Jul 22

Today’s News 22nd July 2024

  • Dersh: The Secret Service Must Be Revamped
    Dersh: The Secret Service Must Be Revamped

    Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,

    Now that the Republican convention ended without incidents, we must get back to considering the implications of the near-assassination of former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump two days before the convention began.

    Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle says she will not resign, despite the failure of her agents to secure the rooftop from where the shots were fired at Trump, and despite her refusal to come clean about the causes of the failure.

    The Secret Service is being praised for protecting Donald Trump from an assassin. This praise is justified if one focuses on the bravery of the agents who risked their lives to shield Trump from the immediate threat posed by the shooter after he fired the initial shots, but that well-deserved praise must be accompanied by constructive criticism for the failure to prevent the shooting in the first place. The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, came within an inch of succeeding. An armed person should never have been allowed to be at a location from which he could take aim at a presidential candidate.

    It is not as if this attack could not have been anticipated and planned for. It is quite similar to the shooting of then President John F. Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. The major difference is that Lee Harvey Oswald shot at a difficult moving target, whereas Crooks shot at an easier stationary target. In both cases, there was a failure to secure an obviously dangerous location. One would think that the Secret Service would have learned from their failure in Dallas. They did not.

    There must be changes in the protective procedures employed by the Secret Service, especially at large outdoor rallies. Everyone admitted to the venue is vetted for weapons, but apparently there is insufficient protection against potential snipers shooting from outside the actual venue. This failing must be remedied before the next rally. The Secret Service should be devoted exclusively to preventing and responding to attacks on its protectees. It must get out of the unrelated business of investigating currency counterfeiting and other crimes.

    This assassination attempt may well be an outgrowth of the increasing acceptance of violence by extremists on all parts of the political spectrum. We do not yet know the specific motivation of Crooks, but it is certainly possible that he may have been influenced by the current rhetoric justifying violence as an appropriate response to perceived injustice. We do know that in addition to possessing a rifle legally purchased by his father, he also had explosives in his car and home. He was determined to murder Trump, though for what reasons we do not yet know. Although there is no direct evidence of his motive, politically-inspired violence is increasingly common, especially among the younger generation of activists.

    Our universities are turning out students who engage in violence and are only rarely punished for it. Some faculty members are teaching that noble ends justify ignoble means. The result has been physical attacks on fellow students based on political, ideological and religious disagreements. It is only a short step from physically attacking those with whose policies you disagree, to shooting at political candidates who support such policies.

    An atmosphere of violence has become pervasive and is likely to increase as a result of this nearly successful assassination attempt and the growing divisions over the coming election.

    The Secret Service must learn from its mistakes and must redouble its efforts to protect candidates from what are likely to be increasing dangers over the next four months and beyond. In its press conference, the Secret Service said it was not changing any plans regarding the Republican convention. Nor did it permit any questions regarding the failures that led to the attack.

    Even more important, political, educational, religious and other leaders must denounce violence advocated and practiced by those on their side of the political divide. It is easy to denounce violence by one’s opponents. It is far more difficult, but more important, to denounce violence by one’s allies.

    Social media is filled with extremist left-wing praise for Crooks and regrets that he missed. Had he succeeded, there would likely be blood on the streets. This is an even more dangerous time than back in the 1960s, when three major assassinations occurred.

    We must do everything in our collective power to prevent a recurrence of the near-assassination and tragedy that occurred in Pennsylvania. We are not doing enough.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 23:55

  • These Are The Largest Religious Groups In Each Southeast Asian Country
    These Are The Largest Religious Groups In Each Southeast Asian Country

    A 2014 Pew Research study found that two of the most religiously diverse countries (Singapore and Vietnam) are in Southeast Asia. At the same time one of the least religiously-diverse countries (Timor-Leste) is also from the same region.

    We map out the largest religious group (by percentage of the population) in every Southeast Asian country.

    Data for this map and article is sourced from the U.S. State Department’s Religious Freedom Report (2022).

    Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity in Southeast Asia

    Southeast Asian countries predominantly follow one of three major religions: Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity.

    Buddhism arrived first in the region, between the 1st–3rd centuries, brought by Indian and Chinese traders. However, despite arriving first, the religion accounts for about 35-38% of the Southeast Asian population, second after Islam.

    Here’s a breakdown of the largest religious group in each Southeast Asian country, along with the percentage of the population.

    Note: Includes all denominations and sects. *Only 14% of Vietnam is religious, of which 6% is Christian, 5% Buddhist, and 3% other religions.

    In Cambodia and Thailand, where over 90% of the population is Buddhist, nearly nine-in-ten people surveyed by Pew Research said being a Buddhist was important to their national identities. More than 70% Cambodians also see Buddhism as an ethnicity one is born into.

    Meanwhile, Islam arrived in the 7th century, brought along with Arabian traders. More than 85% of Indonesia—the world’s fourth-most populous country—is Muslim, helping Islam become the majority religion of Southeast Asia as a whole.

    Finally, European missionaries brought Christianity to the region in the 16th century. Most Christians in the region are Catholics. Indonesia (despite being predominantly Muslim) has the second-highest number of Catholics (after the Philippines) amongst the countries.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 22:45

  • What A Trump Presidency Means For Bitcoin
    What A Trump Presidency Means For Bitcoin

    Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

    …and the Journey from “Notgeld” to World Reserve Currency in Under Two Decades

    “Just because something is inevitable doesn’t make it imminent”

    – Douglas Casey

    For a long time, anybody paying attention knew that central banks printing fiat money out of thin air, then lending it to nation states at interest and blowing it out into the economy would inexorably, eventually lead to such wealth disparity that the society would break down.

    It would get to the point where popular revolts would threaten to overwhelm the position of the elite class; those Cantillionaires who lord over this phantasmagorical system that created value ex nihilo and caused, through inflation, the vast majority of wealth to accrue to society’s “capstone class”…

    Class structure, now and future

    One of my personal favourite quips is:

    Eventually always shows up sooner than everyone expects.

    It’s been over three years since I released The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto, and in it I laid out my base investment thesis that “The Great Reset” wasn’t actually anything to do with climate change or any of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – what it really was all about, is the debt:

    “YOU WILL OWN NOTHING, AND YOU WILL BE HAPPY.

    The messaging coming out of global elites such as the World Economic Forum, The Party at Davos, the International Monetary Fund and even places as disparate as The Vatican and Hollywood are all riffing on the same theme: You, the middle class, the lower class, the masses – are going to have to get used to a lower standard of living.

    The real reason why isn’t because of climate change, or even COVID. It’s because of the debt. The world has finally run out of runway from kicking the can down the road all those times the global economy threatened to backslide into recession or when previous monetary bubbles imploded. All those decades of collectively living beyond our means have finally hit the wall. This is it. We’re here.

    Governments have spent beyond their means for decades, and now the bills have come due. The only way to pay them will include inflation and austerity. It will resemble a controlled demolition of the entire middle class. The easiest way to do that will be to turn them into a completely dependent welfare class via endless rolling lockdowns, Universe Basic Income programs and mandatory health passports.

    However “The Great Reset” is basically at its core, a monetary reboot. A way to restructure the global debt overhang and turn “money” into technocratic lube for enacting grandiose social engineering projects: most of them geared toward ratcheting down the standard of living for the masses of the developed world and suppressing the standard of living for the so-called Third World.”

    (If you want a free copy of the entire manifesto, just sign up for the Bombthrower mailing list and we’ll send you the PDF).

    “The Great Reset” and “Build Back Better” attempted to lay the groundwork for the eventual (and still somewhat inevitable) pivot of fiat money into Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). They will almost certainly be fused with social credit systems denominated in carbon footprint quotas – and thus a mechanism to implement forced austerity across the debt-drowning economies of the world resulting in a kind of “monetary Apartheid”.

    What I Got Wrong in My Manifesto

    Aside from the fact that events I assumed would play out over decades happened within 18 months, there was another fundamental flaw in my analysis:

    I first discovered Bitcoin during the Cyprus banking crisis of 2013 – when people began to understand that “as safe as money in the bank” didn’t quite mean what it used to anymore.

    The Cypriots got hit with a 10% “bail-in”, but more ominously – bail-in provisions started showing up all over the place (from the Manifesto, again):

    As the bail-in was being planned and executed in March 2013, Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem told interviewers that Cyprus would serve as a template for future bank restructurings in the euro zone.

    In April 2013, the idea of enshrining the framework for bail-ins surfaced in my home country of Canada, with the Conservative Harper government’s budget

    The Canadian bail-in language was been preserved in the budget even after the Liberals under Justin Trudeau assumed office in 2015. In 2018 it officially became The Bank Recapitalization (Bail-in) Conversion Regulations.

    In Australia the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill of 2017 gave the Aussie government the power to facilitate bail-ins.

    And in case you’re wondering, the USA was a front-runner for codifying bail-ins into legislation: the Dodd-Frank Bill that was passed in 2010, ostensibly to reform the banking sector after the Global Financial Crisis contains provisions for “Statutory Bail-Ins” to recapitalize any “systemically important” banks that gets themselves into trouble.

    In fact, new supra-national bail-in laws took effect across the entire G-20 in 2014.

    It was during the Cyprus bail-in that Bitcoin surged above $100 USD for the last time. It would never again trade at the double-digit level.

    Even so,  I never thought Bitcoin would become the world reserve currency or even a component of whatever comes next after this post-post-Bretton Woods era we now live in.

    My mental model for Bitcoin, right up until 2022 was as a kind of globally emergent “Notgeld” – a German term that came into being during their 1920’s Weimar Hyperinflation, and translates into English as “emergency money”.

    In Germany, individual towns began printing their own scrip, during the Zimbabwe hyperinflation, people began using prepaid phone and gas cards. Every hyperinflation has its Notgeld, and until early 2022, that’s what I assumed Bitcoin was, on a global level.

    Two things happened that changed my mind:

    1. The US seized the foreign asset reserves of two nation states – it doesn’t matter who those states were or what they did to “deserve it”.

    2. During the #FreedomConvoy, the Canadian government declared martial law and seized the bank accounts of truckers and any citizens who supported them.

    The first sequence of events forever changed the calculus that nations would employ for deciding how to allocate and hold their sovereign wealth.

    The second did that for individual citizens. It alone orange-pilled Robert F Kennedy Jr, who two years later would make Bitcoin a US election issue when he opened his historic keynote at Bitcoin 2022 in Miami with the words:

    “I became a Bitcoiner when I saw what the Canadian Government did to the truckers” 

    From that point on – Bitcoin shifted from being “Notgeld” – emergency money amid a slow-rolling, global hyper-inflationary event, and it became inevitable component of a future, successor monetary regime.

    The Next President of the United States Has Been Orange-Pilled

    No matter what you think of Donald Trump, whether he induces either type of “TDS” (Type 1 = “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, Type 2 = “Trump Divinity Syndrome”), or  you’re more dispassionate and objective, the fact remains that a Trump-led GOP landslide is all but baked-in come November 5th.

    Like RFK Jr., Trump has firmly jumped onto the Bitcoin bandwagon. He’s been orange-pilled (props to David Bailey Bitcoin Magazine for doing so).

    Trump declared that he “wants all future Bitcoin to mined in the USA”. Granted, it doesn’t quite work that way, but he went on to reiterate that, and the right to self-custody at: the Republican National Convention:

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    The Big Announcement Will Drop on July 27th

    This year Trump will be delivering the keynote address at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee. RFK Jr will also be on hand. Both candidates firmly on board with Bitcoin, albeit one destined for the Presidency more than the other (I expect RFK will land somewhere within a Tump administration come January 2025).

    The inside baseball is that at that keynote address, Trump is expected to announce his intention to create a strategic reserve of Bitcoin for the US Treasury.

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    Doing so could be as simple as a stroke-of-the-pen on inauguration day, as the US is already sitting on about $5B worth of BTC:

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    Once that happens, we’re in a whole new ballgame. The Game Theory of Bitcoin will irrevocably change globally, and nation states will be incentivized to follow suit.

    Regardless of how it plays out, Bitcoin has already crossed the Rubicon. It’s here to stay, it isn’t some kind of “emergency money” to temporarily sidestep the ongoing unraveling of the global fiat standard – it’s now part of the plumbing.

    *  *  *

    Read my special report on what a Trump presidency means for Bitcoin, and which companies stand to win big right here. Join the Bombthrower mailing list and get a free copy of the Crypto Capitalist Manifesto here (and The CBDC Survival Guide once it drops) Follow me on Nostr or Twitter here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 22:10

  • Alberta Fires Threaten 350,000 B/D Of Oil Production
    Alberta Fires Threaten 350,000 B/D Of Oil Production

    Alberta’s oil patch faces a worsening wildfire threat heading into the new week as temperatures rise, according to Alberta Wildfire and Alberta Emergency Management.

    The province’s northeast, where most of Canada’s crude oil is produced, is forecast to experience “extreme fire behavior” for next few days. With temperatures in the past few days rising as high as 35C (95F) – with low humidity and winds of 10km/h (6.2 miles/h) to 15km/h and no chance of rain – more than 1,000 Albertans have evacuated homes, including 89 residents of Chipewyan Lake, northwest of Fort McMurray as Alberta has some 144 wildfires burning, including 55 that are out of control.

    According to Bloomberg, a total of 377 of the 887 wildfires that have ignited this year have started in July amid hot weather. 80% were caused by lightning.

    The problem is that some 154 wildfires burning in the province, of which 58 are out of control on at least 10 hectares (25 acres) in size and within ~10km (6.2 miles) of 348k b/d of oil production and ~24k boe/d of gas output, according to Alberta Wildfire and Alberta Energy Regulator data.

    Already some producers are halting output: Suncor curtailed production at its Firebag oil sands site and Greenfire temporarily curtailed output from its Hangingstone sites a week ago. while Cenovus, MEG and Imperial Oil have evacuated non-essential workers from oil sands facilities

    Tourmaline said in email that the nearest fire is 4 miles from nearest well and 6 miles from nearest plant and has no effect operationally.

    Below is the approximate oil, gas and condensate production, broken down by company, in equivalent of barrels of oil a day that’s within ~10km of at least one out-of-control wildfire that’s at least 10 hectares in size, based on AER geospacial data, May production data and Alberta Wildfire data

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 21:35

  • Hurricane Hunters Brace For A Summer Of Flying Into The Eye Of The Storm
    Hurricane Hunters Brace For A Summer Of Flying Into The Eye Of The Storm

    Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    They didn’t need to chase this storm, hunt this hurricane, it was already there—bigger and badder than anything seen before at this time of year, this far out in the Atlantic.

    A U.S. HC-C130J aircraft, carrying Hurricane Hunters, approaches the edge of Hurricane Florence after a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Savannah Air National Guard Base, Ga., on Sept. 12, 2018. (U.S. Air Force via Getty Images)

    Cmdr. Brett Copare knew he was flying into history on June 30 as he steered the P-3 Orion “Kermit” nose-first into a churning wall of towering thunderheads ringing a 450-mile maelstrom that was but a radar flyspeck 48 hours earlier.

    “Before we got out there, it was already a Cat 4,” he said, recalling being “awe-struck” and thinking, “A storm this big, this fast … this is unique.”

    That flight of unwelcome discovery was one of dozens made by National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) aircrews in tracking the Atlantic’s first-ever June category 4 and 5 hurricane as Beryl launched its 6,000-mile, two-week romp from Cabo Verde to Vermont.

    On his third day of standby July 11 at NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) at Lakeland Linder International Airport in central Florida, Cmdr. Copare pondered lessons learned—and questions raised—by a storm that “happened so fast,” and was unlike any of the 25 hurricanes he’s flown through.

    “Typically, when storms form, we see them when they are at their lowest status, a low-pressure disturbance, and monitor as they gear up,” he said. “This was the reverse of what we normally observe.”

    On this haze-gray day, technicians calibrate instruments inside two Lockheed WP-3D Orions—modified U.S. Navy submarine chasers—parked on the tarmac under a gauzy sun.

    Inside the AOC’s hangars, mechanics tend to a Gulfstream G-4 and De Havilland Twin Otter while in offices above, meteorologists and scientists ferret through data from storms’ past and monitor National Hurricane Center radar for storms to come.

    All are set to go at a moment’s notice. And after Beryl’s rapid intensification, all are aware that notice could come any moment.

    “Currently, there’s nothing out there,” NOAA meteorologist and flight director Sofia de Solo said. The lull comes after she flew three G-4 Beryl missions in 10 days.

    “As meteorologists, our job doesn’t end when a mission is completed,” Ms. De Solo said, explaining there’s data to review, instruments to fine-tune, and quality control systems to analyze.

    But while she “wouldn’t say it’s boring,” standby is not what she says she’s here to do—that being, ride “a scientific laboratory in the sky” to collect real-time data to save lives.

    A hurricane specialist inspects a satellite image of Hurricane Beryl at the National Hurricane Center in Miami on July 1, 2024.

    From 45,000 feet above, with horizons hemmed only by the planet’s curved roll, storms are disembodied blots spilling across sky blue, sky black, shimmering as “a very bright big white glow,” a pulsating, living literal ball of energy, Ms. De Solo said.

    It’s her “dream job” and there’s no place she’d rather be, she said with the derring-do expected of NOAA’s heralded Hurricane Hunters, the fearless pilots and crews who fly into the eyes of hurricanes.

    “We’re prepared. It’s going to be a busy year,“ Ms. De Solo said. ”We’re ready to fly.”

    Checking her phone for National Hurricane Center alerts, it’s as if she’s alerting the center: “We’re standing by. We’re ready to go.”

    Many NOAA Missions

    The Hurricane Hunters are the stars, but not the only operators at NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, which moved from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa to its custom-built Lakeland AOC in June 2017.

    On any day, half the AOC’s 20 pilots, 90 scientists and technicians, two dozen mechanics, and 10 aircraft could be tracking tropical depressions in the Caribbean, mapping coastal estuaries, measuring Rocky Mountain snowpack, or flying for the National Geodetic Survey’s GRAV-D project “calculating the intensity of gravity.”

    Most crews are NOAA civilian employees or contractors, but pilots are members of NOAA’s Commissioned Officer Corps, the smallest of eight U.S. federal uniformed services.

    NOAA Corp’s 320 officers—there are no enlisted ranks—man 15 research/survey ships and fly specialized data-collecting aircraft, such as those housed at the Lakeland AOC.

    A Department of Commerce agency, NOAA coordinates storm-tracking with C-130 “Hurricane Hunter” flights by the U.S. Air Force’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, based in Biloxi, Mississippi.

    Like many Hurricane Hunter pilots, Cmdr. Copare is a former military aviator. Before transferring to NOAA, he flew Navy “long leg” surveillance/antisubmarine P-3s.

    Entering his fourth season, he’s tallied at least 140 “hurricane penetrations, or “pennies,” he estimates, piloting Orions older than their crews straight into storms beginning with Cat 4 Hurricane Ida in 2021.

    “Kermit,” a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) WP-3D Orion hurricane aircraft, is displayed at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va., on June 3, 2024.

    NOAA’s two P-3s—their fuselages festooned with Kermit and Miss Piggy stencils personally crafted by Muppeteer creator Jim Henson—have flown through more than 100 hurricanes since 1976.

    During eight-to-10-hour missions, their 18-to-20 member crews of three pilots, navigators, engineers, technicians, and flight meteorologists, are locked into “Setting 5” work-station harnesses, chart air chemistry, barometric changes, wind speeds, temperature shifts, updrafts, downdrafts, and all the mayhem between in real-time transmit to the National Hurricane Center.

    Much data is collected by dropwindsondes, Pringles can-shaped probes that measure wind, temperature, humidity, and pressure as it parachutes through a storm.

    Ms. De Solo said she deploys about 30 every mission aboard “Gonzo,” the G-4 also sporting an original Henson stencil.

    While crews collect data, pilots plot the storm’s track by flying Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) patterns, or “quadrant-to-quadrant butterflies and circle-eights,” Cmdr. Copare said.

    “We start at one corner of the storm, make three to four passes through the core,” he said. “Then, back in. The aim is to find the center path by dead reckoning, each fix to each fix.”

    Each “penny to penny” pass at 8,000-to-10,000 feet can take an hour with P-3s usually making three to four every mission.

    NOAA provides simulations and training, but replicating a flight through a 120-mph slipstream of fury in a careening canister is hard to do.

    “There’s really no way to prepare yourself for what that’s going to be like,” Cmdr. Copare said, noting as the battered plane bounces and heaves, there’s an out-of-body sense with the windshield obscured by rain, all sound blurred in a thunderous, rattling roar, and two-handed focus on cockpit controls.

    He recited the mantra repeated since a B-25 Mitchell bomber crew first successfully flew through a hurricane in 1943 because it’s still the best way to describe it.

    “It’s like riding a roller coaster through a washing machine,” Cmdr. Copare said.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 21:00

  • Meet The Harris Campaign's New Deputy Press Secretary For Swing-State Pennsylvania
    Meet The Harris Campaign’s New Deputy Press Secretary For Swing-State Pennsylvania

    Eric Lipka, who recently worked for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), has been appointed as the Biden-Harris campaign’s deputy press secretary for Pennsylvania. According to Lipka’s social media profiles, he is a traveling ‘drag queen’ on the weekends.

    In an X post on July 17, Lipka revealed, “Thrilled to share I’ve joined the Biden-Harris campaign as deputy press secretary for Pennsylvania!” 

    He added, “Let’s get to work, and finish the job!” 

    For Lipka, in the key battleground state, he might want to give up weekend drag events and, instead, focus on the Biden campaign because the latest polling data from Emerson College shows Trump leads Biden by a 5-point margin (48% to 43%) in the state, following the assassination attempt last weekend.

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

    This was first reported by Fox News. 

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    Furthermore, Democrats have been pressuring Biden to step aside following the disastrous debate with Trump last month. There are concerns the president’s cognitive decline has worsened.

    Let’s not forget Jill Biden’s quote, “Decency is on the ballot.” 

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    And wokeness “is straight up precursor to *violent* revolutionary Marxism,” Eric Weinstein recently wrote on X. 

    Weinstein said that the Democratic Party embracing wokeness is inadvertently promoting a communist agenda aimed at destabilizing capitalism and American society. 

    Let’s get back to this… 

    A majority of Americans are rejecting the woke agenda by showing their support for Trump. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 20:25

  • Study Challenges 'Bad Cholesterol' Label For LDL
    Study Challenges ‘Bad Cholesterol’ Label For LDL

    Authored by Sheramy Tsai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    For decades, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol has been commonly referred to as “bad cholesterol” due to its association with increased risks of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), such as heart attacks and strokes.

    However, a new study involving more than 4 million people across China challenges this belief, suggesting LDL may not be as harmful as previously thought—at least, not for everyone.

    Research led by Dr. Liang Chen and colleagues reveals a more nuanced picture. While high LDL levels are linked to increased mortality in some groups, they do not pose the same risk for others, they found. The relationship between LDL and mortality varies significantly based on an individual’s cardiovascular disease risk and overall health status.

    These findings suggest reconsidering the one-size-fits-all approach to cholesterol management. Instead, personalized treatment strategies may be essential for effectively managing cholesterol and improving health outcomes.

    (Anusorn Nakdee/Shutterstock)

    About the Study

    The study participants were part of the China Health Evaluation and Risk Reduction through Nationwide Teamwork (ChinaHEART) project, which included individuals aged 35 to 75 from various regions across China.

    Participants were divided into three groups based on their risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), a heart disease caused by plaque buildup on artery walls:

    • Low-risk group: Individuals with no history of cardiovascular disease and a low estimated risk of developing it.
    • Primary prevention group: Individuals with high-risk factors for cardiovascular disease but no established disease.
    • Secondary prevention group: Individuals with a history of cardiovascular disease.

    Researchers tracked data from these participants, including cholesterol levels and lifestyle choices like smoking and drinking habits. They also considered medical histories, including conditions such as diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The goal was to determine how different LDL cholesterol levels impacted their mortality risk, particularly from heart disease.

    Over an average follow-up period of 4.6 years, the study recorded nearly 93,000 deaths, with over 38,000 attributed to cardiovascular issues. The results revealed a U-shaped association between LDL cholesterol levels and mortality in the low-risk and primary prevention groups, indicating that both very high and very low levels of LDL were associated with increased mortality.

    In the secondary prevention group, the association was J-shaped, meaning extremely low LDL levels were linked to a higher risk of death, while moderate levels were associated with the lowest risk.

    According to the American Heart Association, “normal” LDL levels are considered less than 100 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). Levels above 160 mg/dL are categorized as high, and those below 70 mg/dL are deemed very low. However, the study found that the optimal LDL levels for reducing cardiovascular mortality varied among the groups:

    • Low-risk group: 117.8 mg/dL
    • Primary prevention group: 106.0 mg/dL
    • Secondary prevention group: 55.8 mg/dL

    The American Heart Association states that “various research studies on LDL have shown ‘lower is better.’” However, these findings suggest this may not always be true. The study indicates that “lower LDL-C targets with increasing ASCVD risk should be considered for reducing CVD mortality.”

    The study also discovered that people with diabetes might need stricter cholesterol control than those without. It found that the optimal LDL cholesterol level to reduce heart-related deaths in people with diabetes is 87 mg/dL, while for non-diabetics, it is 114.6 mg/dL.

    The study authors acknowledged that low LDL cholesterol levels might result from serious health issues rather than cause higher death rates. They excluded people with chronic diseases from their analysis but still found a link between low LDL levels and higher death rates. This suggests other factors, like frailty, might be involved. More research is needed to understand these relationships fully.

    Dr. Jack Wolfson, a cardiologist and owner of Natural Heart Doctor, explained the study’s findings to The Epoch Times. He stated that very low LDL cholesterol levels could indicate liver dysfunction, where the liver can’t produce enough LDL. Conversely, very high LDL levels suggest the body isn’t clearing it properly, both scenarios leading to higher health risks.

    Evolving Views on Cholesterol

    The American Heart Society describes cholesterol as a waxy substance essential for building cell membranes and producing hormones. Cholesterol travels through the bloodstream in particles called lipoproteins, primarily as low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL).

    LDL, often called “bad cholesterol,” carries cholesterol to cells and arteries, where it can form plaques, narrowing the arteries and increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Conversely, HDL, known as “good cholesterol,” transports cholesterol from the arteries to the liver for elimination, according to an article by Dr. Ami B. Bhatt, a cardiologist and Chief Innovation Officer at the American College of Cardiology.

    Dr. Wolfson challenges the notion that LDL is purely harmful. “There’s no such thing as ‘bad cholesterol,’” he said. “All mammals have LDL—they perform many functions. When oxidized, they could be considered ‘bad,’ but this may only reflect general oxidative stress.” He explained that the presence of oxidized LDL (ox-LDL) might indicate underlying issues rather than being the problem itself.

    Recent research has shifted the focus from LDL quantity to particle size. Larger LDL particles are less harmful than smaller, denser ones, which are more likely to penetrate arterial walls and form plaques. Experts like Dr. Ronald Krauss, a senior scientist and director of Atherosclerosis Research at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, have emphasized that small, dense LDL particles are more likely to form artery plaques than larger, buoyant ones. Dr. Krauss, who has published more than 400 papers on this topic, highlights the significance of particle size in assessing cardiovascular risk.

    The HDL-to-LDL ratio also emerges as a better predictor of heart disease risk than LDL levels alone. A high ratio indicates a greater proportion of protective HDL, reducing cardiovascular event risks, as noted in a 2022 BMC Cardiovascular Disorders study.

    Dr. Wolfson cautions against a one-size-fits-all approach to cardiovascular health and cholesterol. “Each individual has a perfect level for themselves,” he said. “What is good for you may be high or low for me.”

    He advocates for evaluating inflammation in the body, the underlying cause of heart disease. He recommends markers of inflammation and oxidative stress, such as c-reactive protein, phospholipase A2, and ox-LDL, as better predictors of cardiovascular risk than LDL alone.

    As research progresses, a more tailored approach to cholesterol management could improve cardiovascular health outcomes.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 19:50

  • La Ñina Boosts Panama Canal; Houthi Threat Drives Up Shipping Costs Through Suez
    La Ñina Boosts Panama Canal; Houthi Threat Drives Up Shipping Costs Through Suez

    By Stuttgart Daily Leader

    While La Ñina is helping ease the traffic knots at the Panama Canal, repeated attacks by Houthis — some fatal — have driven shippers to find alternatives to the Suez Canal, said Ryan Loy, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

    The Panama Canal is a key route for global trade, including for Arkansas commodities such as soybeans and corn. In March, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said that traffic through the Panama Canal had dropped 49 percent since 2021 and 42 percent in the Suez Canal during the same period.

    “About 26 percent of U.S. soybeans and 17 percent of U.S. corn is transported via the Panama Canal,” Loy said. “And this is important to us, especially in Arkansas, because a lot of our grain goes down the Mississippi River to the Port of New Orleans.”

    Arkansas’s export soybeans and corn go through the Panama Canal to get to Asia, Loy noted.

    Long-term drought across Central America was strangling the Panama Canal. While the passage connects two oceans, the water used to raise and lower ships between the coasts comes from Gatun Lake, a fresh water body. Each ship transit requires 52 million gallons of water. The lake fell to its lowest levels in five years last June, hitting 79.5 feet.

    “It was a very dire situation,” Loy said. The alternative to the canal would mean sailing around Cape Horn at the bottom of South America, costly in fuel and fraught with dangerous weather.

    Lower lake levels meant shallower water in the locks. The Panama Canal Authority ended up restricting the number of ships making transits. Ships that could make the trip had to carry less cargo to prevent their hulls from hitting bottom.

    However, the return of La Ñina has meant replenishing rain for the lake and the canal authority has not only increased the number of ships allowed through, but also allowed heavier ships that sit more deeply in the water.

    As of July 11, the canal authority was “increasing the number to 33 ships a day. Then on July 22, they’re going to allow 34 ships a day and on Aug. 5, they will open up one more spot for the Neopanamax ships.”

    “Neopanamax” refers to the largest ships than can pass through the canal’s newest locks, which opened in 2016. These vessels can be up to 1,202 feet long, 168 feet wide and have a draft of 50 feet. Draft is the distance between the ship’s waterline and its lowest point.

    “This is very close to what they used to do —  38 ships a day — so we’re getting close to normal,” Loy said.  “Just for comparison, in November 2023, they were at 24 ships a day, so you can see how much we’ve kind of improved since then.”

    Should drought return the canal to its restricted state and if China’s soybean crop is poor, “that leaves Brazil an opportunity,” he said.

    Brazil is a key rival to the U.S. for soybean trade and doesn’t rely on the Panama Canal.

    “Brazil can come in and say, we don’t need the Panama Canal. We can transport our grain via rail and trucks to the Pacific. They have a lot of it and it’s much cheaper,” Loy said. “So those are the kind of implications of what could happen if the drought comes back.”

    Suez Canal

    The Suez Canal is a critical route, carrying an estimated 12-15 percent of global trade.

    Since starting in November 2023, Houthi attacks in the Suez Canal have become fiercer, resulting in the deaths of four crewmembers from attacks on two ships, the MV True Confidence and the Tutor.

    MarineTraffic.com, which tracks global shipping, reported a 79.6 percent reduction in dry bulk carriers — whose shipments include grain — passing through the Suez, just 24 ships in June, compared to 118 in June 2023. The amount of cargo passing through the canal in May was 44.9 million tons, down from 142.9 million tons in May 2023.

    The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said many shippers were opting to avoid the canal and the Houthis, including British Petroleum, Evergreen, CMA CGM, Hapag Loyd and Maersk.

    Maersk resumed its use of the canal in June, since taking the the Cape of Good Hope route around the tip of South Africa added an estimated $1 million in fuel costs and one to two weeks in additional transit time, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. Rounding the cape is still perilous, with one ship running aground and another losing cargo, according to Bloomberg.

    The Suez Canal’s decreased traffic meant the port authority’s yearly revenues were nearly halved, from $648 million last year to $337 million, Loy said.

    “The areas surrounding this are also impacted, too, because people’s jobs, people’s livelihoods depend on traffic through the Suez Canal,” he said, and “that’s tough for that region.”

    Houthis are only attacking ships affiliated with the U.S., Israel and their allies, affecting insurance premiums for the carriers.

    “The total premium for U.S.-based cargo is 1.7 percent of total freight on board,” Loy said. “Because they’re not attacking Chinese ships, the Chinese premium is just 0.2 percent of the value of total freight on board.”

    Where does this leave consumers?

    “I’m surprised that we haven’t seen much increase in items at the grocery store, even vehicles, or whatever it may be, anything besides grain, that are separate from our inflation issues,” Loy said. “The expected big ripple effect is having a little bit less of an impact than most people thought.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 18:40

  • "First Traces" Of Solar Cycle 26 Detected On Sun 
    “First Traces” Of Solar Cycle 26 Detected On Sun 

    Scientists from the University of Birmingham in England have detected the “first rumblings”—or first indications—that the sun’s next 11-year solar cycle, Cycle 26, will begin by the decade’s end.

    The current cycle, Cycle 25, has reached what scientists call a “solar maximum,” when the sun’s magnetic field flips and its poles swap places. This peak is known for elevated solar activity, including sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections.

    Researchers from Birmingham recently presented the new data at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in Hull. The data shows the first signs that the next solar cycle is beginning. 

    Astronomers use the sun’s internal sound waves to measure how it rotates, making visible a pattern of bands (solar torsional oscillation) that rotate slightly faster or slower. These move towards the sun’s equator and its poles during the activity cycle.

    The faster-rotation belts tend to show up before the next solar cycle officially begins. -researchers 

    Research leader Rachel Howe from Birmingham noted a ‘faint indication’ is beginning to show up after analyzing the pattern of the sun’s bands (solar torsional oscillation). The faster-rotation belts tend to show up before the next solar cycle arrives. 

    “If you go back one solar cycle – 11 years – on the plot, you can see something similar that seems to join up with the shape that we saw in 2017. It went on to be a feature of the present solar cycle, Cycle 25,” said Dr. Howe.

    This map shows which latitudes on the Sun were rotating faster (shown in red and yellow) or slower (shown in blue and green) than average over the last 29 years, as inferred by helioseismology (the analysis of solar sound waves). For each solar cycle, there is a band of faster rotation that moves down towards the equator. The yellow lines show the areas where the magnetic fields are most concentrated.

    She said, “We’re likely seeing the first traces of Cycle 26, which won’t officially start until about 2030.”

    It is possible to see the whole of Solar Cycles 23 and 24, and the first half of Cycle 25. For each cycle, the band of faster rotation starts well before the magnetic activity for that cycle. On the far right of the figure, a bit of red marks what the team believes is the beginning of the fast-rotating band for Cycle 26. Rachel Howe

    Researchers have been analyzing solar torsional oscillation patterns on the sun using helioseismic data from the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG), the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, and the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory since the mid-1990s. This data now covers Solar Cycles 23, 24, and 25, allowing researchers better to understand the precursors to the next solar cycle. 

    Howe has been a student of the stars for 25 years, studying the sun’s rotation through GONG and MDI data. 

    “With more data, I hope we can understand more about the part these flows play in the intricate dance of plasma and magnetic fields that form the solar cycle,” she concluded.

    Several studies (one here) have suggested the sun will experience a new grand solar minimum between 2030 and 2040. This could decrease solar activity, similar to the Maunder minimum in the 17th century. At that time, Earth experienced a period of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age. 

    But in the meantime, the Tonga eruption in 2022 appears to have fueled global warming, not cow farts or Taylor Swift’s private jet.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 18:05

  • DHS Officials Defend Women In Law Enforcement After Trump Assassination Attempt
    DHS Officials Defend Women In Law Enforcement After Trump Assassination Attempt

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, alongside other senior officials and agency leaders, have issued a joint statement firmly defending female Secret Service agents during the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

    “In the days following the attempted assassination of former President Trump, some people have made public statements questioning the presence of women in law enforcement, including in the United States Secret Service,” reads the July 20 statement.

    “These assertions are baseless and insulting.”

    Besides Mr. Mayorkas, the statement was endorsed by 10 other senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials, including Kimberly Cheatle, director of the U.S. Secret Service, who will appear Monday on Capitol Hill to answer questions about the assassination attempt.

    The attempted assassination of former President Trump has raised questions about how 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks managed to position himself on a rooftop with a clear line of sight to the former president, whose ear was injured by a bullet.

    The shooting brought the Secret Service director’s stated interest in hiring more women into the spotlight.

    “I’m very conscious, as I sit in this chair now, of making sure that we need to attract diverse candidates, ensure that we are developing opportunities for everybody in our workforce, and particularly women,” Ms. Cheatle told CBS News in an interview last year.

     

    An array of commentators, including some Republican lawmakers, focused explicitly on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies at the Secret Service, claiming that such programs have undermined its mission.

     

    “Under Director Cheatle’s failed leadership, the United States Secret Service has prioritized woke DEI policies over the core responsibilities of the Secret Service, including protecting our nation’s leaders,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said in a statement, while introducing a bill to hold Ms. Cheatle accountable for allowing the gunman to fire off several shots—including one that grazed former President Trump’s ear—before being killed by police snipers.

    Ms. Boebert’s bill would prohibit “any federal funds from being used to pay the salary or expenses” of Ms. Cheatle.

    Earlier in the week, the Secret Service’s chief of communication, Anthony Guglielmi, called out the “baseless assertions” that agents are unqualified.

    “As an elite law enforcement agency, all of our agents and officers are highly trained and fully capable of performing our missions,” Mr. Guglielmi said in a statement provided to some news outlets.

    “It is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender. Such baseless assertions undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our workforce.”

    The Saturday statement from Mr. Mayorkas and other top DHS officials appeared to focus most acutely on the line of criticism against women being on the front lines in the Secret Service.

    “Every single day, in communities big and small across our great country, women are serving in federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and campus law enforcement,” the joint statement reads.

    “They are highly trained and skilled professionals, who risk their lives on the front lines for the safety and security of others. They are brave and selfless patriots who deserve our gratitude and respect.”

    Mr. Mayorkas and the other officials added that DHS will continue to recruit, retain, and elevate women in our law enforcement ranks and take “great pride” in doing so.

    “Our Department will be the better for it, and our country more secure,” the statement said.

    Former President Trump has thanked the agents who were at the rally and praised members of the security team.

    “They did a fantastic job,” he told the New York Post on Sunday.

    “It’s surreal for all of us.”

    The former president’s son, Eric Trump, went further, offering praise for the female agents in particular.

    “I know all those agents on stage and they’re the greatest people ever,” Eric Trump told MSNBC on July 16.

    “The female that’s in the picture, she was with me for a very long time and she’s one of the greatest human beings you would ever meet.”

    Besides injuring former President Trump, the gunman critically wounded two men and killed one.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 17:30

  • Dems Go Full Throttle On Kamala After Biden Drops Out Of 2024 Race
    Dems Go Full Throttle On Kamala After Biden Drops Out Of 2024 Race

    Update (1630ET): And just like that, the Democratic party has gone all-in for Kamala Harris – who did so poorly in the 2020 election that she dropped out before the primaries. Just hours after Biden’s campaign manager insisted he wasn’t leaving the race.

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    Oh…

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    Lefties from the Clintons, to the Progressive Caucus, to Trump assassination jokester Reid Hoffman, to Alexander Soros, are now firmly behind Harris.

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    Now the question turns to who’s going to be her VP pick. Newsweek suggests these as top-5 candidates:

    Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro
    A rising Democratic star, Josh Shapiro is often floated as a possible running mate for Harris. He governs a major battleground state and could help Harris make inroads among voters in the Keystone State.

    North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper
    Roy Cooper’s governorship has been a sign of hope for Democrats in the Tar Heel state.

    Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
    Gretchen Whitmer’s name has long been floated as a possible presidential candidate, and a Harris-Whitmer ticket would mark the first all-women ticket in history, which Pitney described as “intriguing.”

    Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear
    Andy Beshear impressed many Democrats when he won a second term in the conservative state last year.

    California Governor Gavin Newsom
    Newsom has become one of the most nationally recognizable figures within the Democratic Party.

    According to Polymarket, Shapiro is the top contender.

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    Harris issued a statement following her endorsement, which reads like Joe isn’t about to serve out the rest of his term:

    “On behalf of the American people, I thank Joe Biden for his extraordinary leadership as President of the United States and for his decades of service to our country. His remarkable legacy of accomplishment is unmatched in modern American history, surpassing the legacy of many Presidents who have served two terms in office.

    “It is a profound honor to serve as his Vice President, and I am deeply grateful to the President, Dr. Biden, and the entire Biden family. I first came to know President Biden through his son Beau. We were friends from our days working together as Attorneys General of our home states. As we worked together, Beau would tell me stories about his Dad. The kind of father—and the kind of man—he was. And the qualities Beau revered in his father are the same qualities, the same values, I have seen every single day in Joes leadership as President: His honesty and integrity. His big heart and commitment to his faith and his family. And his love of our country and the American people.

    “I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination. Over the past year, I have traveled across the country, talking with Americans about the clear choice in this momentous election. And that is what I will continue to do in the days and weeks ahead. I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.“

    In short:

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    Of course, if you mention that Harris’s career started out underneath Willie Brown, you might get called out by Scary Poppins…

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    That said, not so fast Kamala…

    In response to Biden’s announcement, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison promised a “transparent and orderly” process to choose the party’s next nominee.

    “The American People owe President Biden an enormous debt of gratitude for the unparalleled progress he has delivered over the last four years — and we will honor that legacy, and the decision that he has made today, through a firm commitment to nominating and electing a Democratic president this November who will carry that torch into the next four years,” Harrison said in a statement, adding that the process will follow established rules for the party, and that the delegates “are prepared to take seriously their responsibility in swiftly delivering a candidate to the American people.”

    “As we move forward to formally select our Party’s nominee, our values as Democrats remain the same — lowering costs, restoring freedom, protecting the rights of all people, and saving our democracy from the threat of dictatorship. We have and will continue to make this case to the American people.”

    Also…

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    And a few reactions:

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    *  *  *

    President Joe Biden is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, has endorsed Kamala Harris, and will “focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

    He also won’t address the nation about it until sometime next week (after his next blood transfusion, we assume?).

    And while 81 million voters are surely crestfallen, Kamala Harris’ odds of being the 2024 Democratic nominee naturally spiked. Roughly 30 minutes after Biden announced he was leaving the race, his social media team followed up with an endorsement of Harris.

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    My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.

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    Meanwhile, a few relevant headlines from the last couple of weeks:

    And of course, if Biden can’t run, how can he remain president?

    Shortly after Biden’s announcement, House Speaker Mike Johnson posted on X:

    Rgardless of the chaos in the current White House, our adversaries around the globe should be reminded that the U.S. Congress, the U.S. military, and the American people are fully prepared and committed to defend our interests both at home and abroad.  

    If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough.

    Johnson, ever cautious, is a little late to the game:

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    As Jonathan Turley notes:

    The decision of Joe Biden to withdraw from his reelection bid raises the obvious question of how he can continue as president if he is incapable of running for that office. The Democratic Party seems to have created its own 25th Amendment, but there remains the “other” 25th Amendment.

    This is a type of 25th-lite option where you lack capacity to run but not to serve for an office.

    It also focuses attention on the efforts of Democrats to drop any challengers or hold any debates through the primary as millions voted for Biden. Holding a party “primary” in a matter of weeks is hardly a substitute for a primary campaign to expose candidates to prolonged.

    The problem for the White House is the glaring disconnect between pulling out of the election but holding on to the office.  Pulling out as simply politically incapable of winning makes a mockery of the unopposed primary process.

    Yet, pulling out do to diminished capacity makes a mockery of his political office. There is a striking lack of clarity on the basis for this historic action…

    Read Biden’s message below:

    My Fellow Americans,

    Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a Nation.

    Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. We’ve made historic investments in rebuilding our Nation, in lowering prescription drug costs for seniors, and in expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans. We’ve provided critically needed care to a million veterans exposed to toxic substances. Passed the first gun safety law in 30 years. Appointed the first African American woman to the Supreme Court. And passed the most significant climate legislation in the history’ of the world. America has never been better positioned to lead than we are today.

    I know none of this could have been done without you. the American people. Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We’ve protected and preserved our Democracy. And we’ve revitalized and strengthened our alliances around the world.

    It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection. I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.

    I will speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about my decision.

    For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected. I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.

    I believe today what I always have: that there is nothing America can’t do – when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America.

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    Trump has responded to the news, posting the following on Truth Social:

    Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve – And never was! He only attained the position of President by lies, Fake News, and not leaving his Basement. All those around him, including his Doctor and the Media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being President, and he wasn’t – And now, look what he’s done to our Country, with millions of people coming across our Border, totally unchecked and unvetted, many from prisons, mental institutions, and record numbers of terrorists. We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

    And hey, Kamala has the support of Elizabeth Warren, so there’s that, despite a disastrous conference call with 300 major Democratic donors last week.

    According to Elon Musk, this was in the cards:

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    The announcement came after in intense pressure campaign, after new polling showed that 60% of Americans said Biden should drop out.

    The opposition included virtually the entire Democratic party – from Pelosi down, and even former Democrat (now independent) Sen. Joe Manchin, the deep state, and Democratic donors – who began pausing funds after last month’s horrific debate between Biden and Donald Trump – and most recently led by a call from Mike Novogratz to replace Biden.

    “The Democratic donor base will be re-energized if there’s a fair process to pick the next candidate,” said Novogratz, the billionaire founder of Galaxy Digital Holdings, who added that if Democrats pick a centrist replacement through a nomination process, “there are a tremendous amount of donors who will cut checks.”

    According to veteran Democrat operative James Carville in a statement to Semafor last week, “This I can confirm. Donors in revolt.“

    “Campaigns are expensive. Sadly, the George Clooney check-writing crowd opposed to Biden remaining in the race might win out,” Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf told Newsweek in response to a recent NYT op-ed by the actor.

    “He who controls the gold might make the rules, making the Democrats no different from the Republicans,” he added.

    The decision to drop out came after the Clintons were reportedly privately urging Democrat donors to keep giving to Biden as long as he remains the presumptive nominee.

    One of the sources said the Clintons are choosing to be “deferential to Biden’s decision.” However, the second source, who is familiar with the Clintons’ thinking and has spoken with the couple in recent days, insisted that it is more accurate to say they are “deferential to the process.”

    According to this source, the Clintons have made clear in private conversations recently that it doesn’t matter what anybody says or thinks — unless Biden decides he will drop out of the 2024 race or the delegates vote for somebody else, he is the party’s presumptive nominee. -CNN

    Deep State Displeased

    On Friday, NBC News reported that “More than four dozen former foreign and national security officials call on Biden to drop out of race” – so the deep state is officially negative on Biden.

    “We write as former U.S. officials who have strongly supported your presidency and your initiatives to strengthen U.S. foreign and national security policy,” they wrote in a letter. “We strongly believe that now is the time to pass the mantle of leadership, and we respectfully urge you to do so.”

    Visualizing Biden’s post-debate downward spiral:

    Via Axios

    What now?

    While Biden just endorsed Harris, Democrat delegates are under no obligation to support her. That said, if she is the nominee, who will she pick as her running mate?

    Coincidence?

    What will Jill do now?

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 16:34

  • In Defense Of Bitcoin Culture
    In Defense Of Bitcoin Culture

    Via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    A response to the recent piece “Reflections on Bitcoin Culture” by Margot Paez, by Joakim Book.

    Bitcoin changes our lives.

    It’s an almost spiritual observation that we’ve all seen within ourselves. After acquiring some, learning how it works, and to various degrees delving into what this decentralized, uncensorable, proof-of-work money is, we’ve seen our lives change. It echoes history. Some people see god in it.

    Bitcoiners have had their lives upended, their perspectives shifted, and their value systems altered. We see how our behavior changed from our pre-Bitcoin selves, our emphasis now squarely placed on real things, hard things, the long term, and the local. We look to our inner selves, and we look after ourselves. We see to our families. We set our own house in order before we criticize the world.

    Bitcoin encourages higher-level thinking, of the dynamic kind that once characterized good economics. Once a Bitcoiner, we become less prone to believing commonly accepted just-so stories — more skeptical and interested in verifying rather than trusting.

    Anyone who’s been in Bitcoin for a while can point to countless such examples in their own lives. It’s undeniable, therefore, that Bitcoin itself has a culture. It affects change in the people it welcomes; you don’t change Bitcoin, Bitcoin changes you.

    The values embedded in it are rules that people who embrace this monetary revolution can’t help but internalize. Whether they understand it or not is unimportant. Bitcoin is for anyone, sure, but you don’t stay that same person after Bitcoin has changed your life; you’re a different “anyone” than when you first opened your fiat eyes.

    Bitcoin allowed us to see much of the stupidity of the collective delusions at the base of the state, democracy, central banks, public health, public schooling — public anything, really. It’s the same realization that makes us put huge question marks on climate change worries or trans ideology.

    In the world of fiat, anything goes.

    You can unverifiably feel oppressed, a man can unverifiably be a woman, anyone who’s sad or distracted can unverifiably feel autistic or depressed. If the lord of the printing press doesn’t feel like there’s enough money around, he makes more. Violently extorting productive members of society is held as a morally good thing and celebrated. The experts and fiat media voices say the world ends in twelve (or five) years, and if you disbelieve them or ask for verification, you’re on par with the Nazis.

    In Bitcoin, this playbook doesn’t fly anymore. Identifying as receiving a block reward does nothing, political votes become irrelevant, nobody’s unverifiable feelings reign supreme, and cheating gets harder. UTXOs don’t have a sex. It all goes out the window, revealed and denuded for the nonsense it always was.

    Thus, something doesn’t add up in Margot Paez’s recent article thrashing Bitcoin culture.

    She writes:

    “…popular influencers who are often millennial men spending a lot of time taking photos of themselves flexing their muscles in front of a mirror. I really wonder how big those muscles have to get to protect the fragile ego buried beneath those muscular fibers.”

    Big muscles are flexes because they’re unfakeable – like a hash under the difficulty target. A transaction is valid and confirmed or it isn’t. It’s right there, objective, and verifiable to anyone who cares to look.

    Pull-ups are flexes because they display truth, regardless of what anyone else thinks about an invisible ego beneath. You can do them, or you can’t; they’re verifiable and undeniable. A muscle-up doesn’t ask for permission or tries to confuse you about nuances to an imagined reality.

    This stands in contrast to the fiat, legacy world — of which trans ideology is merely one of the least material but verifiably stupid examples — where words are violence, invisible and unverifiable identities rule, fiat schools can’t teach people to read or count, Uber doesn’t have any cars, and the banks don’t have your money. It’s a broken culture, where the only thing running away faster than the deaths of despair are the deficits in a profligate Treasury, forever bound to send welfare checks to rent-seekers.

    It’s a culture dominated by sensitivity instead of truth, that celebrates weakness instead of strength and responsibility and self-improvement, that encourages therapy even though it barely works and shoves you pharmacy-full of meds and injections at the first sign of trouble.

    That’s why I’m not sold on this “Progressive Bitcoiner” ethos flying around. Progressives came to Bitcoin and carved out a niche for themselves, and for now that works well as a bridge over from the hyper-leftwing clown world to our world. But you won’t be a Bitcoiner and long remain a progressive; they’re mostly incompatible ideas.

    Progressivism came to Bitcoin as a breath of fresh air, but it will ultimately die here.

    Bitcoin strips a government of control over transactions and economic value. A progressive requires a large and invasive government to uphold and enact the many things they yearn for. If you still want those goodies, but not the violent organized crime syndicate we call government, you’re merely a libertarian with a strong social ethos. Congrats. I’ve said so before regarding Jason Maier’s A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin, and I maintain that in time Bitcoin will change him too, like it has the rest of us.

    Bitcoin sooner or later forces you into seeing the world of truth and acting in unfakeable ways, looking to what is rather than what’s voiced or recommended by “experts.” On the way there one usually complains loudly about the mean Bitcoiners not seeing the world you do.

    It’s not a coincidence that so many Bitcoiners proudly and diligently consume steak. We saw that the nutritional guidelines were gunk (some might even say corrupt), and the people pushing them were obese, ill, and ugly. We ate a bunch of meat and felt better. Do I look unhealthy to you?! we ceremoniously ask.

    The LGBTQ flags that Paez defends sit next to flags with “Free Palestine” — even though Palestinians aren’t exactly known for their pro-gay values — and “Slava Ukraini,” celebrating a country that scores among the worst on the Rainbow Europe index and routinely counts as Europe’s second most corrupt country (behind Russia). These are not serious people. You know something is rotten when originally peace-loving leftists celebrate the very warmongering people they should detest.

    The ultimate shit-test is the clown world shitshow, not Bitcoiner culture. In fact, the truth and honesty in Bitcoin culture is the antidote.

    Quit whining and go do some pull-ups.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 16:20

  • Visualizing The Cost Of Hosting The Olympics
    Visualizing The Cost Of Hosting The Olympics

    The Paris Olympics are estimated to cost over $9 billion to host, making them one of the less expensive Summer Olympic Games in recent memory.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu, lists the estimated cost of hosting the Olympics (Summer and Winter) in 2021 USD. It goes back to the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics.

    The figures come from various sources and were accessed via the Council on Foreign Relations.

    Costly Infrastructure

    The cost of hosting the Olympics has varied massively in recent years, from Sochi’s $59.7 billion to Salt Lake City’s $2.9 billion (2021 USD).

    One of the biggest costs associated with hosting the Olympics is infrastructure. This includes sports facilities such as arenas and general infrastructure like housing and transportation.

    This is typically higher for summer games, which can attract hundreds of thousands of tourists.

    The International Olympic Committee requires cities to have at least 40,000 hotel rooms for spectators and an Olympic Village that can house 15,000 athletes and officials.

    As a result, despite generating billions of dollars in revenue, the Olympics can leave a negative legacy for a host city if not carefully planned or executed.

    For example, a report by the University of Birmingham concluded that the most expensive event – Sochi in 2014 – left the Russian resort vastly overdeveloped relative to its actual occupancy levels. The report estimates that over a billion dollars of follow-up investment is required to maintain the underused infrastructure, including transport networks, sporting venues, and hotels.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 15:45

  • VDH: Which Party Is 'Killing Democracy'?
    VDH: Which Party Is ‘Killing Democracy’?

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via X:

    Democracy Really Is Dying in Darkness – But by Whom?

    Never in modern presidential history has a political party staged a veritable inside coup to remove their current president from his ongoing candidacy for his party’s nomination and reelection.

    Stranger still, the very elites and grandees, who now are using every imaginable means of deposing Biden as their nominee, are the very public voices that just weeks ago insisted that candidate Biden was “sharp as a tack” and “fit as a fiddle.” And they damned any who thought otherwise!

    They are also the identical operators whose machinations ensured that there would not be an open Democratic primary. They demonized the few on the Left who weakly challenged Biden in the primaries. Yet now they will select a replacement candidate who likely never received a single primary vote.

    Note further: Biden’s impending forced abdication is not because he is non compos mentis.

    Rather, the inside move is due to Biden’s disastrous debate exposure that confirmed his dementia could no longer be disguised by a conspiracy of leftist politicos and media.

    But far more importantly, the impetus for removal is driven by the admission that the cognitively Biden is headed for a climactic November defeat.

    Were Biden now ahead in the polls by five points, these same backroom machinists would be insisting that he was still Pericles.

    Yet now Biden is being un-personed and Trotskyized, as we prepare the new groupthink narrative of his likely surrogate—a soon to be praised eloquent, mellifluous, and articulate Cicero-Harris.

    That Biden will likely remain as president until January 20, 2025, should remind the country the Left is more worried about its own next four-year continuance in power than the fate of the country that now admittedly will be guided in the next six months by a president judged unfit by his own supporters to run for the very office that he will still keep holding.

    Further irony arises when those who, as supposedly guardians of democratic norms, pontificated to the country the last nine years about the Trump-Hitlerian threat to democracy. Yet now they so cavalierly work overtime on how:

    a) to pull off the removal of their candidate from the November ballot on grounds of senility,

    b) but not the removal of the same president from office (their own fate is more precious than our collective fate as a nation),

    c) while trying to select, rather than elect, a replace candidate,

    d) without ever offering any explanation, much less an apology, how a Democrat president from January 20, 2021, was daily declared vibrant, dynamic, and engaged but suddenly one day after June 27, 2024, was remanufactured as not?

    Perhaps as an aid and primer on Biden removal they should reread the essay by former Obama Pentagon official Rosa Books. Just 11 days after the Trump inauguration, she published in Foreign Policy, “3 Ways to Get Rid of President Trump Before 2020”.

    It was a veritable manual on the various ways of removing the just inaugurated president – listing immediate alternatives to the distant 2020 election: impeachment and conviction, 25th-Amendment removal, and, barring all that, a military coup:

    “The fourth possibility is one that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America: a military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders.”

    So, to make sense of what these self-appointed and sanctimonious protectors of democracy are trying to pull off demands an Orwellian vocabulary—memory hole, newspeak, unperson, and groupthink.

    Yet there is one more irony.

    Very soon, those who welcomed the protests of summer 2020 radicals, and exempted the rioting and violence, and then again did nothing in 2024 as mobs tore apart campuses and shut down public facilities, will host a Chicago convention – where those very same liberated forces may wreak havoc on the outside, while their backroom progenitors, with threats, money, and the media, will wreak havoc on democracy on the inside.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 15:15

  • Houthis Warn 'No Red Lines' In Counterattack After Israel Bombs Yemeni Port
    Houthis Warn ‘No Red Lines’ In Counterattack After Israel Bombs Yemeni Port

    Israel confirmed on Sunday its military forces launched a retaliatory airstrike on the Hodeida Port, a key Yemeni port on the Red Sea and the second largest in the country.

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    Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Hodeida port was the “entry point for weapons that Iran supplies to its Houthi terrorist proxies. ‏The Houthis have used those weapons to attack Israel, to attack Arab states in the region, to attack many others.”

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    Emanuel Fabian, a military correspondent for The Times of Israel, posted on X satellite images from Israeli intelligence and imagery firm ImageSat that show extensive damage at the Hodeida port.

    The Israeli strike came one day after Iran-backed Houthis hit Tel Aviv with a drone for the first time, killing one person and injuring several others. 

    PM Netanyahu described the counteroffensive against Houthis as a “direct response” to the kamikaze drone attack on civilians in Tel Aviv. 

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    In response to the port attack, which killed three people and wounded 80, rebel spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam told Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV, who was cited by Times of Israel and Reuters staff, as saying there will be “no red lines” in the next attack on Israel.

    “All sensitive institutions with all its levels will be a target for us,” Abdulsalam told Al Jazeera. 

    Separately, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree warned the terror group’s “response to the Israeli aggression against our country is inevitably coming and will be huge.”

    Over the last nine months, rebel forces have fired over 220 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones at Israel in support of Gaza, where Israel has been fighting Hamas terrorists. 

    Houthis have also targeted Western-linked vessels, including container ships and crude tankers, in the critical maritime chokepoint of the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. 

    What’s clear is that Houthi’s threat coverage is expanding, something we told readers was possible at the start of May. 

    Numerous maritime chokepoints in the Middle East are under constant threat, which has only sparked a global supply shock (read: “Supply Shock: Shipping Container Costs Top $10,000 Amid Red Sea Turmoil Thinning Global Capacity”). 

    A recent note by David Asher, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former State Department official in the Trump administration, warned that the next financial shock could potentially originate from the Middle East through the weaponization of crude oil by Iran. 

    On slide 29 of the report, Asher pointed out that Yemen’s Houthi rebels could begin targeting high-value oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. This would send Brent crude over the $100/bbl level quickly if Abqaiq were hit. 

    Remember 2019?

    Israeli’s attack on Hodeida is a ‘message’ to Iran. Now, the perfect storm of escalation is possibly ahead.

    All eyes are also on Brent crude prices. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 14:45

  • Know When To Fold 'Em?
    Know When To Fold ‘Em?

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    Know When to Fold ‘Em?

    It is not often that a single title can apply to so many things.

    Let’s start with Geopolitics, where:

    • How long can the war in Ukraine continue?

    • What is going to happen in the Middle East as it too seems to have reached a “stalemate” status?

    • The issues surrounding China and Taiwan and China and the Philippines seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, as we are getting more and more questions around the potential for “starting” conflicts, rather than questions about how it all ends.

    Academy’s Geopolitical Webinar from Wednesday covered these and many other relevant geopolitical questions. Geopolitics as a tail risk was also discussed on Fox Business as a Bank of America survey of investors listed geopolitics as the biggest tail risk to markets.

    We could discuss “folding ‘em” in terms of politics, but we won’t go into detail.

    • Former President Trump is no longer the “presumptive” nominee and is now the official nominee. J.D. Vance is his official running mate. While the Republican ticket has been finalized and the convention was widely viewed, it is too early to clearly identify what policies (that are being discussed) will have a real possibility of becoming laws after the election. While it is “fun” to play “what if games” in terms of policy (in the event of a Trump win), we will hold off on that for now. Figuring out what is a campaign promise, versus a real policy desire is difficult enough. Then, even if the Trump ticket wins, it will be important to see who wins the House and the Senate.

    • President Biden remains the presumptive nominee, but there are daily questions about that. Once that is definitively decided, we will need to know the vice-presidential candidate. In any event, all the reasons why we are not overly interested in predicting “what the economy will look like” if so and so wins apply to the Democratic ticket as well.

    • We will largely ignore “if this party wins” type of trades and market moves for now, with two exceptions:

      • We continue to like energy. The commitment to growing both traditional and new energy sources is real and is increasingly important to supporting AI and data centers. Also, owning energy related stocks and commodities remains our favorite “geopolitical tail risk” hedge.

      • We think yields, especially at the long end, will drift higher. Whatever the current takes are on various economic policies, we remain convinced that as the campaigns continue, it will become painfully obvious that no one cares about doing anything to stem the growth of the deficit. Yes, there will be all sorts of “offsets” for any spending plans or tax cuts to “keep the budget stable,” but they will be largely wishful thinking rather than anything that is likely to work in the real world.

    We remain on heightened watch for a potential “surprise” or “wildcard” geopolitical event while the nation and the media is so focused on domestic issues.

    Know When to Fold ‘Em – Markets

    Let’s start with rates.

    We continue to see 75 bps of cuts this year. The data is likely to support a cut by at least September, if not July. The data, in our view, already supports a July cut, but that is unlikely to occur.

    One thing that is becoming extremely clear to everyone, and something that we’ve been pounding the table on for months, is that a rate cut ahead of the election will be portrayed as helping the incumbents by all those looking to oust the incumbents. The political backlash against a Fed cut, as undeserved as such backlash would be, could pose longer-term threats to how both America and monetary policy are viewed.

    Having said that, the daily reminders that the deficit is heading higher are likely to take their toll on the long end of the yield curve. That rise in yields will be driven by a “normalization” of yield curves and a return to risk premium. First stop would be 0, then possibly as high as 20 bps between 2s and 10s. Also, I think that we can forever retire inverted yield curves as a very useful signal of an upcoming recession.

    On the equity side we certainly saw “de-grossing” where hedge funds in particular scaled back both their longs and their shorts.

    That helped contribute to a week where the S&P 500 lost 2%, the Nasdaq lost 3.7%, and the Russell 2000 gained 1.7%. This follows our writing and views in Chips and the Russell 2000 vs S&P 500 Ratio, which were also presented in more detail in last weekend’s July – Breadth and Liquidity which really focused on the S&P 500 versus the equal weighted version of the S&P 500. That index was “only” down 0.1% on the week, outperforming the S&P 500 again, and narrowing the biggest gap that we’ve seen in a long, long time between the two indices.

    It is difficult to believe that this week started with questions about the assassination attempt (which haven’t been fully answered), concerns about more sanctions surrounding chips, and even chatter about an imminent attack on Taiwan (which we saw no evidence of) and with the help of the Geopolitical Intelligence Group, responded with the view that it was some very misleading and out of context headlines from a Japanese annual defense report on China’s military activities around Taiwan.

    All of this impacted markets, and we are left knowing that we had “de-grossing,” but we are questioning whether we have had “de-risking.”

    De-grossing is cutting longs and shorts. Often “simplifying” complex portfolios. It tends to be a hedge fund/quant fund/CTA strategy. It can feed into “risk parity” strategies (strategies that attempt to harness the correlations and volatility of stocks, bonds, and commodities to generate alpha).

    De-risking is actual selling. Where fear starts driving decisions. Where assets are sold, not to buy other assets, but to reduce leverage or risk.

    IWM, a Russell 2000 ETF, for example, had large inflows starting late last week. Consistent with de-grossing or rotation, not risk aversion (though it also started to have outflows later in the week). In a similar vein, RSP, an Equal Weighted S&P 500 ETF, experienced inflows and has the most shares outstanding since it was launched in 2003.

    Rotation and de-grossing are not de-risking. Which means that the investors (or “gamblers” using our theme of the day) are still holding ‘em.

    Given:

    • Summer “liquidity” or lack thereof may concern investors.

    • More uncertainty and unprecedented events surrounding our election may not be an ideal backdrop for risk.

    • Heightened concern about geopolitical risk and activity across the globe is a threat.

    • There are indices with heavy concentrations of a few names, sitting near all-time highs, that have performed well year-to-date. The S&P is up 15% and the Nasdaq 100 is up 16% (seems low), which may promote profit taking. This would hit the “momentum” factor hard and produce more selling.

    • While it is early in the earnings season, we are trying to figure out results, versus what was expected, versus what happened to the stocks, and whether it was earnings related or just market noise. We may well be entering a period where the hurdles are quite high for stocks to perform on the backs of earnings.

    You should watch out for investors who might be looking to “fold ‘em.”

    The Nasdaq 100 is down almost 6% from recent highs and nearing its 50-day moving average (19,522 close versus 19,321 50 DMA). We could see the 100 DMA come into play (18,627) which would be another 5% drop from here, taking us to our 10% downside target.

    Expect derisking, hands to fold, and while “rotation” sectors will outperform, we should have better entry points later this summer!

    Bottom Line

    Don’t count your money while you are sitting at the table. My sense is that too many are doing this with both bonds and stocks, leading to more selling than buying in the coming days and weeks!

    While there is some debate about whether “The Gambler” is a country song, a crossover song, or just selling out, there can be no debate that the National Anthem sang before the home run derby at the All-Star game was an abysmal performance!

    In any case, be prepared for more volatility in an illiquid market, which will amplify moves in either direction beyond what the news flow would justify.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 14:15

  • NATO Commander Warns A 'Very Big Russia Problem' Will Remain No Matter How War Ends
    NATO Commander Warns A ‘Very Big Russia Problem’ Will Remain No Matter How War Ends

    The Biden administration and leading NATO officials have long touted that their muscular response to Russia, which has included firm support to Ukraine in terms of billions in arms sent and setting up training programs, has deterred Moscow from expanding the conflict. These leaders claim that escalating against Russian forces now can ensure peace for the future. But the chief of NATO’s European Command, Christopher Cavoli, has recently cautioned about the long-haul challenges ahead. He injected a little more realism into the conversation, warning in an address before the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Thursday that the West “can’t be under any illusions” as ultimately Russia will reconstitute its force and will be “very, very angry” at its adversaries Washington and NATO.

    Cavoli described that in modern warfare a military force “either wins fast and upfront” or is stuck “for a long slog full of unpredictable twists and turns” – which is clearly the course of the Ukraine conflict. “A lot of it’s going to come down to force generation capability, which side can generate force fastest and take advantage of that while they have a window of opportunity,” he asserted. By most accounts, Russia is doing this, and has by far the advantage in terms of manpower and artillery shells.

    While remaining optimistic about Kiev’s chances to change the battlefield situation, the top commander at one point said bluntly, “We can’t be under any illusions: At the end of a conflict in Ukraine — however, it concludes — we are going to have a very big Russia problem. We are going to have a situation where Russia is reconstituting its force, is located on the borders of NATO, is led by largely the same people as it is right now, is convinced that we’re the adversary, and is very, very angry.” Watch a key segment of his comments below:

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 13:25

  • Is Left-Wing 'Trump-As-Hitler Iconography' In The Mainstream Media Responsible For The Attempt To Assassinate The 45th President?
    Is Left-Wing ‘Trump-As-Hitler Iconography’ In The Mainstream Media Responsible For The Attempt To Assassinate The 45th President?

    Authored by Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann via American Greatness,

    So many of us watched in horror last Saturday when a 20-year-old assassin aimed at Donald Trump’s head just after he started his remarks at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. How and why did this happen? Did the mainstream and social media enable a radical to commit murder?

    The June issue of the far-left publication The New Republic featured on its cover a vile photo of the faces of Trump and Adolf Hitler merged together. At the time it was released, we had no idea of what would transpire on July 13, 2024, when Thomas Matthew Crooks, using an AR-15 from 400 feet away, attempted, at the highest level, to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.

    But should we be surprised? Hardly.

    It’s been an open secret among leftist elites that regime-approved violence falls somewhere between “it’s okay to punch a Nazi” and “your speech is violence, while our violence is speech.” Media outlets like The Intercept’s Prem Thakker claim that Crooks was a registered Republican but he also made a small donation to Act Blue, a far-left PAC.

    Regardless of party affiliation, the 20-year-old shooter was shockingly motivated to commit murder. Did it come to him in a dream? Was he personally harmed and looking for justice? Did he conclude that this was a logical and necessary act for the protection of society at large?

    No. His motivation was driven by a firehose of personal hatred and outrageous propaganda promulgated by media platforms (and Democrats) that utilize Hitler imagery and Nazi narratives that are embedded in our minds as murderous, dangerous, and anti-human, all the while tying them to Donald Trump. If anyone thinks that the concept is outlandish, one only has to look at the past decade and see how this imagery and narrative have been pushed to influence the weak minds and radicals among us.

    In reverse chronological order, let us examine three of the most egregious examples of the left using Trump-Hitler iconography to spew their disgusting narrative.

    The New Republic (June 2024)

    For its June 2024 issue, Owner and Editor-in-Chief Win McCormack and Editor Michael Tomasky were rightfully savaged on X/Twitter for the cover merging the faces of Trump and Hitler together. On X/Twitter, this was their rationalization and justification.

    “We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face.

    “Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, “He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.

    “We unreservedly choose the latter course. And so we have assembled herein some of our leading intellectual historians of fascism; a member of the fourth estate who learned firsthand what the Trump lash feels like; a leading expert on civil-military relations; a great Guatemalan American novelist with a deep understanding of immigrants’ lives; one of our most incisive cultural critics; and a man with all-too-real experience in living under a notorious authoritarian regime. The scenarios they describe are certainly grim. We dare you to say, after reading these pieces, that they are impossible.”

    It should be noted that The New Republic is barely profitable. One can hope that, because of its lack of editorial integrity, even left-wing elite intellectuals will abandon it before the 2028 presidential election so that it will go bankrupt and sink below the waves into historical irrelevance.

    The Washington Post (December 20, 2023)

    Back in December, author and attorney Mike Godwin opened his WaPo op-ed Opinion: “Yes, it’s okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don’t let me stop you,” with a side profile graphic of Trump and Hitler back-to-back.

    “My very minor status as an authority on Adolf Hitler comparisons stems from having coined ‘Godwin’s Law’ about three decades ago. I originally framed this “law” as a pseudoscientific postulate: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.’ (That is, its likelihood approaches 100 percent.)”

    Godwin continues, “But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy.”

    This plays directly into the ongoing progressive left narrative that Trump presents an existential threat to American democracy. If elected, Trump will be a dictator, and the 2024 election will be the last to be held in America. It goes back to the words of Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels’ law of propaganda, who once said, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” We’ve seen the media become sheep, often repeating the exact same talking point simultaneously, like for the last couple of years that Joe Biden is “sharp as a tack” and “runs circles around staffers that are half his age,” and that he “would never ban gas stoves.” We could go on.

    Many on the progressive left, including influencers like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, serve up this pablum for the masses on almost every broadcast. Worst of all, their low-information audiences tend to accept and believe it, repeating it at cocktail parties inside the DC Beltway. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy to them.

    The Daily Beast (January 13, 2018)

    The Trump-as-Hitler narrative didn’t happen overnight. The villification started the moment Trump announced his candidacy when he rode down the golden escalator with his wife Melania back on June 16, 2015. But it certainly accelerated when he dispatched his primary opponents, was nominated, and defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

    Once in office, the attacks intensified, with no editorial guardrails to be seen. The mainstream media had the green light to engage in any attack, no matter how insane it might seem. The editors at the left-wing website, The Daily Beast, opined on January 13, 2018, just a year into the Trump Presidency, with the op-ed Trump’s War on the Press Follows the Mussolini and Hitler Playbook. Not only did they compare the evil Orange Man to Hitler but to Mussolini as well. The graphic? A color image of Trump superimposed over a historic black-and-white photo of Hitler and Mussolini standing side-by-side. It stated:

    “The abasement of language by Donald Trump and his assorted flacks began long before, but this concept was so naked, so novel and so unblinkingly forthright that it established the rules for the assault to come, just as the first salvo of an artillery barrage signals the creation of a new battlefield where there will be many casualties.”

    But it didn’t stop there.

    “Trump has spent two years vilifying the “dishonest” media (including The Daily Beast), even invoking the Nazi chant of ‘enemies of the people.’ Aided by the alt-right zealots at Breitbart, he has successfully persuaded millions of Americans that The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC are seditious forces bent on denigrating and destroying the man they elected.”

    Funny how, more than six years on, we have watched how all the media outlets cited above have turned out to be nothing more than stenographers for the Democrat Party, and since January 2021, for the most authoritarian presidency in our 245 years, the Biden administration until his dismal debate performance two weeks ago.

    The Basic Difference Between Right- and Left-Wing Media

    There are very few right-leaning popular culture magazines to find anything comparable to The New Republic, newspapers like the Washington Post, or web platforms like The Daily Beast that would merge an image of Joe Biden with Forrest Gump to return the favor. You won’t see mainstream conservative websites with a large following like The Blaze or Brietbart (or American Greatness) publish anything like that. With the exception of Fox News and all the major broadcast and cable networks. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and especially MSNBC, lean left.

    It’s not because the imagery and political pushback are not deserved. It’s because this is not a “both sides” issue. The violence here is solidly footed on the left. Antifa, BLM, Occupy Democrats, Just Stop Oil…all left-wing organizations. And they are organized, not nutty individuals with their own ideas at work. Violence is a common tool in the left’s arsenal, and they are not hesitant to use it.

    Most likely, we will find that the 20-year-old who shot Trump is among that group. He was probably marinating in hate his entire young life. It likely began at home, where parenting has nearly collapsed, and was extended in the public school system, where kids are taught the absolutist Marxist notion of “oppressors versus the oppressed,” villains versus heroes, Good versus Evil. He would have been a fine candidate for the KKK back in the 1950s and 1960s.

    A media and political party that ties a man to Hitler, to a petty dictator, to an authoritarian, and to someone who needs to be defeated “by any means necessary” is complicit in this murder attempt. Democrats and the legacy media completely understand that they can still influence weak-minded, radical people to do their bidding and hide their complicity under the veneer of plausible deniability.

    Of course, there will be no real media accountability here aside from sharply declining readership and viewership. The media will just move on, unapologetically changing the subject and hoping nobody will notice or remember the slanders.

    Politicians, however, push these extreme narratives at their own peril. They are creating an underclass of radicals that cannot be controlled, and once these murderers-in-training are set loose, the leftist politicians who made them will need to hide, for they could be the next target.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 12:50

  • US B-52s On First Time Mission Over Northern Finland, Russia Scrambles MiG Jets
    US B-52s On First Time Mission Over Northern Finland, Russia Scrambles MiG Jets

    The US military has sent two B-52 bombers over northern Finland on Sunday in a historic first and in a clear strong message aimed at Russia. Finland entered the NATO alliance in April of 2023 and this marks the first big act of military cooperation with NATO and the US over its territory.

    The bombers entered Finland from Norway’s northern region, linking up with Finnish fighter jets for the rest of the flight. “Today, Finland has implemented cooperation with the strategic bombers of the United States in the territory of Finland,” Finnish defense minister Antti Häkkänen announced.

    Finnish Air Force photo of B-52s flying over Finland

    “It is a normal cooperation carried out in the territory of a NATO member country and it demonstrate the basic pillar of common defense and deterrence,” Häkkänen said.

    But as the Barents Observer underscores, this flight was an unprecedented first: “But two B-52 strategic bombers over northern Finland is far from normal,” the publication writes. “It has never happened before and shows the fundamental change in geopolitics following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.”

    Separately, the Kremlin said that Russian forces scrambled Mig-29 and MiG-31 fighter jets as the bombers made their way north of Finland, over the Barents Sea.

    “As the Russian fighters approached, the U.S. strategic bombers turned away from the State Border of the Russian Federation,” the Kremlin stated.

    The Russian warplanes “safely returned to their base airfields,” it added. “The flight of the Russian fighters was carried out in strict accordance with international rules for the use of airspace over neutral waters, observing safety measures.”

    Last week NATO announced that as an initial step and development in military cooperation, the alliance’s two newest members have been integrated into NATO air policing of the Baltic Sea.

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    Already this involves the two (previously and historically neutral) Nordic countries ‘confronting’ Russia. According to a NATO statement from July 16, “NATO’s Combined Air Operation Centre at Uedem, Germany, reported two Russian fighter aircraft flying over international waters in the Baltic Sea from Kaliningrad to mainland Russia on July 15.”

    It added, “The aircraft were also tracked by Finnish and Swedish air operation centers, and both Allies launched their quick reaction alert (QRA) forces to intercept the Russian military aircraft.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/21/2024 – 12:15

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