Today’s News 21st January 2025

• Putting An End To Trump Derangement Syndrome
  Putting An End To Trump Derangement Syndrome

  Authored by J.Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

  My name is Peder and I suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

  

  My case is not full-blown – I don’t contend that the incoming president is a fascist bent on suspending elections, jailing his enemies, and otherwise erasing our constitutional republic. I find claims that he is a sexual predator as risible as the argument that he launched a coup on Jan. 6, 2021. I gleefully whack-a-mole all the whack-doodle fantasies that pass as conventional wisdom among progressives and conservative Never Trumpers.

  And yet, because it is more mild and subtle, my TDS may be more dangerous. Even though I generally support Donald Trump’s policies, I accepted the idea that he is beyond the pale. I agreed that his aggressive tweets, coarse language, and addiction to hyperbole were windows into a damaged soul. He just can’t help himself. I wished that the Republicans had somebody, anybody else to stand up against the Democrats because Trump seemed to lack the temperament and, yes, the character, to be president.

  These critiques are not pulled from thin air. Trump is Trump. My mistake was transforming these complaints into condemnation, defining the man by his off-putting traits instead of his manifest gifts. More disturbingly, I probably took this line to prove to his unhinged haters that I had not drunk the orange Kool-Aid.

  Not my finest hour.

  I offer this confession both to clear my conscience and to offer this message to other Trump supporters who might have a whiff of TDS: Stop! Our embrace of false narratives about Trump’s character gives them credence. It is a major reason why he didn’t defeat the ineffable unqualified Kamala Harris by an even larger margin and why his job approval ratings aren’t higher. They serve as springboard for more extreme attacks against him. Look, even his supporters think he’s off.

  Going forward, such wobbly support may undercut his ability to govern. We must continue to criticize him robustly when it is warranted, and those occasions will surely arise. And if there are people out there who think Trump’s perfect, I haven’t met them. But we must stop casting his all-too-human foibles as signs of something sinister.

  Instead of trying to brush off the character argument, we should transform it. Donald Trump possesses a quality that has been in short supply in American politics and culture: courage.

  This great strength is one source of the enmity against him.

  Recall that Trump was an accepted member of elite circles for much of his life – Bill and Hillary Clinton attended his wedding to Melania in 2005. Then, suddenly, he became a pariah in 2015 when he threw his hat into the ring and dared to challenge the assumptions of the ruling class. Trump called out business leaders and politicians from both parties for policies and practices that seemed to line their pockets at the expense of average Americans: dubious trade deals with the repressive Chinese government; a lax approach to immigration that undercut working class jobs and wages; security arrangements that allowed NATO allies to free-ride on American taxpayers for their military defense.

  He was an outlier, eager to challenge decades of beltline wisdom. He was a disruptor, determined to shake up a system in which consensus had smothered accountability. He was a powerful voice of dissent against a government where people got ahead by ignoring the hard questions. In a final insult, he became a symbol of our still vibrant democracy by winning not one, but two elections despite the visceral, intense, and highly organized opposition of the powers that be.

  These were the real sins his enemies could not and will not forgive. In the face of relentless and unfair attacks, most people would have buckled. It would have been so much easier to play ball. Trump, instead, stuck by his guns. The courage he displayed after an assassin came within in a whisker of taking his life last summer was a true reflection of his abiding character.

  The opposition to Trump will not fade during the next four years.

  Those who cheered the Biden administration as it opened the borders, defied the courts, and censored critics will continue to claim that Trump poses a singular threat to our Republic. Their fraudulence may be clear for all to see, but their case of Trump Derangement Syndrome seems too far gone to repair.

  As we turn a new page in our nation’s history, I am filled with hope because I see that we once again have a president with the character to provide the leadership we need.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 23:45

• Houthis Halt Attacks On Red Sea Vessels As Gaza Truce Holds
  Houthis Halt Attacks On Red Sea Vessels As Gaza Truce Holds

  The Gaza ceasefire which went into effect Sunday morning, ending a 470-day conflict which has reportedly killed over 47,000 – has continued to hold. Palestinians are returning to northern Gaza in droves, picking through the rubble and seeking to identify their homes and belongings.

  Yemen’s Houthis starting last week signaled they would stop their missile and drone attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea. As of Monday, the Houthis have announced a halt to these attacks, but with an important exception.

  

  International ships will no longer come under attack, the Houthis said, but attacks on Israeli-linked commercial and military vessels will continue.

  “We affirm that, in the event of any aggression against the Republic of Yemen by the United States of America, the United Kingdom, or the usurping Israeli entity, the sanctions will be reinstated against the aggressor,” the Houthis said in a written statement reported by Reuters.

  “You will be promptly informed of such measures should they be implemented,” it continued. The Houthis further said that even Israeli-linked ships will stop being targeted “upon the full implementation of all phases of the agreement.”

  The first of three phases is set for 42-days, during which time the terms of the subsequent phases will be negotiated and set. Hamas has already released three Israeli hostages, and dozens of Palestinians who were imprisoned in Israel have been exchanged.

  On Friday, just before the ceasefire was implemented, Houthi leader Abdulmalik Al-Houthi had warned that if the ceasefire didn’t hold, the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping would continue. “Any Israeli breach, massacre, or siege — we will be immediately ready to provide military support to Palestinians,” he had stressed.

  He said his movement, formally known as Ansar Allah, will “confront any aggression, whether by the Israelis, the Americans, or their allies, or any attempts to divert our country from its liberated jihadist path.”

  Bloomberg meanwhile reviewed that “Most Western-linked container ships have over the past year chosen to take the much longer route around southern Africa when sailing between Asia and Europe, and kept clear of the Red Sea. That’s squeezed global shipping capacity, lifting freight rates and boosted the earnings of carriers like Mitsui OSK.”

  “Container-shipping giants A.P. Moller Maersk A/S and Hapag-Lloyd AG last year announced a vessel-sharing partnership for the alternative route,” the report continues.

  “Crude Oil Dips As Yemen’s Houthi Militia Plans To Halt Red Sea Ship Attacks.” – https://t.co/jdS9M0UO55

  — Navroop Singh (@TheNavroopSingh) January 20, 2025

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

  Egypt has said its taken a $7 billion hit in revenue decline from the Suez Canal for 2024, which marks about a 60% drop from prior years.

  If the Yemeni operations directly against Israel do persist in face of the truce, it would complicate or damage efforts to keep the peace in the Gaza Strip, as it’s already sure to be an extremely delicate and fragile truce. The Houthis have up to this point in the war launched several ballistic missiles on Israel, causing limited damage and casualties.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 23:10

• Despite Biden Pardon, Fauci Still Faces Legal Perils. Here They Are.
  Despite Biden Pardon, Fauci Still Faces Legal Perils. Here They Are.

  Authored by Paul D. Thacker via RealClearInvestigations,

  President Biden’s pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci may protect the former National Institutes of Health official from immediate criminal prosecution, but some critics say he is not completely out of legal jeopardy and that public sentiment might still condemn the man who became known during the COVID-19 pandemic as “Mr. Science.”

  

  In the days before Biden offered the pardon to Fauci, along with other critics of Donald Trump, some experts who have followed Fauci’s career and handling of the pandemic, as well as members of the Trump transition team, reiterated their assertion that Fauci perjured himself on several occasions during the pandemic – especially regarding his agency’s links to the lab in Wuhan, China, that might have created the virus that causes COVID-19.

  The pardon addresses any COVID-related offenses, and is backdated to 2014—the year a U.S. ban on so-called “gain of function” virus research took effect — research Fauci is accused of outsourcing to China.

  Despite reporting that Trump is bent on revenge, the appetite among MAGA appointees for holding Fauci accountable hasn’t been particularly vocal. But former Senate investigator Jason Foster, who now runs the whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight, says that Biden’s pardon creates new legal jeopardy for Fauci. Sen. Rand Paul has vowed to continue investigating the COVID origins question, and sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Sen. Ron Johnson and House Republican investigators plan to do so as well. When testifying in those inquiries or answering written depositions, Fauci will be unable to dodge questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination. “They can ask him if he lied before, replough old ground,” Foster said. “And if he lies about any prior lie, he can be prosecuted for that or held in contempt.”

  Andrew Noymer, associate professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California, Irvine, said such hearings are necessary for scientific and historical reasons. “I’m hopeful that he will now come clean about everything he knows about the origins of the virus,” Noymer said. “For the sake of public trust in science – explaining what killed 20 million people – that a complete account is much more important than speculation about what criminal penalties he may have avoided.”

  “These pardons will not stop Department of Justice investigations,” said one adviser to the Trump transition team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We expected this and look at it as a predicate to get truth from people who can no longer use the Fifth Amendment. Now we can bring every one of them in front of a grand jury.”

  

  There is no consensus on Fauci’s handling of the pandemic. Legacy media outlets have promoted Fauci throughout the pandemic as “America’s doctor” who “sticks to the facts” and applauded him as “the nation’s top infectious disease expert.” When he retired from the NIH after five decades in 2022, the New York Times granted him space on its opinion page to advise the next generation of scientists, citing his own accomplishments.

  Numerous social media outlets have provided a polar opposite perspective. Several X accounts have uploaded videos that show Fauci’s inconsistencies. For example, Fauci claimed in early 2022 interviews that he never recommended lockdowns, but later said he recommended shutting the country down. Independent journalist Matt Orfalea circulated another set of clips that show Fauci claiming he kept an “open mind” about how the pandemic started while alleging in others that the evidence points against a lab accident and “strongly” in favor of a natural spillover.

  As Fauci’s flip-flops generated attention in Republican circles and on social media, he charged that such criticism was “totally preposterous,” adding, “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”

  Fauci’s many contradictory statements even caught the attention of a New York Times contributing opinion writer, Megan K. Stack, who chastised Fauci for “the largely one-sided nature of his public remarks” about the possibility the pandemic started from an accident at a lab his agency had helped fund – the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Initially, Fauci dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident on a Feb. 9, 2020, podcast hosted by Newt Gingrich. Afterward, Fauci reversed himself, stating in several interviews that he had always kept an open mind.

  Later reports zeroed in on Fauci’s secret involvement in prominent March 2020 research, called the “proximal origin” paper, that turned public and scientific sentiment against the possibility of a lab accident. “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the paper concluded, adding, “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.” Published in the prestigious Nature Medicine journal, “proximal origin” is the most-cited scientific paper of 2020.

  Subsequent emails showed that Fauci helped guide the “proximal origin” paper to publication, as congressional probers found, “without revealing that he had been involved with its creation and had even, according to the emails, given it his approval.”

  Distancing himself from his own emails, Fauci later told the Times that he wasn’t sure he even got around to reading the paper. But the House later released a multi-day deposition of Fauci where he was asked about his involvement in the “proximal origin” paper. Under oath, Fauci admitted to having received and read several drafts of the paper.

  But while dissembling to the media is not a crime, lying to Congress is illegal. And the Department of Justice has two referrals from Congress already requesting that Fauci be prosecuted for lying under oath.

  Lies as Legal Jeopardy

  

  Fauci’s habit of bending the truth, as some see it, was notably on display at a July 2021 Senate hearing when Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, bore into the funding Fauci approved for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While Fauci attempted to downplay his financial involvement with the Chinese government lab, reports were already percolating.

  In April 2020, Newsweek reported that Fauci had approved a grant for risky “gain of function” virus research at the Wuhan lab. The Washington Post editorial board in March 2021 then called for an independent investigation into EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit funded by the Fauci-run National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. With this grant, EcoHealth subcontracted research to the Chinese, the Post noted, to do experiments involving “modifying viral genomes to give them new properties, including the ability to infect lung cells of laboratory mice that had been genetically modified to respond as human respiratory cells would.”

  Fox News reported Sunday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has barred EcoHealth Alliance Inc. and its former president, Dr. Peter Daszak, from receiving federal funds for five years. EcoHealth allegedly failed to report dangerous gain-of-function experiments to the government, which eventually led to the five-year ban. 

  A month prior to Fauci’s hearing with Paul, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs confirmed that U.S.-funded research at the WIV consisted of gain-of-function virus research that could have started the pandemic. “[I]t is clear that the NIH co-funded research at the WIV that deserves scrutiny under the hypothesis of a laboratory-related release of the virus.” At that time, Dr. Sachs led a commission formed by a British medical journal, The Lancet, to investigate how the pandemic began.

  But when Paul began grilling Fauci about these details and called him out for what he characterized as evasive answers, Fauci pointed the finger back at Paul. “If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you,” Fauci said. Paul then sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice requesting they investigate whether Fauci had committed perjury.

  “He definitely misled the senator,” said former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield. When Redfield looked at all the evidence, including still-classified information, he said the weight falls in the direction of a lab accident. “Fauci manipulated the public to believe there was only one possible cause for the pandemic, a natural spillover.”

  Months after Paul’s referral to the Justice Department, liberal news nonprofit ProPublica released new documents confirming the Wuhan lab had conducted such studies. “Grant money for the controversial experiment came from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Anthony Fauci,” ProPublica reported on September 9, 2021.

  “NIH admits funding risky virus research in Wuhan,” Vanity Fair reported a week after ProPublica, referencing a letter NIH sent to Congress.

  Paul sent a second referral to the Department of Justice in July 2023, reiterating his demand that Fauci be investigated. At that time, House investigators released emails showing that, in early 2020, Fauci admitted that scientists were concerned the COVID virus had been engineered and researchers in Wuhan were engaged in gain-of-function research.  

  “Everything he has been telling us from the very beginning has been a lie,” Sen. Paul told Fox News. “We have documented it’s a lie and it’s a felony to lie to Congress.”

  Biden’s pardon negates the two Senate referrals for criminal activity. But future hearings could still require Fauci to respond to evidence that he might have perjured himself, and open him up to future prosecution if he stands by statements that can be proven to be false.

  Hiding Use of Private Email

  

  Another area of potential inquiry is Fauci’s congressional testimony last summer denying his use of private email to conduct official business,  “Let me state for the record that to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business via my personal email,” Fauci wrote in his sworn statement to Congress.

  This testimony seemed to contradict evidence in a 35-page memo compiled by Republican investigative staff. One email showed Fauci’s second-in-command, Dr. David Morens, suggesting someone speak with Fauci through an unofficial, private channel. In another email, Morens wrote that he would contact Fauci on Gmail.

  After Fauci’s testimony, the writer of this article reported in the DisInformation Chronicle that Morens had connected KFF Health News reporter Arthur Allen with Fauci on Fauci’s private email back in May 2021. The NIH did not respond to comment about Fauci’s use of private email to conduct government business with reporters. 

  In a second example, the New York Post reported that the watchdog group White Coat Waste Project accused Fauci of lying to Congress about his private email use after they released documents showing Fauci was backchanneling with a Washington Post reporter on his private email.

  “I will send you an e-mail via my gmail account,” Fauci wrote in an email dated Oct. 29, 2021, to Washington Post reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb.

  Fauci’s lawyer told the Post that Fauci was discussing a personal matter with the Washington Post reporter, although he did not explain what this personal matter was. 

  Justin Goodman, senior vice president at White Coat Waste Project, said the evidence is clear that Fauci contacted the Washington Post about issues regarding his NIH work and then denied it to Congress. “He should be prosecuted, not pardoned.”

  Follow the Money

  

  Congressional hearings might also delve into Fauci’s involvement in research misconduct with the “proximal origin” paper and a grant he approved for the paper’s lead author, Scripps Research Institute’s Kristian Andersen.

  “There needs to be a criminal investigation of this grant and paper,” said a former law enforcement official who has worked with congressional staff investigating Fauci and his grants. “Nobody inside the executive branch has taken ownership of this.”

  Shortly after the COVID virus outbreak, Fauci began discussing with several virologists, including Andersen, how the pandemic started. In a Feb. 1, 2020 email, Andersen wrote to Fauci that he had analyzed the COVID virus genetic sequence and “some of the features (potentially) look engineered.” Andersen added that, while opinions could change, he and other virologists felt the virus was not natural or consistent with “expectations with evolutionary theory.”

  Later that same day, Fauci held a phone call with Andersen and other virologists and then emailed that the scientists were suspicious that a “mutation was intentionally inserted” into the virus. Other emails show that Fauci was concerned that his funding for research in China may have led to the COVID virus.

  Despite their initial suspicions, Andersen and other virologists reversed course six weeks later and published the “proximal origin” paper on March 16, 2020, that absolved Fauci of funding research that led to the pandemic. Fauci then promoted the Andersen “proximal origin” paper to reporters at a White House briefing on April 17 without disclosing that he had helped marshal the study into publication.

  A month later, Fauci signed off on an $8.9 million grant to Kristian Andersen. Both Andersen and Fauci have denied the grant was quid pro quo for Andersen publishing the “proximal origin” paper that absolved Fauci, but the group Biosafety Now has called twice for the paper to be retracted. 

  “It is imperative that this clearly fraudulent and clearly damaging paper be removed from the scientific literature,” reads an online petition signed by over 5,000 scientists.

  Richard Ebright, a professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University and co-founder of Biosafety Now, said that Fauci should have been prosecuted for “criminal conspiracy” for his secret involvement in the “proximal origin” paper. Ebright added that the grant Fauci gave to Andersen after he published the paper likely also involved criminal behavior.

  With Republicans running both the Senate and House, investigations of Fauci will likely continue as members resume digging into any NIH culpability in funding research that started the pandemic. Trump’s CIA nominee, John Ratcliffe, told House members during a 2023 hearing that classified intelligence points toward a lab accident. Ratcliffe is likely to be confirmed, and a Trump transition team source said he would likely then declassify that information, further undermining Fauci’s claims that the pandemic started from a natural spillover.

  Ongoing investigations of Fauci, RCI has been told, will only further erode his credibility, even if criminal charges can no longer be filed. “This pardon means he can no longer be brought to justice,” said an adviser to the Trump transition team. “But it guarantees he will be further exposed.”

  “I trusted everything Fauci said during the pandemic, and I did everything he told me,” said Bri Dressen, a former preschool teacher in Saratoga Springs, Utah. “I masked, wiped down my groceries with alcohol, kept my kids away from other kids so they wouldn’t catch the virus, and then I got vaccinated.” Dressen ended up injured by AstraZeneca’s vaccine as a volunteer in the company’s clinical trial, and founded React19.org, whose 36,000 members advocate for victims of COVID vaccine harm.

  “It was the steepest learning curve in my entire life. The people in authority like Fauci are the ones I shouldn’t have trusted,” Dressen said. “It’s been a huge paradigm shift to see a hero actually turn into a villain.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 22:35

• The Lousiest President Of All Time
  The Lousiest President Of All Time

  Authored by Jeremy Egerer via American Thinker,

  Anybody who wants to explain how bad the Biden administration is has to start with COVID. 

  

  As such, we knew a few things early on in the pandemic, and they were as follows:

  1. The average age of death from the virus was in the 80s.
  2. It had almost zero effect on young people and children.
  3. Most people who died from it had three or more co-morbidities — that is, they were old as hell, fat as a hog, and really liked smoking, or drinking, or cancer.
  4. It was in the same class of virus as the common cold.

  Once we knew these things, especially the last one, the obvious thing to do was to give up.  There was no point crippling the strong for the sake of the weak when the weak depend upon the strong and most of the weak aren’t affected by COVID anyway.  We should have put the elderly on welfare and expanded Medicaid a bit and let the rest of us run loose.  No — we should have subsidized tickets to bath houses and any place kids eat that has a ball pit.

  We like to say “hindsight is 20/20,” but this isn’t hindsight at all.  Hell, it was 2020.  The stuff I mentioned above was the conclusion every person with regular sight came to the second our government called most workers “non-essential.”  Yet this society was immediately cleaved in two.  All the healthy and thoughtful people were pitted against the sanctimonious do-gooders, the goose-steppers, and the hysterical weaklings.  And they beat us into submission, big time.

  And Joe Biden was their champion.

  Almost overnight, millions were thrown out of work, and a vaccine was made up that nobody had properly tested, which no company was liable for and, in its experimental form, until the pandemic hit, had never been approved by the FDA.  Joe Biden tried to force every American in a company of more than 100 people to take it or lose his job — around two thirds of the whole country, it turned out.  Heart attacks in teenagers went through the roof.  People had to choose between gambling their health and losing their homes.  Pfizer was completely unaccountable and made a windfall.  Mom-and-Pop stores across the nation went bankrupt, and gyms and churches were forced shut, and Walmart and Amazon made a killing.

  To make up for the mass unemployment Democrats caused and encouraged, Joe decided to print more money than anyone ever did in American history — a bill worth $1.9 trillion, which singlehandedly made the dollar implode.  This made everybody in the country take a giant pay cut, effectively, and now most Americans can’t afford the groceries they were buying in 2019.  Or used cars.  Or (many times) the rent.

  Some people escaped this crushing poverty: the ultra-rich, the people who broke the country, and people who broke into the country.  The border was left wide open for nearly Biden’s whole term, and depending on where they went, illegal aliens were given not only free housing and medical care, but also smartphones and thousands of dollars.

  Haitians and Chinese and Middle Eastern gate-crashers were seen marching in by the thousands.  Venezuela went so far as to unload its prisons on us.  Independent journalists began spotting obvious gang members and people on the terrorist watchlist.  The Texans put up blockades, and the Border Patrol, under Biden’s orders, tore them right down.  In some places, gates were broken open to ensure that nobody was denied access.  In total, the BBC estimates (and I would say lowly) that over eight million people invaded.

  Americans were disturbed by footage of hordes pouring over the border, so Biden closed the airspace so we couldn’t see it.  This was in fact his modus operandi whenever we started asking questions.  When doctors from places like Harvard and Stanford questioned the vaccine, he sent the FBI to bully Facebook into banning them and anyone who supported them — a clearly illegal move for which nobody, to my knowledge, has been prosecuted.  When Ashley Biden’s diary was going to be published, with all kinds of weird information about his behavior, the FBI raided the homes of journalists.  When his son’s laptop was found to contain incriminating information, he had the FBI bully social media again during an election season.  When his son was finally going to pay for taking quid-pro-quo bribes from the Ukrainians, or for doing crack and hookers on camera and buying guns illegally, Joe Biden pardoned him for everything he ever did over a ten-year period.  This was right after he went on TV to say “nobody is above the law” — an attack on, you guessed it, his own political rivals.

  Whether or not anyone could measure up to the law, it’s clear that during Biden’s presidency, nobody could measure up to the government.  That’s because he was the DIE hirer-in-chief and made sure almost nobody, from top to bottom, was fit for command.  He sent a fat and mentally ill man, “Rachel” Levine, to run the United States Public Health Service.  He put Ketanji Brown on the Supreme Court — a woman so stupid that she couldn’t define “woman,” thinks being a street junkie is a constitutional right, and doesn’t have (quote) “a judicial philosophy per se.”  Despite her not having anything good to say, she speaks more, ex cathedra, according to the Washington Times, than all the other Supreme Court justices.

  Because of Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, a gay man with zero experience in public transportation, is now the secretary of transportation.  Biden wanted his Cabinet to “look like America,” so he stuffed it with Jews and zero Evangelicals.  He promised us a black woman as a vice president, and the only person available was the most shrill, obnoxious, embarrassing person in the whole party.  When it became clear he had dementia, she was nominated as his successor without the public’s consent.

  We could go on for hours.  When he abandoned Afghanistan — something that had to be done sooner or later — he did it so badly that not only did we lose billions of dollars of equipment, which immediately fell into the hands of the enemy, but he forgot to evacuate all our civilians, and allies, and green card–holders.  Whoopsie-daisy!

  Where was Biden when our cities were getting burned down by Black Lives Matter?  Why did Antifa rioters get their charges dismissed after attacking federal buildings and officers — half of all charges, according to The Wall Street Journal?  And why were the Proud Boys locked up for trying to stop Antifa?  Why did he commute almost all the sentences on federal death row but not pardon Daniel Penny for protecting women on a subway train?  Joe Biden pardoned former Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan, who sent falsely convicted children to for-profit prisons in exchange for kickbacks.  He left Enrique Tarrio in prison for trying to defend people from rioters.

  His whole career has been helping everyone but the talented, the upright, or the American majority.  Biden canceled our Keystone Pipeline while approving the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to Germany.  Newsweek said that at the same time he restricted domestic oil and gas production, causing prices to soar, he asked OPEC and Russia to make more oil so we could reduce our prices.  The New York Post says FEMA couldn’t find funding for victims of Hurricane Helene — our second deadliest hurricane in the last 50 years, which closed 400 roads and destroyed entire towns — because they’d already spent $1.4 billion on illegal aliens.  Israel, from October 2023 to October 2024, got a record $17.9 billion in military aid.  According to the Government Accountability Office, since 2022, Ukraine has gotten $174 billion.  According to U.S. News, we send foreign aid to more than 180 countries, and FEMA said nobody could find the money for our hurricane victims.

  An important question might be asked here.  How much of this is really Joe Biden’s fault?  This is the guy we caught, on camera, in his first days after the election, mumbling I don’t know what I’m signing here when he was green-lighting executive orders willy-nilly.  Biden garbles more sentences than Lil’ Pump.  If he’s not directed off the stage, he could get stuck on it.

  Like the line between the sovereignty of God and our own free will, we’ll probably never know, until the Final Judgment, who was really responsible.  But Biden is the guy we elected to take the blame for it.  He chose to be there.  The whole Democrat party said for years that he was in great shape.  So I say hang him out to dry.  He’s a coward, a sleazeball, a crook and a pardoner of crooks, an embarrassment to the already embarrassing Pope Francis, a horrible public speaker, both a profligate liar and a constant dupe, a prosecutor of truth-tellers and truth-publishers, the enemy of unborn children, a defender of everyone’s border but his own, a burden to the hardworking and the virtuous, a friend to the untalented and the envious, a sniffer of women and children, an incapable father, a consistent and regrettable clown, and a stain on the great legacy of this nation.

  Jeremy Egerer is the author of Prejudices — a collection of questionable essays on Substack.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 21:25

• Go Figure: Walgreens CEO Admits Locking Up Merchandise Makes It Hard To Sell
  Go Figure: Walgreens CEO Admits Locking Up Merchandise Makes It Hard To Sell

  What genius retail executive mind could have figured this one out – that locking up merchandise in stores actually makes its more difficult for honest, paying customers to get to, and buy what they want?

  Walgreens – facing a significant drop in year-over-year earnings – just announced plans to close 450 more stores nationwide, according to Futurism/The Byte. 

  Efforts to curb “shrink” — losses from theft or fraud — included increased security measures, such as locking merchandise in containers requiring staff assistance.

  However, these measures proved ineffective and counterproductive, frustrating customers.

  CEO Tim Wentworth said on the company’s earning’s call: “It is a hand-to-hand combat battle still, unfortunately.”

  

  “But it does impact how sales work through the store because when you lock things up. For example, you don’t sell as many of them. We’ve kind of proven that pretty conclusively,” he continued. 

  The report says that Walgreens is struggling with rising prices, which are making it harder for consumers to afford products. The company faces challenges in its retail business due to inflation and higher interest rates, leading to more cost-conscious shopping and changes in purchasing habits.

  In 2021, Walgreens faced backlash for closing five stores in San Francisco, citing “organized” shoplifting, though police records showed only 23 incidents between 2018 and 2021.

  During a 2023 earnings call, Walgreens CFO James Kehoe admitted the company may have over-invested in security to address theft, acknowledging the company had perhaps exaggerated the problem. This suggests Walgreens has often used theft concerns as a cover for deeper issues within its retail operations.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 20:50

• Former Oakland Mayor Charged In Alleged Corruption Scheme
  Former Oakland Mayor Charged In Alleged Corruption Scheme

  Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times,

  Former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and three other defendants were charged by federal prosecutors in an eight-count indictment unsealed on Jan. 17 alleging the group participated in a bribery and corruption scheme that sought to benefit a company with nearly $90 million in city contracts. 

  

  The recently recalled Thao, who was arraigned during a 10:30 a.m. court hearing in Oakland, pleaded not guilty to six charges and was released on a $50,000 bond. 

  Thao and Andre Jones, described in charging documents as her “longtime romantic partner,” and businessmen David Trung Duong and Andy Hung Duong, father and son, respectively, are charged with a litany of crimes.  

  “The public deserves honesty and transparency from City Hall,” first assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick D. Robbins said in a statement.

  “When elected officials agree to a pay-to-play system to benefit themselves rather than work for the best interests of their constituents, that breaches the public trust.” 

  He said communities relying on leaders for critical government services are hurt by their misdeeds. 

  “The public needs to know it can trust those in charge of City Hall to work for the best interests of the people of Oakland,” he said during a press conference announcing the indictment.

  “This public trust is broken when elected officials agree to a pay-to-play system to benefit themselves.” 

  According to the indictment filed by the grand jury on Jan. 9, in the weeks before Thao was elected mayor in November 2022, and after taking office, she offered influence and city contracts to the Duongs in exchange for campaign support and financial gain. 

  Thao agreed to purchase units from the Duongs’ housing company, extend a contract with the Duongs’ recycling company, and allow the Duongs to select candidates for certain city appointments. 

  In exchange, the Duongs allegedly paid $75,000 to fund a negative mailer campaign against Thao’s political rivals, founded websites attacking her opponents, and made $95,000 in payments through Jones to benefit him and Thao. 

  After taking office, Thao allegedly used her power in office to allow the Duongs to appoint unnamed “high-level” city officials and asked her staff to tour the housing company.  

  The indictment also alleges the group discussed a $3 million bribe payment if the city purchased 300 housing units from an unnamed co-conspirator’s company. The housing company stood to earn about $90 million, according to the indictment. 

  In an attempt to conceal the payments, the arrangement was allegedly for the money to be paid as wages to Jones for a no-show job, and fake invoices were created, among other maneuvers.

  Prosecutors allege improprieties involving a trip Thao took to Vietnam in July and August of 2023 with the Duongs, which cost tens of thousands of dollars and was partially paid for by the Port of Oakland. 

  The unnamed co-conspirator was appointed to a city position and received $1.4 million from entities associated with Duong, according to the indictment.

  Among the agencies involved in what is described as an ongoing investigation is the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division. 

  “The alleged crimes committed against the citizens of Oakland by former Mayor Thao and her co-conspirators are a clear breach of public trust and cannot be tolerated,” Linda Nguyen, special agent in charge for the division’s Oakland field office, said in a statement.

  “Public corruption schemes are rooted in greed and typically leave a money trail behind.  [Our division] specializes in following that trail and building cases that lead to justice.” 

  FBI agents also helped unravel the scheme, including raiding Thao’s Oakland home in June 2024. Thao was recalled in November 2024.

  “Our communities are entitled to leaders who act in their best interest, free from the shadow of corruption,” Dan Costin, special agent in charge for the FBI, said in a statement.

  “Today’s actions demonstrate our resolute determination to protect the integrity of our government and ensure accountability for those who betray the public’s trust.” 

  U.S. postal inspectors were also involved because the scheme allegedly involved mail fraud. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 20:15

• Trump Pardons Approximately 1,500 Jan. 6 Political 'Hostages'
  Trump Pardons Approximately 1,500 Jan. 6 Political ‘Hostages’

  President Trump on Monday gave a ‘full pardon’ to over 1,500 political prisoners who were involved in the Jan. 6 riot.

  🚨 President Trump has pardoned approximately 1500 January 6th political prisoners of the Biden era pic.twitter.com/LwL2S7l5Ft

  — Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) January 21, 2025

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  Earlier in the day, Trump told a yuge crowd at the Capitol One Arena that he was going to “release our great hostages,” referring to the Jan. 6 prisoners.

  “As soon as I leave, I’m going to the Oval Office, and we’ll be signing pardons for a lot of people, a lot of people,” Trump continued.

  Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy, is currently being processed for release from FCI Pollock, a medium security federal prison in Louisiana, NBC News reports. Tarrio had been sentenced to 22 years in federal prison after his conviction.

  “He is being processed out,” said his attorney, Nayib Hasssan. “We do not know what type of clemency he is receiving.”

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 19:49

• U.S. Navy Corpsman Disciplined Last Year After Trying To Access President Biden's Health Records
  U.S. Navy Corpsman Disciplined Last Year After Trying To Access President Biden’s Health Records

  A U.S. Navy corpsman was administratively reprimanded last year after he attempted to access President Biden’s medical records, according to a new report from CBS.

  On Feb. 22, at the Naval Medical Readiness and Training Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, a Navy corpsman sat at his desk amidst the hum of computers and quiet chatter. Nearby, a licensed civilian nurse and an Army soldier worked.

  The routine setting took a turn when a colleague left her workstation, her Common Access Card (CAC) still logged in. This smart card, about the size of a credit card, grants access to secure military networks and facilities.

  The group began discussing the security risk of unattended CACs, with one person noting the potential for misuse: “Someone could maliciously use your CAC when you walk away.”

  Spurred by “curiosity” and this conversation, the corpsman accessed restricted files. According to a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) report obtained by CBS News through a Freedom of Information Act request, the low-ranking sailor attempted to access the president’s medical records.

  

  The investigation led to a nonjudicial punishment for dereliction of duty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The corpsman, whose identity was withheld, was demoted from E-3 to E-2, given 20 days of extra duty, and had pay reduced by half for six months. An E-2 with two to three years of service earns about $2,260 monthly.

  The CBS report says that during a discussion about the risks of unattended CAC accounts, someone suggested such access could be used to view the president’s medical records. Curious, the Navy corpsman tested this by searching “Joseph Biden” in the Genesis Medical Health System. A single record appeared, with a matching birthdate verified via Google. The file was accessed for about 20 seconds, revealing minimal information, including a doctor’s name, which didn’t match publicly available details.

  Realizing the seriousness of his actions, the corpsman closed the file. A female colleague advised him to self-report, but he delayed. Another coworker reported the violation first. The corpsman later confessed, citing curiosity and denying any intent to save, share, or document the record.

  NCIS launched an investigation, discovering no link between the corpsman and political motives or hacktivist groups, though a reverse image search on his Instagram profile hinted at potential Anonymous imagery. Searches on his laptop included terms like “Biden” and “Anonymous.” His devices, seized and analyzed, were eventually returned.

  The accessed record was later confirmed to be non-legitimate. The president was informed quickly, undergoing an unrelated physical two days after the investigation began, where he was deemed “fit for duty.” The corpsman faced disciplinary action but cooperated fully throughout the inquiry.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 19:40

• Watch: Trump Signing J6 Pardons For "A Lot Of People"
  Watch: Trump Signing J6 Pardons For “A Lot Of People”

  Update (1837ET):

  “Tonight, I’m going to be signing on the J6 hostages – pardons – to get them out – and as soon as I leave, we’re going to be signing pardons for a lot of people,” President Donald Trump said at the Capital One Arena to more than 20,000 supporters. 

  🚨 JUST IN: Trump says tonight, he will free the “J6 hostages” via “pardons”

  “For a LOT of people…”

  Expected at the Oval Office later… pic.twitter.com/2uS1UXcM9h

  — Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 20, 2025

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  Trump signed more exec orders:

  • Recision of 78 Biden-Era Executive Orders
  • Freeze federal regulations
  • Freeze on federal hiring
  • Federal workers must return to full-time in-person work immediately
  • Directive to address the cost of living crisis
  • Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Treaty
  • Directive to restore Free Speech and eliminate government censorship
  • Directive to end government weaponization against political opponents

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

  BREAKING: President Trump just signed a flurry of Executive Orders publicly at the Capital One Area including:

  -Recision of 78 Biden Era Executive Orders
  -Freeze federal regulations
  -Freeze on federal hiring
  -Federal workers must return to full-time in-person work immediately… pic.twitter.com/Y7eWr6XlOH

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 21, 2025

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  There are a lot more expected in the hours and days ahead. 

  *   *   * 

  Update (1325 ET):

  Welcome back, Mr. President. 

  President Trump declared, “America’s decline is over,” during his second inaugural address delivered in the US Capitol Rotunda. He described the election as a mandate to end “a horrible betrayal” and pledged to prioritize an “America First” agenda. The president also vowed to “rebalance” the scales of justice. 

  “Our sovereignty will be reclaimed, our safety will be restored, the scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end,” Trump said. 

  He said climate, education, and public health policies will change “starting today and very quickly.”  

  Trump promised to sign an executive order to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.”

  He stated, “From this moment on, America’s decline is over.” 

  The president then spoke about unity and criticized the Biden administration: “In the United States of America, as we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust. For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly incomplete disrepair …  We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time, stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad.” 

  Trump continued on the subject of unity: “National unity is now returning to America, and confidence and pride is soaring like never before in everything we do. My administration will be inspired by a strong pursuit of excellence and unrelenting success. We will not forget our country. We will not forget our Constitution. And we will not forget our God.”

  Trump shifted his speech to the migrant invasion crisis. He said that “criminal aliens” would be deported, catch and release would end, and US troops would secure the border, adding that drug cartels would soon be deemed terrorist organizations. 

  “As Commander in Chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do. We will do it at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump spoke about the migrant crisis that Democrats and their globalist buddies unleashed across the Heartland. 

  Trump addressed the inflation monster, saying, “I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices.”

  “We will drill baby drill,” Trump said, adding that a national energy emergency would be declared. We discussed this earlier… 

  Trump To Declare National Energy Emergency https://t.co/aY9DyrTAPf

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 20, 2025

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  Trump’s policy rollout has been as expected and is consistent with his campaign pledges.

  He said he would sign a “series of historic executive orders” and “with these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense.”

  Regarding gender, Trump said: “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government, that there are only two genders: male and female.”

  The president noted that all efforts to “​socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life” will be halted dead in its tracks. Instead, he said, he will “forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.”

  Trump then declared that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the “Gulf of America.” 

  He praised President McKinley for the Panama Canal and his efforts during the Spanish-American war. He stated, “China is operating the Panama Canal,” indicating, “We’re taking it back.”  

  Trump then spoke about space and wanted to “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.” 

  He pledged to “end the chronic disease epidemic“… 

  During Trump’s speech, the White House released a summary of Trump’s America First Priorities:

  Make America Safe Again

  • President Trump will take bold action to secure our border and protect American communities. This includes ending Biden’s catch-and-release policies, reinstating Remain in Mexico, building the wall, ending asylum for illegal border crossers, cracking down on criminal sanctuaries, and enhancing vetting and screening of aliens.

  • President Trump’s deportation operation will address the record border crossings of criminal aliens under the prior administration.

  • The president is suspending refugee resettlement, after communities were forced to house large and unsustainable populations of migrants, straining community safety and resources.

  • The Armed Forces, including the National Guard, will engage in border security, which is national security, and will be deployed to the border to assist existing law enforcement personnel.

  • President Trump will begin the process of designating cartels, including the dangerous Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations and use the Alien Enemies Act to remove them.

  • The Department of Justice will seek the death penalty as the appropriate punishment for heinous crimes against humanity, including those who kill law enforcement officers and illegal migrants who maim and murder Americans.

  Make America Affordable And Energy Dominant Again

  • The president will unleash American energy by ending Biden’s policies of climate extremism, streamlining permitting, and reviewing for rescission all regulations that impose undue burdens on energy production and use, including mining and processing of non-fuel minerals.

  • President Trump’s energy actions empower consumer choice in vehicles, showerheads, toilets, washing machines, lightbulbs and dishwashers.

  • President Trump will declare an energy emergency and use all necessary resources to build critical infrastructure.

  • President Trump’s energy policies will end leasing to massive wind farms that degrade our natural landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers.

  • President Trump will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.

  • All agencies will take emergency measures to reduce the cost of living.

  • President Trump will announce the America First Trade Policy.

  • America will no longer be beholden to foreign organizations for our national tax policy, which punishes American businesses.

  Drain The Swamp

  • The president will usher a Golden Age for America by reforming and improving the government bureaucracy to work for the American people. He will freeze bureaucrat hiring except in essential areas to end the onslaught of useless and overpaid DEI activists buried into the federal workforce. He will pause burdensome and radical regulations not yet in effect that Biden announced.

  • President Trump is announcing an unprecedented slate of executive orders for rescission.

  • President Trump is planning for improved accountability of government bureaucrats. The American people deserve the highest-quality service from people who love our country.

  • The president will also return federal workers to work, as only 6% of employees currently work in person.

  • President Trump is taking swift action to end the weaponization of government against political rivals and ordering all document retention as required by law. President Trump is also ending the unconstitutional censorship by the federal government. No longer will government employees pick and require the erasure of entirely true speech.

  • On the president’s direction, the State Department will have an America-First foreign policy.

  Bring Back American Values

  • The president will establish male and female as biological reality and protect women from radical gender ideology.

  • American landmarks will be named to appropriately honor our Nation’s history.

  White House website: “America Is Back”… 

  

  Listen to Trump’s speech here:

  🚨 DONALD TRUMP’S FULL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH 🚨 pic.twitter.com/oTT5YdpaEA

  — Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) January 20, 2025

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  Now, it’s time for a barrage of executive orders. 

  *   *   * 

  President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance are set to take the oath of office in the US Capitol Rotunda in just a few short hours, officially ushering in the era of Trump 2.0 (‘America First’). The ceremony marks the peaceful power transfer from the Biden-Harris regime to Trump-Vance-MAGA.

  Trump and Vance will be sworn in at 11:40 AM ET inside the US Capitol Rotunda, a decision attributed to dangerously cold temperatures outside (though speculation about security concerns, such as potential drone threats…). 

  WOW! Here’s a look inside the Capitol Rotunda, where President Trump’s swearing-in ceremony will take place.
  pic.twitter.com/jiK5gJJ5ce

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 20, 2025

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  Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath of office to Trump on the Lincoln Bible and a Bible gifted to him by his mother in 1955. Then, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will administer the oath of office to Vance. 

  President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’ terms will officially end at noon, as directed by the 20th Amendment in the Constitution.

  Trump, as president, will then deliver his inaugural address, where he is expected to lay out the America First vision for his second term. 

  According to CBS News, the inaugural ceremonies were planned by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota.

  Klobuchar’s committee oversees eight events on Inauguration Day:

  • the procession to the Capitol;

  • the vice president’s swearing-in ceremony;

  • the president’s swearing-in ceremony;

  • the inaugural address;

  • the honorary departure of the outgoing president and vice president;

  • the signing ceremony, during which the new president signs nominations, memorandums, proclamations or executive orders;

  • the inaugural luncheon;

  • the pass in review, during which the president and vice president review military troops;

  • and the presidential parade, which will take place at Capital One arena in downtown Washington due to the cold.

  Exact Timing of Today’s Inauguration Ceremony: 

  

  After the inaugural ceremony, the Trump-Vance administration will be hard at work – expected to issue “close to 100” executive orders, if not more…

  CNN cited sources that Stephen Miller, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, reviewed some of the planned executive orders with senior congressional Republicans on Sunday. 

  One of the executive orders Trump is expected to issue is “declaring a national energy emergency…” 

  We expect a barrage of lawsuits from DC swamp law firms to hit the Trump administration in the hours and days after taking power to slow the ‘America First’ progress that will upend many swamp creatures. 

  As for the state of the economy as Trump enters the White House, Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, told clients earlier:

  On Inauguration Day 2025, the US economy is in the sweet spot of healthy growth and gradual disinflation. We estimate that real GDP grew 2.6% in Q4 and expect a similar pace in 2025. Our forecast is ½pp above the latest Bloomberg consensus, in part because we are still more confident than others that real disposable personal income will grow solidly in 2025 and in part because of a sturdy forecast for business investment. That said, we are not as far above consensus as for most of the last two years because other forecasters have become more optimistic given ongoing strength in the data and, in some cases, high expectations for the growth-positive aspects of the Trump agenda.

  Maybe Hatzius forgot to mention that the economy’s “sweet spot” is being produced by debt rising $1 trillion every 100 days.

  We suspect BlueSky users suffering from ‘TDS’ will rage this afternoon.

  Liberal tears incoming pic.twitter.com/CsaiKFOzjZ

  — David Sullivan (prosecute, fauci) (@sully40272) January 16, 2025

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  *Follow this running blog for more updates. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 18:37

• WTF: Asylum Seekers Caught With 30,000 High-Caliber Rifle Rounds In Arizona
  WTF: Asylum Seekers Caught With 30,000 High-Caliber Rifle Rounds In Arizona

  President Donald Trump’s imminent executive orders addressing the illegal alien invasion, border crisis, and cartel violence could not come soon enough, as a new report out of Arizona says a multi-agency investigation led to the arrest of several asylum seekers and a US citizen in possession of 30,000 rounds of ammunition. 

  Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County, Arizona, revealed Sunday in a Facebook post that in mid-January, Cochise County Counter Narcotics, Trafficking Alliance assisted Homeland Security Investigations and Burau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seized 10,000 rounds of .50 caliber ammunition and 19,640 rounds of 7.62×39 ammunition from multiple vehicles, operated by several asylum seekers and one US citizen from Texas.

  Dannels’ Facebook post read:

  Multi-agency investigation results in ammunition seizure

  In mid-January of 2025, the Cochise County Counter Narcotics and Trafficking Alliance (CNTA) assisted Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Burau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) with an investigation leading to the seizure of 10,000 rounds of .50 caliber ammunition and 19,640 rounds of 7.62×39 ammunition.

  The .50 caliber and 7.62×39 rounds were separated within two vehicles traveling east on Interstate 10 from the Phoenix area. The vehicle containing the 7.62×39 ammunition was interdicted by the Pinal County Sheriff’s office. Still, the second vehicle containing the .50 caliber ammunition was located by CNTA investigators at Motel 6 in Benson.

  CNTA, HSI, and USBP contacted the vehicle’s two occupants at the motel. One of the occupants was found to be an asylum seeker out of Cuba and the second individual was identified as a US citizen out of Texas. The second vehicle was occupied by two asylum seekers. This investigation is ongoing and led by HSI and ATF.

  Images of the seizure: 

  

  Facebook users responded to the sheriff’s post with disgust: 

  “This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg of what has traveled from this country. Smh Hope they never see American soil again!” one Facebook user said. 

  Another person said the ammo was mostly likely destined for cartels. 

  “Bet it was heading to the border or worse, heading to all the illegals who are planning an attack on US soil! So many people from different countries came here and we know nothing of their past or their true intentions,” someone else said. 

  “Deportation for all. Go, Trump,” someone else said. 

  Local law enforcement and federal agencies have yet to disclose the buyer or final destination of the ammo. Speculation points to cartels as the likely customer, but the billion-dollar question remains: for cartel operations in the US or in Mexico? Or worse, terror organizations within the US could’ve outsourced ammunition and weapons procurement to migrants.

  The good news, according to President Trump earlier today, is that the era of open southern borders under globalist Democrats, which has threatened national security to unprecedented levels, is coming to an end. After being sworn in, Trump assured Americans that he would designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

  Law and order must be restored. That’s the mandate the American people have given Trump. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 18:30

• What CNN's Loss In The Florida Defamation Case Says About American Journalism
  What CNN’s Loss In The Florida Defamation Case Says About American Journalism

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  “Your credibility with me … is about none.”

  Those words to CNN counsel by Judge William Henry also clearly spoke for the Florida jury which, on Friday, awarded $5 million for Navy veteran Zachary Young and approved an additional amount, still to be determined, for punitive damages.

  The CNN loss is only the latest in a series of media cases that have reversed decades of case law where the media largely prevailed under highly protective legal standards. It says a great deal about the state of modern journalism and its unrelenting efforts at self-destruction.

  

  In “The Indispensable Right,” I discuss the radical shift in American journalism that occurred with the rejection of neutrality and objectivity in favor of advocacy journalism. J-schools now teach that objectivity is a dated concept. As former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has explained, “All journalism is activism.”

  After interviewing more than 75 media leaders, Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, detailed how media leaders view neutrality and objectivity as dated concepts that inhibit social and political agendas.

  The public’s response to this trend has been both predictable and pronounced. The famous “Let’s Go, Brandon” incident after a NASCAR race, after all, was more of a criticism of the media than of Joe Biden — a “Yankee Doodling” of the press for its distortion of facts.

  Revenue and ratings for media outlets have plummeted, although there are other contributing factors. During the trial, CNN host Jake Tapper was challenged for his testimony that he “doesn’t pay attention to ratings.” That does not appear to be the case at the network, which is cratering and desperately trying to reverse the ratings plunge. CNN has reportedly lost half of its viewership, hitting lows not seen in three decades.

  The jury clearly believed, as the network’s slogan claims, that “This is CNN.” That is probably the reason it will soon award punitive damages. However, this is not just CNN. The case itself highlighted everything wrong with modern media.

  The segment aired on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on Nov. 11, 2021, and trashed Young in a story about Afghans being preyed upon by groups promising to get them out of the country amid the disastrous withdrawal of U.S. forces. Tapper told his audience ominously how CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt discovered that “Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.”

  Marquardt detailed how “desperate Afghans are being exploited” and need to pay “exorbitant, often impossible amounts” and then named Young and his company as examples.

  The trial revealed internal messages from Marquardt that he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young motherf—–” and thought the story would be Young’s “funeral.” After promising to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded that he was “gonna hold you to that cowboy!” CNN senior editor Fuzz Hogan described Young as “a s—.”

  As often occurs today, CNN allegedly gave Young only two hours to respond before the story ran. It is a typical ploy of the press to claim that they gave someone a chance to respond. The call often comes at the end of the day to create the appearance of fairness.  Nevertheless, Young did respond to the chagrin of CNN producers and made clear that key elements of the story were untrue.

  CNN’s defense in court was a case study in how not to defend a defamation lawsuit. It included a series of self-inflicted wounds, delivered in front of the jury. However, it is only the latest loss for major media, given recent courthouse setbacks for the New York Times, NBC, and Deadspin. ABC News recently settled its own defamation case out of court, and previously Fox News paid a massive settlement.

  Nevertheless, some outlets appear to be doubling down in the hope that they can ride anti-Trump coverage back to robust ratings. Last week, NBC announced that it was bringing Yamiche Alcindor to the White House press corps. Alcindon, who also worked for PBS, was widely criticized for often preceding questions with attacks on conservatives or over-the-top praise for Joe Biden or Democrats. While others saw raw political bias, Alcindor explained that it was her job to use journalism to bend the “moral arc toward justice.”

  For decades, the media found ample protection within the protective shell created by the Supreme Court after New York Times v. Sullivan. The Court sought to create “breathing space” for the media by articulating a standard that now applies to both public officials and public figures. The demanding standard requires a showing of “actual malice,” where the media had actual knowledge of a statement’s falsity or showed reckless disregard for whether it was true or false.

  The string of media losses reflects a change not in the law but in the media itself. As the press increasingly engages in advocacy journalism, reckless disregard for the truth is becoming the norm, as shown in the CNN case. It could get worse.

  Some have questioned the extension of this protective standard to cases involving public figures, which encompasses anyone who has achieved a modicum of fame in business, sports, or other pursuits. A couple of justices have also expressed skepticism about why non-public figures should shoulder such a burden when people lie about them.

  Meanwhile, the public is abandoning legacy media at a run, turning to new media in the form of blogs and citizen journalists. Recently, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of such a citizen journalist in a criminal case — a woman known as La Gordiloca (loosely translated as “fat, crazy lady”). Describing her as a “swearing muckraker who is upending border journalism,” the New York Times admitted that La Gordiloca “reflects how many people on the border now prefer to get their news.”

  The rise in citizen journalists in new media and advocacy journalism in legacy media will only likely increase the number of such cases in the coming years. For mainstream media, the skepticism that they are facing in society is now becoming equally evident in courts. To paraphrase Judge Henry, their credibility with the public is about none.

  *  *  *

  Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 17:55

• Trump Vows To Refill SPR "Right To The Top" As China Tanker Rates Soar
  Trump Vows To Refill SPR “Right To The Top” As China Tanker Rates Soar

  For much of the past year, oil traders were desperate to find a bullish thesis. Now, in the span of just a few weeks, they have two.

  On one hand, amid mounting fears of a supply and inventory glut, Biden’s parting gift of accelerated sanctions against Russian oil exporters and tankers appears to have promptly removed as much as 1.5 million barrels in daily supply, and pushed oil prices to a 5 month high.

  But while Russian supply is set to shrink materially for the next few months, US demand is about to surge. That’s because President Donald Trump said during his inaugural address that he plans to refill the US’s strategic oil reserve “right to the top” after it reached lows not seen since the 1980s under Joe Biden’s handlers, who drained about half of the SPR after the Ukraine war to prevent a surge in oil prices.

  Trump vowed to “bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top and export American energy all over the world” during his inaugural address at the Capitol Monday.

  The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has a maximum capacity of about 700 million barrels, currently stands at at 394.4 million barrels following a record selloff during Biden’s administration, which drained about half by late 2023. The drawdowns under Biden included selling 180 million barrels into the global market in an attempt to bring down gasoline prices following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

  

  Biden had begun slowly refilling the emergency cache, which was created in the aftermath of Arab oil embargo in the 1970s, but ran out of funding to buy more crude after purchasing about 60 million barrels. It would take an act of Congress to appropriate more money for the Energy Department’s petroleum account.

  Of course, the moment such act is passed, oil traders will start frontrunning the US government and push crude prices sharply higher, especially if and when China finally capitulates and unleashes the massive stimulus its economy so badly needs.

  But while it will take some time before Trump’s plan to refill the SPR is implemented, the Russian export squeeze is already hitting the global commodity market hard, with costs to hire an oil supertanker on key routes to China more than doubling since the US imposed sanctions on Russia two weeks ago, showing the extent to which the move has upended the global shipping market.

  The sanctions have jolted a freight market that was, until recently, dealing with softer demand due to supply curbs, a tepid Chinese economy, and an easing of Middle East tensions. The number of confirmed journeys hasn’t changed much, but the pool of available ships has shrunken rapidly, and there’s intense competition on certain routes.

  As shown below, daily rates for very-large crude carriers on the Middle East-to-China route surged 112% to $57,589 in the week through Friday, according to Baltic Exchange data, after Washington sanctioned nearly 160 tankers hauling Russian crude on Jan. 10. Those on the US Gulf-to-China journey jumped 102%, while West Africa-to-China saw an increase of 90%.

  

  The reason for the surge in tanker rates is that in recent days, major Chinese refiners have been been rushing to buy crude from the Middle East, Africa and the Americas to make up for the loss of Russian oil. A VLCC from the US Gulf to China was hired for $9.5 million last week, compared to a low-$7 million range over the last couple of months, shipping fixtures show.  Indian Oil Corp. is also snapping upup Middle Eastern barrels, adding to the pressure.

  Separately, there’s concern that tanker rates could remain elevated if Trump takes a tougher line against Tehran, which he has also promised to do.

  “Rates could hold at these levels if Trump dials up the pressure on Iranian oil shipments, which is more likely than not,” said Junjie Ting, a Singapore-based shipping analyst at Oil Brokerage.

  The rising demand for VLCCs, which can carry around 2 million barrels of oil, is also feeding through to costs for smaller vessels, which tend to be viewed as less cost-efficient on longer routes. Rates for Suezmaxes, that hold about 1 million barrels, have climbed on increased demand and tight supply, shipbroker SSY said in a report.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 17:20

• When 'Future Shock' Meets 'Mass Formation Psychosis'
  When ‘Future Shock’ Meets ‘Mass Formation Psychosis’

  Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

  Frazzledrip Overdrive

  

  In 1970, futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler released the first of three seminal books about the trajectory that America, and the world was on. They published them at roughly decade intervals: Future Shock (1970), Power Shift, (1984), and Third Wave (1991). There were others (like War & Anti-War and Revolutionary Wealth), but those three laid out what was coming down the pipe and they were largely correct about it because their core premise was so simple:

  The rate of change was accelerating.

  That was it. But it affected everything. The ramifications went beyond cycle theory or long waves because it meant that cycles and long waves would themselves accelerate.

  As this acceleration accelerated, it would begin to overwhelm the coping mechanisms of both individuals and institutions alike. Nobody would be exempt, and everybody was facing a kind of technological and cultural shell shock, which they called: Future Shock:

  It is impossible to produce future shock in large numbers of individuals without affecting the rationality of the society as a whole. Today, according to Daniel P. Moynihan, the chief White House advisor on urban affairs, the United States “exhibits the qualities of an individual going through a nervous breakdown.” For the cumulative impact of sensory, cognitive or decisional overstimulation, not to mention the physical effects of neural or endocrine overload, creates sickness in our midst.

  Of course, the “today” in the above passage was in 1970.

  The Tofflers probably underestimated how bang-on they were, and the pace of change we’re experiencing just over the past few years (since “The Jackpot” event of 2020) probably would have dazzled both of them (Alvin passed away in 2016 and his wife Heidi in 2019).

  I have long ascribed the kind of rampant “mass formation psychosis” (to use the Dr. Peter Malone term) to one thing above all else: Future Shock.

  Most of the ridiculous bullshit people believe today

  … and nearly all the policy blunders that are so catastrophically stupid as to appear to be intentional conspiracy

  – are pure and simple Future Shock.

  Go back and read the entire series.

  Then you’ll get what’s actually… pic.twitter.com/9xGmhtnJJk

  — Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) June 18, 2024

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

  While the Tofflers exhaustively explored the coming breakdown of our prevailing systems of government, education, military and business, there a few additional catalysts at play today – since the Jackpot – which are converging, and adding even more instability and disruption to the future shock.

  I can think of three:

  #1) We’re in a Crack-Up Boom

  The first Future Shock book dropped right on the cusp of the Fiat Era. Less than a year later, the Nixon Shock would rug-pull the concept of “money”, and set in motion yet another accelerant: compounding debt and money creation.

  

  Take all the cognitive dissonance and social breakdown that the Tofflers said future shock would cause, and add to that a doom-loop of money-printing and Cantillon Effect (if you don’t know what that is, just think of it in terms of accelerating wealth inequality).

  All fiat currencies throughout history have gone to zero, no exceptions and as they approach their final glide path, society starts to experience the effects through ever accelerating inflation (sound familiar?)

  There have been close to a dozen hyperinflations over the course of the 20th century, and there have already been a few in the 21st (the Venezuela and Zimbabwe) and a couple that have been teetering on the precipice (Argentina still struggling with 104% inflation in 2024, Turkey, Nigeria).

  

  Usually when this occurs, it’s isolated to a single currency and there at least theoretically exists the option for capital flight into other currencies.

  But owing to the global debt super-bubble, and rampant money creation of the fiat era, which accelerated through The Jackpot (Covid), high inflation is now happening pretty well everywhere (the only country I note that is experiencing deflation right now is Afghanistan).

  Most significantly, the currency experiencing inflation (albeit officially “under control”) is the US dollar, the global reserve currency.

  For months in The Bitcoin Capitalist (since that 50bps cut in September), we’ve been tracking how the Fed has lost control of the yield curve, and this portends a massive crisis regardless of what the official CPI is.

  This is also why whenever we see something like a memecoin rocket from zero to stratospheric valuations, we don’t think of it in terms of a crypto bubble, we rather suspect what the Austrian School economists called “Katastrophenhausse” – literally “Catastrophic boom” or “Crack-up Boom“.

  Tell me we’re in a “crack-up boom” without using the phrase “crack-up boom”… pic.twitter.com/5P1DF7mvQj

  — Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) January 18, 2025

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

  When a currency is in a real hyper-inflation territory, the crack-up boom becomes a flight to safety of “anything but“ the currency, which is in the process of disintegrating (see: It’s the Denominator, Stupid“)

  We aren’t there yet. We may be a few years away from that – and so the pile-in to these memecoins isn’t about the preservation of purchasing power. But I suspect it is about financial nihilism: and the realization the the current system is doomed; that the path for “getting ahead” lies in being early on crazy moonshots and only needing to be right once.

  The Tofflers never talked about how a global hyperinflationary event would effect their thesis. I can fill in the blanks: it’s like pouring accelerant on it.

  #2) The Singularity Has Already Happened

  The Tofflers never came out and said that the accelerating pace of change would result in humanity evolving into something else entirely; just that the effect of this ever quickening change would have profound effects on the collective psyche.

  The pronouncement that it would result in an evolutionary quantum leap would be made by others, in later decades. “We will merge with machines”, was the overall theme. We will upload our consciousness into the cloud. We will transcend our physicality, we will experience a “post-biological” existence. We could even become …immortal.

  What would make all this possible is the virtuous cycle created by digital computer networks, powered by Moore’s Law, incessantly halving their physical footprint while doubling their processing power – eventually we would achieve, and then surpass, the interconnectivity and the processing power of the human brain itself.

  When that happened, all bets were off.

  The assumption is that somewhere along this continuum, when the right thresholds of parallelism and power were surpassed, “mind” itself would leap out of the process – emerging with a vengeance and folding back in on itself, forking off subprocesses even more intelligent than itself, and so on, ad infinitum.

  “Our final invention” will then survey the world, with all its deficiencies and inefficiencies, and being infinitely smarter than all human minds combined, will deftly solve everything.

  At that point there will be little left for us clunky, slow-witted humans to do.

  We can then retire into a life of leisure, experiencing anything existence has to offer courtesy of the super-intelligent beings we had engineered into existence. We can even shed our mortal coils and experience it all from within the safety and comfort of an artificial computer generated construct. Our own personal, chrooted universes where we could experience anything our minds desired.

  The likes of Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamondis posit this oncoming event as “The Singularity”. Kurzweil (who turns 77 next month) thinks it’ll happen by 2045, and reputedly guzzles about 300 capsules per day of various nutrients and supplements in a bid to keep his mortal coil alive long enough to make the leap into immortality.

  There are various problems with this scenario, in fact back before Covid (“The Jackpot event“), I started writing a book about it which has since languished on the back-burner (my focus over 2025 will be to finish the CBDC Survival Guide).

  As a general rule, things never play out along the lines of the best forecasts. I’ve written about this before, and borrowed the term recipriversexclusion from the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy to describe it. In the Douglas Adams book, it meant a number whose value could be anything but itself (i.e “The given hour for a dinner party is the one moment in time that it is impossible for any of the guests to arrive”).

  In our context, it’s that consensus estimates and expert forecasts describe the single timeline that is impossible to occur.

  I’ll go one further. I think that we are already in the post-singularity era. Right now. 

  It happened within the last couple years with the AI wave – of third major technological wave of this century (internet, crypto, now AI) and the eighth major technological leap since the industrial revolution (electricity, radio/TV, telephones, semi-conductors, personal computers).

  Now we’re past the point where the code is coding. The feedback loop there is already underway, and it too is accelerating…

  I’m not sure people understand how important this is:

  Goldman Sachs CEO says that AI can draft 95% of an IPO prospectus “in minutes.”

  White collar jobs will go first…. and fast. pic.twitter.com/ZWbMEGIhhs

  — John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) January 17, 2025

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  #3) We’re in a bizarro-verse alternate reality

  

  We crossed into it on July 13, 2024.

  At that moment, our entire reality phase-shifted into another timeline. This happens constantly (JFK assassination, 9/11), but sometimes, the most monumental shifts are the result of almost accidental “hinge moments”  (there’s an excellent book by that name that lays out a few of them over the past thousand years).

  Hanging chads in 2000 US election. Trump turning his head to point toward a chart at a key moment…

  We’re in a completely different timeline now.

  …and it’s accelerating.

  Not very many people get that.

  Sound on. 🔉🔊 pic.twitter.com/7Z2me11dED

  — Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) November 10, 2024

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

  (That’s a Bill McClintock mash-up, btw, be sure you crank it loud)

  So now, we’re in an ever-accelerating technology loop, amidst an Austrian School Crack-Up Boom, taking place within the early innings of a global hyper-inflationary event, in the early days after the technological Singularity.

  And, we’ve flipped timelines, into what looks like some kind of bizarro-verse.

  

  Earth 29, from the DC Multi-verse, apparently.

  At least that’s what it feels like. 

  This is one of the symptoms of Future Shock.

  And the craazy thing is, we’re aren’t even in the parabolic acceleration phase yet. We’re still just rounding the corner, in the inflection point:

  

  So What Does “Frazzledrip” Mean?

  Anything you relied upon for stability and predictability in the past is over. Governments are near-comedic basket cases, healthcare under nearly every system is a disaster, educational systems near-catatonic. Businesses are moving with the times, some with aplomb, some bomb.

  But the most visible casualty of them all is the real-time self-destruction of the corporate, state-approved media complex.

  How information travels between nodes has shifted from broadcast to interlocking networks (neural nets) and this will never revert back.

  Today we get higher signal news, and faster, on X, than we do from the MSM – the latter of which gets to “breaking news” hours or even days after the fact; and only then after it gets pureed through an intersectional sieve of agitprop.

  

  But the flip side is that in this super-conductive neural net of unrestrained signal, a lot of truly unhinged stuff gains traction.

  In the past, we had a centrally organized information publishing ecosystem: news, publications, broadcast, and they all had editorial processes and filters that, for awhile, almost looked objective and neutral – focusing more on “getting it right” than punditry.

  That all went by the wayside over the past decades, especially since the twin populist crimes of 2016: Brexit, and the first Trump election. That was when it became clear that the gatekeepers were now curating informational pathways that most people were in the process of abandoning.

  In the emergent system – the decentralized, internet system, there is no effective way to manage or control “misinformation” or “disinformation”. In fact, after reading countless NGO and policy papers on the topic, I rarely see one that can even offer a clear definition of what those terms mean.

  So we’re all stuck trying to cope with sensory overload – note that I didn’t say information overload, because a lot of it isn’t information – a lot of it is conjecture, conspiracy and shared neurosis.

  My catch-all phrase for everything that seems crazy and unprovable is “Frazzledrip”, which is the name of my bookmarks folder where I keep all my clippings that fit in this bucket…

  

  Frazzledrip is my preferred term to “conspiracy theory” (because there are a lot of real conspiracies):

  • Directed energy weapons caused fires so that oligarchs could buy property cheap
  • Michelle Obama and Brigette Marcon are dudes
  • Flat Earth “truthers”

  Basically the common theme among Frazzledrips is that everything that happens anywhere is the result of a carefully calculated cabal that rules the world and is intentionally destroying civilization to serve their own ends.

  

  Before you get mad at me because you suspect I don’t subscribe to one of your personal Frazzledrips, we have to acknowledge that:

  • Powerful groups do conspire to protect their own power, increase their wealth and wield outsize influence.
  • There really is a lot of crazy, unhinged stuff actually happening.

  The reality is, those powerful groups conspiring to their own ends are not a monolith, they are factions, and those factions are fractal. There is not only no consensus between these groups, aside from temporary, ever-shifting alignments of interest – there is active conflict between them. Possibly to the point where geopolitical events of the day are more likely the result of internecine factional conflicts than between identifiable sovereigns.

  Even still, none of them are in control – let alone one of them, or even all of them: we live in an out of control world, and for many – that is a more terrifying prospect than the possibility that we live in a dystopian caste-based society, lorded over by an insular class of dynastic, elites (who are really shape-shifting lizards).

  

  (Source?)

  The reason people are prone to believe these narratives is because, in a weird way, they provide some semblance of structure, some kind of mental model that can explain the high weirdness (not to mention institutionalized incompetence) which typifies our day-to-day existence.

  But the reason we live in a world of high weirdness and incompetence, is (you guessed it) Future Shock. 

  Just to make it even harder to parse reality – it turns out there are heterodox narratives which really do have a higher probability of being accurate (like the Covid lab-leak, Epstein didn’t kill himself, or even 9/11 was an inside job), but are less likely to be widely believed than your typical “Frazzledrip”.

  What’s To Be Done

  The bitterest pill to swallow coming out of Covid, even after being a Libertarian and aspiring Sovereign Individual for most of my adult life, was the realization of just how on our own, each of us are.

  Most normies live their entire lives under this assumption that “the system mostly works”, along with its support structures, governance models and information apparatus.

  People like you and me had an awareness that this wasn’t as guaranteed as most others thought, and that we were on a path where this would become less reliable over time.

  With Covid it seemed like complete institutional breakdown: our governments became openly tyrannical and the media complex went full brainwashing mode, while the healthcare system imploded. Suddenly, we, as individuals were tasked with shouldering a level of personal responsibility unlike anything we had ever faced before – it was one thing to lean toward self-reliance in the Beforetimes. Now we not only had to fill the vacuum left by a dysfunctional system, that system was openly hostile toward us.

  Add to that, yet another technological revolution with AI blowing wide open and posing its own unique existential threat to anything that was still left intact.

  I would submit that this actually isn’t  the time for radical self-reliance, you just have to be a lot more thoughtful about what and on whom you rely on.

  This is probably a major contributor to why the Bitcoin culture has taken such hold. As a zeitgeist (Bitcoin is it’s own kind of morphic field, very distinct from “crypto”) – In addition to providing something an immutable: a globally dispersed ledger secured by Proof-of-Work, Bitcoin places heavy emphasis on personal fitness, contemplative practices (mindfulness, meditation) and family; which overflows into a kind of tribalism that I predict will come to define this era.

  We also have to train ourselves to think more in terms of probabilities than binary true or false – if only because the truth is practically impossible for any of us to know when it comes to events and matters outside our own immediate frame of reference. Especially with AI, deepfakes, and botnets.

  Finally, we have to focus on our own internal states and own personal goals – if we’re not examining all this wild mayhem happening around us through the lens of how it impacts (or even empowers) our ability to pursue our own goals, then we’re just a pinball being batted around everybody else’s machine.

  (Last year I soft-launched an email list focusing on this called Sovereign Mind, which I’m going to get into gear in 2025).

  Events are accelerating so fast, we have moved well beyond Hanlon’s Razor (“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”) I don’t actually believe politicians, central bankers, technocrats or pundits are stupid.

  But they are all, as a group, collectively out of their depth and completely tone-deaf. They’re trying to function in a 3D world that’s in the process of turning into a hypercube.

  

  They keep insisting on trying to apply Cartesian boundaries and frameworks on to a place that has been undergoing a rather disorderly phase shift into another dimension.

  (That dimension, was the advent of cyberspace, and I’ll have more to say about this transition from our 3D to a hypercubic world in the next piece. Subscribe here to get it when it drops).

  We’ll close with a final warning from the Tofflers:

  “Social rationality presupposes individual rationality, and this, in turn, depends not only on certain biological equipment, but on continuity, order and regularity in the environment.

  …

  It is premised on some correlation between the pace and complexity of change and man’s decisional capacities.

  By blindly stepping up the rate of change, the level of novelty, and the extent of choice, we are thoughtlessly tampering with these environmental preconditions of rationality. We are condemning countless millions to future shock.”

  Fast forward 50 years, and we’re soaking in it.

  *  *  *

  The Bitcoin Capitalist Letter, my premium newsletter that covers Bitcoin, crypto stocks and the digital asset space. You can catch a trial deal here.

  Sign up for the Bombthrower mailing list and get a free copy of the Crypto Capitalist Manifesto here

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 16:45

• Are US Presidents Getting Older?
  Are US Presidents Getting Older?

  Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the oldest presidents ever to be inaugurated in the United States.

  While Biden was 78 years old in 2021 and remains a one-term president, Trump was 70 at the time of his inauguration in 2017 and is 78 starting his second, non-consecutive term on Monday. Ronald Reagan, who was 69 years old in 1981, comes third. Like Biden, Trump’s age will be 82 when finishing his term. Biden would have been 86 years old at the end of a hypothetical second term.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, taking a look at all presidents’ ages at the time of their inauguration since 1789, no clear trend is visible.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Before Trump and Biden, presidents’ ages were actually well below average.

  Barack Obama took office at 47 years and 169 days, according to Potus.com, making him the fifth youngest president at the time of inauguration.

  Bill Clinton, who was 46 when he took over, was the third youngest – only John F. Kennedy (43) and Teddy Roosevelt (42) were younger.

  Some of the oldest presidents hail from past centuries.

  William Henry Harrison was 68 at his inauguration in 1841 (he died a month later of typhoid and pneumonia), making him the fourth-oldest president ever. James Buchanan, who took office in 1857, was the fifth-oldest president at 65.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 16:10

• Obama's Shadow: The Deep State And Its Real Faces
  Obama’s Shadow: The Deep State And Its Real Faces

  Authored by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke via TruthOverNews.org,

  In contemporary political discourse, the term “deep state” frequently arises as a catch-all phrase to describe the entrenched bureaucracy and unseen forces that shape U.S. governance. Washington, D.C., is often portrayed as the epicenter of this so-called deep state, where power dynamics operate independently of electoral outcomes. Some also refer to it as the “blob.”

  While it is true that U.S. governance is steered by unelected and unaccountable entities, such as the military and intelligence complexes, the concept of the “deep state” can oversimplify the complexities of governance in Washington, D.C. It can also serve to deflect accountability from those most responsible for the damage inflicted on our country.

  The deep state may appear to be a monolithic entity. However, it is, in reality, a complex web of human actors with genuine agency. Among these individuals, Barack Obama stands out as a pivotal figure whose influence and legacy have significantly shaped the political landscape over the past 17 years.

  In this concluding piece of our series on Barack Obama, we explore his instrumental role in shaping U.S. policy, not just during his own presidency but also during Trump’s first term and the Biden presidency – sometimes referred to as Obama’s third and fourth terms – and how this unfortunate era may now be approaching its end.

  

  Agency

  Obama exemplifies the concept of agency within what is usually referred to as the “deep state.” His presidency not only brought about significant division and policy shifts but also laid the groundwork for a network of fanatical loyalists and ideological allies, many of whom have remained entrenched in both governmental and non-governmental institutions. These figures, many of whom are former members of the Obama administration, have undermined democracy and the will of the people across multiple presidencies.

  Obama’s post-presidential endeavors—such as his political advocacy, mentorship of rising Democratic leaders, and the fact that he was the first former president since the dying Woodrow Wilson to remain in Washington—highlight his ongoing influence. Unlike the faceless bureaucracy typically associated with the term “deep state,” Obama embodies the reality of its true nature: not a monolithic entity, but a network of individuals, like him, who shape policy and public opinion, often from behind the scenes.

  A closer examination reveals that many individuals who served under Obama have remained active in government roles through multiple administrations. Key figures in intelligence, defense, and other critical sectors often retain their positions or reemerge in different roles, reinforcing the perception of undemocratic continuity in American governance.

  This phenomenon is not unique to the Obama administration. Historically, Washington has witnessed the recycling of officials and advisors across different presidencies, giving rise to an insider class that operates with a high degree of autonomy from the will of the people. But Obama undoubtedly took things to a new level. Here are some examples.

  The Names of Permanent Washington

  Antony Blinken was Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy National Security Advisor under Obama before becoming Secretary of State under Biden. He continued disastrous Obama policies, ranging from Iran to Ukraine.

  Jake Sullivan cosplayed in various national security roles under Obama before becoming National Security Advisor under Biden. In between those jobs, he was pivotal in pushing the Russia collusion hoax. While he may no longer hold a government position, his wife, Margaret Goodlander, was recently sworn in as a new member of Congress.

  Victoria Nuland seeded the Ukraine war in 2014 when she was Assistant Secretary of State under Obama. She later became Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Biden. She too played a key role in advancing the fraudulent Russia collusion narrative. Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan is a commentator at the Brookings Institution and was, until recently, a fervently anti-Trump editor-at-large at The Washington Post.

  Susan Rice shifted from National Security Advisor and U.N. Ambassador under Obama to Director of the Domestic Policy Council in Biden’s administration. Rice infamously attempted to cover up Obama’s involvement in weaponizing the government against Trump through the Russia collusion hoax, particularly Obama’s role in the dismissal of General Michael Flynn.

  Mary McCord was Assistant Attorney General under Obama, a position from which she too played a role in advancing the Russia collusion narrative. Later, she became legal counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives during the sham January 6th inquiry. Most recently, she has been trying to derail the appointments of Pam Bondi as Attorney General and Kash Patel as FBI Director. Her husband, Sheldon Snook, worked for Chief Justice John Roberts from 2014 to 2020. In December 2020, he authored an anti-Trump article in the left-wing rag, The Atlantic.

  Lisa Monaco, another Russia collusion hoaxer, was Homeland Security Advisor under Obama and became Deputy Attorney General under Biden. She effectively led the Department of Justice’s lawfare campaign against both President Trump and the January 6 protesters.

  John Carlin held a national security role under Obama and returned to the Biden administration as Deputy Attorney General to help Monaco to pursue Obama’s lawfare agenda.

  Janet Yellen transitioned from Chair of the Federal Reserve under Obama to Secretary of the Treasury in Biden’s administration.

  Ron Klain moved from Chief of Staff to Vice President Biden to White House Chief of Staff under Biden.

  John Kerry served as Secretary of State under Obama and became the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate under Biden.

  Denis McDonough went from White House Chief of Staff under Obama to Secretary of Veterans Affairs under Biden.

  Samantha Power, who was U.N. Ambassador under Obama, became the Administrator of USAID under Biden.

  Jen Psaki worked as Deputy Press Secretary and State Department Spokesperson under Obama before becoming White House Press Secretary under Biden.

  Amos Hochstein, who helped Hunter Biden cover up his family’s corrupt entanglements in Ukraine, was Obama’s Special Envoy for Energy Affairs. He was rewarded with a similar role under Biden.

  Alejandro Mayorkas was the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security under Obama before becoming Secretary of Homeland Security under Biden.

  Jerome Powell served as a Federal Reserve Board Governor under Obama, became Chair under Trump, and retained the role under Biden. He’s been printing money recklessly to maintain the illusion of a thriving Biden economy.

  David Shulkin was the Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs under Obama before serving as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs under Trump until he was finally fired in 2018.

  Norm Eisen transitioned seamlessly from his roles in the Obama Administration, including serving as Ambassador to Czechia, to leading lawfare operations against Trump at establishment front organizations such as the Brookings Institution.

  Others, like Obama’s two key intelligence officials, John Brennan and James Clapper, may not have held official roles in subsequent administrations, but they were placed in highly influential legacy media outlets—Brennan at NBC and Clapper at CNN—where they could shape public discourse. Not surprisingly, it was these two men who led the infamous intelligence community letter falsely claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian disinformation campaign. Their actions played a pivotal role in undermining Trump’s chances in the 2020 election.

  There are many more names, including figures such as Anthony Fauci, who were part of the unelected government before Obama’s presidency and remained in their positions afterward.

  We could go on, but the point is clear: Permanent Washington is not a faceless “blob,” but a network of interconnected elites.

  Trump

  Donald Trump’s presidency, characterized by its outsider status posed a significant challenge to this established order. His election in 2016 was seen by many as a populist revolt against the entrenched Washington elites. However, the mechanisms of the deep state—or more accurately, the entrenched bureaucracy and long-standing networks—proved resilient and dangerously effective. It didn’t help that many of the individuals mentioned above, along with others, remained in Washington in government or quasi-government roles, actively working to undermine Trump’s presidency.

  Trump’s second term presents a unique opportunity to challenge the entrenched system and potentially bring about seismic shifts in the political landscape. Whether he will be able to permanently disrupt the continuity of Washington elites or merely cause a temporary shift in power remains uncertain.

  The challenge is certainly formidable. Institutional inertia runs deep, and the sophisticated networks of influence, built over decades with figures like Obama at the helm, are firmly entrenched, as are the military and intelligence complexes that operate behind the political scenes. The first step is to hire the right people and on that front Trump 47 seems to be doing a lot better than Trump 45.

  There will be no fifth term for Obama—not for a while, anyway. The veil has been lifted, and Republicans are no longer falling for the same tricks. Obama’s political standing also took a significant hit from his vocal support of the disastrous candidacy of Kamala Harris. However, that doesn’t mean he won’t try to mount a comeback. His cordial interaction with Trump at President Carter’s funeral hints at possible plotting.

  While our national nightmare may be ending with Biden gone and Obama out of the picture—at least for now—we must remain vigilant to ensure history does not repeat itself.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 15:35

• Extreme Cold, Snow Places Texas Power Grid & Permian On Alert
  Extreme Cold, Snow Places Texas Power Grid & Permian On Alert

  Texas’ top electricity regulator issued a “Weather Watch” from Monday morning through Thursday, citing “extreme cold weather” and the potential for snow, which could send electrical demand soaring across the state. 

  According to the National Weather Service, snow is forecasted to begin in Houston on Monday evening and accumulate to upwards of 4 inches by Tuesday. After the snow, frigid temperatures are expected to sweep in, bringing dangerously cold conditions that could jeopardize the power grid and energy infrastructure. 

  “Weather Watch goes into effect today through January 23 due to forecasted extreme cold weather across the ERCOT region, higher electrical demand, and the potential for lower reserves,” the Electric Reliability Council of Texas wrote on X, adding, “Winter precipitation is also expected across parts of the state. Grid conditions are expected to be normal.”

  TXANS Update—1/20/2025: An ERCOT Weather Watch goes into effect today through January 23 due to forecasted extreme cold weather across the ERCOT region, higher electrical demand, and the potential for lower reserves. Winter precipitation is also expected across parts of the…

  — ERCOT (@ERCOT_ISO) January 20, 2025

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

  Tony Fracasso, a senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center, said, “It’s a significant storm for so far south.” 

  “It looks like almost the entirety of Texas has some chance of wintery precipitation,” Fracasso noted. 

  The early alert issued by ERCOT implies that extreme cold could pressure the power grid. ERCOT stated that peak electricity demand is expected to rise over the next two days, reaching about 77.2 gigawatts. Even though ERCOT predicts high demand, it anticipates having sufficient supply to meet demand. 

  “As freezing temps blanket Texas, the power grid is performing better than ever,” Governor Greg Abbott wrote on X Sunday evening, adding, “There is ample supply of power available to meet your needs.”

  As freezing temps blanket Texas, the power grid is performing better than ever.

  There is ample supply of power available to meet your needs. pic.twitter.com/2mpxNHoKNm

  — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) January 20, 2025

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  Besides potential grid strains, frigid temperatures could curtail natural gas supplies due to the freezing of oil and gas wells and pipes, known as “freeze-offs” by energy analysts. 

  On Tuesday, West Texas temperatures will average around 29F. Through Saturday, average temperatures in the oil-rich Permian basin will remain below the 30-year average of 47F for this time of year. This cold could disrupt oil and gas output by freezing water in wells and pipelines. 

  

  Ahead of the snow, Houston Airports announced that flights at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, William P. Hobby Airport, and Ellington Airport will be suspended on Tuesday morning. 

  The storm is expected to blanket snow across the  Gulf Coast and Deep South coastal areas. 

  Meteorologist Tony Pann questioned if this wintery weather for the Gulf Coast was a “once-in-a-lifetime event“…

  ONCE IN A LIFETIME SNOW EVENT? It’s possible along the Gulf Coast early this week! 👇 Could be 3″-4″ in New Orleans! It’s likely that has not happened for over 100 years. The system could bring a little light snow to Ocean City, MD early Wednesday AM. ❄️🚂 pic.twitter.com/FUoAiKiyNR

  — Tony Pann (@TonyPannWBAL) January 20, 2025

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

  Here’s our latest reporting on the polar vortex and energy markets:

  • Goldman: “Cold January” & “Record LNG Demand” Drive Upside Risk In Natty Prices

  • Incoming: “Big Dumps Of Cold Air. Reminiscent Of 2013/14 Winter”

  • Doesn’t Fit MSM Narrative: Parts Of US Could Rival Coldest January Since 1977

  • Polar Vortex, Back-To-Back-To-Back Winter Storms Target Eastern Half Of US

  Where did global warming go? Please come back. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 15:00

• On Biden's So-Called "Oligarchs"
  On Biden’s So-Called “Oligarchs”

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

  In his last address, Joe Biden offered a Parthian shot at “oligarchs” and the dangers these “billionaires” pose to the republic. At the same time, left-wing senators hammered Trump cabinet nominees on the grounds that they would be too complacent in the face of a supposed takeover of the country by Trump’s “billionaires” and their “oligarchy.”

  

  Many things could be said about Biden’s farewell address, but I will limit them to three.

  First, Biden was attempting to copycat the warnings of outgoing president and iconic war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  Some 64 years earlier—on January 17, 1961, the near day of Biden’s “farewell address,” a departing Eisenhower warned of a new “military-industrial complex” threat to the republic that had grown out of World War II and was cresting during the ongoing Cold War of the 1950s.

  The fear, as Ike outlined it, was that a new small tech-corporate elite would sell the country on all sorts of expensive weapons and programs to ensure a near-permanent condition of hyper-military readiness and national insolvency.

  This resulting “garrison state” would make the arms merchants and technocrats rich but also exhaust the U.S. treasury in the process. What would follow for the American people was a government octopus that demanded ever higher taxes while spending money in ways increasingly unknown or irrelevant to the public interest.

  Eisenhower worried the grandees of the military-industrial complex—ex-generals revolving into defense contractor lobbyists and board members—would redefine the ancient laws of war and peace in terms of mumbo-jumbo techno-jargon. The resulting esoterica was designed to justify budget-busting defense expenditures, without enough care that the federal government would expand while the now overtaxed and overregulated citizen would be at their mercy.

  Apparently, a departing Biden sought to graft his own “oligarchy” speech onto Eisenhower’s earlier blueprint.

  But Ike was speaking as a successful two-term president. And he was an iconic war hero, as the architect of the successful American role in defeating Hitler—from the beaches of Normandy to the occupation of the defeated German homeland.

  The postwar president Eisenhower was worried about a new world in which new nuclear-tipped missiles threatened to turn any conventional war between superpowers into nuclear Armageddon. In other words, Americans listened to Eisenhower, given his probity, gravitas, and experience—and the dangers of the new corporate-government fusion. But they have no reason to listen to Biden.

  Or to paraphrase a famous quip from 1988 Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, “President Biden, you’re no Dwight Eisenhower.” Biden was removed by his own party insiders from the Democratic ticket before he did further damage to his party as he was finishing his failing one-term presidency. He left the country in shambles, at home with hyperinflation, 12 million illegal entries, a nonexistent border, spiking crime, and destroyed deterrence abroad. He humiliated the armed forces in Afghanistan, encouraging enemies that prompted two theater-wide wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

  Moreover, after swearing he would not pardon his own son as Hunter Biden faced numerous felony indictments and convictions, Biden did just that—thereby likely preventing further investigations into the entire corrupt Biden family.

  Biden leaves office desperate to sabotage his successor, extending even to the pettiest detail, such as selling off critical steel panels essential to the construction of the border wall that he suspended.

  Again, Ike had credibility; not so with Biden.

  Second, until November 2024, Biden had no problems with oligarchs.

  In fact, he courted and used them. And they, in turn, eagerly donated lavishly to his agenda. Multibillionaire George Soros nearly wrecked the criminal justice system by pouring millions of dollars into big-city radical district attorney races to ensure the election of left-wing ideologues who would not arrest, indict, jail, convict or incarcerate thousands of dangerous violent felons—all in pursuit of bankrupt progressive ideas like “critical legal theory” and “critical race theory”.

  So happy was Biden with Soros’s nihilistic multimillion-dollar work and his lavish contributions to Biden’s two presidential runs that he awarded the Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

  In 2020, Meta/Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg did the bidding of the Biden campaign team by pouring $419 million into Biden-related PACs and voting groups to change voting laws and absorb the work of the registrars in key states. And on the eve of the last 2020 presidential debate, it was Facebook, under pressure from Biden lackeys, that began censoring accurate news stories about the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop, in hopes of arming Biden with a credible lie.

  Biden also mumbled about “censorship” and the loss of “fact-checkers.” But when the “oligarchs” who run Apple, Facebook, and Google decided to conspire to destroy upstart conservative social media platform Parler in 2021, Biden apparently thought it was wonderful. And, of course, he uttered not a peep of criticism of oligarchic-government strangulation of the market.

  So why is Biden so worried about oligarchy?

  The answer is as easy as it is insulting.

  “Oligarchs” like Elon Musk, David Sachs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Andreesen all realized that Biden’s ruthless team was leveraging their liberalism to use these “oligarchs” as illiberal megaphones for his own power and reelection.

  When they understood that the new Democratic dream was to fuse their social media and high-tech companies with the government—but under the control of left-wing anticapitalism activists to help the obsequious and punish the free-thinking—they revolted.

  In other words, they realized that their freedom was endangered by the left and that the country under Biden was descending into cultural chaos.

  Third, quite unlike Biden, Trump is leveraging support from “billionaires,” many of whom have not donated to his campaign and were not previously his political supporters.

  His appeal to them is not, as alleged, to further the Trump one-term presidency in political terms.

  Rather, Trump, in his brief four years, has enlisted “billionaires” like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, David Sachs, and Mark Andresen in the way that Franklin Roosevelt, in 1941-1942, reached out to his other party’s millionaire captains of industry to fuel a Depression-era-recovering economy to produce the type and number of weapons to defeat Germany and Japan, who had a near decade head start. Roosevelt essentially gave these “oligarchs” and “multimillionaires” wide latitude to produce as much as they could to win the war.

  The result was that shipbuilder and aluminum magnate Henry Kaiser began mass-producing historic Liberty and Freedom cargo ships in astronomical numbers to supply our troops overseas. The neo-socialist FDR even reached out to arch-paleoconservative Henry Ford. By 1949 Ford was building one B-24 heavy bomber per hour at his innovative and gargantuan Willow Run plant.

  Roosevelt also created a “war production board,” staffed by the arch-conservative capitalists—and in Biden’s terms “oligarchs”—like Charles E. Wilson, the head of General Electric; William Murphy of Campbell Soup; Matthew Fox of Universal Pictures; and others, to create a national marriage of labor, capital, media, and advisors to radically reboot the nascent war effort.

  The result by 1945 was that a once stagnant and virtually unarmed nation that was surprised at Pearl Harbor, in a short four years, built a navy larger than all the ships of the major combatants combined. America’s capitalists eventually fueled a GDP larger than all our major allies and enemies together. By the end of the war, they were supplying much of the entire Allied effort with everything from aviation and trucks to fuel, radios, and rations.

  Trump knows that the current multitrillion-dollar annual deficits and $36 trillion debt are unsustainable—while high taxes, Draconian regulation, and profligate spending are strangulating the economy. And Trump further realizes that our dilemma is the work of both political parties in Congress and past Democrat and Republican administrations.

  Trump fears the rise of China that seeks to absorb Taiwan, coerce our friends in the Pacific like Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and steal our technology.

  So, he further insists that in the future, the U.S. must master emerging technologies and services—such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cyberwarfare, cryptocurrency, drones, emerging fuels like small nuclear plants, hydrogen, and mega-batteries, and deadly new weaponry from lasers to hypersonic missiles.

  In that regard, he knows that the talent that created and mastered these technologies and new services are not greedy billionaires and “oligarchs,” but, if enlisted in a common cause for their fellow citizens, could become the modern successors to Kaiser, Knudson, Ford, and Wilson.

  Biden’s hypocritical parting shot at “oligarchs” should be filed with his eleventh-hour crazy pardons, his final lies about pardoning his son, and the bizarre edict that unconstitutionally, as some dictator, he could pass a 28th Amendment by fiat: all the sad end of a sadder presidency.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 14:30

• Mexico Is All Talk: They Have No Power To Stop Trump's Mass Deportation Plans
  Mexico Is All Talk: They Have No Power To Stop Trump’s Mass Deportation Plans

  In the weeks leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration there has been an escalation in rhetoric from Mexico and the rest of Central America in regards to the plan for mass deportations of illegal immigrants.  The prevailing message from these neighbors to the south was, initially, that they will do anything they can to make the process difficult.  Trump, expecting this response, has used the threat of tariffs as leverage to gain cooperation.  And frankly, it’s working.

  Progressive Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has been full of bluster but she is slowly and surely falling in line.  Sheibaum has been publicly combative with Trump on the issue of deportations, denying Trump’s claim that Mexico was planning to secure their border and threatening economic retaliation should tariffs be used.  She recently stated that Mexico’s policy was:

  “…Not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and people”.

  Whatever that means.  Analysts dealing in US/Mexico relations claim Sheinbaum is on the right track to ensure a strong ongoing relationship with Trump.  “She’s sending this message that she is a strong political leader,” said Gema Kloppe-Santamaria, a global fellow of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, pointing to recent polling that shows Sheinbaum has increased her popularity to a staggering 80% approval rating, opens new tab after her first 100 days in office.  “Trump without a doubt comes with a lot of power and legitimacy, but she does as well,” Kloppe-Santamaria added. 

  But does the Mexican president’s approval rating mean anything when it comes to deportation policy?  Not really.  After all, Mexico has been a parasitic element feeding on the US economy for quite some time; it’s not surprising that a large portion of the population wants the bloodletting to continue.

  For example, Mexico receives billions of dollars in foreign assistance from the US every year.  In 2023 alone, the country was given over $63 billion in payoffs, right out of the pockets of American taxpayers.  This money is given to Mexico with the stated intent of “reducing irregular migration, yet illegal border crossings only skyrocketed along with subsidies.

  

  Mexico is not alone.  Many Central and South American countries receive billions in foreign assistance from the US in the name of slowing immigration caravans.  In other words, these nations keep their borders open and allow millions of illegals to cross into the US, and then extort the US for cash to make the pain stop.  Then, when they get the money, they let even more illegals flood the border.  It’s an endless sham.

  Beyond the subsidies is the exploitation of the US border as a steam valve to get rid of undesirables.  Criminals, malcontents and the poverty stricken are encouraged to migrate to the US illegally so that Mexico and other countries can avoid civil disturbances.  These corrupt governments don’t want to fix their own problems, they outsource them to the US instead. 

  Border security is now a non-negotiable factor in America’s geopolitical agenda (as it should be) and the notion that the US is supposed to act as a sponge soaking up the refuse leaking out of the third world has lost all favor among native borne citizens (many legal migrants also oppose open borders).  With the majority of Americans in support the deportations are going to happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them.

  Trump’s tariff strategy carries real weight, especially when it comes to Mexico.  More than 80% of Mexico’s exports go to the U.S., causing much of its economy to depend on American markets. The most prominent exports from Mexico to its northern neighbor are cars and car parts, while the U.S. purchases approximately 92% of Mexican agricultural exports.  Tariffs of 10% or more could wreck the Mexican economy within months.  They have no choice but to comply.

  Mexican leaders argue that tariffs will also hurt the US, claiming that this will trigger inflation.  Claudia Sheinbaum asserts that there will also be extensive job losses in the US due to tariffs and deportations.  It’s clear she doesn’t understand how these things work.

  Tariffs create job opportunities by encouraging companies to bring production back into the United States so they can avoid extra import costs.  Deportations, obviously, stop millions of illegal migrant workers from gaming the system by working under the table for much lower wages compared to American laborers.  The very presence of these people drives down the overall wage rate and makes it difficult for native born citizens to find jobs.

  In terms of inflation, tariffs can raise prices on foreign goods, but illegal immigrants raise prices more.  The ten million-plus illegals that have entered the US under the Biden Administration have helped to drive up housing prices exponentially.  Their demand for goods and services creates shortages in necessities and because they are often subsidized by tax dollars through welfare programs they drive up the national debt at the same time.      

  Mexico remains the leading country of origin for immigrants in the U.S., representing 23% of all migrants, according to the Pew Research Center.  Not only that, but the vast majority of migrants from other parts of the world use Mexico as an open highway to the southern border and the Mexican government does little to interfere. 

  

  This is about to change.  The Mexican president has been adjusting her tune in the past week, stating that Mexico will be preparing to accept deported migrants.  Not only migrants from Mexico, but also those not from outside Mexico (they created the crisis by not securing their own border, so now they get to clean up the mess).   

  Sheinbaum announced on Friday that her administration has outlined a contingency plan for Mexican nationals expected to be deported by the incoming United States President.   During her morning press conference, Sheinbaum announced jobs and social programs for ousted Mexicans if Trump decides to carry out his threats of mass deportations when he resumes power on January 20th.  

  “We have been preparing to receive Mexicans who have a space at the border and in other places so that they can have access to social programs, employment, and be able to move within our national territory to return to their places of origin…”

  It’s not that Mexico has become more reasonable in the past month; these kinds of mood changes require a sharp slap upside the skull.  It appears that Mexican and Central American authorities are finally being taken behind the woodshed after years of obstinate behavior. 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 14:05

• TIME Magazine Describes Trump's Second Term As A "Disruption"
  TIME Magazine Describes Trump’s Second Term As A “Disruption”

  Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

  In a post unveiling a special Inauguration day cover depicting President Trump sweeping away everything on the Resolute Desk in the White House, TIME Magazine has captioned the image “Donald Trump’s disruption is back.”

  An animated online version of the cover, featuring sleepy Joe Biden’s trademark aviator sunglasses, was posted by the publication.

  TIME’s new Inauguration cover: Donald Trump’s disruption is back https://t.co/f6thgzBMCY pic.twitter.com/LwsTz8sMyl

  — TIME (@TIME) January 19, 2025

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  Respondents pointed out that while Trump’s second term might be a disruption to the agenda of the leftist media, it was the past four years that were really the disruption to the prosperity of the country.

  Disruption to you.
  More freedom and prosperity for many Americans.

  — 2VNews (@2VNews) January 19, 2025

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  American first is only a disruption to globalists.

  — Nick Jay (@Nick_Jay_D) January 19, 2025

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  A more honest, self-aware cover would have prefaced that with, “Despite Our Best Efforts”

  — Robert Belgrad (@MetalVistas) January 19, 2025

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  Disruption to the journalists who have been sleeping the last four years.

  — Skid Willie (@SkidWillie) January 19, 2025

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  Yes! Trump WILL disrupt the evil, the treason, the disgusting walking corpse who was installed as a puppet so the bureaucrats who really ran this country could do so behind the scenes. Maybe you there at TIME likes our country to fail, I don’t know, BUT REAL AMERICANS DON’T. We…

  — Swan Creek (@Swan_Creek1) January 19, 2025

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  Thoughts are with you, CNN & MSNBC at this difficult time x

  — The TV Grump (@TheTVGrump) January 19, 2025

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  Others pointed out that this is yet another example of TIME unintentionally making Trump look badass.

  You guys always try to make him look bad and end up making him look bad ass, literally he should hire you for his PR department

  — LAWD DEM RANGS (@InwardTower) January 19, 2025

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  September vs November pic.twitter.com/G26hGQ66DG

  — Brandon Comeau (@ComeauB38) January 19, 2025

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  Meanwhile over at the White House today:

  GTFO. 👋🏻 https://t.co/3mm4SNcLIv

  — m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) January 20, 2025

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  *  *  *

  Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/20/2025 – 13:40

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