Today’s News 26th August 2022

• "Get Trump!" Damn The Constitution
  “Get Trump!” Damn The Constitution

  Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,

  • Many of my friends on the left fear [Trumpism] as much as many on the right feared Communism in the 1950s. And they may have a point. But not enough of a point to destroy a century of progress in civil liberties, free speech, due process, and the rule of law.

  • Articles are now frequently appearing in the mainstream media demanding compromises with important rights in the name of “Getting Trump.”

  • My former colleague Laurence Tribe, who taught constitutional law for half a century now seems willing to weaponize the Constitution to serve his partisan end of “Getting Trump.” Incredibly, he has advocated prosecuting Trump for the “attempted murder” of former Vice President Pence. To do so would require retroactively and unconstitutionally expanding the law of attempts to fit Trump’s ill-advised actions and inactions with regard to Pence. But apparently that doesn’t matter to Tribe and his followers who care more about achieving their “noble” ends than they do about the ignoble means they are willing to employ.

  • The ACLU, which has long objected to the overuse of search warrants instead of subpoenas, is silent about the search of Mar-a-Lago. As long as the goal is to get Trump, anything goes including hypocrisy, inconstancy and unconstitutionality.

  • I would give everyone “the benefit of law,” but not only “for my own safety’s sake,” but for the sake of future generations. Once the Constitution and civil liberties are “cut down” it is difficult to regrow them and the “winds that would blow them” might prevent us from “standing upright” against new tyrannies from the extreme left and right.

  • This important right [to vote ] should not be taken away by unconstitutional means, even if the result were to be the unlikely re-election of Trump. That is the price of democracy.

  There is a movement afoot to “Get Trump,” at any cost.

  The goal is to prevent him from running in 2024. Many in this movement are willing to use any means to attain what they believe to be a necessary and admirable goal.

  “Democracy is at stake,” they claim. They are prepared to sacrifice constitutional rights, civil liberties, principles and the rule of law to stop Trump.

  

  This is a familiar argument to me. I fought against it in the 1950s, when decent people who believed that Communism was a grave danger to democracy were willing to trample on the Constitutional rights of alleged communists and fellow travelers in order to prevent them from destroying our democracy.

  Although back then the fear was more exaggerated than it may be now, there was genuine concern about the increasing influence of communism throughout the world. The Soviet Union controlled all of Eastern Europe and was making inroads in central Europe and Latin America. Communists controlled China. Khrushchev boasted “We will bury you.” There was concern, albeit exaggerated, about the influence of Communism in the American media, academia, and government bureaucracies. McCarthyism was intended to rout out these Communists and to prevent the spread of their anti-Democratic agenda. McCarthyites, and even some moderates, were prepared to trash the Constitution in order to achieve what they regarded as a noble pro-democracy goal.

  Today the fear is Trumpism. Many of my friends on the left fear it as much as many on the right feared Communism in the 1950s. And they may have a point. But not enough of a point to destroy a century of progress in civil liberties, free speech, due process, and the rule of law. Articles are now frequently appearing in the mainstream media demanding compromises with important rights in the name of “Getting Trump.” Sam Harris essentially said he was willing to break democracy to save democracy. His dangerous words speak for the actions of many on the hard left. My former colleague Laurence Tribe, who taught constitutional law for half a century now seems willing to weaponize the Constitution to serve his partisan end of “Getting Trump.” Incredibly, he has advocated prosecuting Trump for the “attempted murder” of former Vice President Pence. To do so would require retroactively and unconstitutionally expanding the law of attempts to fit Trump’s ill-advised actions and inactions with regard to Pence. But apparently that doesn’t matter to Tribe and his followers who care more about achieving their “noble” ends than they do about the ignoble means they are willing to employ.

  Leftists who railed against the breadth of the Espionage Act of 1917 now want to expand it to cover Trumps alleged misconduct. The ACLU, which has long objected to the overuse of search warrants instead of subpoenas, is silent about the search of Mar-a-Lago. As long as the goal is to get Trump, anything goes including hypocrisy, inconstancy and unconstitutionality.

  A scene from the film “A Man for All Seasons” well illustrates the current debate:

  William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

  Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

  William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”

  Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

  Today on the left, there are more Ropers than Mores. Today’s devil is Trump, and today’s Ropers are willing to “cut a great road through the law to get after [today’s] devil.” Like More, I would give everyone “the benefit of law,” but not only “for my own safety’s sake,” but for the sake of future generations. Once the Constitution and civil liberties are “cut down” it is difficult to regrow them and the “winds that would blow them” might prevent us from “standing upright” against new tyrannies from the extreme left and right.

  There is a legitimate way to stop Trump from being elected in 2024, just as he was not elected in 2020: a fair election defeated him once, and it can do so again – without cutting down the Constitution and weakening the rule of law. But it will take hard work, not unconstitutional shortcuts.

  I voted against Trump twice. If he is renominated, I plan to vote against him a third time. That is my right in a democracy, just as it is the right of Trump supporters to vote for him. This important right should not be taken away by unconstitutional means, even if the result were to be the unlikely re-election of Trump. That is the price of democracy.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 23:40

• China's Water Crisis Could Trigger Global Catastrophe
  China’s Water Crisis Could Trigger Global Catastrophe

  China’s water crisis is nothing new, but it’s gotten worse – and is now on the ‘brink of catastrophe‘ and could trigger a global catastrophe, according to Foreign Affairs.

  

  Given the country’s overriding importance to the global economy, potential water-driven disruptions beginning in China would rapidly reverberate through food, energy, and materials markets around the world and create economic and political turbulence for years to come. -Foreign Affairs

  For starters, there’s no substitute for water – which is essential for food production, electricity generation and sustaining all life on earth.

  In China, which consumes ten billion barrels of water per day (approximately 700x its daily oil consumption), decades of economic and population growth have pushed northern China’s water system to unsustainable levels.

  According to the report, the per-capita water supply around the North China Plain at the end of 2020 was nearly 50% below the UN’s definition of acute water scarcity at 253 cubic meters. Other major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, are at similar (or lower) levels. 

  For comparison, Egypt had per-capita freshwater resources of 570 cubic meters, and has nowhere near as large of a manufacturing base as China.

  Not fit for human consumption

  Also worrisome, is that 19% of China’s surface water is not fit for human consumption according to China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Roughly 7% was deemed unfit for any use at all.

  Groundwater was worse – with around 30% considered unfit for consumption, and 16% unfit for any use.

  In order to utilize this water, Beijing will need to make major investments in treatment infrastructure, which will require a significant increase in electricity usage in order to power the equipment.

  Working against progress is China’s farming and industrial industries, which dump contaminants into the country’s groundwater – potentially setting the stage for decades of additional impairments.

  Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization indicate that China uses nearly two and a half times as much fertilizer and four times as much pesticide as the United States does despite having 25 percent less arable land.

  For decades, Beijing has generally chosen to conceal the full extent of China’s environmental problems to limit potential public backlash and to avoid questions about the competence and capacity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This lack of transparency suggests that an escalation to acute water distress could be far closer than most outside observers realize—increasing the chances that the world will be ill prepared for such a calamity. -Foreign Affairs

  The core problem is the overpumping of aquifers under the Northern China Plain – which according to NASA GRACE satellites, are more overdrawn than those of the Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains in the US – which is one of the world’s most imperiled sources of agricultural water.

  In some instances, groundwater levels have gotten so low that underground aquifers have collapsed – triggering a phenomenon called Land Subsidence, which can cause the ground to cave in over large areas, which in some case renders the aquifer unusable in the future.

  In 2003, Beijing launched a $60 billion “South-to-North Water Transfer Project” to use waters from the Yangtze River to replenish the north.

  Meanwhile, China has deployed cloud seeding technologies to lace the clouds with silver iodide or liquid nitrogen in order to stimulate rainfall. It’s also relocated heavy industries away from dry regions.

  In April 2022, Vice Minister of Water Resources Wei Shanzhong estimated that China could end up spending $100 billion annually on water-related projects.

  It might not be enough, however.

  Despite highly innovative programs to improve water availability, some scholars estimate that water supply could fall short of demand by 25 percent by 2030—a situation that would by definition force major adjustments in society. Experiences to date on the North China Plain enhance concern and illustrate the scale of additional needed hydraulic intervention. Despite nearly a decade of importing Yangtze valley water supplies to high-stress areas such as Beijing, large-scale depletion of stored groundwater continues in other nearby areas, such as Hebei and Tianjin. -Foreign Affairs

  The result of a worsening drought will, of course, mean less food.

  60% of China’s wheat, 45% of its corn, 35% of its cotton and 64% of its peanuts come from the at-risk North China Plain – where, in the example of wheat, their annual production of more than 80 million tons is on par with Russia’s annual output, while their 125 million tons of corn is nearly 3x Ukraine’s prewar production.

  In order to sustain these harvests, water is being pumped to farms faster than nature can replenish it. According to satellite data, between 2003 and 2010, Northern China lost as much groundwater as Beijing consumes annually – leaving farmers struggling to find new sources.

  If the North China Plain suffers a 33% crop loss due to water insufficiency, China would need to import roughly 20% of the world’s internationally traded corn and 13% of the world’s wheat.

  Although China has stockpiled the world’s largest grain reserves, the country is not immune to a multiyear yield shortfall. This would likely force China’s food traders, including large state-owned enterprises such as COFCO and Sinograin, into global markets on an emergency basis to secure additional supplies. This in turn could trigger food price spikes in high-income countries, while rendering key food items economically inaccessible to hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries. The impacts of this water-driven food shortage could be far worse than the food-related unrest that swept across lower- and middle-income countries in 2007 and 2008 and would drive migration and exacerbate political polarization already present in Europe and the United States. -Foreign Affairs

  A shocking problem

  China’s water woes go beyond agriculture – with around 90% of the country’s electrical grid reliant on extensive water resources – “particularly hydro, coal, and even nuclear generation, which needs large and steady water supplies for steam condensers and to cool reactor cores and used fuel rods” according to the report.

  If China lost 15% of its hydropower production in any given year due to low water levels, it would have to increase electricity output via other means by an amount equal to what Egypt consumes in a year – something that only coal would be able to accomplish.

  Except – the process of mining and preparing coal is also highly water intensive. And while seawater can be used to cool the limited coastal coal sources, much of the sooty resource is located inland and rely on groundwater, rivers and lakes.

  Read the rest here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 23:20

• LA Homeless Authority Doesn't Want Anyone Saying The Word "Homeless"
  LA Homeless Authority Doesn’t Want Anyone Saying The Word “Homeless”

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  The LA Homeless Services Authority has put out a call for the word ‘homeless’ to be dropped, claiming that the term is ‘outdated and dehumanising’, and leads to ‘othering’.

  

  The Authority, which has the word Homeless in its name, wants to see it replaced with terms such as ‘people who live outside’ in order to “emphasize personhood over housing status.”

  Our unhoused neighbors are human, and the language we use should reflect that.
  Let’s abandon outdated, “othering”, and dehumanizing terminology- and instead, adopt people-centered language that emphasize personhood over housing status. pic.twitter.com/w3u2pfFbjf

  — LA Homeless Services Authority (@LAHomeless) August 22, 2022

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

  What other terms are off limits now?

  How about “person who is addicted and mentally ill lighting fires in the brush outside my house and walking into traffic naked in the middle of the night”? (True story, thanks to the 344 Metro line)

  — Julie Hamill (@hamill_law) August 22, 2022

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

  Of course, none of this will actually do anything to improve the homelessness people living outside epidemic that is ravaging practically every city in the country and getting worse.

  Figures from January 2020 show that more than 580,000 people were homeless in the U.S. on a given night, with an estimated 226,000 of them sleeping outside, in cars, or in abandoned buildings. The real number is likely to be exponentially higher.

  in 2019, Los Angeles’ head of homelessness resigned after presiding over a 33% increase in homelessness over the course of just five years.

  Homelessness comes hand in hand with drug dependence, crime, mental illness, an increase in disease, and the ruination of communities.

  Don’t say ‘homeless’ though.

  This policing of language is now a common trait used as a way of avoiding dealing with major societal issues.

  Pedophiles are now to be described as “minor attracted persons”, while “women” or “mothers” are being replaced with “birthing people” or “pregnant people” to appease people with gender dysphoria or just straight up mental illness.

  The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine in the U.S. has issued a new guide, advising hospitals and health carers to change their language to be more “gender-inclusive”.

  The guide lists “traditional terms” such as ‘breast milk’ and then suggests woke alternatives including “human milk”, “parent’s milk”, and most ridiculously “father’s milk.”

  This trend has reached as far as dictionaries literally changing the definition of the word “female” to include anyone who identifies as one.

  We face a future where if you type the ‘wrong’ word, Google will correct your language to help you become more ‘inclusive’.

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  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 23:00

• Major US Retailers Warn: Lower-Income Consumers Are In Trouble
  Major US Retailers Warn: Lower-Income Consumers Are In Trouble

  President Biden and his top advisers have been adamant that the consumer is exceptionally strong this summer despite the economy slumping into a technical recession. Well, maybe in aggregate, the consumer appears healthy, but numerous retailers pointed out that less-affluent ones are tapped out. 

  Earlier this summer, we saw the first signs of consumer cracking as people maxed out their credit cards and depleted savings amid 16 months of tumbling real wages due to the highest inflation in forty years. 

  Companies from McDonald’s Corp. to Costco Wholesale Corporation to Burlington Stores, Inc. to Nordstrom, Inc. to Macy’s to Advance Auto Parts, Inc. to AT&T Inc. to even Dollar Tree, Inc. have all echoed a very alarming message that low-tier consumers are scaling back purchases as inflation bites. 

  

  In July, McDonald’s offered a grim warning about the consumer’s state: Customers traded down for less expensive menu items. Lower-tier customers ditched combo meals for value offerings. 

  Also, in July, Costco CEO Craig Jelinek said, overall, “the consumer isn’t doing bad,” but also mentioned, “a lot of people, right now, they’re in a recession because they’re just trying to survive by just buying gas and making house and rent payments.” 

  Sounds confusing, right? But it’s not. With some clarification, Jelinek said wealthier households still have “discretionary income to buy goods,” which means the lower tier consumers are perhaps tapped out. 

  Clothing retailer Burlington Stores this week offered even more insight into the state of the consumer. Michael O’Sullivan, the CEO, stated:

  “We believe that the external factors – economic pressure on lower-to-moderate income shoppers, and very high levels of promotional activity – will continue well into the second half of the year. Accordingly, we are taking down our full-year sales and earnings outlook.”

  Another retailer Nordstrom outlined the impacts on inflation between affluent and less-affluent consumers, which was also echoed by Macy’s. 

  Then car-repair retailer Advanced Auto Parts said that soaring fuel prices and elevated inflation led to declines in do-it-yourself demand.

  Retailers are having a tough time as low-tier consumers appear exhausted. Even Dollar Tree slashed its full-year profit outlook, citing a higher cost of living and inventory woes due to economic pressure on low-tier consumers. 

  Remember that Walmart had already cut its profit outlook as consumers purchased less-profitable groceries.

  Also from the summer was AT&T when CEO John Stankey said customers are starting to put off paying their phone bills. 

  And then there’s the figure of at least 20 million households — or about 1 in 6 American homes — are behind on their power bills. 

  Retailers warning about the souring state of less-affluent consumers is troubling, despite Biden and his senior aides reaffirming every week that everything is wonderful ahead of the midterm elections in November. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 22:40

• IRS Hiring Spree Is The Biggest Police-State Expansion In US History
  IRS Hiring Spree Is The Biggest Police-State Expansion In US History

  Authored by David Harsanyi via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Democrats’ new reconciliation bill isn’t just going to be the largest-ever expansion of a government agency. It’s going to be the largest expansion of the domestic police state in American history. Only a statist could believe that a federal government, which already collects $4.1 trillion every year—or $12,300 for every citizen—supposedly needs 80 battalions of new IRS cops.

  

  The average American has less reason to be concerned about cops with guns—though the IRS is looking for special agents who can “carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary”—than they do bureaucrats armed with pens who are authorized to sift through their lives. If you pay your taxes you have nothing to worry about, Democrats claim. But most law-abiding citizens know they have something to fear from a state agency that doesn’t concern itself with your due process, has no regard for your privacy, and is empowered to target anyone it wants without any genuine oversight.

  And, please, spare us this nonsense about the IRS expansion focusing exclusively on “high earners.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre promised that the IRS wouldn’t engage in new audits of anyone making under $400,000—a claim she has no authority to make and could not possibly predict even if she did. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy also said that the bill was passed to stop an “epidemic of tax cheating amongst the millionaires and billionaires” and promised that “audit rates won’t increase for anyone making under $400K.”

  This is a lie. Nothing in the bill that Democrats passed through the Senate limits audits. Murphy, along with every other Democrat in the Senate, voted against a Republican amendment that would have prevented new agents from auditing individuals and small businesses with less than $400,000 of taxable income. Not long ago, Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan Act—which had as much to do with rescuing as the Inflation Reduction Act has to do with reducing inflation—and changed tax code so that mobile payment apps like Venmo and Cash App were now required to report transactions totaling $600 or more per year to the IRS. Does that sound like a party aiming fire exclusively at high-earning Americans?

  Indeed, poor and middle-class Americans are far more likely to do their own taxes, and thus more prone to making mistakes. In 2021, those making $25,000 or less (often the young and elderly) were audited at a rate five times higher than everyone else. The wealthier you are the more likely it is that you can hire lawyers and accountants to work within the system. There aren’t enough millionaires and billionaires in the world to keep a potential new 87,000 IRS employees busy.

  There are other overlooked aspects of the Democrats’ IRS expansion. The bill, for instance, strengthens the federal public-sector union monopoly that funds Democrats’ political aspirations. IRS and Treasury Department employees spent 353,820 hours engaged in union activism—their PAC gives every cent to the Democrats—in 2019. One can imagine what another 87,000 employees would do for that effort. In the real world, laundering taxpayer funds through unions and using them on political campaigns is called racketeering.

  None of this is to say that everyone who works for IRS is corrupt or power-hungry or an ideologue. The unassailable rules of giant bureaucracies, however, are that they always experience mission creep, they always do enough to justify their funding, and sooner or later, their leaders become political operatives.

  With that said, it’s worth remembering that the IRS doesn’t simply collect taxes. It enforces speech codes. This is what empowered former IRS official Lois Lerner to target conservative groups—“crazies” and “a–holes”—who used words like “Tea Party” or “patriots” in their names. But, even at the time, leftists at The New York Times editorial board praised the IRS for going after conservative groups because they did not “primarily” engage in “social welfare,” and so did not deserve an exemption under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. Has anything in the evolution of the Democratic Party given you confidence that such power would not be abused or that an engorged IRS would be immune from political pressure?

  Wrestling with an insanely complex tax code—nearly 8 million words—costs Americans billions every year. Rather than flattening and simplifying this astonishingly convoluted code, which not only would have saved citizens but the government money, Democrats decided we needed up to another 87,000 people to enforce it.

  Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or Zero Hedge

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 22:20

• California Votes To Ban New Gas Vehicles By 2035 In Push For EV-Utopia
  California Votes To Ban New Gas Vehicles By 2035 In Push For EV-Utopia

  The California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted Thursday on a groundbreaking measure to approve a ban on new vehicle sales with internal combustion engines. It’s a move by the progressive state to combat climate change. By 2035, the state would only allow EVs – electric vehicle sales. 

  The plan is heralded as a major acceleration toward EV adoption to tackle what many leftist lawmakers in the state believe the world is rapidly descending into a climate disaster because of increasing carbon emissions:

  “It’s ambitious, it’s pioneering, it’s what we must do if we’re going to leave this planet better for future generations,” Lauren Sanchez, senior climate adviser to Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, said Wednesday on a conference call.

  California appears to be leading the rest of the US (and possibly the world) in the quest for EV-utopia:

  “California will now be the only government in the world that mandates zero-emission vehicles. It is unique,” said Margo Oge, an electric vehicles expert who headed the Environmental Protection Agency’s transportation emissions program under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. 

  CARB’s new rule is expected to require all new vehicles sold in the state by 2035 to be 100% electric. Currently, sales are about 12%. By 2026, the rule would require the state to have at least 35% of new passenger vehicles produce zero emissions and then 68% in 2030.  

  “The climate crisis is solvable if we focus on the big, bold steps necessary to stem the tide of carbon pollution,” Newsom said in a statement.

  The goal to increase the US’ largest EV market from 12% of all new sales to 100% looks pretty ambitious, considering China controls all the battery-making rare earth metals. Also, global supply chains are being rejiggered in a multi-polar world as US companies pull out of China and shift operations to friendlier countries. 

  

  Autotrader analyst Michelle Krebs told Axios that CARB’s new rule doesn’t sound “realistic” given “there are some hurdles:” 

  “Whether or not these requirements are realistic or achievable is directly linked to external factors like inflation, charging and fuel infrastructure, supply chains, labor, critical mineral availability and pricing, and the ongoing semiconductor shortage.

  “These are complex, intertwined and global issues well beyond the control of either CARB or the auto industry,” John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents the major automakers on policy issues, said in a statement.

  Another issue is cost — as The Epoch Times explained, only “the top tier of society” can afford new electric vehicles. As The Verge reported: 

  “One of the major barriers to mass adoption of electric vehicles is cost. EVs are just way too expensive, with the average price hitting an all-time high earlier this summer of $66,000. That’s disappointing because the auto industry has always promised that prices would come down as EV battery packs became more efficient to manufacture.

  “But even more disappointing is the rate that EV prices are increasing as compared to their gas equivalents. According to a recent analysis by car shopping database iSeeCars, electric car prices saw a year-over-year increase of 54.3 percent while gas-powered cars were up just 10.1 percent.”

  And so, what does that mean for the bottom tier of society who can’t afford new, expensive EVs? Well, as Epoch’s John Seiler opined:

  The Bottom Tier of car owners will be those who can’t afford new EVs, or even EVs a couple of years old. They will be forced to buy much older EVs at high prices, with mechanical problems that will strain family budgets even more.

  Or they will be forced to keep old, gas-powered flivvers running much longer than expected. 

  One can only imagine what the power demand situation in the state would look like with millions of new EVs on the road, requiring daily charges — if lawmakers in the state fail to beef up the already fragile grid with clean nuclear power generation to ensure the transition to a low-carbon economy, then the reliance on unreliable solar and wind could derail Newsom’s future EV-utopia. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 22:00

• Drastic Increase In Non-Infectious Diseases In Military Explained As Data Glitch: Whistleblower
  Drastic Increase In Non-Infectious Diseases In Military Explained As Data Glitch: Whistleblower

  Authored by Ella Kietlinska and Joshua Phillip via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A medical Army officer who discovered a sudden increase in disease coinciding with reports of side effects alongside COVID-19 vaccines—which the Army has dismissed as a data glitch—said he faces involuntary separation after being convicted but not punished for disobeying COVID-19 protocol.

  

  In January 2022, First Lt. Mark Bashaw, a preventive medicine officer at the Army, started noticing some “alarming signals” within the defense epidemiological database.

  The Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), which tracks disease and injuries of 1.3 million active component service members, showed during the pandemic a significant increase in reports of cancers, myocarditis, and pericarditis; as well as some other diseases like male infertility, tumors, a lung disease caused by blood clots, and HIV, Bashaw said.

  All these illnesses are listed in FDA documentation as potential adverse reactions associated with COVID-19 vaccines, Bashaw told EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program in an interview on Aug. 1.

  Seeing increases in cases of these illnesses as high as 50 percent or 100 percent in some situations, Bashaw stepped forward as a whistleblower to raise concerns about his findings.

  Bashaw’s whistleblower declaration, submitted to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) who is facilitating the sharing of information from early investigations of COVID-19 products with Congress, said he saw the increasing incidence of these disorders observed in DMED as “very troubling.”

  Specifically, the number of cancer cases among active service members in 2021 nearly tripled in comparison with the average number of cancer instances per year from 2016 to 2020, Bashaw said in his declaration.

  Bashaw’s responsibilities as a preventive medicine officer, with a specialty in entomology, include “participating in fact-finding inquiries and investigations to determine potential public health risk to DoD [Department of Defense] personnel from diseases caused by insects and other non-battle related injuries.”

  Glitch in DMED

  

  A week after this information was brought out in January in a “COVID-19: Second Opinion” roundtable organized by Johnson, the data in DMED changed, Bashaw said, and all of these troubling spikes in diseases and injuries “seemed to have disappeared and been realigned with previous years.”

  Curiously, the glitch didn’t affect the data from 2021, which remained the same. Instead, the corrected data saw the data for prior years increased, which made the 2021 data look normal and in line with the running average, Bashaw explained.

  In response to the whistleblower claims, spokesperson for the health agency of the Department of Defense Peter Graves told PolitiFact that the data in DMED “was incorrect for the years 2016-2020,” so the system was taken offline to correct the root cause of the data corruption, which didn’t impact data from 2021.

  After the roundtable, Johnson sent three letters to the Department of Defense (DoD) requesting an explanation of the sudden increase in medical diagnosis and the changes in the DMED data.

  “The concern is that these increases may be related to the COVID-19 vaccines that our servicemen and women have been mandated to take,” Johnson said in one of his letters.

  The senator also sent a letter to the technology company that manages DMED asking for clarification of all data integrity issues uncovered in the database.

  Although Johnson received some responses from the tech company, there has not been still a “solid, rational explanation” as to why a glitch occurred in the database and what it was, Bashaw said.

  After the glitch, Bashaw pulled out data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) for injuries related to viral vaccines to compare to his findings on DMED. He compared the average of the last 24 years to data for 2021 and found an eleven-fold increase in the number of suspected adverse incidents reported in 2021.

  “I compared it to the average of the last 24 years, it’s a 1,100 percent increase in 2021. And the only difference we had in 2021 was the rollout of these experimental emergency use authorized COVID-19 vaccines,” Bashaw said.

  VAERS is managed by agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and serves as “a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines,” according to HHS’s website.

  Though reporting to VAERS is voluntary for individuals, “healthcare professionals are required to report certain adverse events, and vaccine manufacturers are required to report all adverse events that come to their attention,” the website says. However, non-professionals are also able to make entries.

  Emergency Use Authorized Products

  

  Bashaw tried to raise his concerns regarding COVID-19 vaccines to his leadership at the army through the proper channels, recommending that it change its risk communication strategy for the vaccine from ”safe and effective “ to “there might be some problems.”

  However, his concerns were not addressed, Bashaw said. “And then, later, I was targeted due to my own [COVID-19] vaccination status.”

  Bashaw said he was “forced into an experimental emergency use authorized testing protocol, which was only for the unvaccinated.”

  He questioned the policy, saying that forcing unvaccinated individuals into such a testing regimen seems “coercive” and “kind of punitive.”

  Bashaw invoked the provisions of the United States Code, which gives liability protection for epidemic products authorized for emergency use to manufacturers and distributors of the product, the government, and medical personnel who administer the product.

  However, the perspective of the individual who chooses to use these products or to whom the product is administered is not considered by this law despite their taking on all the burden of risk. “For this reason, [they should have] the ability to accept or refuse these products,” Bashaw said.

  “It’s my job as a medical officer in general, to warn individuals, or at least try to communicate [to them] what they might be getting themselves into with these products.”

  Bashaw pointed out that the individual’s right to accept or refuse administration of these products and to informed consent has also been written down in the United States Code, specifically 21 U.S. Code § 360bbb–3.

  Individuals to whom the product is authorized for emergency use should be informed “of the significant known and potential benefits and risks of such use, and of the extent to which such benefits and risks are unknown,” the said law stipulates.

  This applies not only to the experimental vaccines but also to COVID-19 testing procedures and the wearing of masks, Bashaw said.

  Targeted for Disobeying COVID-19 Rules

  Bashaw has been court-martialed for disobeying the mandated COVID-19 protocol. He challenged the accusation saying that the order to follow the protocol disregarded the individual’s right to informed consent guaranteed by U.S. law.

  The court convicted Bashaw, but the judge did not hand down any punishment and recommended to the commanding general to drop the conviction, Bashaw said, but the general upheld the conviction.

  After the conviction, the Army initiated Bashaw’s involuntary separation from service after 17 years of honorable service. His expected promotion to captain was also withheld, the officer said.

  The justification for his discharge was that the army lost trust in his “capabilities as an officer over the past seven months,” Bashaw explained.

  Bashaw filed a rebuttal, hoping to reverse its course.

  In addition, Bashaw filed a whistleblower complaint at DoD, but the decision was made that there was no retaliation against him, and the case was closed out. He said that he then filed another complaint which exercises his right guaranteed by the code of military justice to challenge such decisions.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 21:40

• Big Banks Build Loophole To Avoid Biden's Share-Buyback Tax
  Big Banks Build Loophole To Avoid Biden’s Share-Buyback Tax

  Share repurchases have been the backbone of the stock market’s rise over the last few years – and simultaneously, and purely coincidentally, the rise in C-Suite remunerations.

  Companies in the S&P 500 spent $281bn on share repurchases in the first three months of 2022, according to S&P Global, setting a new record high for the third consecutive quarter.

  

  Traders on the Goldman Sachs trading desk responsible for executing buybacks estimated companies have authorized $856bn worth of repurchases so far this year.

  That spendfest – helping stakeholders and not workers – has been an easy-win talking point for Democrats for years, and so, one of the main revenue generators in President Biden’s climate and health package is a tax on share buybacks sending millions of dollars from corporate coffers into the much-smarter and optimally-allocated arms of Washington bureaucrats.

  

  And so in order to avoid those taxes, The FT reports that bankers and lawyers on Wall Street are hunting for ways to help companies:

  At the center of their efforts is the use of accelerated share repurchase (ASR) programs, a commonly used mechanism allowing companies to complete buybacks that can be worth billions of dollars.

  Although the programmes are recorded as having been executed on a single day, it often takes several months for banks to complete the trades.

  The plans hinge on whether forthcoming Treasury guidance will count the day that the company forks over the cash and receives its shares as the date of the buyback, or whether they will have to wait until investment banks actually buy the stock in the open market.

  The new tax will generate $74bn in revenues over the next decade, according to official estimates, but bankers warn the number could balloon if the 1 per cent level is the thin end of the wedge and ends up being set higher in subsequent years.

  “The assumption, and it’s still pretty early… is that a 1 per cent tax in and of itself is not enough to significantly change behaviour,” said a New York-based banker who works on corporate share buybacks.

  “One per cent now is not a big deal, but what if that 1 becomes 3 or 5 or 10 per cent to raise revenue or score political points?”

  How does an ASR work?

  In a simplified accelerated share repurchase programme, an investment bank agrees to buy a publicly traded company’s outstanding stock in the future as part of a forward contract.

  The bank is paid upfront by the company to buy the stock.

  It then borrows stock in the public market from security lenders, delivering the shares to the company.

  The company can then treat those shares as retired, helping boost its earnings per share.

  The bank, which is effectively short the stock, will spend several months buying back the shares in public markets, ultimately returning it to the security lenders.

  As The FT concludes, equity trading desks have not yet seen a surge of interest in executing buybacks. However, bankers said they expected activity to increase in the final months of the year as companies planning buybacks in early 2023 move some purchases into 2022.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 21:20

• Bonds Have Rarely Been This Anxious About Jackson Hole
  Bonds Have Rarely Been This Anxious About Jackson Hole

  By Garfield Reynolds, Bloomberg markets live commentator and reporter

  If you were thinking that this week’s Jackson Hole meeting may be one of the most pivotal the Federal Reserve has ever had, then the bond market looks to be agreeing with you.

  That makes it more likely that the reactions from all assets after the event will be violent, and that the impact of the speeches from Powell and others will be large and sustained.

  The MOVE index of implied bond volatility — at times seen as the Treasuries fear gauge — has rarely been this high in late August. In fact, the only other times it was around or above current levels at this time of the year was in 1990, 2002-03 and 2009. In 2008, it would later move a lot higher, of course, as the global financial crisis struck.

  

  It is noticeable that those prior occasions came either during or just after the Fed cut rates rapidly, rather than in the middle of steep hikes as is now the case.

  With the strongest inflation in 40 years and central banks’ policy response threatening to tip the world into recession, investors are right to be nervous. But that doesn’t mean that potential outcomes from Jackson Hole have been fully priced in.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 21:03

• DeSantis Eliminates ESG From State Pension Investments
  DeSantis Eliminates ESG From State Pension Investments

  Authored by Jannis Falkenstern via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Gov. Ron DeSantis made good on his promise to take action against the environmental, social and corporate governance movement (ESG), which he called an “alarming trend” and a threat to the American economy.

  

  On Aug. 23  the governor, along with trustees of the State Board of Administration (SBA), passed a resolution directing Florida’s fund managers to make investments that do not involve the ideological agenda of the ESG.

  “Corporate power has increasingly been utilized to impose an ideological agenda on the American people through the perversion of financial investment priorities under the euphemistic banners of environmental, social, and corporate governance and diversity, inclusion, and equity,” said DeSantis said in a written statement.

  “With the resolution, we passed today, the tax dollars and proxy votes of the people of Florida will no longer be commandeered by Wall Street financial firms and used to implement policies through the board room that Floridians reject at the ballot box.”

  At a July 27 press conference in Tampa, the governor said that most Americans were not aware of what ESG was and what the goal is of “leveraging corporate power to impose an ideological agenda on society.” He promised to do something about it.

  Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), an investment research firm in New York, described ESG as “investing as the consideration of environmental, social and governance factors alongside financial factors in the investment decision-making process.”

  But some view the movement as a sinister force.

  James Lindsay, the author of “Race Marxism,” described ESG as a “weapon in the hands of ‘social justice warriors’ to shake down corporations and a tool in the hands of those seeking to impose ‘one world government.’”

  DeSantis’ resolution followed an action taken in December 2021 when he reclaimed the SBA’s proxy voting authority from “large financial firms,” and provided guidance to the SBA for proxy voting and investment decisions.

  “This guidance will ensure that the decisions made by these civil servants on behalf of the people of Florida are in accordance with the voters’ values as expressed through the democratic process rather than blindly in lockstep with the ESG mania taking hold of Wall Street and Washington,” the governor’s office said in a prepared statement.

  In the upcoming 2023 legislative session, the governor plans to propose laws that would amend Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices statute that would prohibit discriminatory practices by large financial institutions that incorporate the ESG social credit score metric.

  Incoming Florida House Speaker Paul Renner said that ESG is “a global elite weaponizing American capitalism against us” making it a national security issue as well as a “pocketbook issue.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 21:00

• Two Plead Guilty To Stealing Ashley Biden's 'Inappropriate Showers With Dad' Diary
  Two Plead Guilty To Stealing Ashley Biden’s ‘Inappropriate Showers With Dad’ Diary

  Two Florida residents have pleaded guilty to stealing Ashley Biden’s diary and other belongings, before selling them to Project Veritas in the weeks leading up to the 2020 US election.

  

  Aimee Harris, 40, and Robert Kurlander, 58, admitted they took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ashley Biden had been living, to New York, according to the New York Times.

  “Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

  And while Project Veritas declined to publish the diary (and were still raided by the Biden DOJ), the National File did publish excerpts on Oct. 24, 2020 – and the full diary two days later. While treated as potentially fake at the time, we now know that the contents are legit – including claims that Joe took ‘probably inappropriate’ showers with Ashley, and that she believes she was sexually molested as a child.

  Entries in the diary include the author revealing she believes she was sexually molested as a child and shared “probably not appropriate” showers with her father, some that detail the author’s struggle with drug abuse and the author’s crumbling marriage with multiple affairs, along with entries showing the family’s fears of a potential scandal due to her brother’s new home, and those that show a deep resentment for her father due to his money, control, and emotional manipulation. –National File

  

  

  How did it make its way to Project Veritas?

  In the spring of 2020, as Joe Biden was in the process of clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Ashley was living in Delray Beach, FL with said friend “who had rented a two-bedroom house lined with palm trees with a large swimming pool and wraparound driveway,” according to people familiar with the matter.

  In June, however, Ashley visited the Philadelphia area as Joe’s campaign was ramping up.

  “She decided to leave some of her belongings behind, including a duffel bag and another bag,” according to the report.

  

  Enter Aimee

  Several weeks after Ashley left the Delray house, the friend who hosted her invited an ex-girlfriend named Aimee Harris and her two children to move in. Harris, in the middle of a custody dispute and financial woes, appears to have been a Trump supporter according to ‘social media postings and conversations.’ She learned that Ashley Biden had stayed there, and that some of her things had been left behind, according to two people familiar with the mater.

  Exactly what happened next remains the subject of the federal investigation. But by September, the diary had been acquired from Ms. Harris and a friend by Project Veritas, whose operations against liberal groups and traditional news organizations had helped make it a favorite of Mr. Trump.

  In a court filing, Project Veritas told a federal judge that around Sept. 3, 2020, someone the group described as “a tipster” called Project Veritas and left a voice message. The caller said “a new occupant moved into a place where Ashley Biden had previously been staying and found Ms. Biden’s diary and other personal items.”

  The “diary is pretty crazy,” the tipster said on the voice mail, according to a Project Veritas court filing. “I think it’s worth taking a look at.” -NYT

  Court filings reveal that Project Veritas bought the diary (though never published it), through an unnamed proxy identified as “A.H.” and “R.K.” – Harris and Robert Kurlander, a self-described venture capitalist, longtime friend, and former housemate of Harris. 27 years ago, Kurlander “pleaded guilty in federal court in Florida to a conspiracy count in a drug-related money laundering scheme” and was sentenced to 40 months in prison, per the Times, which added that the same case resulted in a guilty plea from David Witter – grandson of the founder of Dean Witter.

  Days before the 2020 election, Kurlander tweeted: “Where are Biden’s two kids?” adding “Ashley and Hunter are disasters. Reflection of the parents.”

  Are we allowed to talk about the ‘probably inappropriate showers’ now?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 20:55

• China Angrily Denounces Joint US-India Drills Near Contested 'Line of Actual Control'
  China Angrily Denounces Joint US-India Drills Near Contested ‘Line of Actual Control’

  China on Thursday expressed its anger over joint US-India military drills in a southern region of the Himalayas that Beijing officials say violates prior bilateral agreements regarding the contested border.

  Beijing has slammed the drills as third party “meddling” along its border, citing that it previously inked agreements with India to not hold provocative military exercises near the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Despite over a dozen peace talks occurring since a June 2020 border clash between Indian and Chinese forces, which left over 20 Indian soldiers dead, tensions have continued to soar in the contested region. 

  

  China’s defense ministry issued a scathing denouncement of US military operators reportedly being near the LAC, saying, “We firmly oppose any third party to meddle in the China-India border issue in any form.”

  The PLA spokesman was further questioned on another planed US-India joint exercise: 

  Senior Colonel Tan Kefei, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defence (MND), made the comments while replying to question about reports of special forces of the US and India recently holding a joint combat exercise in the southern foothills of the Himalayas and their plans to conduct a joint military exercise code-named “War Exercise” (Yudh Abhyas) in October close to the border.

  He continued, “It is hoped that the Indian side will strictly abide by the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries and the relevant agreements, uphold its commitment to resolving border issues through bilateral channels, and maintain peace and tranquility in the border area with practical actions.”

  India is a member of the “Quad” nations – a regional security pact also made up of Japan, the United States, and Australia. Last week India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said it was the Chinese side that’s a frequent violator of Line of Actual Control truce agreements that stretch back to the 1990s.

  “They (Chinese) have disregarded that. You know what happened in the Galwan Valley a few years ago. That problem has not been resolved and that is clearly casting a shadow,” Jaishankar said on Saturday.

  

  Simultaneously, on the clear other side of China the US has been in a simmering standoff with the PLA Navy which has had heavy deployments surrounding Taiwan ever since Nancy Pelosi’s visit in early August.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 20:40

• Sen. Ernst Demands IRS Watchdog Audit Federal Agency's Hiring And Re-Hiring Tax Cheats
  Sen. Ernst Demands IRS Watchdog Audit Federal Agency’s Hiring And Re-Hiring Tax Cheats

  Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) wants Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) J. Russell George to audit the staff hiring and re-hiring practices of the IRS as the federal tax agency moves to double its workforce with President Joe Biden’s blessing.

  

  The Iowa Republican told George in an Aug. 24 letter that her request was prompted by the fact that “earlier this month, Congress passed and Biden signed legislation to double the size of the IRS workforce so the agency can more aggressively audit America’s taxpayers.

  “The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says with the supersized staff, the IRS audit rate ‘would rise for all taxpayers,’ regardless of income, which will ‘result in some audits of taxpayers who would later be determined not to owe additional taxes.’”

  Among the results of adding 87,000 new IRS agents to the 80,000 the agency presently employs, Ernst said, could be that “innocent, hardworking Americans” will be “subjected to unfair and costly IRS audits when the agency is ignoring tax cheats on its own payroll.”

  Ernst was referring to reports compiled and published by TIGTA investigators in 2017 and 2019 that found the IRS had hired and rehired thousands of employees who had not paid their taxes.

  “In April 2019, TIGTA released a report, ‘Improvements Are Needed to Ensure That Employee Tax Compliance Cases Are Adjudicated Consistently,’ that found 1,250 IRS employees had not paid their tax bills in full or on time, including hundreds of whom, were willfully delinquent or repeat offenders, and that the tax collecting agency had done little to discipline these tax cheats on its own payroll,” Ernst told George.

  “A 2017 TIGTA review, ‘The Internal Revenue Service Continues to Rehire Former Employees With Conduct and Performance Issues,’ found that the IRS rehired hundreds of former employees who ‘had been terminated from the IRS or separated while under investigation for a substantiated conduct or performance issue.’”

  The rehires included some who were fired or resigned for “willful failure to properly file their federal tax returns,” Ernst continued.

  In a separate statement in which Ernst announced she is giving the IRS her latest Squeal Award, the Iowa Republican said that among the excuses the IRS tax cheats offered to investigators were not knowing how to use TurboTax to prepare a tax return and forgetting to report all of their income.

  “We have a real problem if the IRS staff who enforce the tax law aren’t paying their own taxes and can’t even understand how to properly fill out the agency’s tax forms!” Ernst said in the statement. “I’ve heard enough of the excuses and these Washington double standards.

  “The IRS needs to start living under its own rules and that’s why I am demanding that we audit the IRS!”

  The statement said Ernst selected the “soon-to-be supersized IRS” for the award because she fears the tax agency will be “going after hardworking taxpayers while ignoring the tax cheats on their own payroll.”

  A TIGTA spokesman declined to comment on the Ernst letter.

  Biden’s plan to more than double the IRS workforce would likely be controversial at any time, but debate on it in Congress and the media was made even more intense because the agency has struggled in recent years to process paper tax returns efficiently and quickly.

  National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins told Congress earlier this year that little progress has been made by the IRS in dealing with a mounting backlog of unprocessed tax returns.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 20:20

• The Other Shoe Drops: Blackstone Landlord Halts Home Purchases In 38 Cities As Market Crashes
  The Other Shoe Drops: Blackstone Landlord Halts Home Purchases In 38 Cities As Market Crashes

  One month after we reported that home prices finally dropped for the first time in year, an observation echoed yesterday by Black Knight which also found that home prices had fallen for the first time in 3 years last month – in the biggest decline since 2011 – we knew the other shoe in the ongoing housing crash was set to drop any minute.

  We didn’t have long to wait, because just after the close today, all those who had defended housing as backstopped by Wall Street’s biggest firms and thus unlikely to crash, were suddenly silenced when Bloomberg reported that Home Partners of America, the single-family landlord owned by Blackstone, the largest residential and commercial landlord in the US, will stop buying homes in 38 US cities, becoming the latest institutional investor to back away from an overheated housing market.

  The company, which was acquired by Blackstone in June 2021 for $6 billion, told customers that as of Sept. 1, it is pausing applications and property submissions in Boise, Idaho; Fresno, California; Memphis, Tennessee, and 25 other areas. The company will go on hiatus in 10 additional cities on Oct. 1 (incidentally, Boise, ID is the city which saw explosive price increases during the covid pandemic, and has since then seen an unprecedented plunge with Redfin reporting that a record 70% of home sellers had dropped their asking price in July).

  “We assessed several factors such as home price appreciation, state and local regulations and market demand to guide our investment plans to best serve consumers,” Home Partners of America said in an announcement on its website. “We hope to resume purchasing homes in these markets in the future.”

  According to Bloomberg, Home Partners of America, which operates in more than 80 markets, stands out from other large single-family landlords because it’s designed to give tenants a pathway to homeownership. Customers apply for the program and, if approved, can submit homes they would like to eventually buy. Home Partners purchases the property in cash, then rents it to the customer, who gets the right to purchase the home at a predetermined price.

  Under the new policy, customers who have been approved but don’t submit a home by the cutoff date will be withdrawn from the program and have their application fee refunded, according to the announcement.

  Home Partners isn’t the first Wall Street institutional investor to back away from the US housing market, which reached a frenzied bubble during the first half of the year, a bubble which has since popped with both new and existing home sales collapsing at near record rates. As we reported last month, Invitation Homes, American Homes 4 Rent, and KKR’s My Community Homes are among landlords that have slowed purchases during a period of high home prices and rising financing costs.

  Mynd Management, a real estate platform that helps investors find, buy, lease, manage, and sell residential investment properties, advised institutional clients to dial back acquisitions and wait for housing prices to readjust to the interest rate shock. In an interview, Mynd’s CEO Doug Brien told Bloomberg that market conditions could improve in the fall as “buying opportunities” emerge. He said, for the time being, “let’s tap the brakes and watch the markets.”

  Only instead of tapping the breaks, they were slammed full force…

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 20:00

• Lawsuit Seeks Removal Of Judge Who Approved Warrant For FBI Trump Raid
  Lawsuit Seeks Removal Of Judge Who Approved Warrant For FBI Trump Raid

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

  Tea Party Patriots Action filed a federal complaint against the judge who approved the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home.

  “Judge [Bruce] Reinhart has a conflict of interest and a pattern and history of hostility to President Trump,” said the filing (pdf).

  

  The lawsuit then listed several examples including purported Facebook posts that show Reinhart had criticized Trump while praising the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). Reinhart also reportedly donated to former President Barack Obama and to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush when he was running against Trump in 2015, the lawsuit said, citing publicly available reports.

  The lawsuit seeks to have Reinhart, a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida judge, removed from the case or even removed from his position.

  “Judge Reinhart should be disciplined and removed as a federal magistrate because of his failure to meet the standards of ethical conduct and character necessary for the public to have confidence in the nonpartisan role of a judge in a matter of this extreme public interest,” the suit contended.

  “Clearly,” it further said, “Judge Reinhart is a partisan and has publicly expressed his partisan views against former President Trump” and that his “antipathy for the former President is such that he should have recused when presented with the search warrant for the highly problematic search of President Trump’s home in Florida.”

  Days after signing off on the FBI search warrant, Reinhart ultimately released the warrant and property receipt to the public.

  During a hearing last week and on Monday, Reinhart suggested that he would release the affidavit the Department of Justice used to seek the warrant after the agency submits the document with redactions. He gave the Justice Department, which has sought to block the release of the affidavit, until Thursday at 12 p.m. to submit the redacted version.

  The Tea Party lawsuit also cited a case involving Hillary Clinton in which Reinhart had recused himself, arguing that he should have done so with the FBI search warrant.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 19:40

• Uvalde School Board Votes Unanimously To Fire School Police Chief Pete Arredondo
  Uvalde School Board Votes Unanimously To Fire School Police Chief Pete Arredondo

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District school board voted unanimously on Wednesday to terminate the employment of the district’s Police Chief Pete Arredondo, three months after the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary school in Texas.

  

  The vote came as Arredondo, who was one of the first responders on the scene, faced mounting criticism over his response to the mass shooting on May 24 that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers.

  He has been on administrative leave since June 22.

  Arredondo was not present during the vote, which took place in a closed session as required by Texas law.

  Prior to the vote, Arredondo’s attorney George Hyde released a 17-page statement (pdf) accusing Uvalde school officials of putting his client’s life at risk by not letting him carry a weapon to the school board meeting, despite “knowledge of legitimate risks of harm to the public and to Chief Arredondo and all others intending to be present.”

  Hyde also claimed that the school district violated Arredondo’s constitutional due process rights by failing to provide him notice of the complaints against him and conduct an internal investigation establishing evidence supporting a decision to terminate his employment leading up to the hearing.

  “Chief Arredondo will not participate in his own illegal and unconstitutional public lynching and respectfully requests the Board immediately reinstate him, with all backpay and benefits and close the complaint as unfounded,” the statement reads.

  ‘A Courageous Officer’

  The attorney also defended his client’s actions on the day of the mass shooting, stating that a “perfect storm” of circumstances had culminated in the tragedy.

  “Chief Arredondo is a leader and a courageous officer who with all of the other law enforcement officers who responded to the scene, should be celebrated for the lives saved, instead of vilified for those they couldn’t reach in time, and not for lack of effort,” Hyde wrote.

  “There was only one person that caused this – the shooter. Recognizing that it was the Chief, Pete Arredondo, who warned the district over a year before this event of the vulnerability of the district to such an incident, should not be waiting with his head on the chopping block because what he feared happened,” the statement added.

  However, hundreds of people who attended Wednesday’s vote, including relatives of the shooting victims, disagreed and emotions were clearly running high. Many of those in attendance chanted “coward” and “no justice, no peace.”

  Arredondo is the first officer to be dismissed over the police response to the mass shooting incident; one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.

  One other officer, Uvalde Police Department Lt. Mariano Pargas, who was the city’s acting police chief on the day of the massacre, was placed on administrative leave in July amid an evaluation into his response to the shooting.

  In an interview with the Texas Tribune in June Arredondo defended his actions during the shooting, in which law enforcement took 77 minutes to take down gunman Salvador Ramos.

  ‘Shortcomings and Failures’

  “Not a single responding officer ever hesitated, even for a moment, to put themselves at risk to save the children,” Arredondo said. “We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced. Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.”

  The Texas state House of Representatives on July 17 published a 77-page report noting that there were “shortcomings and failures” across the board by both law enforcement and the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District in its handling of the mass shooting.

  In its report, the state committee determined that Arredondo had “failed to perform or to transfer to another person the role of the incident commander” on the day of the shooting.

  Arredondo also testified to the House committee investigating the shooting that he thought the shooter was a “barricaded subject” as opposed to an “active shooter,” and that his priority was to protect people in the other classrooms from being hurt by the attacker.

  “With the benefit of hindsight, we now know this was a terrible, tragic mistake,” Arredondo said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 19:00

• Electrion Interference: Zuck Tells Rogan Facebook Censored Hunter Laptop Story After FBI Request
  Electrion Interference: Zuck Tells Rogan Facebook Censored Hunter Laptop Story After FBI Request

  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed on Thursday that the FBI warned Facebook about “Russian propaganda” shortly before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke at the NY Post.

  

  “Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us- some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert…  We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump of that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,” Zuckerberg told Rogan.

  Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that the FBI reached out to Facebook to put them on notice that the Hunter Biden’s laptop story was similar to the previous Russian Propaganda and to be on high alert #joerogan #MarkZuckerberg #JRE pic.twitter.com/ojZHhK3isa

  — Giuseppe Mercadante (@itsmercadante) August 25, 2022

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  LOL. It’s actually the FBI spreading the “election misinformation.”

  — thebradfordfile (@thebradfordfile) August 26, 2022

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  As a reminder, Hunter Biden abandoned his laptop at a Wilmington, Delaware repair shop on April 12, 2019. The owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, walked into the Albuquerque FBI office, where he explained what he had, but was rebuffed by the FBI. He was told basically, get lost. This was mid-September 2019.

  Two months passed and then, out of the blue, the FBI contacted John Paul Mac Issac. Two FBI agents from the Wilmington FBI office–Joshua Williams and Mike Dzielak–came to John Paul’s business. He offered immediately to give them the hard drive, no strings attached. Agents Williams and Dzielak declined to take the device.

  Eight months later, Isaac provided a copy to then-President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy of the hard drive to The Post.

  Back to Rogan – Zuckerberg expressed regret about suppressing a story that turned out to be the truth.

  “Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sucks,” he said, before defending the platform for letting others share the NY Post story, unlike Twitter.

  then they raid the previous president’s home to find a crime that they can use to keep him from running again

  — The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) August 25, 2022

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  “It’s probably also the case of armchair quarterbacking, right?” replied Rogan, adding “Or at least Monday morning quarterbacking… because in the moment, you had reason to believe based on the FBI talking to you that it wasn’t real and that there was going to be some propaganda. So what do you do?” Rogan said. “And then, if you just let it get out there and what if it changes the election and it turns out to be bulls—, that’s a real problem. And I would imagine that those kinds of decisions are the most difficult.” (h/t Fox News).

  Wait till you hear what the whistleblowers have to say about this.

  It’s gonna make J6 look like a game of hopscotch. https://t.co/xiCjR5U28T

  — Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) August 25, 2022

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  reminder: big tech effectively acts as a DNC PR operation. pic.twitter.com/LhYGNKy3q5

  — Logan Hall (@loganclarkhall) August 25, 2022

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  The FBI lied on FISA warrants to spy on Donald Trump in 2016, they fabricated the Russia hoax, they worked with Facebook (and probably Twitter) to censor a damaging true story about his opponent in 2020 while they had the laptop the whole time, and they raided his home in 2022.

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 25, 2022

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  In a letter from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to Inspector General Michael Horowitz this week, Johnson revealed that an FBI whistleblower claims that agency leadership gave orders not to investigate the laptop.

  “Allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,” wrote Sen. Grassley in a separate letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

  Talk about running cover…

  Zuck should probably avoid driving in a convertible in Dallas for a few months

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 25, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 18:33

• Manchin Warns Democrats Not To Betray Him On Climate Deal
  Manchin Warns Democrats Not To Betray Him On Climate Deal

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

  Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is warning other members of his party not to back out of a compromise climate deal that helped Democrats pass the $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act.

  

  Specifically, Manchin agreed to lend his support to the bill—crucial for the bill’s eventual passage through the evenly divided Senate—in exchange for consideration at a later date of separate legislation that would grant some concessions to fossil fuels and would cut down on regulations of the industry.

  Now, with the Inflation Reduction Act passed, some Democrats are getting cold feet about honoring that deal, which they say would undercut the effects of the approximately $400 billion in climate spending contained in the larger reconciliation bill.

  At a recent event in his home state of West Virginia, Manchin blasted far-left members of his party for musing on undoing the bill.

  “I’ve got the hard left right now saying, ‘Hell no, we’re not going to do anything now that makes it look like we’re helping Manchin,’” Manchin said. “I said, ‘You’re not helping me, you’re helping yourself if you want to get anything built in America.’”

  The regulations that Manchin wants cut often can delay the construction of energy infrastructure projects for years, and he has argued that loosening these regulations would help to increase U.S. energy output and reduce skyrocketing energy prices for American consumers.

  In addition, Manchin has asked for $6.6 billion to help restart the stalled West Virginia Mountain Valley pipeline.

  Though some Democrats seem to be looking at the prospect of betraying Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat has turned his gaze across the aisle to force his party to uphold their side of the bargain.

  Specifically, Manchin has demanded that the regulation cuts be included as part of a stopgap spending measure, which must pass by Sept. 30 to stave off a government shutdown. If he doesn’t get his way on this, Manchin suggested, he is quite happy to team up with Republicans and force a government shutdown until Democrats yield.

  Like almost all Senate legislation, at least 60 senators must support advancing a bill before it can go to the floor for a simple majority vote.

  If Manchin refuses to back a stopgap spending bill, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will need to win the support of at least 11 Senate Republicans to stop the shutdown.

  “This [loosened fossil fuel regulations] is something the Republican Party has wanted for the last five to seven years I’ve been with them,” Manchin said. “It either keeps the country open, or we shut down the government. That’ll happen September 30, so let’s see how that politics plays out.”

  The real challenge for Manchin, however, is from the lower chamber, where far-left elements have a much stronger hold on the party than in the Senate.

  Progressives in the House have argued that they are not obligated to follow a backroom unofficial agreement struck between Manchin and Schumer as they were not involved in the process. In addition, they have contended that what Manchin is demanding would lessen the effect of the climate policies contained in the Inflation Reduction Act.

  Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a leading member of the progressive “Squad,” opined in a recent interview with The American Prospect that “we sure as hell don’t owe Joe Manchin anything now.”

  House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) echoed Tlaib’s sentiments in a Newsweek op-ed, writing that “Democrats don’t owe anybody anything in return for passing the bill.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 18:20

• August On Verge Of Being Tropical-Storm-Free For Only Third Time In 60 Years
  August On Verge Of Being Tropical-Storm-Free For Only Third Time In 60 Years

  If September 1 rolls around without a named tropical storm this month, it would be the third August since 1961 and first August since 1997, without a named storm, according to AccuWeather. 

  It’s been a tranquil hurricane season despite the number of named storms that tend to increase in August and peak in September. 

  Dry air, Saharan dust, and wind shear are reasons tropical activity remains depressed. Storms coming off the African coast hit dry air and wind shear disorganizes them and prevents further development before reaching the eastern Caribbean. 

  If the storms can break through those barriers, there’s a lot of warm water in the Gulf of Mexico and along the US coastlines that could allow storms to develop. But so far, only three storms (Alex, Bonnie, and Colin) have successfully developed. 

  

  Less than a week to go before August closes out. There minor tropical development has been spotted in the Atlantic Basin: 

  “As these waves come off [the African coast] each one kind of moistens up the atmosphere, it makes it a little more favorable for the next one,” said AccuWeather senior meteorologist Adam Douty.

  “Eventually we’ll get one to develop,” Douty said. “It looks like the one right around the end of the month could be the one. It looks like it’ll be really close whether we make it through the entire month without a system.”

  

  By this time last year, there were seven named storms in August, with four developing into hurricanes. 

  At the start of the season, NOAA forecasted 14-21 named storms, of which 6-10 could become hurricanes, including 3-6 major hurricanes. 

  

  This month could end up being the third time since 1961 that there was a tropical storm-free August in the Atlantic basin — only about six days left to find out. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/25/2022 – 18:00

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