Mar 25

Today’s News 25th March 2023

  • Homeland Security Reorganizes, Appearing To Scrap Last Remnants Of Ill-Fated "Disinformation Governance Board"
    Homeland Security Reorganizes, Appearing To Scrap Last Remnants Of Ill-Fated “Disinformation Governance Board”

    Authored by Matt Taibbi and Susan Schmidt via Racket News,

    The Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to present a less Orwellian exterior to the public took a big step forward this week, as it disbanded a key subcommittee linked to the Department’s ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board, announced last year and quickly “paused” amid public outcry.

    Jen Easterly, head of the DHS’s cyber division — the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA — this week convened the agency’s influential Cybersecurity Advisory Committee (CSAC), which is made up of senior executives from organizations like Twitter, Amazon, and the Stanford Internet Observatory. The agency announced an expanded roster, adding 13 new members to CSAC, including chief cybersecurity officer for General Motors Kevin Tierney and Cathy Lanier, the chief security officer for the NFL. The full CSAC now contains 34 members.

    However, amid the additions, CISA also shuffled responsibilities, making a key change. In particular, its “MDM” advisory subcommittee, for “Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation,” was scrapped.

    The subcommittee’s leaders, including chairperson Kate Starbird of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP), and Vijaya Gadde, a former top Twitter executive who was fired last year when Elon Musk took over the company, were shifted to other advisory roles.

    A spokesman for the agency said the change appeared in an unpublicized summary of a Dec. 6 advisory board meeting. The summary provided to Racket states Easterly decided late last year that the subcommittee had fulfilled its tasks and would “stand down”:

    But that notice appears to have only been posted on the agency website recently (the Wayback Machine captured a first image of it in late February). CISA’s unique approach to website maintenance has drawn attention of late. Last week, Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online reported that CISA scrubbed key sections of its web page about its campaign against “Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation.” Crucially, the agency appeared to remove references to “domestic threat actors” as purveyors of “MDM.”

    CISA’s MDM guidance now, and before

    The updated page now refers to foreign actors only, and no longer makes reference to other domestic-facing programs, like an “MDM planning and incident response guide for election officials.”

    The changes come amid months of embarrassing #TwitterFiles disclosures about formal DHS involvement in the content moderation procedures of Twitter and other platforms. Two weeks ago, Michael Shellenberger of Public and the co-author of this article told a House Subcommittee about the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” among other things criticizing the “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” concept.

    “MDM” was once central to CISA’s mission. In fact, it appeared to be the inspiration for the infamous Governance Board, which was designed to be a centralized hub uniting various public and private “anti-disinformation” initiatives. As reported by Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein of The Intercept last October, Easterly in February of 2022 texted a former CISA official, saying she was “trying to get us in a place where Fed can work with platforms to better understand mis/dis trends so relevant agencies can try to prebunk/debunk as useful.”

    Easterly’s February, 2022 text

    It later came out that the DHS approved the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board on February 24, 2022. The charter for the new organization, which was announced to the public by DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas on April 27, 2022 and slated to be headed by singing censor Nina Jankowicz, spoke to the agency’s growing obsession with stopping “MDM” at home:

    DHS Disinformation Governance Board Charter

    Section1. Purpose. The purpose of the Board is to support the Department’s efforts to address mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM), that threatens Homeland Security. Departmental components will lead on operational responses to MDM in their relevant mission spaces.

    All of this came out after news of the Governance Board inspired a public flip-out, leading Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Josh Hawley of Missouri to send the DHS formal demands for information. The documents the DHS produced showed CISA envisioned a deepening of its partnership with Twitter. On April 28, the day after the Governance Board was announced, DHS Undersecretary Robert Silvers was scheduled to meet with Twitter Head of Policy Nick Pickles and Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.

    A briefing memo prepared for Silvers by Jankowicz advised him to discuss “operationalizing public-private partnerships between DHS and Twitter.” Silvers was to line up Twitter’s coordination with the new board, and ask it to “become involved in Disinformation Governance Board Analytic Exchanges”:

    The creation of the Disinformation Governance Board represented a remarkable shift in focus, away from foreign threats and toward the domestic population.

    The MDM subcommittee had actually once been called the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF). Throughout the period of the 2020 Election, Twitter received large quantities of flags about tweets from the CFITF, notices which appear in abundance in the #TwitterFiles. These letters often originated from a regional American agency, like the Secretary of State’s office in Colorado or Connecticut.

    This was odd behavior for an agency devoted to countering “foreign” threats. The subcommittee subsequently changed its name and — briefly — adopted a more openly domestic focus.

    Last June, the advisory board recommended that CISA should work with and provide support to external partners “who identify emergent informational threats,” and find ways to mitigate “false and misleading narratives.”

    It also said CISA should fund and collaborate with partners to measure the impact of disinformation and mitigation, and do “proactive” work like “pre-bunking” emerging rumors. In a five-page memo of recommendations, the board listed a slew of aggressive ideas for combating “MD” at home (i.e. “mis- and disinformation”) that included “reducing engagement” by offenders:

    The tasks were enormous, advisors said. “CISA should consider MD across the information ecosystem,” including talk radio, cable news, mainstream media, and “hyper-partisan media.”

    Easterly’s response to the June recommendations focused on foreign threats. She narrowed the scope of a recommendation from the MDM subcommittee that the agency should combat mis- and disinformation that “undermines critical functions of American society and undermines response to emergencies.”

    Easterly responded by saying CISA will continue to work on ways to counter “foreign influence operations and disinformation that threatens the integrity of the election infrastructure.” She seemed to agree that the agency should work with academic researchers to measure the impact of their efforts.

    Meeting minutes from last year also show the public furor over the DHS announcement of a “Disinformation Governance Board” had MDM subcommittee members worried. They discussed delaying and toning down their June quarterly recommendations to the full CISA advisory board, with one passage suggesting members find a way to “pre-socialize” the existence of the subcommittee for key decision-makers:

    [Redacted] suggested contacting Director Easterly in preparation for the rollout during the CSAC June Quarterly Meeting, to solicit her feedback on how to pre-socialize the existence of the subcommittee with key members of congress or outside validators.

    Part of the subcommittee’s worry seemed to be that not many people knew what they were up to, or that they even existed — not in Congress or even at DHS. The group worried about how to “strategically approach MDM in the government in the current discourse.”

    The “current discourse” was a reference to the furor over the Disinformation Governance Board, which by then was being likened to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.” After an outcry, Mayorkas had to “pause” its work and asked two top Washington lawyers, former DHS Secretary Mike Chertoff and former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to weigh in on the legitimacy of the board. Within weeks the lawyers issued an urgent interim finding: It’s not needed.

    They then issued a final report in August, affirming the Disinformation Board should be abolished. The report said government should limit its involvement with social media companies. DHS, they concluded, can bring disinformation to the attention of social media companies, but “it is for the platforms, alone, to determine whether any action is appropriate under their policies.”

    Given the controversy over the Disinformation Governance Board, subcommittee members decided it would be better to jettison altogether a planned recommendation on “privacy and social listening,” which appeared to refer to the use of software that can proactively search out particular words or language. They worried this “most sensitive recommendation” could “overshadow other recommendations posed by the committee.”

    The decision this week by CISA to scrap the MDM subcommittee, like last year’s “pause” of the governance board, reflects political sensitivity to growing public concern over social media censorship. What changes would more press attention bring?

    Subscribe to Racket News

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 23:40

  • "City Killer" Apollo-Class Asteroid To Buzz Earth, Visible Via Telescope
    “City Killer” Apollo-Class Asteroid To Buzz Earth, Visible Via Telescope

    The Associated Press reported that a “city-killer” asteroid, known as 2023 DZ2, is set to pass between Earth and the Moon’s orbit on Saturday. Discovered merely three weeks ago, the asteroid’s 17,000 mph flyby of Earth will be observable through telescopes or accessible via a live stream. 

    023 DZ2 is an Apollo-class asteroid measuring approximately 140-310 feet in diameter. This classification signifies that its orbit intersects Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Apollo asteroids are also classified as “near-Earth objects” because they can be “potentially hazardous.” The good news is the asteroid will pass Earth by about 110,000 miles, about half the distance to the Moon.

    The Virtual Telescope Project will provide a live stream Saturday evening around 7:30 pm EST for the flyby.

    Anyone with a six-inch telescope in the Northern Hemisphere might be able to observe the asteroid as it passes by Earth.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 23:20

  • GOP Bill To Expand Tax-Free Health Savings Accounts To All Americans
    GOP Bill To Expand Tax-Free Health Savings Accounts To All Americans

    Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    ​​House Rules Committee member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said during the panel’s four-hour Jan. 30 meeting that ending the federal healthcare worker vaccination mandate is “part of a bigger discussion that we should have regarding deference to the executive [branch] and to the bureaucratic state.” (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has introduced a bill that would make tax-free Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) available to all Americans.

    Currently, most Americans cannot use HSAs due to the stringent rules that govern their use: only those who pay an abnormally high insurance deductible can take advantage of the pre-tax program. In practice, this means that 90 percent of Americans are not eligible for HSAs.

    Roy’s bill, dubbed the Healthcare Freedom Act, would change the rules to make all Americans eligible for HSA accounts.

    To do this, the bill would de-link eligibility for an HSA, renamed a “Health Freedom Account” by the legislation, from health insurance requirements.

    Many patients who pay high-deductible policies—which have grown more popular among employers over the past two decades—never meet their annual deductible, meaning any money they paid on the policy was effectively wasted. Because of the increased prevalence of high-deductible health insurance policies, many Americans have had to rely on savings to cover their day-to-day medical expenses.

    Additionally, the bill would increase the maximum annual contribution to HSAs from $3,650 to $12,000, or to $24,000 for a joint contribution.

    In effect, this would allow American families to pay less in taxes annually and direct more money to HSAs.

    The bill would also expand permitted expenses under an HSA, allowing contributors to make tax-free withdrawals to pay for health insurance and associated costs, direct primary care arrangements, prescription and over-the-counter medications, and others.

    Roy told The Epoch Times in a statement on the legislation that his bill would be a win for patient choice.

    “Patients and their doctors should be driving our health care system—not politicians, and not government or corporate bureaucrats,” Roy said.

    He added that collusion between government and health care insurers against HSAs had led to increased medical costs for Americans.

    “The American people are absolutely fed up with Big Health care, government bureaucrats, and Congress destroying affordable access to the greatest medical care in the world,” Roy said. “It’s time to cut through the knot of government-corporate collusion and put power back in the hands of those who actually provide it and those who actually receive it.”

    Roy concluded, “I refuse to sit back and watch our government completely decimate health care freedom, and the Healthcare Freedom Act is a crucial step forward to saving it.”

    The legislation, which Roy also introduced during the 117th Congress, has won the praise of Americans for Prosperity, a free market non-profit.

    “Tax-free Health Savings Accounts save people money and give them more control over their health care by putting them in charge of their health care dollars,” said Dean Clancy, senior health policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity. “The fact that 90 percent of Americans can’t have an HSA is a major injustice that must be addressed if we truly want to reduce health care costs and make the health system more responsive to patients. Expanding access to HSAs is key to creating more personalized options in health care, and we applaud Rep. Roy for including this solution in his Healthcare Freedom Act.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 23:00

  • "Significant" Amount Of Toxic Waste From Ohio Train Derailment Heads To Baltimore
    “Significant” Amount Of Toxic Waste From Ohio Train Derailment Heads To Baltimore

    The decision to transport a “significant” amount of toxic wastewater from the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment by rail to a wastewater treatment plant located east of Baltimore City, and eventually discharge it into the local water system, might spark outrage among residents.

    Local media outlet WYPR obtained a letter from Contractor Clean Harbors of Baltimore Inc., which described itself as the “optimal wastewater treatment site to treat and discharge the wastewater collected from rainwater, collected water and stream water above and below the cleanup site of the Norfolk Southern Railroad derailment.” 

    Once the contractor obtains approval, the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Baltimore County is set to receive over 675,000 gallons of toxic water via rail transport (if you can believe it – by rail) — a fact that may concern Baltimore residents. The approval is expected to be granted imminently.

    “The water would be pre-treated by a contractor then dumped into the city-controlled wastewater system then cleaned with the city’s Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Dundalk,” WYPR said. 

    Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott voiced concerns about the plan to treat the toxic water. 

    “Both the county executive and I have grave concerns about the waste from this derailment coming into our facilities and being discharged into our system.” 

    Scott added he wants additional testing to be conducted before the water is released from the plant and into the water system. 

    And we wonder what water system is near the plant. Perhaps it’s the Chesapeake Bay… 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 22:40

  • Don’t Believe The Hype: Woke Is Real And It’s Dangerous
    Don’t Believe The Hype: Woke Is Real And It’s Dangerous

    Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Politics,

    He’s woke. She’s woke. So are they, them, ey, ze, and xeir.

    Know what I mean?

    Of course, you do. The dominant flashpoint word in today’s political lexicon – woke is here, there, everywhere. From Whoopi’s lips to your ears. I say it all the time – way too much, according to my wife – but never once has anybody asked: what the heck are you talking about?

    The word is becoming a problem for woke-noscenti because the more people know about the alphabet soup movement – DEI, CRT, ESG, QIA+, etc. – the less they like it. What to do? Deny, deflect, and demonize, of course. Seizing on a conservative writer’s halting efforts to define the term during an interview, they are arguing that woke is a made-up, meaningless slurbrandished by the right to oppress minorities. Seeking to shut down all discussion of their movement, Touré outlawed it as the new “n-word.”

    Never mind that all language is made up – words are just symbols we create so we can talk about things and ideas – and that the term “woke” was coined by African Americans to describe the road-to-Damascus moment when the scales fall from one’s eyes and society’s allegedly oppressive structures become clear.

    Still, it can seem hard to precisely define this hydra-headed beast which seeks to redefine every aspect of human relations and understanding, from race, gender, and science, to politics, culture, family, and identity. Its tentacles are so far-reaching that even some writers who are critical of the movement are throwing up their lexicographic hands.

    Honestly, it’s probably enough to apply Justice Potter Stewart’s understanding of pornography: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material … but I know it when I see it.”

    The current insistence that woke isn’t even a word, however, provides giving-up-the-game clarity. At root, wokism hinges on the power to command perception and language. That word you know and discuss all the time, it doesn’t exist. Full stop. The consequential policy debates that consume our attention – e.g., battles over critical race theory or gender affirming care for children – are mere skirmishes in the far broader effort to control thought; once that’s accomplished, anything is possible. Hence its core demand: are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?

    To paraphrase Raymond Carver, what are we talking about when we talk about woke?

    Woke describes the ongoing cultural revolution which defines reality by its usefulness in achieving left-wing goals.

    The main weapon of the woke, who dominate society’s privileged channels of communication – academia, publishing, entertainment, and the media – is the article of faith that almost all reality is socially constructed, a creation of humanity rather than nature, to enable those in power to subjugate “the other.” Truth is not the goal of a never-ending quest to describe what is, but simply whatever they proclaim it to be. When there is no hard and fast truth, anything is possible. Facts are not stubborn things, but malleable building blocks which gain or lose authority based on their usefulness for constructing preferred narratives.

    Thus, the woke incessantly offer versions of events that are at odds with the known record. They told us that the summer of 2020 riots were “mostly peaceful;” that antifa was only an idea; that the nation is overrun by white supremacists and Christian nationalists. They insist that women earn a fraction of the pay men get for performing the same work; that unarmed blacks are shot by the police at much higher rates than other Americans; that all disparities between blacks and whites in wealth, health, and education are completely due to racism. And they assert that critical race theory is only taught in some law school classes, that mathematics is racist and sexist, men can menstruate, climate change is an existential threat, and Gov. DeSantis wants to prevent teachers in Florida from saying the word “gay.”

    The crucial dynamic is not just the assertion of fraught claims but the continued advancement of them after they have been debunked. The New York Times, for example, didn’t just declare in its “1619 Project” that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery, it pooh-poohed complaints from leading historians that this was false.

    As TV’s Dr. House observed, “everybody lies.” But woke lies have a larger purpose beyond gaining a temporary advantage. They are a strategy aimed at defining reality. Yes, people have always argued over truth, but history shows that societies governed by rigid, facts-be-damned ideology crush freedom, human dignity, and progress in order to coerce submission.

    This soul-crushing dynamic is inevitable because people aren’t blind – they can see they are being lied to. This is the chief reason why American politics has become so angry and divisive. The woke left is trying to impose a false world view. When people push back, they are silenced, demonized, and canceled. Dissent is not an option because the entire woke project depends on acceptance of their worldview.

    Woke isn’t just a word, it’s a revolution.

    J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a columnist for RealClearPolitics.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 22:20

  • Off-Duty Pilot Enters Southwest Cockpit To Help After Pilot Suffers Medical Emergency
    Off-Duty Pilot Enters Southwest Cockpit To Help After Pilot Suffers Medical Emergency

    An off-duty pilot on a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Columbus, Ohio entered the cockpit to help after one of the on-duty pilots suffered a medical emergency mid-flight.

    “The captain became incapacitated while enroute. He’s in the back of the aircraft right now with a flight attendant, but we need to get him on an ambulance immediately,” said a crew member in a communication to air traffic control, according to LiveATC.net.

    “A credentialed Pilot from another airline, who was on board, entered the Flight Deck and assisted with radio communication while our Southwest Pilot flew the aircraft,” said a airline spokesman Chris Perry, CNN reports. “We greatly appreciate their support and assistance.”

    A nurse who happened to also be onboard helped care for the pilot, the airline said, adding “It’s standard procedure for our Flight Crews to request assistance from traveling medical personnel during in-flight medical events involving Customers, this situation just so happened to involve one of our Employees.”

    According to FlightAware.com, the plane was in the air for around one hour and 17 minutes. After returning to the Las Vegas airport, a backup crew boarded the plane and continued to Columbus as planned.

    The FAA is investigating the incident.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 22:00

  • Pentagon Leaders Say New Budget Will Help Prepare For War With China
    Pentagon Leaders Say New Budget Will Help Prepare For War With China

    Via The Libertarian Institute, 

    Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Congress at a Thursday hearing that the Pentagon’s 2024 budget request will help the country prepare for a future war with China.

    Milley insisted the Pentagon’s massive $842 billion budget request is meant to deter war but said it will also prepare the US military to fight one. He told the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense that deterring and preparing for a conflict “is extraordinarily expensive, but it’s not as expensive as fighting a war. And this budget prevents war and prepares us to fight it if necessary.”

    The Pentagon identified China as the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security strategy” in the 2022 National Defense Strategy, and lately, US military leaders have been speaking more explicitly about how they’re preparing for a direct war with China despite the risk of nuclear war. President Biden has also vowed to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

    Milley said China’s actions “are moving it down the path toward confrontation and potential conflict with its neighbors and possibly the United States,” echoing similar warnings made by Chinese officials.

    Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang warned earlier this month that if the US doesn’t change course on its military buildup in the Asia Pacific and other policies aimed at China, it will lead to “conflict and confrontation.” The Pentagon’s budget request will further expand the US military footprint in the region by funding a buildup plan known as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative.

    “This budget includes a 40 percent increase over last year’s for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to an all-time high of $9.1 billion,” Austin said at the hearing.

    “That will fund a stronger force posture, better defenses for Hawaii and Guam, and deeper cooperation with our allies and partners,” the top general added.

    For China hawks in Congress, what the Pentagon has asked to spend in 2024 is not enough. Including funding for other agencies, President Biden’s military spending request totals $886.4 billion. Congress is expected to add tens of billions more as it did with Biden’s 2022 and 2023 requests.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 21:40

  • Ray Epps Hires Lawyer With Ties To FBI-Linked Perkins Coie, Threatens Tucker Carlson
    Ray Epps Hires Lawyer With Ties To FBI-Linked Perkins Coie, Threatens Tucker Carlson

    Authored by Mark Pellin via Headline USA,

    Ray Epps’s new attorney, who is demanding on behalf of his client a public apology from Tucker Carlson under threat of a defamation lawsuit, is the director of a radical anti-Trump organization, a close associate of Media Matters Democrat attack dog David Brock and a former employee of Perkins Coie, the lawfare firm behind Russiagate and the Steele dossier.

    Ray Epps, right, conducting an improv interview. / IMAGE: RT via YouTube.

    Epps’s attorney, Michael Teter, sent a letter on Thursday to Carlson, demanding the Fox News host retract what Teter called “false and defamatory statements” that Epps was a J6 government plant.

    Carlson and myriad media outlets have reported on Epps’s suspect actions connected to the J6 uprising, his dubious testimony to the J6 Inquisition and his connections to federal agents.

    Teter — Epps’s new lawyer — is a former employee of Perkins Coie, the firm notorious for the grunt work and disinformation campaigns it ran for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

    The Democrat-connected law firm helped hatch the Steele dossier and actively collaborated with the FBI to push the bogus Russia collusion narrative. In the run-up to the 2016 tilt, Perkins Coie had furnished the FBI with office space.

    “We have learned that since March 2012, the FBI approved and facilitated a Secure Work Environment at Perkins Coie’s Washington, D.C. office, which continues to be operational,” lawmakers wrote to FBI chief Christopher Wray.

    And now one of Perkins Coie’s alumni is helping Ray Epps shut down Tucker Carlson.

    After leaving Perkins Coie, Ray Epps’ new attorney hooked up with Media Matters founder and TDS fabulist David Brock. While not threatening Tucker Carlson with lawsuits on behalf of suspected J6 fed plant Ray Epps, Teter manages The 65 Project, where Brock is a senior advisor.

    The 65 Project was launched to punish lawyers who supported President Trump and to dissuade future attempts to overturn elections on illegitimate grounds.

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 21:00

  • Iran-Backed & US Occupation Forces Currently Battling In Eastern Syria, Reports Of Casualties
    Iran-Backed & US Occupation Forces Currently Battling In Eastern Syria, Reports Of Casualties

    Update(20:00ET): US forces occupying Syria’s northeast are in a high state of alert, and there are reports of ongoing gunbattles with Iran-backed militias into the night hours. It’s being widely acknowledged as the most serious fighting involving American forces there since 2019, with some of the latest rocket launches targeting Omar oil field, which has long been held by US and Kurdish forces.

    “The conflict in northeast Syria escalated on Friday as Iran-backed militias launched a volley of rocket and drone attacks against coalition bases after American reprisals for a drone attack that killed a U.S. contractor and injured six other Americans,” The New York Times reports late in the day Friday.

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    The Pentagon claims the flare-up in fighting began the prior night with a drone attack which detonated at a US base. US officials called the self-destructive drone of “Iranian origin” – which resulted in rare American casualties.

    The White House then authorized a series of major airstrikes utilizing its aircraft out of Qatar. There were reports of fatalities and casualties among Syrian Army as well as allied Iranian troops as well.

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    Biden addressed the fighting while visiting PM Justin Trudeau in Ottawa. “Make no mistake, the United States does not, does not, I emphasize, seek conflict with Iran.” He added: “But be prepared for us to act forcefully to protect our people. That’s exactly what happened last night.”

    US officials have acknowledge to the Times that there was some kind of failure in the base’s anti-air systems: 

    Two U.S. officials said the main air defense system at the base was “not fully operational” at the time, raising questions about whether the attackers had detected that vulnerability and exploited it, or just happened to send the drone at that time, according to people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.

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    As for the raging overnight fight currently said to be unfolding, few details have emerged as to potential casualties on either side. The timing is interesting politically given the Saudi-Iran rapprochement, as well a recent failed push by Congress members to force the Biden White House to pull troops out of Syria.

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    * * *

    The United States struck Iranian-linked groups in Syria on Thursday after a US contractor was killed and five military service members and another US contractor were wounded in a purported drone strike. 

    The Pentagon said the US casualties were suffered on a base near Hasakah in the northeast part of the country, when a “one-way, unmanned, aerial vehicle” hit a maintenance facility at 1:38 pm local time. The statement said intelligence assessed the drone to be “of Iranian origin.” 

    Three service members and the surviving U.S. contractor were medically evacuated to military medical facilities in Iraq. Two service members were treated at the base. No details were provided about which military branches the service members were affiliated with, nor the identity of the contractors. 

    Syria’s Hasakah province is south of Turkey and west of Iraq 

    “At the direction of President Biden, I authorized U.S. Central Command forces to conduct precision airstrikes tonight in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC),” said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in a statement. “The airstrikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a series of recent attacks against Coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC.”

    The violence came on the same day as reports that Syria and Saudi Arabia are on the brink of fully restoring diplomatic relations — to include reopening embassies. As we wrote just yesterday: 

    It seems the Gulf has been willing to recognize that the Syrian government won the decade-long war and move on, but not Washington. The US has continued its military occupation of northern Syria, and Israel has extended its bombing campaign, even this week with strikes on Aleppo international airport.

    The violence also comes alongside a Chinese-brokered rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which will see the long-time archrivals restore full diplomacy. An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, disappointed over the prospect of more peaceful relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, said it was the result of American “weakness.” 

    US troops near the Suwaydiyah oil fields in the Hasakah province in 2021 (Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images and Axios)

    In August of last year, US helicopters attacked Iranian-linked militants in Syria after rockets were fired at US bases. 

    In separate statement on Thursday’s events, US Central Command said, “Our troops remain in Syria to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS, which benefits the security and stability of not only Syria, but the entire region.” 

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    Officially, about 900 US service members are deployed in Syria, against the wishes of the Syrian government. The presence dates back to 2015, with successive administrations claiming the deployments are legal under the aging 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs). The first authorized force against the perpetrators of 9/11, and the second authorized the disastrous invasion of Iraq.  

    Earlier this month, the House rejected a resolution that would have directed President Biden to withdraw U.S. troops within 180 days. Introduced by Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, it failed in a 103-321 vote. Both the yea and nay votes were highly bipartisan; 56 Democrats joined 47 Republicans in calling for troops to leave. 

    In a 9-86 vote on Wednesday, the Senate killed an amendment offered by Sen. Rand Paul that would have put a six-month sunset on the 2001 AUMF.  ​​​​​“No one in Congress in 2001 believed they were voting for a decades-long war fought in at least 19 countries,” wrote Paul at Responsible Statecraft, noting that the six-month window would give Congress time to debate “where and how to authorize force.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 20:45

  • Think Of The Zoomers! Democrat Activists Worry TikTok Ban Would Be 'Slap In The Face' To Young Voters
    Think Of The Zoomers! Democrat Activists Worry TikTok Ban Would Be ‘Slap In The Face’ To Young Voters

    After a Thursday grilling of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at a congressional hearing over concerns about user data and Chinese spying, Democrats have found an odd way of defending the app which may place data into the hands of the CCP…

    …banning the app – which doesn’t actually exist in China – will be a “slap in the face” to zoomers, aka GenZ.

    Screenshot, NBC News

    “I’m not defending TikTok as a company, I’m defending my entire generation,” said 19-year-old Harvard freshman, Aidan Kohn-Murphy, who founded a group in 2020 called TikTok for Biden (now called Gen Z for Change, having been formally incorporated as a political nonprofit).

    “If they went ahead with banning TikTok, it would feel like a slap in the face to a lot of young Americans,” he added. “Democrats don’t understand the political consequences this would have.”

    As the Biden administration considers banning the Chinese-owned short-form video platform with some 150 million U.S. users, young progressive activists and the older Democratic strategists trying to reach them are worried that the officials making the decision — very few of whom likely regularly use TikTok — have no idea how central the platform is to the lives of many in a generation that is just coming of age politically.

    Gen Z — the teens and 20-somethings born after 1996 — skew overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic. Their stronger-than-expected turnout in the 2022 midterms was partially credited with salvaging what otherwise might have been a disastrous election for the Democratic Party. -NBC News

    According to a recent poll, a majority of GenZ voters (53%) opposed a ban on TikTok vs. 34% who supported it. 49% of millennials support the ban vs. 34% who are similarly against it.

    “No doubt, Gen Z loves TikTok — it’s a source of entertainment, advice and revenue for influencers,” said pollster, John Della Volpe. “Banning it without a clear presentation of facts would be jarring; but what this survey shows is that two thirds of young Americans are concerned about Chinese threats to national security — and Gen Z is more pragmatic that many initially thought.”

    Who else defended TikTok? The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, who banged out a multi-tweet screed arguing that “TikTok might downplay its ownership by a China-based company because members of Congress keep saying it’s a secret Chinese spying machine owned by the Chinese Communist Party with zero evidence.”

    Except…

    Hilarity ensues;

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 20:40

  • Many CDC Blunders Exaggerated Severity Of COVID-19: Study
    Many CDC Blunders Exaggerated Severity Of COVID-19: Study

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

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made at least 25 statistical or numerical errors during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the overwhelming majority exaggerated the severity of the pandemic, according to a new study.

    Researchers who have been tracking CDC errors compiled 25 instances where the agency offered demonstrably false information. For each instance, they analyzed whether the error exaggerated or downplayed the severity of COVID-19.

    Of the 25 instances, 20 exaggerated the severity, the researchers reported in the study, which was published ahead of peer review on March 23.

    “The CDC has expressed significant concern about COVID-19 misinformation. In order for the CDC to be a credible source of information, they must improve the accuracy of the data they provide,” the authors wrote.

    The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

    Most Errors Involved Children

    Most of the errors were about COVID-19’s impact on children.

    In mid-2021, for instance, the CDC claimed that 4 percent of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were kids. The actual percentage was 0.04 percent. The CDC eventually corrected the misinformation, months after being alerted to the issue.

    CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky falsely told a White House press briefing in October 2021 that there had been 745 COVID-19 deaths in children, but the actual number, based on CDC death certificate analysis, was 558.

    Walensky and other CDC officials also falsely said in 2022 that COVID-19 was a top five cause of death for children, citing a study that gathered CDC data instead of looking at the data directly. The officials have not corrected the false claims.

    Other errors include the CDC claiming in 2022 that pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations were “increasing again” when they’d actually peaked two weeks earlier; CDC officials in 2023 including deaths among infants younger than 6 months old when reporting COVID-19 deaths among children; and Walensky on Feb. 9, 2023, exaggerating the pediatric death toll before Congress.

    “These errors suggest the CDC consistently exaggerates the impact of COVID-19 on children,” the authors of the study said.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/24/2023 – 20:20

  • Miami Prepares For "Lawlessness And Carnage" Weekend As Mayor Vows To End Spring Break
    Miami Prepares For “Lawlessness And Carnage” Weekend As Mayor Vows To End Spring Break

    With spring breakers causing chaos across the South Florida area, Miami Beach is bracing for another wave of mayhem. According to the New York Post, business owners are preparing for three days of “lawlessness and carnage.” 

    “These people [spring breakers] have zero respect for any property, for anybody. Drugs, prostitution, you name it we’ve seen it.

    “You walk on the street on a daily basis and you’ve got guys coming up to you, [asking] if you want coke, if you want marijuana.

    “The people that come to Miami Beach in the last couple of years are no spring breakers… They’re adults. They’re troublemakers,” said Sebastian Labno, who co-owns several restaurants in the area.

    Miami Beach is already reeling from last weekend’s riots, shocking execution-style murders, and a number of smash-and-grabs. The violence was so bad that Miami Beach declared a state of emergency and implemented a curfew last Sunday into early Monday. 

    The identity of the spring breakers causing chaos can be seen in videos posted on Twitter.

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    And maybe Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber has reached a breaking point. He told Bloomberg:

    “It’s time Miami Beach gets rid of spring break.

    “Spring break is not a driver for the kind of economy we want.”

    Gelber’s potential move to end spring beak is probably due to the ultra-rich who moved to South Florida during the pandemic. 

    Officials in Miami Beach have expressed interest in ending spring break over the past several years due to the weeks of chaos that occur annually in March. However, despite enforcing temporary curfews, no permanent action has been taken to address the worsening violence. 

      Tyler Durden
      Fri, 03/24/2023 – 20:00

    1. Rickards: Why The Fed Keeps Getting It Wrong
      Rickards: Why The Fed Keeps Getting It Wrong

      Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

      The market’s in a highly unstable state right now. These violent swings show the inadequacy of the standard models that the Fed and other mainstream analysts use.

      The Fed assumes so many things about markets that are simply false, like that markets are always efficient, for example. They’re not. Under volatile conditions like these they gap up and down — they don’t move in rational, predictable increments like the “efficient-market hypothesis” supposes.

      The problem is that the Fed’s models are empirically false.

      Studies have proven how faulty their models are. The Fed has the worst forecasting record in the world. It’s basically been wrong every year since 2009.

      Equilibrium models like the Fed uses basically say the world runs like a clock and occasionally it gets knocked out of equilibrium. And all you have to do is tweak policy or manipulate some variable to push it back into equilibrium.

      It’s like resetting a clock. That’s a shorthand way of describing what an equilibrium model is. They treat markets like they’re some kind of machine. It’s a 19th-century, mechanistic approach.

      But traditional approaches that rely on static models bear little relationship to reality.

      Twenty-first-century markets aren’t machines and they don’t work in this clockwork fashion.

      The Fed uses equilibrium models to understand an economy that is not an equilibrium system; it’s a complex dynamic system.

      The Fed uses the Phillips curve to understand the relationship between unemployment and inflation when 50 years of data say there is no fixed relationship. The Fed uses what’s called value-at-risk modeling based on normally distributed events when the evidence is clear that the degree distribution of risk events is a power curve, not a normal or bell curve.

      As a result of these defective models, the Fed printed trillions of new money beginning in 2008 to ‘stimulate’ the economy, only to produce the weakest recovery in history. Need proof? Every year, the Federal Reserve forecasts economic growth on a one-year forward basis.

      And it’s been wrong every year for the better part of a decade. When I say ‘wrong’, I mean by orders of magnitude. If the Fed forecast 3.5% growth and actual growth was 3.3%, I would consider that to be awesome.

      But the Fed would forecast 3.5% growth and it would come in at 2.2%. That’s not even close, considering that growth is confined to plus or minus 4% in the vast majority of years.

      Right now the economy faces severe headwinds in the form of geopolitical instability, inflation and ongoing supply chain disruptions. The chances of recession are very high.

      The Fed needs interest rates to be between 4% and 5% to fight recession. That’s how much “dry powder” the Fed needs going into a recession. In September 2007, the fed funds rate was at 4.75%, toward the high end of the range. That gave the Fed plenty of room to cut, which it certainly did. Between 2008 and 2015, rates were essentially at zero.

      The good news, if you can call it that, is that the current fed funds target rate is between 4.75%-5%. That’s what today’s rate hike brought it up to. So, if we have a recession this year the Fed has the dry powder to fight it. But then the cycle just starts all over again.

      Here’s the deeper problem with all the Fed’s manipulations…

      The problem with any kind of market manipulation (what central bankers call “policy”) is that there’s no way to end it without unintended and usually negative consequences. Once you start down the path of manipulation, it requires more and more manipulation to keep the game going.

      Finally it no longer becomes possible to turn back without crashing the system.

      Of course, manipulation by government agencies and central banks always starts out with good intentions. They are trying to “save” the banks or “save” the market from extreme outcomes or crashes.

      But this desire to save something ignores the fact that bank failures and market crashes are sometimes necessary and healthy to clear out prior excesses and dysfunctions. A crash can clean out the rot, put losses where they belong and allow the system to start over with a clean balance sheet and a strong lesson in prudence.

      Instead, the central bankers ride to the rescue of corrupt or mismanaged banks (hello, SVB!). This saves the wrong people (incompetent and corrupt bank managers and investors) and hurts the everyday investor or worker who watches his portfolio implode while the incompetent bank managers get to keep their jobs and big bonuses.

      All it does is set the stage for a bigger crisis down the road. It certainly hasn’t helped the economy.

      In my 2014 book, The Death of Money, I wrote, “The United States is Japan on a larger scale.” That was nine years ago. Japan started its “lost decade” in the 1990s. Now their lost decade has dragged into over three lost decades. The U.S. began its first lost decade in 2009 and is now in its second lost decade with no end in sight.

      The economic damage from the lockdowns certainly didn’t help.

      What I referred to in 2014 is that central bank policy in both countries has been completely ineffective at restoring long-term trend growth or solving the steady accumulation of unsustainable debt.

      In Japan this problem began in the 1990s, and in the U.S. the problem began in 2009, but it’s the same problem with no clear solution. The irony is that in the early 2000s, former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke routinely criticized the Japanese for their inability to escape from recession, deflation and slow growth.

      When the U.S. recession began during the global financial crisis of 2008, Bernanke promised that he would not make the same mistakes the Japanese made in the 1990s. Instead, he made every mistake the Japanese made, and the U.S. is stuck in the same place and will remain there until the Fed wakes up to its problems.

      Bernanke thought that low interest rates and massive money printing would lead to lending and spending that would restore trend growth to 3.2% or higher. But he ignored the role of velocity (speed of money turnover) and the unwillingness of banks to lend or individuals to borrow.

      When that happens, the Fed is pushing on a string — printing money with no result except asset bubbles.

      That’s where we are today.

      Tyler Durden
      Fri, 03/24/2023 – 19:40

    2. Defunded Austin Cops Take So Long To Respond To DUI That Driver Sobers Up, Walks Free
      Defunded Austin Cops Take So Long To Respond To DUI That Driver Sobers Up, Walks Free

      Police in Austin, Texas took so long to respond to a drunk driving incident that the driver was able to sober up and avoid charges, Fox News reports.

      Lacey Purciful and her family waited 2.5 hours for Austin police to arrive to the scene of a DUI. (Purciful Family via Fox News)

      Lacey Purciful told the outlet that she was driving with her husband Dustin and two children in North Austin around 4 p.m. on March 18, when a drunk driver cut across two lanes of traffic and hit them head-on.

      “Head on, didn’t hit the brakes, airbags deployed, screaming kids, smoke, adrenaline, we started screaming, and got the kids out of the car,” she said, adding that they quickly determined that the driver – a man in his 70s – was intoxicated. According to Purciful, the “first thing” a bus driver on the scene told her was that the other driver “smells of alcohol” and was “refusing to get out of the car.”

      @ladybug3660 Head on collision by a drunk driver. City of Austin TX police department has yet to arrive…2 Hours Later!!!!##drunkdriver##austintx##caraccident##wheresthecops ♬ original sound – Lacey Purciful

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      “He sat in the car for over 30 minutes and then when he got out of the car he fell to the ground and was making weird noises and just acting weird,” she said.

      More than 2.5 hours later, a police officer responded to the scene, telling them that only five officers were working that area. The suspect was given a sobriety test, and was let go.

      “Everyone could smell alcohol on this man,” said Purciful. “He openly admitted what he was drinking. He told my husband he was drinking High Noons. It isn’t just me making accusations he was just straight-up coming out and telling us and there was no remorse.”

      The Purciful family suffered injuries as a result of the crash. (Purciful family via Fox News)

      “He never asked if our children were OK. He never apologized. I have a video of him smiling at me as I’m calling him a drunk driver. He’s just standing there smiling at me,” she told the outlet.

      The couple has retained personal injury attorney Adam Loewy who told Fox News Digital that his understanding is typically around 25 officers would be in the area if it had been fully staffed. The 2.5-hour lag allowed the driver to avoid criminal charges by sobering up, he claimed.

      “I’ve heard this again and again where officers are telling me, look, we don’t have enough people working and so when that’s the scenario, these men and women go to different calls and there’s more calls that come in and what happens is you just wait and that’s just how it is,” Loewy said. -Fox News

      As Fox News notes, the Austin City Council slashed their police budget in 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd riots across the country, while low morale and a recent move by the council to abandon a recently agreed upon contract with the PD has sparked a wave of retirements from the force.

      Democratic Mayor Kirk Watson recently assured the public that the PD would be “fully staffed” during the March 18th SXSW festival, when the Purcifuls were struck.

      Tyler Durden
      Fri, 03/24/2023 – 19:20

    3. FDA Notice: Common Stroke Medication Recalled Over Cancer-Causing Chemical
      FDA Notice: Common Stroke Medication Recalled Over Cancer-Causing Chemical

      Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

      The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the recall of a commonly used stroke medication after the company discovered the presence of a potentially cancer-causing impurity.

      In an FDA-issued recall notice on March 22, Ascend Laboratories LLC said it is recalling Dabigatran Etcxilate Capsules at the consumer level after nitrosamine, a carcinogenic substance, was found about the “acceptable daily intake level.” The company said it hasn’t received any reports of adverse events or health problems in connection to the recall.

      “Nitrosamines are common in water and foods, including cured and grilled meats, dairy products, and vegetables. Everyone is exposed to some level of nitrosamines. These impurities may increase the risk of cancer if people are exposed to them above acceptable levels over long periods of time,” the FDA said. “The product is used as an oral anticoagulant to lower the risk of stroke and blood clots.”

      Dabigatran etexilate is a prescription medication that is used to lower the risk of stroke and blood clots in some individuals, according to the National Libraries of Medicine. Specifically, the drug is used to treat deep vein thrombosis, to prevent strokes or serious blood clots in individuals with atrial fibrillation, and pulmonary embolism in both children and adults.

      The company said that the recalled medication was distributed around the United States between June 2022 and October 2022. Lot numbers and other information about the recalled product are available on the FDA’s website.

      “Patients who have received impacted lots of Dabigatran Etexilate Capsules, USP 75 mg and 150 mg are advised to continue taking their medication and contact their physician for advice regarding an alternative treatment,” the notice said. “Consumers with questions regarding this recall can contact Ascend Laboratories LLC. using the below information.”

      But consumers should contact their doctor if they’ve experienced any adverse health events associated with the medication, the notice said.

      Other Recalls

      In October, Aurobindo Pharma USA announced the voluntary recall of two lots of blood pressure medication because of high levels of nitrosamine, according to an FDA notice. Two months later, Lupin Pharmaceuticals Inc. stated that it is voluntarily recalling four lots of Quinapril tablets due to the presence of nitrosamine.

      Read more here…

      Tyler Durden
      Fri, 03/24/2023 – 19:00

    4. Florida NAACP Seeks National Advisory Against Black Travel To Sunshine State
      Florida NAACP Seeks National Advisory Against Black Travel To Sunshine State

      The Florida chapter of the NAACP is asking its national organization to issue a travel advisory urging black people not to visit or move to the Sunshine State. 

      The proposal was put forth at the chapter’s state conference on Saturday, and members voted unanimously in favor of it. 

      The move is seen as a response to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s education policies, including his having pressured The College Board to remove critical race theory tenets from its advanced placement (AP) African American studies course.  

      “We are going to educate the people about Florida and what Florida is doing to black peoples, that no black person should want to voluntarily come and be subjected to,” said James Muwakkil president of Lee County’s NAACP chapter. “Don’t come into racism. Stay away from it.”

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      “What a joke,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis. “Just remember, during COVID, these people would be on CNN, all this stuff, slamming Florida, saying we were so bad, don’t go to Florida. And then they would end up being spotted on the beach somewhere vacationing in Florida.”

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      “We are an organization that protects people’s civil rights, and this is a first step to doing that,” Hillsborough County NAACP President Yvette Lewis told the Tampa Bay Times. “People are seeing what’s happening in Florida. They’re paying attention, and I hope that help is coming.”

      Lewis said Florida’s efforts to strip blacks of their rights goes beyond education policy, and pointed to voting fraud arrests and redistricting that has split black voting blocks. She said the travel-advisory vote also reflected anger over proposed abortion limits and legislation narrowing the use of preferred pronouns in Florida schools. 

      It’s worth noting that, scouring the many interviews of Florida NAACP leaders, ZeroHedge found no indication that any of them actually plan to flee the purported bastion of racism.  

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      Tourism contributed $102 billion to Florida’s economy in 2021 — however, as even the Miami Herald recently noted, not all black travel in Florida is a net positive. After the latest vandalism and two more murders amidst spring break partying, the Herald editorial staff called for Miami to “drive a stake through spring break’s heart,” noting that “complicating matters is that many of the spring breakers are black.”

      Interestingly, that editorial no longer appears in searches of the Herald website, but is still visible where it was republished at Yahoo. 

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      Tyler Durden
      Fri, 03/24/2023 – 18:40

    5. GOP Can Target Suburban Swing Voters And Keep Their Base
      GOP Can Target Suburban Swing Voters And Keep Their Base

      Authored by Guy Ciarrocchi via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

      In recent election cycles, the Philadelphia suburbs have been moving further into the Democratic column. To add to the challenge for Pennsylvania Republicans, more areas are resembling these communities as the state becomes more suburban. It’s a common trend in Rust Belt and East Coast states.

      Some analysts have argued that the answer for Republicans is to run “moderate” candidates. Admittedly, this approach is preferable to some others – either ignoring the suburban trend altogether or trying to compensate by building up super-majorities in rural Pennsylvania. Still, a moderate strategy may be too simplistic, and even misguided.

      My personal observations as a congressional candidate and former chief of staff, and as CEO of the Chester County Chamber of Business & Industry, have led me to conclude that a more important factor for Republican candidates is whether they strike the right tone and have the right temperament – and if they focus on kitchen-table issues, the ones that matter most to voters.

      Is a candidate seen as a “fighter,” for instance, as opposed to being perceived as “angry” or confrontational? There is a difference. It matters what the candidate fights for and against.

      In the suburbs, swing-voters’ default setting currently is to vote for Democrats. Fairly or not, Republicans are perceived as angry or confrontational.

      The suburbs are the most politically, culturally, and ideologically diverse segment of American society. Even in Chester County – Pennsylvania’s wealthiest county, with the most college graduates – it’s not easy to strike a balance. There are Whole Foods and gun clubs, hot-yoga studios and pro-life prayer vigils. And all these exist among registered Republicans and Independents, without even taking Democrats into account. 

      Moving too close to the center poses as many risks for Republicans as moving too far right; being too bland is as risky as it is to be too fiery. On Election Day 2022, shaking hands outside at a polling place in Chester County for over 13 hours, I was challenged by multiple moderate to right-of-center voters on a variety of issues. They were testing me to see if I would stand up for them. I didn’t for a moment think that any of them were going to vote for my Democratic opponent, an incumbent who had voted with Speaker Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time. But it was clear that many were considering whether they should bother voting at all.

      That’s the challenge for Republicans, who are already outnumbered and usually outspent by their Democratic opponents. If the GOP nominee is perceived as too far out on the fringe or too angry, swing voters will vote for the Democrat. If the nominee is perceived as too moderate or lacking conviction – lacking “fight” – some voters who are now part of the GOP base will not vote in that race.

      Let’s address the elephant in the room, on the heels of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. There is little doubt that a GOP candidate who bases his/her campaign on abortion will likely fall short. But abortion as an issue – and being “pro-life” – is more complicated than that. Pro-life candidates have had relative success in the suburbs, such as former U.S. Senator Pat Toomey and former Reps. Jim Gerlach and Patrick Meehan; Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who rates an 80% from the National Right to Life Committee, continues to win. Candidates who are pro-life have had relative success in suburban communities in purple and blue states like New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, and Florida. And then there are Govs. Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis, of Virginia and Florida, respectively. Not only did they win; so did their colleagues on the GOP tickets.

      This is why I believe tone, temperament, and priorities are more important for success than being “moderate.” Yes, Youngkin seemed at home in his sweater-vest, looking like a dad at a soccer game. But he talked passionately about school choice, parents’ rights, and common sense. He jumped into issues that many in the GOP would have seen as politically radioactive. In Virginia’s Loudon County, which resembles our Chester County, Youngkin lost by only 11 points. This is an impressive performance compared with that of the prior Republican candidate for governor, who lost by 20 points, and Donald Trump, who lost by 25 points in 2020. 

      Gov. DeSantis found success with an edgier tone. He has not shied away from campaigning against mask and vaccine mandates, critical race theory, and even the Disney corporation. His nearly 20% reelection victory margin included success in the suburbs and in minority communities, too.

      Both Youngkin and DeSantis made progress in the suburbs. Neither are considered moderate. Both have confronted hot-button battles of today. They are fighters, yes – but their fights have been on behalf of kids, parents, and the quality of day-to-day life.

      Most swing voters are looking for a clear, positive message. GOP candidates must build a coalition: they need to reach out to voters who want a candidate who shares their priorities and opposes radical “woke” policies. This is especially true among first- and second-generation Asian and Hispanic voters. Swing voters will tolerate and even applaud a “fighting” tone in a candidate if they sense that it’s genuine and policy-driven. If, by contrast, they perceive it as mean-spirited or reflexively partisan, they will look elsewhere.                                                                                          

      Put all those voters together, and that makes a pretty strong coalition and partnership. There’s a path forward to electoral success for Republicans. The choice is ours.

      Tyler Durden
      Fri, 03/24/2023 – 18:20

    6. Earth Hit By "Strongest Geomagnetic Storm In Six Years" As Dazzling Auroras Spotted Across US
      Earth Hit By “Strongest Geomagnetic Storm In Six Years” As Dazzling Auroras Spotted Across US

      The coronal mass ejection we warned readers about days ago just blasted the Earth with solar plasma from the sun, unleashing one of the most intense geomagnetic storms in years. 

      According to the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center, the CME pounded Earth’s atmosphere last night with solar plasma in a G4 (Severe) geomagnetic storm. A G3 Warning was in effect until early Friday morning. 

      “A severe disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field,” an SWPC warned, calling the solar storm “severe.” This caused stunning auroras in the US as far south as the Midwest. 

      People shared stunning photos of the auroras on Twitter. 

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      Geomagnetic storm news blog Space Weather said the severe G4 storm was the “most intense in nearly six years.” 

      This solar cycle, Solar Cycle 25, has already been active, exceeding the past cycle. 

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      Even though auroras look stunning, these CMEs have a tremendous impact on modern society. 

      Recall the federal government started to prepare the nation for a space weather disaster in 2016 with the executive order signed by the Obama administration titled “Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events.”  

      Tyler Durden
      Fri, 03/24/2023 – 18:00

    7. How They Convinced Trump To Lock Down
      How They Convinced Trump To Lock Down

      Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via Brownstone Institute,

      An enduring mystery for three years is how Donald Trump came to be the president who shut down American society for what turned out to be a manageable respiratory virus, setting off an unspeakable crisis with waves of destructive fallout that continue to this day. 

      Let’s review the timeline and offer some well-founded speculations about what happened. 

      On March 9, 2020, Trump was still of the opinion that the virus could be handled by normal means. 

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      Two days later, he changed his tune. He was ready to use the full power of the federal government in a war on the virus. 

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      What changed? Deborah Birx reports in her book that Trump had a friend die in a New York hospital and this is what shifted his opinion. Jared Kushner reports that he simply listened to reason. Mike Pence says he was persuaded that his staff would respect him more. No question (and based on all existing reports) that he found himself surrounded by “trusted advisors” amounting to about 5 or so people (including Mike Pence and Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb)

      It was only a week later when Trump issued the edict to close all “indoor and outdoor venues where people congregate,” initiating the biggest regime change in US history that flew in the face of all rights and liberties Americans had previously taken for granted. It was the ultimate in political triangulation: as John F. Kennedy cut taxes, Nixon opened China, and Clinton reformed welfare, Trump shut down the economy he promised to revive. This action confounded critics on all sides. 

      A month later, Trump said his decision to have “turned off” the economy saved millions of lives, later even claiming to have saved billions. He has yet to admit error. 

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      Even as late as June 23rd of that year, Trump was demanding credit for having followed all of Fauci’s recommendations. Why do they love him and hate me, he wanted to know. 

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      Something about this story has never really added up. How could one person have been so persuaded by a handful of others such as Fauci, Birx, Pence, and Kushner and his friends? He surely had other sources of information – some other scenario or intelligence – that fed into his disastrous decision. 

      In one version of events, his advisors simply pointed to the supposed success of Xi Jinping in enacting lockdowns in Wuhan, which the World Health Organization claimed had stopped infections and brought the virus under control. Perhaps his advisors flattered Trump with the observation that he is at least as great as the president of China so he should be bold and enact the same policies here. 

      One problem with this scenario is timing. The Oval Office meetings that preceded his March 16, 2020, edict took place the weekend of the 14th and 15th, Friday and Saturday. It was already clear by the 11th that Trump was ready for lockdowns. This was the same day as Fauci’s deliberately misleading testimony to the House Oversight Committee in which he rattled the room with predictions of Hollywood-style carnage. 

      On the 12th, Trump shut all travel from Europe, the UK, and Australia, causing huge human pile-ups at international airports. On the 13th, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a classified document that transferred control of pandemic policy from the CDC to the National Security Council and eventually the Department of Homeland Security. By the time that Trump met with Fauci and Birx in that legendary weekend, the country was already under quasi-martial law. 

      Isolating the date in the trajectory here, it is apparent that whatever happened to change Trump occurred on March 10, 2020, the day after his Tweet saying there should be no shutdowns and one day before Fauci’s testimony. 

      That something very likely revolves around the most substantial discovery we’ve made in three years of investigations. It was Debbie Lerman who first cracked the code: Covid policy was forged not by the public-health bureaucracies but by the national-security sector of the administrative state. She has further explained that this occurred because of two critical features of the response: 1) the belief that this virus came from a lab leak, and 2) the vaccine was the biosecurity countermeasure pushed by the same people as the fix. 

      Knowing this, we gain greater insight into 1) why Trump changed his mind, 2) why he has never explained this momentous decision and otherwise completely avoids the topic, and 3) why it has been so unbearably difficult to find out any information about these mysterious few days other than the pablum served up in books designed to earn royalties for authors like Birx, Pence, and Kushner. 

      Based on a number of second-hand reports, all available clues we have assembled, and the context of the times, the following scenario seems most likely. On March 10, and in response to Trump’s dismissive tweet the day before, some trusted sources within and around the National Security Council (Matthew Pottinger and Michael Callahan, for example), and probably involving some from military command and others, came to Trump to let him know a highly classified secret. 

      Imagine a scene from Get Smart with the Cone of Silence, for example. These are the events in the life of statecraft that infuse powerful people with a sense of their personal awesomeness. The fate of all of society rests on their shoulders and the decisions they make at this point. Of course they are sworn to intense secrecy following the great reveal. 

      The revelation was that the virus was not a textbook virus but something far more threatening and terrible. It came from a research lab in Wuhan. It might in fact be a bioweapon. This is why Xi had to do extreme things to protect his people. The US should do the same, they said, and there is a fix available too and it is being carefully guarded by the military. 

      It seems that the virus had already been mapped in order to make a vaccine to protect the population. Thanks to 20 years of research on mRNA platforms, they told him,  this vaccine can be rolled out in months, not years. That means that Trump can lock down and distribute vaccines to save everyone from the China virus, all in time for the election. Doing this would not only assure his reelection but guarantee that he would go down in history as one of the greatest US presidents of all time. 

      This meeting might only have lasted an hour or two – and might have included a parade of people with the highest-level security clearances – but it was enough to convince Trump. After all, he had battled China for two previous years, imposing tariffs and making all sorts of threats. It was easy to believe at that point that China might have initiated biological warfare as retaliation. That’s why he made the decision to use all the power of the presidency to push a lockdown under emergency rule. 

      To be sure, the Constitution does not allow him to override the discretion of the states but with the weight of the office complete with enough funding and persuasion, he could make it happen. And thus did he make the fateful decision that not only wrecked his presidency but the country too, imposing harms that will last a generation. 

      It only took a few weeks for Trump to become suspicious about what happened. For weeks and months, he toggled between believing that he was tricked and believing that he did the right thing. He had already approved another 30 days of lockdowns and even inveighed against Georgia and later Florida for opening. He went so far as to claim that no state could open without his approval. 

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      He did not fully change his mind until August, when Scott Atlas revealed the whole con to him. 

      There is another fascinating feature to this entirely plausible scenario. Even as Trump’s advisors were telling him that this could be a bioweapon leaked from the lab in China, we had Anthony Fauci and his cronies going to great lengths to deny it was a lab leak (even if they believed that it was). This created an interesting situation. The NIH and those surrounding Fauci were publicly insisting that the virus was of zoonotic origin, even as Trump’s circle was telling the president that it should be regarded as a bioweapon. 

      Fauci belonged to both camps, which suggests that Trump very likely knew of Fauci’s deception all along: the “noble lie” to protect the public from knowing the truth. Trump had to be fine with that. 

      Gradually following the lockdown edicts and the takeover by the Department of Homeland Security, in cooperation with a very hostile CDC, Trump lost power and influence over his own government, which is why his later Tweets urging a reopening fell on deaf ears. To top it off, the vaccine failed to arrive in time for the election. This is because Fauci himself delayed the rollout until after the election, claiming that the trials were not racially diverse enough. Thus Trump’s gambit completely failed, despite all the promises of those around him that it was a guaranteed way to win reelection.

      To be sure, this scenario cannot be proven because the entire event – certainly the most dramatic political move in at least a generation and one with unspeakable costs for the country – remains cloaked in secrecy. Not even Senator Rand Paul can get the information he needs because it remains classified. If anyone thinks the Biden approval of releasing documents will show what we need, that person is naive. Still, the above scenario fits all available facts and it is confirmed by second-hand reports from inside the White House. 

      It’s enough for a great movie or a play of Shakespearean levels of tragedy. And to this day, none of the main players are speaking openly about it. 

      Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

      Tyler Durden
      Fri, 03/24/2023 – 17:40

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