State of Emergency

    The policy, which was set to end on Dec. 21, has been used millions of times to expel aliens since March 2020 and has prompted fears among officials that cities and states could soon be overwhelmed with immigrants.

    Preliminary Customs and Border Protection data shared with The Epoch Times shows that El Paso and Del Rio in Texas, two of the busiest sectors along the border, apprehended 70,288 illegal aliens between Dec. 1 through Dec. 19. An additional 28,913 “getaways,” or those who evaded arrest, were also reported.

    According to acting Chief Patrol Agent Peter Jaquez of the El Paso Sector, border agents experienced a major surge in illegal crossings over the weekend of Dec. 10 to Dec. 11, with a three-day average of 2,460 daily encounters. This marks a 40 percent increase compared with October. More increases are expected.

    In order to help deal with the increased number of illegal aliens, Leeser declared a state of emergency, granting the city more resources and authority to shelter those who have crossed the southern border.

    An emergency operations center will also be opened to help manage the situation, Leeser said.

    “We know that the influx on Wednesday will be incredible,” the mayor said in a news conference announcing the state of emergency.

    “I said from the beginning, that I would call it when I felt that either our asylum-seekers or our community, was not safe. I really believe that today our asylum-seekers are not safe as we have hundreds and hundreds on the streets and that’s not the way we want to treat people.”

    Supreme Court Puts Title 42 End on Hold

    On Nov. 16, a federal judge ruled that Title 42 was unlawful and ordered the Biden administration to end it by Dec. 21. Republican states promptly filed a motion seeking to stay the order but that order was denied late on Dec. 16 by a federal appeals court.

    The GOP-led states, including Arizona, Louisiana, and Texas, filed an emergency application seeking to reverse the lower court’s decision, just days before the policy was set to expire, noting that removing it would “needlessly endanger more Americans and migrants by exacerbating the catastrophe that is occurring at our southern border.”

    Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to the temporary pause to the termination of the policy but said the Biden administration must respond to the emergency appeal by 5 p.m. ET Tuesday.

    On Dec. 15, the city of Denver also declared a state of emergency in an effort to prevent a local humanitarian crisis amid an influx of illegal aliens arriving mainly from El Paso.

    Mayor Michael Hancock, a Democrat, said the increased number of illegal aliens arriving in the city, mostly from Central and South America, is placing extreme pressure on the city’s efforts to shelter them and leading to limited space. The situation is being further exacerbated by staffing issues and winter weather, according to Hancock.

    “It is at a crisis point right now and cities all over this country are being forced to deal with something we’re not equipped to deal with,” Hancock said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 22:45

  • Iran & Russia Have Entered "Full-Fledged Defense Partnership," US Warns
    Iran & Russia Have Entered “Full-Fledged Defense Partnership,” US Warns

    The US has alleged that relations between Iran and Russia have reached a “full fledged defense partnership” – based on the words of the US State Department’s Ned Price. 

    Price explained that Iran has continued its shipments of drones to the Russian military, at a moment drones have continued to pound Ukrainian cities, particularly targeting energy infrastructure – plunging at least half the country into darkness, and resulting in rolling emergency blackouts.

    Price went on the explain that the constant supply of drones and other munitions has in return resulted in Moscow giving back “unprecedented level of military and technical support to Iran… that should concern Iran’s neighbors.”

    Iranian Shahed-136 drones

    The US and UK have recently ramped up sanctions efforts to isolate and punish the Islamic Republic’s defense sector, and to thwart the drone transfers, but now see the closer relationship with Moscow as a ‘life-line’ keeping these manufacturers operating and thriving.

    An estimated hundreds of drones, and possibly thousands throughout the course of the over 10-month long conflict, are alleged to have been transferred from Iran to the Russian military. Throughout the opening half of the war, both Russian and the Iranian government denied the drone transfers; however, more recently Tehran officials belatedly admitted to sales which they say took place before the Feb. 24 invasion.

    The Ukrainian government and intelligence has countered that hundreds more are on the way: 

    A Ukrainian senior intelligence official says Russia has received a new shipment of Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drones from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    According to Ukraine’s defense intelligence (GUR) spokesman Andriy Yusov, the new shipment is smaller than the previous one sometime in the summer that is estimated to have included at least 400 UAVs.

    Yusov said in a Sunday statement, “This is a new batch [of Shahed drones], we do not comment on its size, but we see that Shaheds were not used during yesterday’s massive terrorist missile strikes.”

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    “All other available weapons were used, and these were all missiles and no Shaheds,” he continued. “This is a new batch, but this one, compared to the initial mass use of Shahed, is obviously smaller.”

    Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Monday again repeated the official government line that all Iranian-made drones were sent to Moscow “before the Ukraine war began.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 22:25

  • Dems Dump Trump Tax Data In Tuesday Night Release
    Dems Dump Trump Tax Data In Tuesday Night Release

    Update (2020ET): Hours after they voted to release Trump’s tax returns, House Democrats released a report which includes the data from Trump’s taxes.

    You can read the report below as we are currently doing, however upon first read – and the fact that it was quietly released on a Tuesday night instead of via a Washington Post bombshell detailing specific ‘evil things’ Trump’s done, we are going to – for now, assume this is a giant nothingburger.

    In a coordinated response to the release, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there is an “urgent need for legislation to ensure the public can trust in real accountability and transparency during the audit of a sitting president’s tax returns – not only in the case of President Trump, but for any president,” adding “we will move swiftly to advance Chairman Richard Neal’s legislation requiring the Internal Revenue Service to conduct an annual audit of the President’s finances.”

    In their closing observations, Democrats suggested that the IRS did not sufficiently audit Trump, and that high net worth individuals who use lawyers and accounting firms should be subject to enhanced actions.

    Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the top Republican on the Committee, warned in a press conference, “Longstanding privacy protections for all taxpayers have been compromised. Going forward, the majority chairman in the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee will have nearly unlimited power to target or make public the tax returns of private citizens—and not just private citizens: political enemies, business and labor leaders or even the returns of Supreme Court justices themselves.”

    *  *  *

    After a Tuesday vote, Democrats on the House and Ways Committee have voted to release six years of President Trump’s tax returns, in what Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the top Republican on the Committee, called a ‘new political weapon.’

    “This meeting actually sets a terrible precedent that unleashes a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president,” Brady told reporters on Tuesday. “I won’t speculate on what the next Congress and this committee will focus on related to tax returns, but I do know that a major focus will be on the IRS.”

    The committee voted along party lines, 24-16, to make public the returns – which will span 2015 to 2020. While the returns could be released as soon as hours, per The Hill, Chairman Richard Neal said that ‘sensitive information’ would be redacted, which may take days.

    Progressives, meanwhile, cheered the decision.

    “Chairman [Richard Neal (D-MA)] and the Ways and Means Democrats are to be congratulated for their dogged pursuit of this important information. Now they must share the fruit of their labors with the American people, the final arbiters of what is acceptable behavior by our elected leaders,” said Frank Clemente, director of the Americans for Tax Fairness nonprofit.

    That said, some legal minds are saying that Democrats would be abusing the oversight process if they rush to make the tax returns public without substantially assessing the presidential audit program – the ostensible reason for obtaining Trump’s returns, The Hill reports.

    “Any review of the presidential audit program that starts now and ends when the GOP takes control of the House in January would be slapdash and superficial,” said NYU Law professor Daniel Hemel in an article posted to Lawfare earlier this month.

    “Neal and the House Ways and Means Committee would undermine their own credibility—and could be seen as hoodwinking the courts and the public—if they proceeded to release the returns outside the context of a comprehensive review of the presidential audit program,” he added.

    Tax experts have expressed doubts about whether the documents obtained by the committee are enough to back up years of investigative reporting that also gained access to Trump’s financial records and painted a dismal picture of Trump as a businessman.

    “It could be a case of too little too late,” Steve Rosenthal, an analyst with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said in an interview. “I expect very little, without a fuller probe.” -The Hill

    In 2017, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow released two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax returns, which revealed that he paid $38 million that year, and the rate he paid was higher than than Mitt Romney and several other top earners.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 22:12

  • Twitter Files Point To Urgent Need For Platform Transparency
    Twitter Files Point To Urgent Need For Platform Transparency

    Authored by Kalev Leetaru via RealClear Wire,

    December has been a whirlwind month in the Twitterverse. A new academic study argued that hate speech was surging on the platform, while new company owner Elon Musk countered that such tweets were being quietly hidden, so they didn’t count. High-profile journalists were abruptly suspended and restored with little explanation, with condemnations from the EU and UN. All the while, the so-called “Twitter Files” allowed an unprecedented inside look at the messy and controversial world of platform moderation. What can we learn from all of this about the how the social platforms at the heart of our digital democracies are run?

    Twitter is unique among major social platforms in that outside researchers can access a real-time data feed of every tweet ever sent. This enables external audits of its content and is the means by which researchers have been able to document a significant rise in hate speech. But there’s a catch: Because Twitter does not make available the number of views each tweet gets, it’s impossible to distinguish between a tweet that received millions of views and one that was seen by three people. This difference between production (sending a tweet) and consumption (how many users see that tweet) lies at the heart of the dispute over Twitter’s changes to its moderation practices. Researchers claim hate speech is soaring because that is what they can measure, while Musk claims those tweets aren’t being seen, based on data that only Twitter itself possesses. If Twitter were to make such viewership data available, it could both generate rich new revenue streams and demonstrate to its critics that its visibility filtering is as effective as it claims.

    In one of the company’s most controversial moderation decisions since Musk took ownership, Twitter suspended a group of journalists last week, before restoring some of them just days later, leaving others banished and suspending new ones. Musk’s explanation, delivered after the fact with little specificity, was that he was only silencing journalists who were engaged in “doxxing” behavior that put his own family at risk.

    This wasn’t necessarily true: Some of those suspended were merely covering the controversy. But what was undeniably true was that only days earlier, the legacy media had largely ignored the revelations of the recent “Twitter Files.” The mainstream outlets that did cover it were mostly dismissive, arguing that Twitter is a private company that has the right to decide which voices to allow or disallow and does not owe any explanation to conservatives banished in the past.

    Yet when their own voices were suddenly silenced, the same mainstream media condemned the idea that voices could be silenced “without warning, process, or explanation” and denounced the “zero communication from the company on why I was suspended or what terms I violated.” Buzzfeed reporter Katie Notopoulos best summarized the reactions in her comment to Musk himself: “It’s highly unusual for a journalist at The Washington Post and The Washington Times to have their Twitter account suspended.”

    In other words, Twitter is a private company that can silence whomever it likes – until it comes for them. In this way, the “Twitter Files” served as a kind of Rorschach test, as Musk likely knew it would. Working with a hand-picked set of journalists, he granted access to selected internal correspondence and data to offer a never-before-seen glimpse into how Twitter has conducted some of its most controversial moderation decisions.

    The first release, on Dec. 2, offered more detail on the company’s decision-making around suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story and the degree to which partisan players with an interest in the outcome influence how Twitter prioritizes content removals. While containing no bombshell revelations, the tranche of internal emails nonetheless documented the routineness of external influence in Twitter’s enforcement. Yet the larger, unanswered question is what this landscape of external takedown requests really looks like: Who is the cast of characters that has access to this direct line into Twitter’s removal teams? Releasing the entire archive of these requests would enable journalists and scholars to form a more complete picture of what was taking place.

    The second release, on Dec. 8, focused on how Twitter quietly adjusts the visibility of tweets, accounts, and even entire topics in real-time to nudge its platform away from speech it views as allowable but “harmful.” While this was seized on as a newly uncovered revelation, the company has for years openly touted this “visibility filtering” as a powerful tool for addressing speech it believes detracts from its community. The real story is whether this filtering has been applied more to some constituencies than others. If Twitter were to release a master list of everything that has ever been subject to visibility filtering over time, this would go a long way toward answering this existential question. As a first step towards such transparency, Twitter says it will soon alert users about whether they themselves are subject to filtering.

    The third, fourth, and fifth releases, Dec. 9-12, documented Twitter’s banishment of Donald Trump in January 2021. While offering slightly more detail on his removal, the emails largely match what had already been widely reported.

    The sixth release, on Dec. 12, focused on Twitter’s engagement with law enforcement, specifically the FBI. Combined with earlier revelations of government-requested visibility filtering, it revealed the deference the company granted government agencies and select outside organizations. While any Twitter user can report a tweet for removal, officials at the platform provided more direct and expedited channels for select organizations, raising obvious ethical questions about the government’s non-public efforts at censorship. It also captured the degree to which law enforcement requested information – from the physical location of users to foreign influence – from social platforms outside of formal court orders, raising important questions of due process and accountability.

    Despite this trove of internal documents raising profound questions about the role of outside influence in platforms’ decisions, the amount of media coverage the Twitter Files received was almost utterly dependent on the partisan orientation of the media outlet itself. As of Sunday, Fox News had mentioned them 943 times, compared to just 33 mentions on CNN and just 29 on MSNBC. In contrast, the 2021 “Facebook Files,” in which internal communications and documents from the company were released to the public by a whistleblower, garnered global media coverage.

    Besides ideological considerations, the biggest difference is that the Facebook Files consisted of a vast tranche of internal documents that were released under embargo to a wide array of mainstream news outlets who could all review and report on them, contact sources for comment, contextualize them, etc. Those documents were provided in their entirety to newsrooms, enabling reporters to see their full context and counteract claims of cherry-picked statements.

    And Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey himself has called for all of the underlying Twitter Files documents to be released to the public – sidestepping why he is only now embracing the idea of moderation transparency when these actions occurred under his watch. Releasing the documents in full would address the emerging consensus in the media world that might be best summarized as “Musk is baiting mainstream media companies to cover a manufactured scandal about something that happened years ago” with “cherry-picked so-called evidence.”

    In the end, the Twitter Files provide few revelations that were not already widely known and reported on. That Twitter’s moderation practices and external engagements are so surprising to the American public offers a stark reminder of just how little the public understands about the way social platforms work. In the end, however, perhaps their greatest lesson is just how urgently we need transparency into the inner workings of the social platforms that form our modern digital public square.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 22:05

  • Cold Exposure May Inhibit Cancer Growth By 'Hijacking' Glucose Storage
    Cold Exposure May Inhibit Cancer Growth By ‘Hijacking’ Glucose Storage

    Ice baths and cold plunges have been brought into the limelight following Joe Rogan and Dr. Andrew Huberman’s Podcast earlier this year about the health benefits of cold exposure therapy. A study published last year by Dr. Susanna Soeberg, an expert in cold and heat treatment, was cited in the Podcast. 

    When thinking about ice baths — the first thing that comes to mind is cold exposure for athletic performance and exercise recovery. But according to Rogan and Huberman, as well as Soeberg’s study and others, regular users subjected to cold therapy will reap the health benefits in the form of adaptive hormesis, regulating hormones relating to sleep, regulating energy levels, mood maintenance, faster recovery after training and improved mental processing.

    In a separate study, the health benefits go even deeper. Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed that cold exposure could inhibit the growth of cancerous cells in mice and humans. 

    Researchers published their findings in the British weekly scientific journal Nature. Titled “Brown-fat-mediated tumour suppression by cold-altered global metabolism,” they found that rodents with cancerous cells that were continuously exposed to very low temperatures, but above freezing, for 20 days, experienced an activation of their brown fat tissue, which burns energy rather than storing it, diminishing the tumors’ energy supply.

    “Similarly, cold exposure of tumour-bearing mice also markedly inhibited the growth rates of these tumour types,” the study said. 

    New Scientist explained more about the study:  

    To eliminate the possibility that the tumour suppression was down to something other than the cold therapy, Cao [researcher Yihai Cao] and his team intervened in several ways. After surgically removing the cold-exposed mice’s brown fat, or turning off the gene by which brown fat generates heat, tumour inhibition was absent.

    The inhibition was also absent when the mice were fed a high-glucose diet, suggesting that the tumours’ growth was inhibited by a lack of glucose. The team also performed a genetic analysis on the cold-exposed tumours, finding a decrease in markers associated with glucose consumption.

    Then in the second part of the experiment, researchers exposed a group of six healthy humans to 61°F for 2 to 6 hours for two weeks. What they found was similar to the mice. Volunteers’ brown fat tissue was activated. 

    A person with Hodgkin’s lymphoma was continuously exposed to cold (72°F) for a week. The results also found brown fat became activated, and their tumors consumed less glucose over this period. 

    A lot more research in cold exposure therapy needs to be performed. In the meantime, the trend of ice baths and even heat exposure in combination has gone viral on social media after Rogan’s podcasts. 

    … and Wim Hof, also known as ‘The Iceman’, has been leading the cold exposure movement for years. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 21:45

  • Biden To Sign Defense Funding Bill, Ending Military’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate: White House
    Biden To Sign Defense Funding Bill, Ending Military’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate: White House

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

    President Joe Biden will sign the $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week, even though the measure ends the U.S. military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the White House said.

    “He’s going to sign that later this week,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Dec. 19 in Washington.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in Washington on Dec. 19, 2022. (Brandon Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

    The White House had kept open the possibility of a veto because of the budget bill’s inclusion of the forced termination of the military’s vaccine mandate, which the president opposed.

    The bill “has some provisions we support and some we do not,” Jean-Pierre said. “Clearly, the president was opposed to rolling back the vaccine mandate but we saw that Republicans in Congress decided that they’d rather fight against the health and well-being of the troops than protecting them.”

    She claimed that the vaccine mandate was protecting troops, even though many experts have acknowledged that the vaccines don’t stop transmission, provide little protection against infection, and have a waning effect on severe illness. Mandate critics have also noted that young, healthy people—the bulk of the military—face little risk from COVID-19.

    It isn’t clear when the president will sign the bill, which was passed by bipartisan majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate in recent weeks. The NDAA for fiscal year 2023 states that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the Biden appointee who imposed the vaccine mandate in 2021, must repeal the policy within 30 days of Biden’s signature.

    Pentagon officials, who have said they want to keep the mandate in place, declined to comment.

    “We won’t comment on pending legislation,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email. Austin was spotted entering the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) around the time that Jean-Pierre spoke.

    While Republicans spearheaded the end of the mandate, many Democrats joined them in ending the requirement.

    Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the mandate made sense when it was imposed but makes little sense now that the protection from a primary series of a vaccine serves little protection.

    “Personally, I would have preferred the Department of Defense do it on their own rather than legislature telling them to but since they didn’t, I think this makes sense, and I think we ought to do it,” he said on the House floor.

    Soldiers file paperwork before being administered COVID-19 vaccines in Fort Knox, Ky., on Sept. 9, 2021. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

    Pentagon Is Urged to Reinstate Discharged Troops

    Military branches have discharged more than 8,400 members over vaccine refusal. Three branches have been blocked by courts from discharging members seeking religious exemptions due to findings they likely or did violate the members’ constitutional rights with nearly word-for-word rejections.

    A group of senators urged Austin on Dec. 16 to reinstate the members who have been discharged.

    “All branches of our military are facing significant recruiting problems, including problems arising from the vaccine requirement,” they said in a missive (pdf). “Therefore, it is in our readiness and security interests to keep these brave men and women within our ranks.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 21:25

  • Chinese Refiners Are Profiting From The Russian Oil Price Cap
    Chinese Refiners Are Profiting From The Russian Oil Price Cap

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com,

    Independent Chinese refiners have seen their refining margins jump in recent weeks as they are able to negotiate steeper discounts for their preferred Russian crude grade, even if they buy it above the G7 price cap, trading and industry sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

    The flow of cheaper Russian crude to China lifted the refining margins of the independent refiners, the so-called teapots, to above $115 (800 Chinese yuan) per ton last week, from less than $86 (600 yuan) at the beginning of December, according to a China-based oil analyst who spoke to Reuters.   

    Many independent Chinese refiners based in the Shandong province have continued to buy Russian crude and are ignoring the price cap imposed by Western countries. The price cap on Russian crude imposed by the EU, the G7, and Australia came into effect on December 5, but China hasn’t joined the so-called Price Cap Coalition, which bans maritime transportation services for Russian crude oil unless the oil is sold at or below $60 per barrel.  

    ESPO, the crude from Russia’s Far East which is preferred by China’s independent refiners, is being sold above the price cap and estimated at around $65-68 per barrel on a free-on-board basis by trading sources. 

    Although it’s above the price cap, the price of ESPO being negotiated by Chinese refiners is still at a wide discount to ICE Brent futures for the month of delivery of the cargo, currently February and March.

    While China hasn’t joined the Price Cap Coalition, the fact that a price cap now exists gives the world’s top crude oil importer, as well as other buyers of Russian crude such as India, more bargaining power to negotiate steep discounts for the Russian crude even outside the price cap mechanism, analysts say.

    The trades with ESPO above the price cap suggest that, for now, Russia has the tankers and insurance firms to provide coverage and shipping for the ESPO grade, which can reach China from Russia’s Far East in less than a week.  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 20:45

  • US Nuclear-Capable Bombers, F-22 Jets Deploy For Joint Drills Over South Korea
    US Nuclear-Capable Bombers, F-22 Jets Deploy For Joint Drills Over South Korea

    The US has sent a B-52H strategic bomber as well as F-22 stealth fighter jets to participate in joint military drills over South Korea on Tuesday, in what Pyongyang is sure to take as a significant provocation. It comes after the north has test-fired a record number of missiles, including ICMBs, this year – also amid live military exercises.

    “South Korea, US conducted combined air drills involving US B-52H strategic bomber, F-22 stealth fighters,” South Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement, also confirming it is utilizing its own F-35A stealth jets and F-15K fighters for the aerial maneuvers with the US.

    US B-52H, F-22 stealth fighter & C-17 in Korea’s air defense identification zone on Tuesday. Korean Ministry of National Defense

    Yonhap News described based on the ministry statement, “The deployment of the B-52H and F-22 fighters this time is part of an effort to reinforce the credibility of the U.S.’ extended deterrence.”

    The deployment comes a mere days after North Korea’s weekend launch of a pair of ballistic missiles fired toward Japan, which set off emergency notifications across the large island-nation. Officially pacifist Japan has meanwhile announced its largest defense budget since WWII, having unveiled a $320 billion plan, which will involve development of long-range offensive missiles.

    The Tuesday Korea-U.S. air drill near Jeju, the country’s largest island off the southern tip of the peninsula.

    “The purpose of joint South Korea-U.S. stealth fighter training is to strengthen the ability to respond to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats,” a Korean government source told regional media. “The training involves practicing strikes on North Korean high-value targets.”

    The Pentagon described the mission as part of “extended deterrence” over the South Korean capital.

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    Likely Pyongyang will respond with more military muscle-flexing, including possibly with more drills near the border. It has already launched over 60 ballistic missiles so far this year. This reportedly included an ICBM launch on November 18. According to The New York Times‘ count, the country has “launched at least 90 ballistic and other missiles this year, more than in any previous year” – despite a UN ban.

    Kim Jong Un’s influential sister responded Tuesday, warning the US and South Korea to “behave carefully and think twice”…

    Earlier Tuesday, Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, used a slew of derisive terms — such as “malicious disparaging,” “rubbish” and “dog barking” — when she dismissed the outside assessments that cast doubt on North Korea’s spy satellite development and long-range missiles.

    South Korean intelligence has for months been warning that the north is preparing its first nuclear test in over half a decade, but despite predictions which have been on since the summer, this has yet to materialize. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 20:25

  • The US Has Spawned An Entire Generation Of 'Kidults' That Simply Refuse To Grow Up
    The US Has Spawned An Entire Generation Of ‘Kidults’ That Simply Refuse To Grow Up

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    Do you know any adults that still live at home with their parents?  If you are like most Americans, you probably know lots of them.  Sadly, that is because the percentage of young adults that are living with at least one parent has been trending upwards for decades.  Of course the cost of housing is one factor that is driving this phenomenon.  At one point in 2022, housing was more unaffordable than it had ever been in the entire history of our country.  So the truth is that many of the multi-generational households that exist today have formed due to economic necessity. 

    But in other cases, “kidults” that simply refuse to grow up have moved back home with Mom and Dad because it is easier than trying to live independently.

    Thanks to the “kidult” trend, approximately half of all U.S. adults in the 18 to 29-year-old age bracket are currently living with at least one parent…

    In July 2022, half of adults ages 18 to 29 were living with one or both of their parents. This was down from a recent peak of 52% in June 2020 but still significantly higher than the share who were living with their parents in 2010 (44% on average that year) or 2000 (38% on average).

    So what do parents think about all of this?

    Well, some like it, but even more don’t like it…

    The share of adult children who live with their parents has ticked up in recent years. This just in: The parents don’t like it.

    A recent Pew survey found two-fifths of dads believe parents hosting adult children is bad for society, while only 12 percent think it’s a good thing. Moms agree, albeit to a lesser degree.

    Overall, the Pew survey discovered that Americans have very mixed feelings about this phenomenon…

    Over a third of Americans (36%) say that more young adults living with their parents is bad for society, while 16% say it is good for society. Nearly half of Americans (47%) say it doesn’t make a difference.

    Of course every story is different.

    Some adults are living at home because they just cannot afford homes of their own.

    These days, millions of young people graduate from college with massive amounts of debt, and when all of that debt forces them to go back to living with their parents they are referred to as “boomerang kids”.

    If you are a young person that has been financially crippled by student loan debt, I certainly don’t blame you for trying to save money so that you can turn your life around.

    Ultimately, trying to get out of debt is a really good thing.

    But of course there are millions of other young adults that simply refuse to grow up.

    In fact, they have become so numerous that the toy industry has created a special term for them.  They are called “kidults”, and these days they are spending billions of dollars on toys…

    There are two things keeping the toy industry afloat right now: inflation and a consumer group known as “kidults.”

    These kids at heart are responsible for one-fourth of all toy sales annually, around $9 billion worth, and are the biggest driver of growth throughout the industry, according to data from the NPD Group.

    Have you ever met an adult that has a special room for all of his Star Wars collectibles?

    If so, then you probably have a really good idea of the type of person that I am talking about.

    “Kidults” are shelling out so much money for toys that toy companies have actually begun to create “product lines just for these consumers”…

    Kidults, who tend to spend more on toys, have a great fondness for cartoons, superheroes and collectibles that remind them of their childhood. They buy merchandise such as action figures, Lego sets and dolls that might typically be considered “for kids.” However, in recent years, toy makers have created product lines just for these consumers, realizing that demand is high for this generation of adults who still want to have fun.

    I am all for having fun.

    But this is getting ridiculous.

    Sadly, men are much more likely to be “kidults” than women are.

    Needless to say, this is one of the reasons why many women find it so difficult to find someone suitable to marry.

    The labor force participation rate for men has been trending down for decades, and meanwhile the labor force participation rate for women has been trending up for decades.

    Of course the systematic emasculation of the male population is another reason why this has been happening, but that is a topic for another article.

    Once upon a time, it was extremely unusual for an able-bodied male to be doing nothing if he was capable of working.

    But now we have millions upon millions of men that have simply dropped out of the labor force completely.

    Some of those men are now living with their parents, and that isn’t good for our society.

    Unfortunately, as economic conditions deteriorate, even more young adults will move back home with Mom and Dad.  According to a Wall Street Journal poll that was just released, approximately two-thirds of Americans believe that “the nation’s economic trajectory is headed in the wrong direction”…

    A majority of voters think the economy will be in worse shape in 2023 than it is now and roughly two-thirds say the nation’s economic trajectory is headed in the wrong direction, the latest Wall Street Journal poll shows.

    The survey, conducted Dec. 3-7, suggests a recent burst of positive economic news—moderating gas prices and a slowing pace of inflation—haven’t altered the way many feel about the risk of a recession, something many economists have forecast as likely.

    The coming year is definitely going to be quite rough, and the outlook for beyond that is even worse.

    As the economy crumbles and global events spiral out of control, we are going to need men to be men.

    But a lot of the “kidults” out there simply don’t want to be men, and that is extremely unfortunate.

    *  *  *

    It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 20:05

  • Top Russian Diplomat Claims US Still Holding 60 Russians 'Hostage'
    Top Russian Diplomat Claims US Still Holding 60 Russians ‘Hostage’

    Coming fresh off the December 8th one for one prisoner swap of Brittney Griner and Viktor Bout, the Kremlin on Tuesday accused the United States of holding over 60 Russian citizens as “hostages” – in what could be a bid to keep the exchanges going, after the return of Bout was widely seen as hugely beneficial to the Russian side, if not also a full-blown propaganda success.

    Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin complained in the fresh statements that “The Americans deliberately ignore the existing legal mechanisms,” according to RIA Novosti.

    Former US Marine Trevor Reed was released in April 2022, via Reuters.

    He was referencing a treaty signed by both countries in 1999, called the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance. Now some two weeks since the Bout and Griner prisoner exchange, which was accomplished when both were let go on an airport tarmac in Doha, Washington and Moscow have continued signaling they remain open to future swaps.

    Vershinin in his comments underscored, “The total number of Russian citizens who have, in fact, been taken hostage, exceeds 60 people.”

    The senior Russian diplomat didn’t offer any details, and it’s unclear how many of these are simply Russian nationals being held for low-level offenses, or else held for espionage or other more serious crimes. 

    The day after Bout’s release earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin said he’s willing to entertain future swaps with the US: 

    Asked after a summit in Kyrgyzstan whether other prisoners could be swapped, Putin replied that “everything is possible,” noting that “compromises have been found” that cleared the way for Thursday’s exchange of Griner for Bout.

    “We aren’t refusing to continue this work in the future,” the Russian leader said, making his first comments about the closely watched trade.

    The White House had previously reacted to these remarks of Putin, with National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby saying soon after that indeed more prisoner swaps remain “possible” – stressing there are active channels of communication for this but that the US wants further “actions” and not just words out of Moscow.

    Former Marine and detained US citizen Paul Whelan, who hoped to be released in the Griner swap, but remains in a Russian penal colony.

    Ex-Marine Paul Whelan and school teacher Marc Fogel are said to be high on the Biden administration’s list of priorities in terms of still locked-up Americans inside Russia. Former Marine Trevor Reed was freed by the Russians last spring in a rare successful swap, which was a precursor to the Griner deal.

    Additionally, the US State Dept. said the following responding to Putin’s remarks about future prisoner swaps: “It’s not often we can say that we actually agree with something President Putin said, but today I can say that,” Ned Price told CNN earlier this month. “President Putin himself has said that these discussions will continue. These discussions absolutely will continue,” Price said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 19:45

  • The Hope Of Fusion Vs The Pomp Of Politicians And Climate Activists
    The Hope Of Fusion Vs The Pomp Of Politicians And Climate Activists

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    If there is a climate problem, science will find the answer, not politicians or activists…

    There was an interesting trio of articles in the Wall Street Journal this week with seemingly conflicting messages.

    Hold the Nuclear Fusion Hype

    Headline Number One: Hold the Nuclear Fusion Hype

    The breakthrough is exciting but its practical use as an energy source may be decades away.

    What the experiment proved is that scientists can recreate the physical reactions in stars. But scaling the technology and making it commercially viable by most scientists’ accounts will likely take another few decades.

    How Fusion Works and Why It’s a Breakthrough

    Headline Number Two: How Fusion Works and Why It’s a Breakthrough

    The Energy Department has announced the first gain in energy from fusion in a laboratory—the first time fusion reactions produced more energy than it took to induce them. Last week 192 laser beams at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility heated and compressed a capsule of hydrogen to previously unattainable temperatures and pressures, igniting fusion reactions that produced 50% more energy than the laser beams had delivered.

    Nuclear-Fusion Breakthrough Accelerates Quest to Unlock Limitless Energy Source

    This is the third headline and the article has the most details. The link below is a a free link. The article merits a close look and has some very interesting diagrams. 

    Headline Number Three: Nuclear-Fusion Breakthrough Accelerates Quest to Unlock Limitless Energy Source

    Experiment yields net-positive energy, a milestone in effort to develop nuclear fusion as a source of clean power.

    Researchers said that shortly after 1 a.m. last Monday, they fired the largest laser in the world into a tiny cylinder holding a diamond capsule containing hydrogen isotopes. For a brief moment, the laser delivered energy that exceeds the entire U.S. power grid, in an attempt to compress the capsule’s fuel to reach densities, temperatures and pressures that are higher than the center of the sun. In the moments after the shot, the researchers weren’t sure what had happened.

    “The shot goes off. It takes only a few billionths of a second, and so we need an exquisite suite of diagnostics to measure what happened,” said Alex Zylstra, the principal experimentalist on the project. “And as the data started to come in, we saw the first indications that we had produced more fusion energy than the laser input.”

    It is premature to talk about building fusion power plants, said Gianluca Sarri, a professor of physics at Queen’s University Belfast who wasn’t involved in the new research. “There are technical issues that need to be solved still before it becomes an energy source,” he added. 

    “We are still not gaining electrical energy” Dr. Sarri said.

    The lasers at the National Ignition Facility are less than 1% efficient, according to Jonathan Davies, a senior scientist at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. The facility used hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the laser light needed to produce about 3 megajoules of fusion energy.

    Same Thing, Different Lead Message

    All three articles say the same thing inside, but the initial message looks vastly different. 

    • Hold the Hype

    • Fusion Breakthrough

    • Limitless Energy Source

    The articles and headlines are accurate. They don’t really conflict, they just provide a different initial message. 

    The details in the third article show the problems ahead. Scientists were successful but it took hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the laser light needed to produce about 3 megajoules of fusion energy.

    Yet, I find it fascinating that scientists were able to produce temperatures as hot as the sun without anything melting or blowing up. 

    The extreme temperatures and pressures—similar to those in the cores of stars and giant planets and in exploding nuclear weapons—triggered a fusion reaction. The hydrogen atoms combined to form helium, releasing a tremendous amount of energy at the same time. The Dec. 5 fusion reaction produced 3.15 megajoules of energy, a gain of about 1.5 times.

    Pomp of Activists and Politicians

    This weekend AOC’s climate change documentary earned only $80 per theater despite rave critic reviews.

    OutKick reports AOC’s Clime Change Documentary Fails Hard

    Film critics say the film titled “To the End” is splendid. It holds a 88% “fresh” critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. The doc has not yet generated an average rating from the audience.

    But despite critics raving about AOC’s beauty and intelligence, moviegoers have shown no such interest in the film.

    The documentary earned an average of just $81 per theater during its debut weekend. “To the End” sits atop no lists of box office successes.

    A failure this great falls on par with the embarrassment that is Jemele Hill’s book sales. Per publishing data, Hill’s new self-purported journey in overcoming racism has sold just $5,034 copies after a month.

    AOC, Hill, racial hysteria, and climate change propaganda play well on social media. The press loves those women and their “issues.” Yet most of the country does not care.

    There’s minimal demand to buy a ticket to watch rich, privileged women stroll around and screech about climate change.

    Totally Boring Trailer

    If that’s not overwhelmingly boring, what is? 

    The hype is constant and has been consistently wrong. The word did not end in the 10 years after which activists said it would.

    The world will still be here in 2050. 

    UN Seeks $4 to 6 Trillion Per Year to Address Climate

    On October 29, I noted UN Seeks $4 to 6 Trillion Per Year to Address Climate

    Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. A rise of 1C to date has caused climate disasters in countries from Pakistan to Puerto Rico.

    What Would It Cost?

    Hooray! Only $4 trillion to 6 trillion per year.

    “A global transformation from a heavily fossil fuel- and unsustainable land use-dependent economy to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investments of at least US$4–6 trillion a year,” stated the UN report (page 26 of 132).

    Q: US$4–6 trillion a year for how many years?
    A: Based on figure ES.6 (lead chart) least eight years.

    Q: What Percent of GDP?
    A: 4 to 9 percent for developing countries, and 2 to 4 percent for developed countries.

    And developing countries will gladly fork over up to 9 percent of GDP every year for eight years.

    Yeah, right.

    Meanwhile, the EU is burning more trees and coal. Burning trees is magically deemed environmentally neutral. 

    What a hoot.

    Exploring the Massive Clean Energy Boondoggle of Burning Trees as Carbon Neutral

    Please consider Exploring the Massive Clean Energy Boondoggle of Burning Trees as Carbon Neutral

    To the shock of everyone with any semblance of common sense, we are clearcutting forests and burning the trees based on the idea the process is carbon neutral.

    Meanwhile, President Biden is sucking up to Venezuela so that it will pump more oil. Note that Venezuela’s oil is sour, loaded with sulphur.

    For details, please see President Biden Makes Oil Overtures to Venezuelan Dictator Nicolás Maduro

    Hypocrisy, You Bet

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    President Biden, the UN, and the Climate Lobby Seek to Spread More Fossil Fuel Misery

    Also consider President Biden, the UN, and the Climate Lobby Seek to Spread More Fossil Fuel Misery

    Team Biden in Action

    On November 12, president Biden’s climate ambassador, John Kerry, made this statement:

    “It’s a well-known fact that the United States and many other countries will not establish…some sort of legal structure that is tied to compensation or liability. That’s just not happening.” 

    Guess What Happened 

    In case you are wondering about the Secretary-General’s statement regarding a loss and damage fund, John Kerry signed up for it at the conference.

    What about solar energy roof tiles?

    I am glad you asked. President Biden is more concerned over a couple hundred manufacturing than promoting solar energy. Tariffs have driven up the costs that few want to install the roof tiles. 

    Where we will get the metals for batteries and how we get clean energy from the desert to Chicago cheaply are both mysteries. The attempt adds to inflation. 

    And China is going gangbusters building coal-powered electricity plants.

    Reparations, bribes, inept tariff policies, sucking up to Venezuela, and mandating policies that are not close to being ready are all part of the Biden-AOC-Warren packages.

    Hype or not, fusion is a far better bet on fixing the problem than the misguided stupidity of politicians and activists.

    *  *  *

    Like these reports? I hope so, and if you do, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 19:25

  • Incoming GOP House Rep Apparently Fabricated His Life Story
    Incoming GOP House Rep Apparently Fabricated His Life Story

    Incoming Republican New York Congressman George Santos appears to have presented voters and the public at large with a personal history that’s positively riddled with falsehoods, according to a damning exposé from The New York Times. 

    For starters, Santos claimed that he earned degrees in economics and finance from Baruch College and New York University. However, when the Times inquired, neither school was able to locate any record of this attendance.  

    New York Congressman-Elect George Santos won the first-ever congressional election featuring a clash of openly gay men (Mary Altaffer/AP via NBC News)

    After securing his degrees, he supposedly became “an associate asset manager” in Citigroup’s real estate division, according to a biography on his campaign website. A Citi spokeswoman not only told the Times that Citi couldn’t confirm he’d worked there, but that his claimed job title wasn’t familiar either — and Citi sold its asset management division in 2005.  

    His shiny campaign resumé also included a claimed stint at Goldman Sachs. If you’ve picked up on the pattern, you’ve already guessed — correctly — that Goldman Sachs couldn’t find any record of his employment.  

    Santos said he was the founder and leader of “Friends of Pets United,” a supposed tax-exempt organization. While the Times found some traces of the organization on Facebook, the IRS found no indication it held tax-exempt status, and neither New York nor New Jersey officials could find records of such a registered charity. 

    It just keeps gets better: Friends of Pets United held a joint $50-a-head fundraiser, but the event’s beneficiary says she never received a dime — just excuses from Santos on why the money wasn’t coming through.  

    During the same period as the purported pet philanthropy, Santos was the subject of an eviction suit, where was accused of owing $2,250 in rent. Two years later — in 2017 — he was again the target of an eviction claim, this time allegedly owing more than $10,000. Eviction was ordered, and Santos was fined more than $12,000.  

    Santos (right) and his fiancé (Instagram via Star Observer) 

    In an apparent case of massive projection, in 2021 Santos claimed he was a landlord suffering from the consequences of New York’s eviction moratorium. The Times couldn’t find any records of his property ownership. 

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    Santos also reported having received a $750,000 salary and a million to five million dollars in dividends over the last two years — from the “Devolder Organization,” a mysterious entity with no public website or LinkedIn presence. During the same time, he lent more than $700,000 to his campaign. 

    Santos has portrayed Devolder as his “family’s firm” that managed $80 million:

    “He described it as a capital introduction consulting company, a type of boutique firm that serves as a liaison between investment funds and deep-pocketed investors. But Mr. Santos’s disclosures did not reveal any clients, an omission three election law experts said could be problematic if such clients exist.” — New York Times  

    Probing his past in Brazil, the Times also unearthed criminal charges against Santos — and a confession — over an incident in which “he stole the checkbook of a man his mother was caring for.” 

    The openly gay Santos claimed that his company “lost four employees” in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting. He didn’t specify the company, and the Times couldn’t find any overlap between profiles of the 49 dead and any of the companies Santos claimed to have worked for. (Like many others, he implied the assault on the Orlando club was an attack on the LGBT community — reinforcing a persistent myth about the shooter’s target selection.)  

    The 34-year old Santos won his northern Long Island and Northeast Queens district by 8 points, in a mild upset in an historic, first-ever congressional tussle between two openly gay men. 

    In a statement tweeted by Santos on Monday afternoon, his lawyer said it’s “no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at The New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations.”  

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    Icing on the cake: The lawyer attributes to Churchill a quote he apparently never said. 

    Santos faces more than just humiliation. If he’s found to have knowingly and willfully made material omissions or misrepresentations on his House financial disclosures, he faces penalties of up to $250,000 and five years in prison. 

    He could well face a House ethics investigation, but the timing of that seems to make it likely that, barring his resignation, he’ll be sworn in in January.  

    Just hours after the Times notified him about their pending report, looking like a man thrashing around for a lifeline, Santos posted a resounding endorsement of Kevin McCarthy, who’s in the midst of a tumultuous drive to become Speaker of the House.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 19:05

  • Student Debt: It Is And Always Has Been A Personal Choice
    Student Debt: It Is And Always Has Been A Personal Choice

    Authored by Joyce Humber-Faison via The Mises Institute,

    The Supreme Court of the United States will hear plaintiff and defendant oral arguments for Biden v. Nebraska in February 2023. That case will determine whether the Biden administration has the constitutional authority to forgive student loan debt and thereby make taxpayers responsible for the debts that students have incurred.

    This past year President Biden announced that his administration would forgive federal student loans. According to the Congressional Budget Office student debt forgiveness would cost taxpayers $400 billion. Taxpayers are already taxed for public schools and for the public universities within their states and, in some instances, within their cities. Therefore, there is no reason that they should assume the loan debt that students chose to amass by attending colleges that have tuitions that they cannot afford.

    Each of the fifty states has public universities. The tuitions for in-state residents at the public institutions of higher education are lower than the tuitions at private institutions. In all states, out-of-state residents pay higher tuitions than in-state residents. For instance, in New York State there are forty-five public universities (SUNY), and there are twenty-five public colleges in New York City (CUNY). The undergraduate tuition at CUNY is $305 per credit. The average SUNY undergraduate tuition per credit is $295 for in-state residents.

    However, in some instances based on residency, grades, family income, and other criteria, tuitions are free at CUNY and SUNY. If some New York State or New York City high school students choose to attend public colleges out-of-state or to enroll in private universities in New York where the average private college tuition is $929.75 per credit, they will pay tuition rates that are higher than if they were to enroll in CUNY or SUNY, even if they did not meet the standards for free tuition

    Tuitions at private institutions are generally higher than out-of-state or in-state public college tuitions. During the first two years, all colleges, whether public or private institutions, have the same core liberal arts, mathematics, and science classes; for the next two years, students take electives and requisite courses for their majors. Courses, taken during the freshman and sophomore years can be transferred from public to private colleges and conversely within the same state. Interstate course transfer acceptance is discretionary. A three-credit English composition class carries a higher cost at a private college than the same course at a public college. A student chooses to pay more tuition for the same course at one college than at another college.

    In order not to incur debt, students should attend colleges based on their economic comfort level; however, some do not. Many students choose to attend colleges that neither they nor their parents can afford. Both they and their parents accrue loans that will take years to pay off. Loan repayment, depending on the amount borrowed, can take anywhere from ten to thirty years to repay.

    Students’ lives are curtailed by those loans. Where and in what types of residences they will live, when and if they will marry, and when and if they will have children are instances in which student loan debt is the prevailing predicate. Choice then is the underlying economic catalyst for students’ debts,

    To curtail or to eliminate debt, students have the option to attend in-state public universities or private universities that do not charge tuition. In all cases students should be very cautious when considering any tuition-charging private institution.

    Some television pundits proffer the opinion that tuitions increase because the federal government continues to hold student debt and that while students accumulate large debt balances colleges will increase tuitions. However, those pundits forget that debt is the choice of students, and, as with any purchase, economic prudence in college choice is essential. Students wrap themselves in debt because they choose not to wait for their self-sufficiency; their debt is a choice and should not be the burden of taxpayers. Caveat emptor.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 18:45

  • Zelensky To Address Congress In Person Wednesday As $45BN More In Aid Set For Approval
    Zelensky To Address Congress In Person Wednesday As $45BN More In Aid Set For Approval

    The D.C.-based online political news daily Punch Bowl has revealed late Tuesday that Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky is set to address Congress on Wednesday, but this time in person, as his plane has also possibly already arrived in the US.

    It’s believed the special address is the hidden subject of a letter circulated to lawmakers by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday which encouraged them to “be present for a very special focus on Democracy Wednesday night.”

    His appearance on Capitol Hill would mark the first time since the Feb.24 Russian invasion that he’s left Ukraine. He’s likely to use the occasion to “thank” lawmakers for proposing a gargantuan omnibus spending package which includes $45 billion in military, economic, and other foreign aid to Ukraine. 

    But without doubt he’ll also quickly pivot to his “asks” – just like the first time he addressed Congress (virtually) on March 16 – which is likely to include another plea for the US military and NATO to “close the skies”, as well as to send more advanced weaponry such as long-range missiles and warplanes.

    Currently there are fears that Russia is planning a large-scale further invasion alongside Belarusian forces, as Putin has been visiting Minsk this week for talks. Ukraine is also struggling to keep power on amid devastating energy infrastructure attacks. 

    If Zelensky does again press for the US to “close the skies” – which would be tantamount to imposing a No Fly Zone (and brining the US directly into war with Russia) – it’s likely to come couched in deeply emotional language, as the first speech to Congress was. 

    Zelensky’s March address, it should be recalled, was laced with American patriotic references from Pearl Harbor to memories of 9/11 to Martin Luther King Jr, and even an appeal for Americans to “remember” the heroism and leadership etched on Mt. Rushmore. The speech further had a consistent theme that Russia had not just attacked Ukraine’s people and values – but that it was attack on “basic human values” and thus the West itself.

    Zelensky received a standing ovation at the end of the March virtual address to Congress.

    Likely Wednesday’s new in-person appearance will include themes of suffering during Christmas, given on Tuesday top Ukrainian officials alleged Russia is attempting to “steal” Christmas and impose maximum levels of suffering on the population. Lawmakers will meanwhile likely vote on the massive omnibus bill, which includes the tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine, within days after Zelensky makes his speech.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 18:25

  • DOJ Subpoenaed Google To Access Personal Info Of House Staffers During Russia-Trump Probe: Report
    DOJ Subpoenaed Google To Access Personal Info Of House Staffers During Russia-Trump Probe: Report

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) allegedly used grand jury subpoenas to secretly access personal information belonging to House Republican staffers – including email communications, residential addresses, and cellphone data – while Republican lawmakers simultaneously worked to obtain evidence that the FBI’s investigation into the now disproven Trump–Russia collusion narrative was false, according to a report by Just the News.

    The subpoenas were obtained by Just the News, and were issued at a time when then-chair of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) struggled to get the FBI and DOJ to hand over documents to the committee while he sought to establish that the allegations made against former President Donald Trump were being driven by the infamous Steele dossier.

    Research in the Steele dossier was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee and commissioned by Washington-based private intelligence firm Fusion GPS.

    The subpoenas (pdf) show that the DOJ requested that tech giant Google hand over documents containing the personal information of at least two top House Intelligence Committee staffers in November 2017: former Intelligence Committee senior counsel Kash Patel, and another unnamed staffer.

    Google responded to the subpoena requests by Dec. 5, 2017, roughly a month after they were issued, according to the publication.

    Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) holds a copy of the Steele Dossier during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Dec. 11, 2019. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

    Google Notifies GOP Staffers of Information Request

    Just the News reports that the subpoenas have only recently come to light because Google, in line with its five-year policy, informed the former committee staffers that their records had been handed over to law enforcement.

    Google’s policy regarding government agencies requesting it disclose user information states: “We carefully review each request to make sure it satisfies applicable laws. If a request asks for too much information, we try to narrow it, and in some cases, we object to producing any information at all.”

    The tech giant noted that it will send an email to the user account before disclosing personal information to the relevant government agency, although this is not the case when “legally prohibited under the terms of the request.”

    The subpoena for Patel shows that the FBI and DOJ requested a string of information from Google, including subscriber names, screen names, and user names; addresses including mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and email addresses, local and long-distance telephone connection records, records of session times and durations, length of service and types of service utilized, and personal telephone numbers.

    It also requested information pertaining to the “means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number) and billing records.”

    The subpoena issued to the other unnamed former staffer requested the same, according to Just the News. It is unclear from the subpoena who was leading the investigation into Patel and the other staffer.

    Former President Donald Trump speaks with EpochTV’s Kash Patel at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 31, 2022. (The Epoch Times)

    Patel was personally recruited by Nunes to spearhead the investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Russia–Trump probe.

    In an interview with The Epoch Times in March 2021, Patel said:

    “It would be beneficial to the American public for the FBI to disclose who they surveilled in this Trump orbit, and more importantly, how.”

    “The lengths they were willing to go just to try to get a narrative to become true—which is never the purpose of an investigation at the Department of Justice—you’re supposed to follow an investigation and see if there’s a crime. You’re not supposed to try to come up with a political narrative and have the ends justify the means,” Patel added.

    Despite winning the election over Clinton in 2016, Trump was dogged by the collusion allegations for years after.

    The former president went on to sue Clinton, Steele, and several other Democrats in March 2022, claiming they carried out a plot to “weave a false narrative” that he was colluding with Russian actors.

    The lawsuit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, in September, with the judge stating that it “does not establish that Plaintiff is entitled to any relief” and that the claims presented in it “are not warranted under existing law.”

    The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of Justice for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 18:05

  • Star Of Body-Positivity Show Dead From Heart Failure At Age 37
    Star Of Body-Positivity Show Dead From Heart Failure At Age 37

    The body positivity movement, at least in the case of women, has been highly promoted by every area of the entertainment media and among social justice activists based on a singular claim:  You can be healthy at any size (HAES).  

    The claim has inspired numerous efforts to normalize obesity in American society as not only socially acceptable but also medically acceptable.  While political activism in science is nothing new and has been present in everything from climate change rhetoric to pandemic response, fat positivity disinformation in scientific observation is perhaps the most egregious and widespread.  It attempts to ignore or dismiss decades of studies on the negative effects of obesity and asserts that being grossly overweight has minimal or no health consequences.  

    This argument is often debunked by the very people that tend to promote it and encourage it, as they die incredibly young and from health problems that are usually reserved for the elderly.  

    Jamie Lopez, star of the body positivity-based television show ‘Super Sized Salon’, was an advocate of a “beauty at any size’ philosophy, more so than a health at any weight ideal.  However, social justice proponents often held up her example as justification for the HAES lifestyle.  She is now dead, suffering from heart failure at age 37.

    To be fair to Lopez, she did attempt to lose weight, dropping over 400 pounds in a year. 

    But, going from 800 pounds to 400 pounds is still not enough to prevent the myriad of health problems associated with obesity.  Undoubtedly, body positivity proponents will try to gloss over her cause of death, but the fact remains that health and weight are indelibly intertwined. 

    While “beauty” might be treated as socially subjective by some people (studies show beauty concepts are actually biologically ingrained), health standards are not subjective. 

    Gluttony has long been a despised habit within almost all cultures for a reason – It is a sign of a lack of discipline as well as a precursor to societal decline, and, it is a sure trigger for an early demise.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/20/2022 – 17:45

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