Today’s News 23rd January 2021

• Cult: Government Is Now The New Religion?
  Cult: Government Is Now The New Religion?

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

  A new magazine cover of the Jacobin is striking a nerve after it appears that the magazine is saying the government is now god and our religion, to be worshipped. It sure begs the age-old question: who do you serve?

  If we are ever to be free, we have to remove our consent. That goes for those who worshipped Trump as the messiah as well (and there were plenty.)  We should have never allowed ourselves to see each other as slaves to the ruling class, submitting to democracy (which is mob rule) and letting others have power over anyone else for any reason. Our inability to take the moral high ground has led to us this point in history. Government is now your god. Like it or not.

  Describing Trump supporters as a cult has become a trope among his Democratic critics. Which seems ironic, considering how the very same crowd in the past four years tended to invest emotionally in whoever they hoped would end Trump’s presidency. Special Counsel Robert Muller probably received the lion’s share of the prayers, though figures like ex-FBI director James Comey or even Trump’s fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen basked in some limelight. –RT

  Here’s the cover of the magazine in its entirety for you to have a look at:

  

  Biden’s larger-than-life, bare-chested figure is shown surrounded by ‘holy spirits’ of Twitter and ‘saints’. The latter include kneeling Democrat leaders in the US Congress, Dr. Anthony Fauci, fawning journalists, and manager-class devotees eagerly consuming the ‘holy scripture’ from what is probably the latest Barack Obama memoir. The former president himself is shown as a six-winged seraphim bracketed by the likewise angelic Hillary and Bill Clinton, with the trio gazing benignly from the heavens. A crowd of mask-wearing suburban laymen on Earth celebrates Biden’s ascension. A pair of Reaper drones complete the picture, providing a clear hint for the doubtful that the image should be taken with a grain of salt.-RT

  So the left went from keep religion out of government at all costs to the government is our religion

  — Facetious Libertarian (@libertarianwin) January 20, 2021

  It is way past time to figure out that this is the plan.  One world government, worshipped under the one world religion where the very few control and enslave the many.  Trump obviously didn’t do anything he promised, such as drain the swamp, and people are still worshipping him as some sort of messiah as well.  Stop allowing others to rule over you and making exceptions if one has a different letter behind his name.

  Democracy is mob rule. If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it. Government is slavery. Taxation is theft. Time to wake up and take the moral approach that no one should be a master and no one should be a slave regardless of whether it’s called “government” or not.

  Hopefully, this is the wake-up call people need and the push toward a liberated humanity, truly free from their chains.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 23:40

• China Caught Importing 'Doctored' & Rebranded Venezuelan Oil To Evade US Sanctions
  China Caught Importing ‘Doctored’ & Rebranded Venezuelan Oil To Evade US Sanctions

  It’s no secret that Maduro’s Venezuela has long gone to extraordinary lengths to bust through the US oil export blockade and sanctions designed to choke the socialist country. This past summer, and in recent months, Iran emerged as Venezuela’s chief trading and sanctions-busing partner, with at one point US authorities seizing and later auctioning off over 1.1 million barrels of fuel taken from Iranian tankers bound for Venezuela.

  As we and other have noted before, methods often employed to evade sanctions involve Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, gaining the assistance of third party shell companies to change names and paperwork of vessels during export. “Ghosting” has also been a common tactic, which involves a tanker switching off its transponder in sensitive areas of a voyage to conceal its identity.

  A new investigative report in Bloomberg details another dodge method being employed, namely “doping” the oil being transported with chemical additives while doctoring the accompanying paperwork, so that it can be “sold as a wholly different crude without a trace of its Venezuelan roots.”

  

  Much of this embargoed Venezuelan crude is ending up in China under different names and paperwork intended to conceal its origin, as the report details:

  Invoices and emails reviewed by Bloomberg show the lengths to which some traders will go to disguise the crude’s origin and get it to Asia, making Chinese refineries an essential lifeline for Venezuela’s battered oil industry. U.S. officials, of course, can’t ban Chinese or any international companies from buying Venezuelan oil. They can financially squeeze them, though, by prohibiting them from then doing any business with American companies. That is why such intricate steps are taken to disguise the origin of the crude.

  This appears to be based on a trove of leaked emails containing the communications of industry insiders.

  This likely represents the “tip of the iceberg,” the report underscores, while featuring examples like the following:

  In one email seen by Bloomberg, a Swissoil trader marketing “Singma” urged a counterpart to violate a standard industry practice by keeping the original loading paperwork off a tanker. “Putting original BL on board of a vessel is insane, do not do it,” the trader said, referring to bills of lading. “You do not understand the problem you are getting into.”

  In an email responding to questions, Swissoil’s attorney said, “Swissoil Trading SA is not marketing and has not marketed crude oil from Venezuela.”

  Bloomberg saw documents for at least 11.3 million barrels of Venezuelan oil that were sold by Swissoil and delivered to China last year under the guise of other names.

  It remains that on an official level China supposedly hasn’t imported Venezuelan crude in a year-and-a-half. 

  

  In one instance a Swissoil member tells an external company, “Gentlemen, this is the doping fee,” in reference to a mysterious over $200,000 fee that was billed. “I am sure we will need these guys in the future, please make sure they get paid promptly,” the email said.

  Likely this state of things is only to continue and will possibly grow given the new Biden administration appears to be content to keep Trump’s max pressure campaign targeting Maduro and Venezuela’s state oil revenue in place. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 23:20

• Big Tech, Big Brother, & The End Of Free Speech
  Big Tech, Big Brother, & The End Of Free Speech

  Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

  In George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” members of the Outer Party of Oceania engage in the Two Minutes Hate ritual against Emmanuel Goldstein, who is supposed to be the enemy of the people but may actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real enemy — Big Brother.

  

  In Nancy Pelosi’s “Twenty Twenty-One,” members of the Democratic Party engage in the Two Hours Hate against Donald Trump, who is supposed to be the enemy of the people, but may actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real enemy — Big Tech.

  Two hours of hate — er, debate — was held in the House of Representatives last Wednesday for the avowed purpose of removing a president of the United States. That’s all it took. Two hours. That should tell you everything you need to know about the state of democracy in our country.

  More time is routinely spent on picking wallpaper. But let’s face it, most families wouldn’t trust Congress to pick out wallpaper for their living room, so why should we trust these self-appointed moral arbiters to pick our president?

  Well, we don’t. Not all of us.

  Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican representative from California, put it plainly in his 90-second speech when he said the “second annual impeachment” of Donald Trump “isn’t really about actual words spoken at a rally. No, this is all about the unbridled hatred of this president [by Democrats]. You use any extreme language and any process to oppose the core of what he has really fought for. You hate him because he is pro-life, the strongest ever. You hate him for fighting for the freedom of religion. … You hate him for Israel. You hate him for defending our borders. … You hate him for putting America first.”

  They certainly shouldn’t hate him — or impeach him — just for telling a rally crowd that “everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” But that’s what they did. In two hours.

  And before they ever got around to impeaching Trump, they de-platformed him. With stunning suddenness, Trump went from the most powerful man in the world to a cornered, desperate fugitive. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google — they all came for him. Most importantly, they came for us. Everyone who sided with the president, everyone who agreed with the president about the questions of election fraud, we are all now guilty by association, and Big Tech has turned its sights on all of us.

  “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”

  Those were the words that terrified millions of Americans in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy and other senators tried to purge the United States of what they considered a subversive movement designed to overthrow the government.

  In that case, of course, it was conservative senators — both Democrat and Republican — who were trying to expose what they called a communist conspiracy. In their zeal to protect the nation, they trampled on the civil liberties of individual Americans and tried to strip them of their jobs, their reputations and in some cases their very freedom.

  What was the crime most of those Americans had committed? They had either attended a meeting of the Communist Party, donated money to the Communist Party or signed a petition on behalf of the Communist Party. In other words, they had exercised their First Amendment rights of speech and assembly. They had used their own minds and reached unpopular opinions. That was all it took for McCarthy to try to ruin their lives.

  Apparently the American left never forgot what was done to them, and now that they have achieved absolute power, it looks like they want revenge.

  In the lead-up to the impeachment vote, Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts put Trump defender Jim Jordan “on trial” for the new crime of having a dissenting view on the 2020 presidential election. The question McGovern barked at Jordan in a congressional hearing last week could be repeated in job interviews for years to come:

  “Will you admit that Joe Biden won fair and square and that the election was not rigged or stolen?”

  Jordan avoided a direct answer, but of course he and millions of other people don’t believe that Biden won fair and square. In a free country, they could say so, but in Pelosi’s “Twenty Twenty-One,” you say so at your own risk. To begin with, you can lose your Twitter account or your Facebook account, but who’s to say that you won’t lose your bank account next? China has a “social credit” system that deprives citizens of certain rights if their score falls below a certain level of acceptability — meaning if they don’t follow the party line in their thinking and their public persona. You might lose your job. You might be denied a ticket on a train or a plane. The only recourse is to do what the party tells you to do — even if it means accepting that 2+2=5.

  Now, in modern America, we are precipitously close to duplicating the monolithic control of information that Orwell predicted in “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and that the Chinese Communist Party has perfected.

  In the last two weeks, we have seen the power of Big Tech unleashed mercilessly. With the complicit assistance of Big Media, the Silicon Valley oligarchs not only neutered President Trump as a political leader by taking away his bully pulpit but also effectively crushed dissent by demanding that only social media companies that censor unpopular opinions can have a platform on the Internet. Bye-bye, Parler. You can also make a reasonable case that Democrats in Congress would never have impeached President Trump from public office so hastily were they not goaded into action by Twitter and Facebook taking the first step of banning him from public life.

  In a sense, Big Tech has taken cyberbullying to its logical conclusion. When 13-year-olds are entrusted with cellphones and Snapchat accounts, they can use them to bring shame on innocent children and even destroy their lives. Often, this involves spreading false rumors about the person or discrediting them for something they espouse, like their religion, their political beliefs or their sexual identity.

  Tell me how this is different from what Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have done to Donald Trump and, by extension, the more than 74 million people who voted for him. This group of post-pubescent cyberbullies in Silicon Valley doesn’t like Donald Trump. They feel justified in calling him names like white supremacist and Nazi and racist. They don’t care whether it hurts him or not. They don’t care whether it is true or not. They are strangely enlivened by what they perceive as their ability to hurt him, to weaken him. Like the mob that they have attempted to link the president to, these bullies act in mindless concert, emboldened by each other to see who can strike the deeper blow, who can make the victim hurt more.

  And over what? Differences of opinion, for the most part. Strong border or no border? Mask or no mask? Globalism or Americanism? Carbon credits or fracking? Abortion or no abortion? And then the last straw — fair election or fraudulent election?

  These should be legitimate subjects for debate in a free society. But not anymore. Big Tech has banned debate about government policy on the coronavirus, and any discussion of election fraud is treated as if it were a crime. But wait? It’s only a crime to question the government in a totalitarian system, like that in communist China or Orwell’s fictional Oceania, right? In America, we have the right and obligation to question our government, don’t we? Because, if we don’t have that right any longer, then what are they afraid of? What are they hiding?

  Bottom line: At some point in some election, the allegations of election fraud have to be real. It can’t always just be the figment of some right-wing president’s imagination. And if we aren’t allowed to have free speech, then how do we fight back? If Big Tech and Big Government have their way, we don’t. Just keep your head down and your nose clean — and never ever question what you are told.

  Remember, 2+2=5.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 23:00

• Biden To Propose 5-Year Extension On Last Major Nuke Treaty With Russia
  Biden To Propose 5-Year Extension On Last Major Nuke Treaty With Russia

  It was no secret that the Russians were waiting out the Trump administration, anticipating that Trump’s declared desire to pull out of the New START treaty which limits the number of strategic nuclear weapons maintained by the former Cold War rivals would be a moot point should Biden take the White House.

  During prior negotiations this past fall, Putin was willing to offer an extension on the landmark nuclear treaty of at least one year without any preconditions ahead of its February 2021 expiration. At the same time Biden on the campaign was on record as clearly indicated he’d be ready to agree to an unconditional 5-year extension.

  And now on day two of the Biden administration that’s just what the US side is proposing: an immediate five-year extension of New START, or New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

  

  “Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan planned to convey the extension proposal to Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, on Thursday afternoon, said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter not yet publicly announced by the administration,” according to the Associated Press. “A second U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the proposal but offered no details.”

  Amid Trump’s prior pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) as well as ‘Open Skies’ there was growing concern that a new Cold War style arms race would be unleashed between the US and Russia. To some degree it already has – given Russia’s advancing and very public hypersonic weapons program and testing of the past couple years. There’s also the Pentagon for the first time resuming testing of INF-banned ground-launched ballistic missiles as of late 2019 under Trump’s watch.

  Putin too voiced such a concern on multiple occasions. “It would be extremely tragic, if the treaty ceases to exist, without being replaced with another fundamental document of this kind,” he said in October 2020 comments. “For all these years, the New START worked, worked perfectly, performed its fundamental role of a limiter, curbing the arms race,” Putin had underscored at the time.

  Biden’s reported offer to extend New START another 5 years also comes as a relief to America’s NATO allies, as AP notes:

  The move, providing an early signal of Biden’s intent to pursue arms control, is almost certain to be welcomed both by Russia and key American allies. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday called on the United States and Russia to extend the treaty and to later broaden it.

  “We should not end up in a situation with no limitation on nuclear warheads, and New START will expire within days,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels. Stoltenberg underlined that “an extension of the New START is not the end, it’s the beginning of our efforts to further strengthen arms control.”

  However, it’s anything but a done deal, given the Biden team is preparing to impose “costs” on the Kremlin elsewhere:

  Biden is ordering DNI Avril Haines to provide a full intelligence assessment of Russia’s alleged interference in the 2020 election, use of chemical weapons against Alexei Navalny, and bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan, and SolarWinds officials said. 2/

  — John Hudson (@John_Hudson) January 21, 2021

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

  In the past months Russia’s Defense Ministry appeared to have ramped up its ballistic and hypersonic missile tests – possibly as a “message” to Washington and as leverage toward pressuring Washington to not let New START unravel.

  “Russia is not interested in triggering an arms race or deploying missiles where there are none,” Putin had also said in recent years.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 22:40

• Academic Study Finds Big-Tech Elites Are In Their "Own Class", Different To Rest Of Humanity
  Academic Study Finds Big-Tech Elites Are In Their “Own Class”, Different To Rest Of Humanity

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  An academic study carried out by researchers in the US and Germany has concluded that big-tech elites are completely different to all other people on the planet, and can be placed in their own class.

  

  “Our research contributes to closing a research gap in societies with rising inequalities,” note the authors of the study from two German universities and the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies in New York. 

  The research centres around analysing language used in close to 50,000 tweets and other online statements by 100 of the richest tech-elites as listed by Forbes.

  The researchers conclude that big-tech elites such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates display a ‘meritocratic’ worldview, meaning they do not see wealth as a source of their influence or success, but rather believe their innate abilities and more altruistic beliefs have enabled them to achieve power.

  “We find that the 100 richest members of the tech world reveal distinctive attitudes that set them apart both from the general population and from other wealthy elites,” the study states.

  The findings reveal that big-tech elites consistently talk about believing in democracy, being philanthropic, and helping make the world a better place for other people.

  “Yet their position in a democratic system is contradictory – as a result of their enormous wealth, they have disproportionate influence over how discretionary income is spent,” the researchers note.

  The researchers found that language used by the tech-elites regularly includes words such as ‘merit’, ‘distinct’, ‘excellent’, ‘value’, ‘virtue’, ‘advantage’, ‘superiority’, ‘worth’, ‘perfect’, ‘important’ and ‘significant’.  

  The researchers also note that:

  “The tech elite may be thought of as a ‘class for itself’ in Marx’s sense – a social group that shares particular views of the world, which in this case means meritocratic, missionary, and inconsistent democratic ideology.”

  The researchers noted that the study had limitations, ironically owing to the fact that they were not able to access language used by all the top 100 tech-elites because Twitter is banned in China.

  The Twitter accounts they were able to access could also be managed by PR professionals and are obviously public projections of how the tech elites want to be thought of by the public at large, therefore the language used may be ‘strategic’.

  Nevertheless, the findings go some way to explaining why big-tech elites are so inclined to censor and de-platform those who hold world views at odds with their own.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 22:20

• Winter Storm Could Batter Northeast Next Week 
  Winter Storm Could Batter Northeast Next Week 

  Widespread winter weather across the lower 48 states in recent weeks has been limited, but that drought could be over as early as this weekend into next week as a duo of storms could batter parts of the US. 

  Accuweather meteorologists are closely watching weather disturbances forecasted to bring snow, ice, and a wintry mix across parts of the Midwest and the Northeast. 

  Snow, ice, and a wintry mix could be seen across Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, DC, Pennsylvania, and New York early next week. 

  

  The Global Forecast System for forecast temperatures appears to show a dip in temperatures across the Midwest and the Northeast into early next week – during the time, the storm is expected to traverse those regions. 

  

  The Global Forecast System for precipitation shows the storm’s progression through the weekend into early next week. 

  

  The biggest worry would be slippery conditions on highways, especially in places where wintry mix falls.

  More accurate models on the storm’s trajectory and snow totals will be made available in the coming days. 

  Other weather models suggest warmer than average temperatures are expected across much of the US this month. However, there are two things natural gas bulls are watching for model shifts, and if that happens, demand could return later in the month, bouncing natgas prices. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 22:00

• The Despicables
  The Despicables

  Authored by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

  One of the nuggets to be mined from the wholesale cancelling of politically unapproved speech by the Tech Oligarchs – soon to be empowered by government oligarchs, if the “kraken” doesn’t somehow prevent it – is how obvious their pathological dishonesty has become.

  

  Amazon, Facebook and Twitter have asserted that, as private businesses, they have the right to decide with whom to do business – and not do business with. But do they feel the same way about the right of other private businesses to practice what they preach?

  Only when it conforms with what they preach.

  Consider the religious tenets of the Sickness Cult; specifically, the dogma that requires all to wear a Face Burqa within a privately owned business, even if the owner isn’t religious and isn’t interested in proselytizing to his customers, much less insisting they show respect for a religion he doesn’t subscribe to.

  

  It is a private business, is it not?

  Why then must this private business be forced to conduct its business according to the religious tenets of people who don’t own the business? Isn’t that a violation of the owner’s rights, just the same as the rights asserted by Amazon, Facebook and Twitter?

  They claim no one is forced to use their services; that people are free to use other services more to their liking. Bully! But why doesn’t the same standard apply to other private businesses, the ones the people who run Amazon, Twitter and Facebook insist be closed to people who aren’t forced to go within?

  People should be free to do business with whomever they wish, according to whatever terms are mutually agreeable to the parties. If one party does not find the terms agreeable then they are free to not do business with the other party. This is the argument purveyed with great unction by Amazon, Facebook and Twitter justifying their decisions to stop doing business with Parler, for instance (in the case of Amazon) and cancelling the ability of people whose opinions – and facts – they dislike from their platforms, including the president of the United States (in the case of Twitter and Facebook).

  Fine. Indeed.

  

  They do have every right. It’s despicable – in the manner of “No Colored” signs on the door of businesses back in the ’50s – but they have every right as privately owned businesses to do business with whomever they wish, according to whatever terms they wish – so long as people are free to  take their business elsewhere.

  Aye, there’s the rub.

  These Despicables want to enjoy the right to cancel, close – and decree – to others while at the same time denying the right of any other privately owned business to set its own terms and conditions.

  The Despicables cannot stand the idea of freedom of religion when it comes to the wearing of the Face Burqa, for instance. The Holy Vestment must be worn everywhere, even within privately owned businesses and irrespective of a businesses’ private property rights.

  Privately owned businesses are also unfree to unlock their doors and leave it up to customers to decide whether they wish to enter. It is not enough that no one is forced to enter these privately owned businesses. These privately owned businesses must be forced to not let them in – and if they are let in, force them to perform bizarre religious rituals including the wearing of a “mask.”

  

  But this is nothing new. The Left specializes in situational ethics; in fungible etymology. Like Humpty Dumpty, a word means exactly what the Left says it does until the Left says it means something else.

  This creates difficulties in the minds of rational, honest people – who take words at face value and base their arguments on moral principles that aren’t fungible. Thus the stymying of many conservatives – and even libertarians – with regard to the Mandatory Burqua policies imposed by many businesses under pressure from the government to do so – and also with regard to calling out the Despicables who brazenly refuse to do business with those whose opinions – and facts – they do not like, claiming they have private property rights to do so. . . and then going on a rampage when a privately owned business uses the same argument to defend its private property rights.

  

  The Left is defined not so much by its leftism but its psychotic doublethink. It is rancidly intolerant while touting itself as ethereally tolerant. It promotes racism in the name of combatting it.

  And it thinks property rights only apply to correct privately owned businesses; i.e., to their businesses.

  This has always been the case but now it’s out in the open – which may finally put an end to this business.

  *  *  *

  Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in! If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.  We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!  Our donate button is here.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 21:40

• Microsoft Patents AI-Chatbots That Imitate Dead People 
  Microsoft Patents AI-Chatbots That Imitate Dead People 

  The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted Microsoft one of the most bizarre patents to date: chatbots using deceased people’s personal information. 

  The Independent reports Microsoft is creating an AI-based chatbot based on “images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages,” and other personal information. It’s thought that the chatbot would simulate the deceased person’s human conversation. 

  

  This AI-based chatbot concept is straight out of a Black Mirror episode called “Be Right Back,” where a young woman uses an AI-based chatbot to chat with her deceased partner. 

  The patent describes a “specific person [who the chatbot represents] may correspond to a past or present entity (or a version thereof), such as a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a celebrity, a fictional character, a historical figure, a random entity, etc.” 

  “The specific person may also correspond to oneself (e.g., the user creating/training the chatbot,” the patent said, implying that living users could train AI-based chatbot as their digital replacement in the event of death. 

  The patent even includes creating 2-D or 3-D models of the person based on images, videos, and other information. 

  If the patent doesn’t lead to any tangible tech, it’s a reminder of the digital age we live in. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 21:20

• Taibbi: The Echo Chamber Era
  Taibbi: The Echo Chamber Era

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  A day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, the headline in Axios read: “Trust in media hits a new low.” Felix Salmon wrote that “for the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media.” The Edelman survey showed overall trust in the press dropping to 46%.

  ​

  The traditional explanation for this phenomenon is that Republicans hate the press a lot, but Democrats just a little. The Axios story bore this out somewhat, as only 18% of Republicans reported trusting media, versus 57% of Democrats.

  Still, 57% of half your potential audience is nothing to brag about, when you’re in the trust business. Other numbers, like 56% of respondents believing journalists are “purposely trying to mislead people,” or 58% thinking that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology… than with informing the public” are more ominous.

  Media critics who work in the corporate press, like Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, seem determined to look everywhere but inward for solutions. The dominant legend in our business is that if Republicans believe in fairy tales like Q and “Stop the Steal,” the traditional press can do nothing but stand its ground.

  Sullivan’s reaction to at-times “embarrassing” Inauguration Day coverage was an injunction to reporters to resist the temptation to try to appear more balanced by showing “toughness” with regard to the incoming Biden regime. If anything, Sullivan said, the press should stand even taller in its opposition to red-state lie merchants like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, “without fearing that they’d be called partisan.”

  Karen Attiah, the Post’s global opinions editor, took the same approach. She wrote that Trump had been caused in part by the media’s penchant for “balance” and “presenting both sides.” Going forward, it will therefore be necessary to work even harder avoid missteps like Politico’s much-criticized decision to publish Ben Shapiro, which Attiah decried as a decision defended with the “rusty armor of both-sidesism.”

  It’s astonishing that after so many years of decline in trust in media — this phenomenon has been going on for over a decade now, something I first started noticing when I published The Great Derangement back in 2008 — media people still think the issue is a mathematical question of “sides,” with widespread audience revulsion a kind of reward for their unflinching correctitude.

  Sullivan was a lot closer to the truth when she warned of being seduced by the return of a Biden administration that closely reflects “our values,” which she described as being like the world as represented in West Wing: celebrating “multiculturalism, a belief in the principles of liberal democracy, and a kind of wonky idealism.”

  West Wing was General Hospital for rich white liberals, a seven-season love letter to the enlightened attitudes of the Bobo-in-Paradise demographic. If that’s the self-image of the national press, it’s no wonder they make people want to vomit. The coverage of Biden’s inauguration, another celebration of those attitudes, was an almost perfect mathematical inverse of late-stage Trump reporting, a monument to groveling sycophancy.

  John Heileman at MSNBC compared Biden’s speech to Abe Lincoln’s second inaugural, and suggested that the sight of “the Clintons, the Bushes, and the Obamas” gathered for the event was like “the Marvel superheroes all back in one place” (this was not the first post-election Avengers comparison to be heard on cable). Rachel Maddow talked about going through “half a box of Kleenex” as she watched the proceedings. Chris Wallace on Fox said Biden’s lumbering speech was “the best inaugural address I ever heard,” John Kennedy’s “Ask Not” speech included. The joyful tone was set the night before by CNN’s David Challen, who said lights along the Washington Mall were like “extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America.”

  As these neo-Soviet ministrations spread across the airwaves, an opposite storyline was discarded. From the Capitol riot on, we’d been warned about a sequel act of violence by Trump supporters. On January 11th, ABC reported that an internal FBI memo had “received information about an unidentified armed group” planning a “huge uprising” if efforts were made to remove Donald Trump via the 25th Amendment, while protesters were planning to “storm” state capitols in “all 50 states.”

  We were shown how 25,000 National Guard troops were deployed to protect the capital, with attendant subplots about an unusual effort to politically screen those Guardsmen. “While we have no intelligence indicating an insider threat,” Defense Secretary Chris Miller said, “we are leaving no stone unturned in securing the capital.”

  Beyond the 50-state threat, what if Trump just wouldn’t leave? That was the subject of countless stories across all four years of the Trump experience, with Vanity Fair’s “No One Knows How to Get Trump to Leave In January?” being a typical example. They speculated that the Secret Service might have to pull an old landlord’s trick:

  [The Secret Service] could also simply do the equivalent of changing the locks: “When the staff leaves on January 19, don’t let them back into the complex the next day,” an ex-agent said. “He can’t do anything without his staff.”

  Should we worry about martial law? Before the inauguration, USA Today and multiple other outlets wondered what would happen if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, especially after the CEO of My Pillow, Michael Lindell, was spotted entering the White House with a document full of notes that apparently contained suggestions for invoking military rule.

  On Inauguration Day these stories melted away in silence. Trump and his wife Melania ditched the White House more or less without event Wednesday morning, unless one counts the unauthorized use of Village People hit “YMCA” as an exit tune (“it would seem his abusive use of our music has finally ended,” the band said in a statement). In localities around the country, there were but a few scattered reports about tiny or nonexistent demonstrations at state capitols:

  In all of New York and California, a single protester showed up at the state capital to protest. So terrifying. pic.twitter.com/cwiQRx2dqF

  — Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 20, 2021

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

  In other cases, as in the instance of a gun-rights rally held at the Virginia State Capitol — many of whose attendees were apparently vocal opponents of Trump — livestream coverage by indy outlets like Jordan Chariton’s Status Coup was shut down, allegedly because it violated Google’s “firearms policy.”

  Balance isn’t about giving credulous coverage or equal time to Donald Trump or Josh Hawley or Ben Shapiro (though I think it’s crazy for news organizations to cut off all conservatives), it’s about being consistent. If you tell us on January 12th that all 50 state capitols are under serious threat — I was genuinely worried — you have to tell us what happens at the end of the story a week later. Was that threat real but deterred? Was it overblown? What happened to all of those warnings?

  This has been an ongoing theme of coverage in the Trump years: hyping a threat for a news cycle or two, then moving to the next panic as the basis for the first one dissipates. How many headlines were aimed out our outrage centers in the last four years that were quietly memory-holed, once they’d outlived their political utility? We read dozens of stories before the election warning that Russia was already interfering in the 2020 election. A smattering of New York Times headlines alone:

  • Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump

  • Russia Continues Interfering in Election to Try to Help Trump, U.S. Intelligence Says

  • ‘Chaos Is the Point’: Russian Hackers and Trolls Grow Stealthier in 2020

  • F.B.I. Warns of Russian Interference in 2020 Race and Boosts Counterintelligence Operations

  • Putin Most Likely Directing Election Interference to Aid Trump, C.I.A. Says

  The Times almost weekly quoted people like the “American official” who said Russia was like a “tornado, capable of inflicting damage on American democracy now,” or FBI Director Christopher Wray, who said there was a “very active” campaign to influence the election and “denigrate Vice President Biden.”

  Then Biden won the election, the story disappeared, and the near-immediate conclusion of the same New York Times was that the election had been “free of fraud.” They quoted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as saying the 2020 vote was “the most secure in American history,” and as for all of those pre-election scare stories?

  A bipartisan consensus like this may tempt some people to conclude that the dire pre-election warnings were overblown, that the risks to the election were never that serious. The reality is the opposite…

  Like the wider Trump-Russia story itself, which magically vanished from coverage before both the 2018 and 2020 election seasons, audiences were asked for a time to care about certain things as if their lives depended on it, then just as quickly asked to forget the issues ever came up. And they wonder why people feel manipulated?

  We went through many of these episodes, from Bountygate to the “mass hysterectomies” story to the recent spate of “What if Trump blows up the universe?” scare-o-grams (Forbes, echoing the famed “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is Still Dead” construction, wrote the best of these, with “Enraged and Isolated, Donald Trump Still Has Sole Control of America’s Nukes”).

  We were repeatedly told that revealing the name of this or that patriotic news source would “risk lives,” only to have those sources turn out to be people like paid DNC researcher Christopher Steele, the “informant” Stefan Halper (exposed as an FBI source in the press in the eighties), or Brookings Institution fellow Igor Danchenko, who produced the pee tape tale over “beers” at a conversation made in “jest” with a pal in Moscow. Needless to say, no lives were ever threatened, and in many of those cases — Steele’s especially — the rationale for keeping the person’s name and employer a secret was clearly corrupt.

  Blue-state audiences didn’t ask for accounting for those official warnings for the same reason Trump voters never asked what happened to those three million undocumented votes Hillary Clinton supposedly won in 2016: audiences don’t demand explanations for puffed-up claims about other groups.

  People like Sullivan would have you believe that “balance” is a mandate to give voice to clearly illegitimate points of view, but it’s really about not falling so completely in love with your “values” that you stop caring to avoid mistakes about those who don’t share them, or even just mistakes generally.

  By any standard, the press had a terrible four years, from the mangling of dozens of Russiagate tales to scandals like the New York Times “Caliphate” disaster and the underappreciated Covington High School story fiasco. Still, many in the business can’t see how bad it’s been, because they’ve walled themselves off so completely from potential critics.

  Coupled with the enhanced aggressiveness of Silicon Valley in removing dissenting accounts across the spectrum — Facebook is taking down six Socialist Workers Party accounts in Britain as I write this, a day after zapping a series of Antifa accounts — reporters at places like the Post, the Times, and CNN every day have less and less to worry about in terms of audience blowback, and they know it. Just in the first few days of the Biden administration, we’ve seen editorial decisions that would never have been attempted once upon a time.

  The Post just tried to remove seven paragraphs of their own archived article about Vice President Kamala Harris, which contained a cringeworthy scene of Harris and her sister joking about prisoners begging for water, only to restore it after an outcry. CNN meanwhile ran a story that incoming Biden officials had to “build everything from scratch” with regard to Covid-19 policy because the Trump administration had no plan for vaccine distribution at all — not a bad or even a terrible plan, but literally a “nonexistent” plan, despite the fact that 36 million vaccines had already been delivered.

  In this rare case, rival media organizations cried foul, with reporters from both Politico and the Washington Post blasting the report as untrue and a “gambit to lower expectations” by the incoming administration. In an atmosphere where editors really feared discontent from outside demographics or rival party politicians, a story like that, with an over-the-top-to-impossible premise, would never even be tried.

  Competing voices and critics who’ll keep your newsroom at least theoretically honest are important, which is why the mass-deletions of alternative media accounts are so upsetting: it hugely enhances the likelihood of errors and cheap caricatures, as well as the belief in one’s infallibility. The fact that pundits and reporters are leading the charge for an ever-purer monoculture is beyond creepy. A tweet by Anand Giridharadas expressed what probably more than a few people in West Wing media-land are thinking these days:

  It’s time for this question to be front and center: Should Fox News be allowed to exist? Brain-mashing as a business model shouldn’t be legal.

  — Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) January 22, 2021

  It’s bad that trust in media is down, but even worse that so few in the business seem to think it’s a problem. 

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 21:00

• Google Threatens Shut Down In Australia Over Bill Designed To Better Compensate Content Providers
  Google Threatens Shut Down In Australia Over Bill Designed To Better Compensate Content Providers

  A huge controversy erupted last summer between major US social media platforms and the Australian government over a bill designed to better compensate and reward local news publishers, while bringing greater transparency to the way algorithms employed by Google, Facebook, and YouTube work.

  Months after failed attempts to come to an agreement with the government of Australia, Google is now threatening the dramatic step of shutting down its search engine in the country altogether.

  It stems from the initiative that seeks to ensure companies and content providers are compensated fairly for the value their content generates for Google and parent company Alphabet Inc.

  On Friday at a Senate hearing on the matter Google Australia Managing Director Mel Silva told lawmakers, “If this version of the Code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia.”

  

  “That would be a bad outcome not just for us, but for the Australian people, media diversity and small businesses who use Google Search,” she added. She said as the legislation currently stands it would be “breaking” the way users typically search for information, upending Google’s operations.

  Silva attacked the bill for requiring “payments simply for links and snippets just to news results in Search” – while also touting the “free” service Google offers. “The free service we offer Australian users, and our business model, has been built on the ability to link freely between websites,” she said.

  “We don’t respond to threats,” Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison hit back in the wake of the threatened Google shutdown in the country.

  “Let me be clear. Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. That’s done in our parliament. It’s done by our government and that’s how things work here in Australia and people who want to work with that in Australia, you’re very welcome,” he said.

  GOOGLE: if you pass a law that makes us pay media companies for journalism, we’ll shut down search in Australia.
  PRIME MINISTER: “But we don’t respond to threats”
  GOOGLE: “It’s not a threat. It’s a reality.”

  Last two are *checks notes* actual quotes.
  https://t.co/UWlPBT6thY

  — Kate Crawford (@katecrawford) January 22, 2021

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

  It’s commonly estimated that Alphabet Inc. oversees at least 94% of all search traffic in Australia, similar to many other countries globally, at a time it’s coming under increased accusations of using its monopoly power to bully content providers and smaller competitors. 

  Meanwhile Bloomberg cites tech analyst Johan Lidberg, an associate professor at Melbourne’s Monash University, who said, “It’s about control and power.”

  Julian Assange on Big Tech: ‘Google is not what it seems’

  “Google’s influence on the choices and behavior of the totality of individual human beings translates to real power to influence the course of history” #Google #Assangehttps://t.co/ZUfh7WDAT5 pic.twitter.com/FLnEBTT8Kw

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 22, 2021

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

  He added that Google is seeking to make an example in Australia: “They’re signaling to other regulators they’ll have a fight on their hands if they do this.”
   

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 20:40

• Are We Still Allowed To Ask Questions?
  Are We Still Allowed To Ask Questions?

  Authored by Paul Rosenberg via FreeMansPerspective.com,

  Aside from a breathless stream of headlines and a few random inputs, I haven’t seen many facts regarding the events of January 6th. Circumstances made things that way for me, and now I’m glad they did, because it set me up for the really important issue: Am I allowed to ask questions about this, or am I not?

  Bear in mind that I haven’t voted for or otherwise championed Mr. Trump. (Nor did I support his opponents.) More than that, I really want to know the answers to these questions. Especially given the fallout from January 6th, honest answers to these questions matter a great deal.

  So, I’m going to stick my neck out and ask questions about this event that seem pertinent.

  Question #1: What was the actual time line?

  As I was driving on the 6th, I flipped on the radio and heard Mr. Trump speaking. I was aware that there was going to be a rally in the capitol, and so I listened for a minute or so, just enough to get the tone of it; a rally on the same day electoral votes were counted concerned me.

  What I actually heard from Mr. Trump, however, was less than his strongest, and included something like, “I know you’re going to go down there…” combined with “patriotically and peacefully.” Hearing him mention “peacefully” comforted me. (Plus the fact that American conservatives take pride in being peaceful and courteous.)

  And so I was rather shocked, not many minutes later, when a friend called and said something about the capitol. I responded along the lines of, “it sounds harmless enough”… whereupon I learned that protesters were already inside the building.

  Since then I’ve seen claims that Mr. Trump was a mile away, in the middle of his speech, when the capitol building was being broken into.

  So, between my own observations and the claims, I’d like to know what really happened when.

  Again, I honestly don’t know. What troubles me is that I haven’t seen the claim refuted, only ignored.

  Question #2: Were agents provocateur involved?

  One of the random things I came across was a report from Michael Yon, perhaps the most experienced war reporter in the world, claiming BLM and Antifa agents provocateur led the break-in. This is a guy who should be able to tell.

  I’ve further seen reports that someone named Sullivan was a known BLM leader, and was at the vanguard of people entering the building.

  So, I don’t actually know that BLM and Antifa were involved with this, but I’d very much like to know. And once again, I haven’t seen this question addressed. Perhaps I’ve missed something conclusive on this, but the question deserves to be addressed with facts.

  Question #3: Is thinking an election was rigged considered insane?

  This is the impression I get from about half of my headline stream: That anyone believing the recent election was rigged is flat-out insane. But for me, that’s a real problem, because I’ve experienced election rigging, personally. On top of that, I’ve known a lot of inside players in my home state, giving me many more reasons to believe in election rigging.

  That’s not proof that the November election was rigged, of course, but it’s clearly a reason for me to take seriously the possibility. And if I’m not allowed to ask, I have to wonder why.

  As best I can tell, none of the loud voices (news networks, etc.) have analyzed what has been claimed as evidence. Again, I may have missed something, but I simply haven’t seen it. So far as I know, the courts have never examined it (they got rid of the cases on procedural grounds in every case I recall), nor did congress: the “insurrection” interrupted that, after which it was ignored. That sounds very convenient to me, but again, I could have missed a lot.

  So again I’d like to know: Is such a question permissible, or will I be punished for asking it?

  Question #4: Aside from trespassing and a few broken windows, what harm was done?

  So far as I know, the answer is “not much,” though I may have missed something. A lady named Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed, but she was killed by the police, not the protesters. And details about other reported deaths are spotty. So, I think my question is valid.

  Several hundred politicians were inconvenienced, of course, but that’s hardly a major issue.

  A congressional baseball team being murderously shot up not too long ago was a big deal, but that came and went with almost none of the fanfare and fallout we’ve seen since January 6th.

  So again I ask, precisely what harm was done? And I ask especially because I’ve seen words like “sacred” applied to this, and to me that reeks of idolatry and dogma, the opposites of reason and proportion.

  Question #5: Where are the civil libertarians?

  I’ll admit that this one rather ticks me off. Tens of thousands of people have been ejected from the public square, not because they caused actual harm, but because someone thinks they’re part of an “insurrection.” Bear in mind that almost none of these people were anywhere near Washington, DC on the 6th. All they did was to fall within some algorithm produced by a surveillance capitalism company. (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

  I’ve further heard that people have lost jobs and financing in precisely the same manner: They had nothing to do with the event, but were somehow associated with it. Either that’s a witch hunt or there’s massive and direct evidence against all those people… and it sure doesn’t seem like that’s the case. Since when do we impose penalties for insurrection without a serious finding of fact?

  And Ron Paul, for goodness sake? He’s a congenitally polite doctor, now old and retired. Disagree with him all you like, but to eject him from the public square is naked thuggery.

  So again, I ask: Where are all the civil libertarians? They’re absent without leave, as best I can tell. Either that or it was always a charade, and their high-sounding rhetoric was just sucker-bait for the rubes.

  If These Things Can’t Be Asked…

  Here’s where the rubber meets the road: If we cannot ask these questions, confident that we’ll be met with reason and proportion, we’re living in a tyranny.

  What appears to be happening is an illogical statement being writ very large. This is the statement:

  Some people broke into the capitol and a few windows were broken, therefore our lives are in danger and we must stomp out all evildoers.

  Any connection between the first part of that sentence and the second is uncertain and (as best I can tell) unproven. And yet, the responses to January 6th treat it as completely verified.

  And so, if these questions are not permissible, we are living in tyranny, and particularly under the tyranny of those who punish the asking.

  So many times we see the true importance of things only once we lose them, and this moment has been revelatory in just that way: We can now see why free speech must be held sacrosanct.

  Free speech is inherently oppositional to tyranny. It’s the canary in our coal mine. When we see free speech abandoned and punished, we can be certain that tyranny is upon us.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 20:20

• Jamie Dimon's Compensation Held Steady At $31.5 Million For 2020
  Jamie Dimon’s Compensation Held Steady At $31.5 Million For 2020

  While the nation is bearing the brunt of a recession and President Kamala Harris Joe Biden is battling to try and raise the minimum wage, Jamie Dimon, boss at JP Morgan, unfortunately had to see his pay hold steady at just a meager $31.5 million in 2020, according to bank disclosures on Thursday.

  The bank noted that “amid the unprecedented health and economic consequences of Covid-19” it was still able to post record revenue and hold a strong balance sheet, even while provisioning $12 billion for credit losses, according to FT. Its shares wound up down 8% for the year, despite a weeks-long rally to end the year. 

  Dimon’s pay package included $1.5 million base pay, a $5 million bonus and $25 million in “performance share units” that vest over time. The lack of a rise in his pay is a “signal that the biggest U.S. bank is focusing on keeping costs down amid uncertainty about the prospects for the economy,” Bloomberg noted.

  

  The filing says that “the board took into account the firm’s strong performance in 2020 and over the long term, across four broad dimensions: business results, risk, controls and conduct; client/customer/stakeholder; and teamwork and leadership”.

  Like many other banks, JP Morgan had warned that bonus season wasn’t going to be particularly plentiful, but we noted late last year that the bank was intent on boosting bonuses for sales and trading workers by 15% to 20%. Bank of America, for example, disclosed it would pay special bonuses of $750 to employees earning $100,000 or less; higher paid employees will receive bonuses tied to stock.

  Despite the bank’s stellar performance in the fourth quarter, Dimon took a more somber tone, stating: “It’s not like we’re bragging, we’re not.” The bank made “more money than it ever has in three months” during the fourth quarter, Bloomberg noted. The bank’s annual profit was down 20% to $29.1 billion during the year.

  JP Morgan marks the first bank to reveal the compensation of its CEO out of all of the major U.S. banks. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 20:00

• "Spend As Much As You Can… And Then Spend A Little More!"
  “Spend As Much As You Can… And Then Spend A Little More!”

  Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

  Are you ready for this week’s absurdity?

  Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

  “Spend as much as you can and then spend a little bit more.”

  At an economic forum last week, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told governments :

  “In terms of policies for right now, very unusual for the IMF, starting in March I would go out and I would say: ‘please spend’. Spend as much as you can and then spend a little bit more.”

  She added that she continues advocating this policy.

  

  Governments across the world are in massive debt. And essentially all of them continue to finance their debt by printing money. Meanwhile economies have shrank over the past year due to COVID restrictions on travel, and business.

  So more debt, a smaller economy, and more paper money than ever, with nothing backing it…

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Click here to read the full story.

  Apple Sued to Force it to Remove Telegram from its App Store

  An organization called the Coalition for a Safer Web is suing Apple to try to force the company to remove the messaging app Telegram from its app store.

  The lawsuit claims Apple is failing to enforce its terms of service because Telegram “allows” (read: doesn’t censor) “extremist” content.

  It’s bad enough that Apple removed Parler from its app store because the social media platform allows free speech. But that wasn’t enough for the censorship zealots.

  Now the woke mob has moved beyond Twitter and taken to the courts.

  Click here to read the full lawsuit.

  23 Elderly People Have Died Soon After Receiving COVID Vaccine

  The Norwegian government issued a warning that frail, elderly people with underlying health conditions might be in danger from the COVID vaccines.

  So far, at least 23 elderly people have died shortly after receiving the first dose of the BioNTec /Pfizer COVID vaccine.

  “Based on these reports we cannot rule out that common adverse reactions, such as fever and nausea, may contribute to a more serious course and fatal outcome in some frail patients with severe underlying diseases,” said Sigurd Hortemo, chief physician at the Norwegian Medicines Agency.

  So it’s possible that the most likely group to die from COVID may also be the most likely group to die from the COVID vaccine…

  Click here to read the full story.

  Germany Will Detain Quarantine Breakers in Camps

  An emergency German law gave states the power to detain people who come into contact with COVID and refuse to quarantine, even if they test NEGATIVE for Covid multiple times.

  Now, some German states are moving ahead with plans to detain people in immigrant detention camps, and juvenile detention centers.

  You might think Germany, of all countries, would shy away from detaining people in camps.

  But the Germans insist that these are totally not concentration camps.

  You might even call them social distancing camps, which is like, the opposite of concentration. So that makes it OK.

  Click here to read the full story.

  Study finds no difference in COVID cases among strict versus lenient countries

  A peer reviewed study begins:

  “The most restrictive non‐pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for controlling the spread of COVID‐19 are mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closures. Given the consequences of these policies, it is important to assess their effects.”

  The study compared less restrictive countries like Sweden and South Korea, to countries which issued strict lockdowns, like England, France, Germany, Iran, and Italy.

  It found “no clear, significant beneficial effect” in using strict lockdowns to control the spread of COVID. In fact in some cases, such as France, COVID cases increased in the wake of strict interventions.

  I guess governments destroyed your civil liberties and businesses for no reason, since the study concluded: “Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less restrictive interventions.”

  Listen to the scientists. Unless, of course, the scientists are anti-lockdown.

  Click here to read the full story.

  *  *  *

  On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 19:40

• Is It Almost Over: US Sees Record One-Day Drop In COVID Hospitalizations
  Is It Almost Over: US Sees Record One-Day Drop In COVID Hospitalizations

  In the last few days – really since the BIden inauguration – we have seen declarations of victory over covid across the board, from the likes of Dr. Fauci who yesterday said that coronavirus infections may be about to hit a “plateau“, to Wall Street, where Bank of America yesterday declared “The Beginning Of The End Of The COVID Crisis.“

  In its chart of the day, BofA showed that the US is now clearly over the hump, with 142,000 COVID cases in the US on Monday, down 32% from the prior Monday with the seven day average also dropping to 209,000, down 16% from the peak on January 8th.”

  

  In another good sign, the bank said that “testing is increasing and the share of tests that come back positive is falling” and cheerfully adds that “It seems clear that an end to the holiday season, a modest increase in restrictions and a small increase in herd immunity is bending the COVID curve.”

  

  So is the beginning of covid’s end truly nigh (coincidentally, just as Joe Biden walked into the White House)?

  It would appear that the answer is yes: as Goldman predicted last month, now that the US has administered 17.5 million vaccines and the pace has picked up to 6.4 million per week (19 per every 1000 people and almost 1million per day), Bloomberg today announced that Covid-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. fell by the most ever on Thursday, the latest sign that not only “relief may be coming to a health-care system that’s been fighting the virus for almost a year”, but that the pandemic appears to finally be under control.

  Bloomberg cites the latest Covid Tracking Project data according to which, the number of people currently hospitalized with Covid dropped by 2,773 in a single day to 119,927, while the one-week drop of 9,020 was also a record, the data show. More importantly, the decrease is accelerating on a percentage basis.

  

  To be sure, the absolute number of people with Covid-19 in hospitals is still extraordinarily high, and while the virus remains prevalent in much of the country, it is now following the hospitalization scenario laid out by Goldman…

  

  … which said that “as vaccinations ramp with the targeted population we see the potential for significant further declines in US hospitalizations in the coming weeks” and in fact predicts no more covid-related hospitalizations in just a few months. The data also corroborates what we published in mid-December when we used Goldman’s analysis when we explained “Why Covid Hospitalizations And Deaths Are About To Plunge.”

  Meanwhile, as Bloomberg notes “the U.S. is also entering the second month of its vaccination push, with 18 million doses of the vaccine administered, or 5.62 people per 100, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. Fauci has estimated that the U.S. needs to vaccinate more than 70% of its people to return to a degree of normalcy.”

  Which means that between those Americans who already have natural immunity to covid (from having survived it) and those who will get the vaccine in the next several months, herd immunity should be a fact of life by the late spring (unless, of course, Fauci moves the goalposts again, or a new mutant strain with immunity to all vaccines mysteriously emerges in the next few weeks).

   

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 19:20

• Trump Impeachment Trial To Start February 8th, Dems Float Ban From Office (Again)
  Trump Impeachment Trial To Start February 8th, Dems Float Ban From Office (Again)

  Update (1900ET): Senate Democrat Leader Schumer announced The Senate will start President Trump’s second impeachment trial during the week of Feb. 8, marginally ahead of Senate Republican Leader McConnell’s proposed timeline.

  “Both the House managers and the defense will have a period of time to draft their legal briefs just as they did in previous trials. … Once the briefs are drafted, the presentation by the parties will commence the week of Feb. 8,” Schumer said from the Senate floor (in dramatic fashion)…

  JUST IN: The impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump is set to begin the week of February 8th pic.twitter.com/78bWC3liNk

  — The Hill (@thehill) January 22, 2021

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

  The full timeline:

  

  “Leader McConnell is glad that Leader Schumer agreed to Republicans’ request for additional time during the pre-trial phase. Especially given the fast and minimal process in the House, Republicans set out to ensure the Senate’s next steps will respect former President Trump’s rights and due process, the institution of the Senate, and the office of the presidency,” said Doug Andres, a spokesman for McConnell.

  Finally, in yet another news-cycle-grabbing repeat of what has been discussed numerous times, The Hill reports that Democrats are mulling whether they can use the 14th Amendment to prevent former President Trump from ever holding office again.

  “It’s an idea that’s out there that I think people are contemplating in the accountability space,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who described himself as “quite confident” that Congress could act under the constitutional amendment.

  Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who caveated that talk of the 14th Amendment was hypothetical, said it could be applied to Trump, with one mechanism being a resolution from Congress.

  “The remedies of the 14th Amendment certainly may be appropriate for someone who incites an insurrection as Donald Trump did,” said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

  An “idea” that would suggest the Democrats’ real agenda.

  Ironically, as this story dropped, Trump reportedly spoke his first public words since leaving office…

  “We’ll do something, but not just yet,” Trump told Rob Crilly of the Washington Examiner on Friday. 

  *  *  *

  Update (1015ET): Senate Democrat Leader Schumer has just confirmed that House Speaker Pelosi will deliver the Trump impeachment resolution to the Senate on Monday 26th January.

  This is slightly ahead of McConnell’s plan – which had hoped for delivery on January 28th – but as far as the rest of the timeline is concerned, there is no apparent change yet.

  The apparent rush seems to signal that Democrats are more keen to stop Trump from ever being able to run for office again than they are for providing stimulus to Americans?

  *  *  *

  While the left is split between wanting to hammer the final nail in Trump’s coffin (through the Senate impeachment trial) and tending to its aggressive agenda of new laws, spending, and government control, U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) issued a statement today regarding his proposed timeline for the first phases of an impeachment trial of former president Trump.

  “I have sent a proposed timeline for the first phases of the upcoming impeachment trial to Leader Schumer and look forward to continuing to discuss it with him.

  “Senate Republicans are strongly united behind the principle that the institution of the Senate, the office of the presidency, and former President Trump himself all deserve a full and fair process that respects his rights and the serious factual, legal, and constitutional questions at stake. Given the unprecedented speed of the House’s process, our proposed timeline for the initial phases includes a modest and reasonable amount of additional time for both sides to assemble their arguments before the Senate would begin to hear them.

  “At this time of strong political passions, Senate Republicans believe it is absolutely imperative that we do not allow a half-baked process to short-circuit the due process that former President Trump deserves or damage the Senate or the presidency.”

  

  Specifically, Leader McConnell shared the following proposed pre-trial timeline with the Republican Conference today:

  When the articles arrive, the House Managers would exhibit (read) the articles to the Senate, Senators would be sworn in the Members as the Court of Impeachment, and would issue a summons to former President Trump.  While we do not know what day the Managers will choose, Leader McConnell has asked for this to occur on Thursday, January 28. 

  Former President Trump would have one week from that day to answer the articles of impeachment (February 4).  The House’s pre-trial brief would also be due then.

  The President would then have one week from the day he submits his answer to submit his pre-trial brief (February 11).  That means former president Trump has fourteen total days from when we issue the summons to write his pre-trial brief.  The House would also submit its replication on this date.

  The House would then have two days to submit their rebuttal pre-trial brief (February 13).  

  This approach tracks the structure of the Clinton and Trump pre-trial processes. 

  The periods between due dates are longer than in 1999 or 2020, but this is necessary because of the House’s unprecedented timeline.

  So far we have not seen any response from Senate Democrat Leader Schumer, but we do note the timing is ironic as (in what appears to be more PR stunt than anything else) freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced via Twitter video Thursday that she’s filed articles of impeachment on President Joe Biden.

  I just filed Articles of Impeachment on President @JoeBiden. pic.twitter.com/mcwEEkKiHL

  — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) January 21, 2021

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  As SaraACarter.com’s Jennie Taer reports, Rep. Greene earlier pledged on Newsmax on January 13 to do so on the first day of Biden’s presidency, as reported.

  “We cannot have a President of the United States that is willing to abuse the power of the office of the presidency and be easily bought off by foreign governments, foreign Chinese energy companies, Ukrainian energy companies. So on January 21st, I will be filing articles of impeachment on Joe Biden,” said Rep. Greene.

  “On behalf of the American people – on January 21st I will be filing articles of impeachment on Joe Biden.”

  “We have to make sure our leaders are held accountable,” says @mtgreenee. https://t.co/VlT7z8drtO pic.twitter.com/aOh9GOdN1E

  — Newsmax (@newsmax) January 14, 2021

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  As w3e noted, while this is unlikely to proceed, that did not stop Democratic Reps such as Al Green from incessantly posting articles during Trump’s term (as early as May 2017).

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 19:00

• Black Prof Shreds 'Anti-Racist' Activists For "Bluffing", Confronts What They "Don't Want To Talk About"
  Black Prof Shreds ‘Anti-Racist’ Activists For “Bluffing”, Confronts What They “Don’t Want To Talk About”

  Authored by Benjamin Zeisloft via Campus Reform,

  Glenn Loury, a Brown University economics professor, shredded racial activists for “bluffing” as they fail to address Black-on-Black crime and other issues plaguing the Black community.

  

  On an episode of his podcast, The Glenn Show, Loury told co-host and Columbia University professor John McWhorter that certain issues in the Black community are neglected.

  Here I explain my idea of the “bluffing equilibrium” that stifles public discussion in America about persistent racial inequality. For more of the same, follow us at https://t.co/Wy8KpOFZx9 pic.twitter.com/x4a9DuccwE

  — Glenn Loury (@GlennLoury) December 29, 2020

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  “We’re in an equilibrium, as economists might say,” explained Loury.

  “We’re in a stable, ongoing situation where there are tacit agreements not to talk about certain things. Not to talk about Black-on-Black crime as the scourge that it is. Not to talk about affirmative action as being necessary because of Black mediocrity, not measuring up on the competitive edge.”

  “People don’t want to talk about the Black family,” he continued.

  “It’s an absolute catastrophe that two-thirds to three-quarters of Black kids are being raised in a home without a father present in the home, in terms of the social cohesion of the community. People don’t want to say that.”

  Loury also explained that the forced silence of Black people in talking about these issues will prompt more non-Blacks to speak up.

  According to Loury, Americans will eventually realize that Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Director and author of How to Be An Anti-Racist Ibram X. Kendi is an “empty suit.” At that point, “the jig is up, the bluff is called, and they don’t have any cards.”

  In his book, Kendi teaches readers that “the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

  Loury, an accomplished economist, became the first tenured Black professor in the Harvard University economics department at the age of 33, according to the New York Times.

  Campus Reform reached out to Loury for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 19:00

• Most.Popular.President.Ever…?
  Most.Popular.President.Ever…?

  The media heralded Biden after he pulled off the ‘stunning’ achievement of garnering the most votes in presidential history with over 81 million, beating Barack Obama’s previous record of 69.5 million.

  

  However, as Summit News’ Paul Joseph Watson points out, Biden being the most popular person to win the Oval Office in history doesn’t seem to translate to enthusiasm for his speeches, which are typically watched online by a paltry amount of viewers.

  Case in point, the most-viewed clip on the official ‘The White House” channel on YouTube (with 1.9 million subscribers), a 31 minute video of Biden’s inauguration (with over 450,000 views), has 9,400 thumbs up compared to 43,000 thumbs down.

  

  As PJW concludes, Biden is supposedly “the most popular president in U.S. history,” but you wouldn’t know it by looking at his YouTube analytics.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 18:40

• Americans Are Suffering Through The Most Painful Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression
  Americans Are Suffering Through The Most Painful Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression

  Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

  I warned that an economic collapse was coming, and an economic collapse is exactly what we got.  2020 was a “personal financial disaster” for 55 percent of all Americans, approximately 12 million U.S. renters are “at least $5,850 behind in rent and utilities payments”, the Aspen Institute is projecting that up to 40 million people could be facing eviction when the rent and mortgage moratoriums finally end, and more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed since the COVID pandemic began.

  

  Nobody can point to a time since the Great Depression of the 1930s when the U.S. economy was in worse shape than it is right now.

  Unfortunately, there are no indications that this nightmare is going to end.  Last week, another 900,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits…

  Another 900,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week, President Donald Trump’s last in office, a snapshot of the significant labor market challenges facing President Joe Biden.

  An additional 423,000 people in 47 states filed new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the program created to help gig and self-employed workers.

  Prior to 2020, the all-time record for new unemployment claims in a single week was just 695,000, and that old record was set all the way back in 1982.

  We shattered that old record early in 2020, but the bigger story is what has happened since we broke it.

  At this point, the number of new claims for unemployment benefits has been above 695,000 for 44 weeks in a row.

  That is starting to come close to a full year.

  If that does not qualify as a “collapse”, then you are probably using a completely different definition of the word than I am using.

  This unemployment crisis has hit low wage workers particularly hard.  At this point, even Fed officials are being forced to admit that the unemployment rate for low wage workers “is above 20%”.

  Many of those low wage workers used to be employed in the restaurant industry, but the restaurant industry continues to be mired in the worst stretch that it has ever encountered…

  The number of “seated diners,” a daily measure with which OpenTable tracks walk-ins and diners with reservations, in the week through January 20 in the US was down on average by 57% from the same period last year.

  The hospitality industry also typically employs large numbers of low wage workers, and we are being told that last year was the “worst year on record” for that industry…

  According to STR, Inc, a hotel industry market data firm, 2020 was absolutely the worst year on record for hotels as industrywide profits fell to zero, as the virus pandemic and resulting government-enforced social distancing measures kept travelers at home.

  STR’s latest report said the US hotel occupancy rate was 44% for the year, down from 66% in 2019. This was the lowest occupancy rate on record. In an earlier STR report, we noted weeks ago that the industry had one billion unsold room nights for the first time, surpassing the record of 786 million in 2009.

  Countless numbers of small business owners have also been absolutely devastated by this economic downturn.

  Each month, thousands of small businesses die a permanent death, and the outlook for the months ahead is not good at all.

  The Epoch Times recently interviewed one small business owner in Minnesota who admitted that “the fallout by this time next year will be shocking”…

  The ramifications of the forced shutdowns on thousands of small businesses in Minnesota is going to be huge, says Julie Schroeder, who owns two craft stores in the Minneapolis metro area.

  “The fallout by this time next year will be shocking,” she told The Epoch Times on Dec. 30, 2020.

  Meanwhile, north of the border small businesses are being destroyed at a staggering rate as well…

  The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is warning that more than 220,000 businesses across the country are at risk of permanently closing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  The CFIB, a lobby group that represents small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Canada, released a new report on Thursday that surveyed 4,129 members about business prospects through the pandemic. The survey found that 181,000 businesses – or one in six – are seriously contemplating permanently closing. That’s up from a similar survey conducted in July, which found that 158,000 businesses were at risk of closing.

  In the end, if we can keep the amount of small businesses in the U.S. and Canada that go under to less than 20 percent that should be considered a major victory.

  Because I have a feeling that the final number is going to be well above that threshold.

  And the Biden administration does not seem too sympathetic to the needs of small businesses at this point.  For example, one new law that Biden is likely to sign would absolutely cripple small truckers…

  Trucking industry experts expect Joe Biden’s presidency to seriously jeopardize many small American trucking companies, and the prospects of truck drivers who work as independent contractors.

  Biden is poised to sign a transportation law passed in the Democratic House and stalled in the then-Republican Senate in 2019. The Moving Forward Act had required commercial motor vehicles to maintain more than $2 million in insurance liability, more than doubling the existing $750,000.

  Wouldn’t it be nice if our representatives in Washington were forced to take a basic course in economics before they were allowed to serve?

  The blind are leading the blind, and the economic nightmare that we are currently experiencing is eventually going to get a whole lot worse.

  But hopefully we can at least have a short period of time where things will plateau a bit before the next major trigger event happens.

  So many people out there are really hurting right now, and it is not just financial pain that they are dealing with.

  The past several months have been excruciatingly painful for tens of millions of Americans, and the truth is that there are countless people out there that are emotionally shattered at this moment.

  If you are one of those people, just keep hanging in there.

  It will take some time, but you will get through this and you will recover.

  And I will continue to be here pumping out articles as I do my very best to try to help everyone make sense of a world that is going completely mad.

  *  *  *

  Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 18:20

• So You Missed Today's Epic Move In Gamestop: Here's How To Catch The Next One
  So You Missed Today’s Epic Move In Gamestop: Here’s How To Catch The Next One

  Back in 2013, we first said that in a market as broken as this one, where no fundamental or technical analysis works, and where logic and rational thought have been flipped upside down thanks to the Fed, the best strategy is to merely go long the most shorted stocks… and wait for the epic short squeeze.

  Well, a few days ago, something caught our eye: just as Gamestop’s stock was starting to ramp higher, we pointed out that the open interest of Gamestop was higher than the float…

  is this right pic.twitter.com/mVfitVff5b

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 14, 2021

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  … potentially setting up an epic short squeeze, like that in Volkswagen which exploded ten-fold back in 2008 which found itself in a similar predicament with not enough physical share float to cover all outstanding shorts (whether or not these calculations are in fact 100% accurate doesn’t matter: all that is needed is for the perception that there may be an epic short squeeze to spread, coupled with some upside catalyst).

  Well, that catalyst today was Citron Research which, with the stock already rampaging in the past few days, announced at the open that it will stop commenting on the stock following the actions of “an angry mob.”

  “We are investors who put safety and family first and when we believe this has been compromised, it is our duty to walk away from a stock,” Citron managing partner Andrew Left wrote in a Friday letter.

  Left’s letter came a day after he said in a YouTube video that he’d “never seen such an exchange of ideas of people so angry about someone joining the other side of a trade,” referring to Reddit bulls who have been particularly “vocal” on the social media site in pushing their bullish opinions on the video-game retailer’s stock.

  An army of Robinhood, Reddit and TicToc traders read the letter as capitulation on the fund’s short position, recall that as recently as Tuesday Citron said that it saw the stock returning to $20 “quickly”…

  GameStop pared gains after short-seller Citron Research tweeted that it sees the stock returning to $20 quickly.

  Good luck with that: someone’s shorts are really hurting pic.twitter.com/XzeEL3snN3

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 19, 2021

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  … which in turn unleashed a historic pile up into Gamestop today as daytraders tired – and succeeded – in forcing a massive short squeeze. So furious was the ramp, that at one point, the video-game retailer was the most actively traded US company with a market value above $200 million, according to Bloomberg. It certainly was the most active day in company history: with more than 193 million shares traded on Friday, it was the most active day for the company since it went public in 2002.

  The resulting surge in GME, which pushed the stock as much as 80% higher at one point, was an epic victory for all those Redditors  – many of whom continued to pump up their bets with one user saying they relied on it to pay their student loans …

  

  … who followed our simple – yet favorite – market strategy of merely doing the opposite of what makes sense. And in this case a bunch of Gen-Zers and Millennials demonstrated how easy it is to steamroll one of the more respected shortsellers in the US.

  To be sure, there were also some fundamental reasons for the surge: as Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said, GameStop became a “cult stock because of Ryan Cohen’s success with Chewy” and retail investors “appear confident that he can implement omnichannel initiatives that will materially grow their earnings.”

  Maybe, but for the company to be worth $50 a share it would have to quickly double its growth, Pachter, who has a $16 price target which is the second highest among analyst tracked by Bloomberg, said.

  Not that fundamentals matter: with a record 71 million shares short, or a whopping 142% of the float, it is unclear how many of the stubborn shorts have covered their position, especially since today’s surge attracted a new generation of GME bears who may be next to get trampled by the Reddit stampede.

  

  “While older existing shorts have been covering some of their positions due to a profit-loss based short squeeze, there is a queue of new short sellers wanting to get short exposure in GME after its recent run-up,” Ihor Dusaniwsky, S3’s managing director told Bloomberg.

  One thing we do know is that the pain for the shorts has been immense, having suffered more than $3.3 billion mark-to-market losses this year (incidentally, Gamestop should immediately announce an equity offering and use the proceeds to pay down its $1.2 billion in debt, although since no institution would ever buy GME at this price, the company would have to pull at Tesla and announce an At The Money offering to the same redditors who pushed it to this level, and maybe to the stranded shorts).

  And while it is unclear if the squeeze will continue – Reddit traders are known for having a relatively short attention span – one thing we do know is that the same strategy of going long, and ideally unleashing the Reddit herd, on the most shorted names will continue to make huge profits in this absolutely insane market.

  How to win this market:

  Go long every stock with a market cap between $50MM and $2BN and Short Interest > 50% of float (as first laid out in 2013).https://t.co/8wpkGLMeiW

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 22, 2021

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

  So for all those who wish to ride the next Gamespot to untold riches and force a massive squeeze, we have done a little homework for you. Specifically, we have screened through the Russell 3000 and picked the companies that are the top candidates for a (forced) short squeeze: those whose short interest at a % of the float is > 50%. The 11 “hjts”, which are incidentally headed by GameStop, are shown below.

  

  An equal-weighted basket of these 10 stocks has more than doubled off the March lows and is accelerating in the last few days…

  

  For those who wish to gamble their next stimmy check and frontrun the next reddit-raid, the best move would be to buy equal amounts of the 10 companies (ex GME) and just wait for the short squeeze panic to unroll. Yes, there is a risk that the entire stimmy will be lost, but that would require logic and fundamentals to matter again… and we just don’t see that happening any time soon.

  For more, see Premium

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/22/2021 – 18:00

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