Today’s News 26th December 2021

• Chaos & The Triumph Of Survival
  Chaos & The Triumph Of Survival

  Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

  One of the most horrifying works of art is Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Death” painted in 1562. The painting depicts the end of life on earth.

  I sincerely hope that this is not what the world will literally look like in the next decade or two but metaphorically this is not an unlikely depiction of the chaos that could hit us all.

  For a detailed description of the grim painting see here

  

  The Black Death plague of the 14th century, which killed up to half of the world’s population, clearly had a major influence on the painter.

  The moral message is that when chaos hits, the destruction will affect everyone, rich and poor, young and old. No one will escape by power or devotion.

  The financial, economic and moral devastation which is about to hit the world will for more than 99.5% of the people come out of the blue like a flash from a clear sky.

  For most people, coming events will thus be like the definition of the word CHAOS: “A state of total confusion and disorder”.

  CHAOS NUMBER 1: COVID

  Talking about disorder, just like the Black Death that inspired Bruegel’s painting, the world is now facing a global pandemic. But rather than the nearer 50% of global population that perished in the mid 1300s, today we are looking at total deaths from the current pandemic of 0.06% of the world population! And even that figure might be overestimated due to the classification rules applied.

  For that minuscule percentage the world has now been paralysed for the third year soon.

  There are lockdowns, quarantines, compulsory vaccines with unlined boosters, covid passports, closed schools, closed offices, major industries like leisure haemorrhaging, airlines going bankrupt, shortages of labour, components, products, closed borders, and for the few people who dare to and can travel across borders, more bureaucracy, paperwork and tests than in a police state. At the same time money printing and credit creation have gone exponential.

  The politicians obviously blame the scientists for all the rules that they force upon the people.

  It is interesting that with almost 200 countries in the world, each country has different rules how to deal with covid. If all these rules were based on science, you would have thought that the rules would have been the same for all 200 countries.

  Or could it be as many observers believe that the politicians use the pandemic to their own advantage.

  Or is it more likely that neither the scientists nor the politicians have got a clue how to deal with a disease that creates hardly any deaths in excess of normal deaths?

  In Sweden for example, there has been no lockdown, no quarantine, no closed shops, no mask requirement and industry has operated normally. Covid cases and deaths are at the lower range of the European average. Hmmm – so much for all these punishing rules in most countries.

  

  We were told that the vaccines would solve the problem but two shots haven’t so far as we were promised. So now everyone needs a booster every few months. With Big Pharma being both judge and jury plus benefiting from their own advice to the extent 100s of billions of dollars, how do we know the real truth?

  As an example, I have a 19 year old vaccinated granddaughter who had Covid in August. Now she has got Covid for the second time, fortunately in the form of a normal cold. The government/scientist solution is clearly more vaccines at ever more frequent intervals. And still no one has properly tested the long term effects the vaccines have on our bodies. There just isn’t time for that!!?

  The consequences of these constant changing of rules and shutdowns will clearly have a devastating effect on an already very fragile world economy and financial system.

  CHAOS NUMBER 2: GLOBAL DEBT

  So if scientists and governments haven’t got a clue how to deal with Covid, we can at least assume that central bankers and governments have got the economy and the financial system under control.

  How wrong can we be?

  Ever since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, central and commercial bankers have successfully been running the financial system for their own benefit. But what really gave them carte blanche to print unlimited amounts of money was in August 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window. Since then, President Thomas Jefferson’s cynical view on bankers have really come to pass.

  

  How incredibly prescient the above statement is. We must remember that the Fed is a private bank that totally controls the US financial system. And as long as the US dollar remains the reserve currency of the world, the Fed also controls major parts of the global financial system.

  Jefferson will also be right regarding inflation and deflation. The current financial system is now entering a phase of inflation, most probably leading to hyperinflation as I have discussed many times in my articles. 

  But before this financial system ends, the totally worthless debt must be destroyed through a deflationary implosion not only of the debt, but also the bubble assets financed by printed money created out of thin air.

  So a deflationary depression is likely to be the end of yet another failed experiment of a fiat money system which was doomed the day it was created on Jekyll island 111 years ago. Jefferson of course told us this would happen already over 200 years ago.

  If history teaches us anything, it is that no one learns from history and everyone thinks it is different today because we are here.

  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – The more it changes, the more it stays the same.

  So back to Bruegel. An implosion of the financial system and consequently the global economy will clearly have major repercussions for life on earth.

  We must remember that NEVER BEFORE IN HISTORY has there been a global debt crisis of this magnitude.

  Never before have debt bubbles at this level in Europe, in North and South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania synchronised at the levels we are now experiencing. 

  Just look at the magnitude of debt which has been created since 1971.

  

  It took a few thousand years to get to a global debt of $1.5 trillion in 1971. And 29 years later debt had grown 66x to $100 trillion and since then it is up another 3x to $300T.

  So when the shackles were thrown off by closing the gold window in 1971, there was a free for all between bankers and governments to create unlimited amounts of money.

  And by golly they have succeeded! Global debt is up 200x since Nixon took away the gold backing of the dollar and all other currencies.

  As regards the $3 quadrillion debt in 2030, I will comment later in this article.

  The very final stage of this monetary era started in 2006 with the Great Financial Crisis. Tens of trillions of dollars printed, lent and guaranteed managed to patch up Humpty Dumpty temporarily.

  But it was very clear to me and some other observers that the patch would not last long. So back in September 2019 the financial system came under severe pressure and central banks panicked in an attempt to save the bankrupt banking system with massive liquidity. Conveniently for the banks, they had an excuse for this money printing since Covid started a few weeks later.

  Normally governments need to start a war to have an excuse to print serious money. But a pandemic created in a lab works even better.

  The world is now in totally unchartered and very precarious waters. A ship in such danger does not require more than a minor storm to be hit by irreparable damage.

  Nobody can forecast what will happen since we have nothing to compare with. But what is very likely is that the creature (from Jekyll Island) that has been created by bankers and governments will reach a terrible fate – a fate that only future historians can tell the world about.

  CHAOS NUMBER 3: DERIVATIVES

  Global derivatives outstanding were reported by the BIS in Basel (Bank of International Settlement) at $1.4 quadrillion in the mid 2000s. That figure was conveniently reduced by the BIS to around $600 trillion at the end of the 2000s by netting positions.

  Banks like Deutsche or JP Morgan have reported gross outstanding derivatives of $40-50 trillion.

  But all banks net the gross amounts of derivatives down to insignificant levels, arguing that these low and totally misleading amounts are their real exposures.

  Well, the bankers can fool some of the people some of the time but in the end we know who the real fools will be!

  The problem with netting is that when counterparties fail, gross risk remains gross.

  Derivatives have been a most incredible money spinner for banks and other financial entities. There are today so many opaque ways of creating and hiding derivatives from the official reporting that no one has a clue of the real amount outstanding. But it could easily be in the quadrillions of dollars.

  Remember that virtually every financial instrument created today consists of derivatives, whether it is ETF stock or bond funds, interest rate swaps, forex swaps, mortgage loans etc, etc, the list is endless.

  Derivatives function very well in an manipulated orderly system when there is constant demand. But when the music stops and liquidity dries up, only then will we know the real amounts outstanding.

  One of my very good contacts is an excellent interpreter of the risks in the system. He has created these inverse pyramids with the current financial system at the bottom resting on a small amount of gold with massive debt on top. Above that we see the known derivatives reported by the BIS of $600 trillion and on top of that the opaque financial system which is likely to be in the quadrillions of dollars.

  No one knows the exact amount but it could easily be $2 quadrillion and probably more.

  

  CHAOS NUMBER 4: TIMEBOMB

  So if we look into the next 5-10 years and paint a picture of what could happen to the financial system, the risk the world is facing is horrifying.

  Global debt will certainly grow from $300t to at least $500t. That figure is really a gross underestimate.

  We add to that global unfunded liabilities (pensions, medicare etc) which are easily $500 trillion.

  Finally we add the derivatives of $2 quadrillion – also probably too conservative.

  When counterparties fail, central banks will need to print all that money to prevent banks from failing.

  So if my assumptions are right, global debt will have grown from $300 trillion to $3 quadrillion in the next 5-10 years.

  But I will probably be wrong on many accounts, like it won’t take as long as 10 years. We know from history that hyperinflation goes very fast. Also, most of the estimates of debt and derivatives are probably much too low.

  Still, let’s assume that the world is now facing a timebomb of $3 quadrillion. A very frightening prospect indeed.

  

  Warren Buffett knew he was right in 2002 when he called derivatives financial instruments of MASS DESTRUCTION. Sadly, we will soon see the evidence.

  Since all monetary systems in history have come to an end, we have to assume that the biggest global bubble ever also will.

  And since this morbid system touches all corners of our lives and has led to a decadent world where moral and ethical values have virtually disappeared, the world needs a cleansing in the form of a forest fire for new green shoots to start again.

  PREPARE AND ACHIEVE THE TRIUMPH OF SURVIVAL

  As I have pointed out in this article, nobody knows exactly how things will play out.

  But what we do know is that risk is probably greater than any time in history. So prudence tells us to get out of bubble assets like stocks, bonds and speculative property. Once the fall starts, these assets are likely to lose 90% or more in real terms which means against gold.

  The majority of stock investors are likely to buy all the dips as the market falls, not realising that they will ride the fall all the way down to the bottom. And this time the market will not recover for years or probably decades.

  Also it is important to get out of debt except for a normal mortgage on your residential property.

  Own physical gold and some silver (much more volatile). That will be your insurance against a rotten financial system.

  We have owned and recommended physical gold for 20 years. Not once have we worried about the price. History tells us that governments and central banks destroy the value of money without fail.

  But for the ones who do look at the gold price, I think that the correction in gold is finished. There is always a chance of a final move down of $50-100. But that would make no difference since the next big move up is soon coming to much higher levels.

  Finally, we will have difficult times in the world. So helping family and friends is very important.

  It is everyone’s responsibility to resist the Triumph of Death and achieve the Triumph of Survival – both financial and mental – for everybody we can help.

  And remember that many of the best things in life are free – friendship, music, books, nature and many hobbies.

  I wish all our readers Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, as well as a Healthy and Harmonious 2022 in spite of the tumultuous era we are entering!

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 23:45

• Who Got It Right? A Look Back At Expert Predictions For 2021
  Who Got It Right? A Look Back At Expert Predictions For 2021

  Last year, the editorial team at Visual Capitalist scoured through 200+ reports, articles, podcasts, and more, to create our 2021 Prediction Consensus—a big picture and aggregated look at the key trends that experts predict for the year ahead.

  If 2021 taught us anything, it’s that things can change at the drop of the hat. Amidst all this uncertainty, how many of the highlighted predictions came to fruition, and which ones didn’t pan out exactly as expected?

  Before we start, it’s worth revisiting the prediction bingo board for 2021:

  

  Below, we’ve evaluated a handful of the predictions for 2021 to determine whether or not they actually materialized.

  The Easy-to-Quantify Predictions for 2021

  Some of the predictions were easy to quantify—like the price of Bitcoin, or GDP targets.

  PREDICTION 1: Bitcoin hits the $50,000 mark

  Did it happen? Yes

  As many of the experts forecasted, Bitcoin, and the crypto space in general, had another explosive year in 2021.

  

  Bitcoin’s price rose 72%—from $29,000 at the start of 2021 to roughly $50,000 today (after reaching an all-time high of $69,000 in November).

  The price increase wasn’t without its fair share of volatility, with Bitcoin suffering three different pullbacks of at least 30%, the greatest being a 50% correction in May.

  Bitcoin’s ascent is impressive considering the amount of attention and capital that poured into other cryptocurrencies and sectors in the space. Layer one blockchains like Ethereum (+483% in 2021) and Solana (+12,500% in 2021) greatly outpaced bitcoin’s price growth, and NFTs emerged as one of the hottest markets this year.

  PREDICTION 2: Global GDP grows 5-6%

  Did it happen? Yes

  By the end of 2021, Euromonitor International expects global real GDP to increase by 5.7%, which aligns perfectly with expert predictions from last year.

  However, despite the global economy’s overall growth, this year hasn’t come without its challenges.

  Supply chain issues have triggered a rise in global commodity prices. And since supply constraints are likely to continue into 2022 or beyond, global inflation is expected to keep rising, which could create a drag on real GDP growth.

  PREDICTION 3: Positive growth for small cap stocks

  Did it happen? Yes

  The S&P Small Cap 600 Index generated a return of 24.6% from December 31, 2020, to December 7, 2021. This mimics the performance of the S&P 500 Index, which grew by 24.8% over the same time period.

  

  Many analysts expect U.S. small caps to continue their momentum into 2022. Historically, the asset class enjoys significant gains during times of robust economic growth.

  For context, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects U.S. GDP to grow by 5.2% in 2022, outpacing many other developed economies.

  The Harder-to-Quantify Predictions

  Many of the predictions were more subjective than GDP or stock-market growth, and therefore, were harder to measure. So, for these predictions, we polled nine members of our editorial team to gauge whether or not they panned out as expected.

  We also sifted through hundreds of individual predictions from last year to see which experts got it right, and we’ll be highlighting some of them below.

  Let’s dive in.

  PREDICTION 4: ESG reaches a tipping point in 2021

  

  ESG continued its upward trajectory in 2021.

  In Q3 2021 alone, the number of sustainable funds jumped 51% to roughly 7,500 worldwide, and assets under management hit a record $3.9 trillion. In the U.S., sustainable fund assets surpassed the $300B mark.

  

  As sustainable investing continues to become a top priority among investors, companies are starting to be held accountable for their sustainability efforts. And those that don’t get on board could see it negatively affect their bottom line.

  Who saw this coming? DWS Asset Management Group said, “ESG will continue to play an increasingly important role in investing.” Fidelity Investments, an American financial services company also got it right, claiming “ESG and climate funds have outperformed conventional funds throughout 2020 and are likely to continue to do so in 2021.”

  PREDICTION 5: Work from home is here to stay

  

  Even as lockdown restrictions eased, and the world took small steps towards normalcy, workers across the globe continued to work from home.

  By the end of the year, Gartner predicts that 51% of knowledge workers worldwide will be working remotely, up from 27% in 2019.

  

  Luckily, remote work hasn’t seemed to have a negative impact on employee engagement. In fact, a recent Gallup survey found that 36% of American respondents felt engaged at work, a near all-time high.

  Who predicted this? Forrester did: “Hybrid work models will become the norm for information workers.” Blue Frontier also predicted this, “Most companies will employ a hybrid work model, with fewer people in the office and more full-time remote employees.”

  PREDICTION 6: SPACs will fall out of favor

  

  Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) waned in 2021—despite a strong start to the year. The market for “blank check” companies peaked in March of 2021, when a record 109 SPACs were issued.

  

  The SEC cracked down on accounting practices, and Rep. Maxine Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee remarked she had “deep concerns about the lack of transparency and accountability that is a hallmark of the SPAC process”.

  However, blank check firms haven’t disappeared completely. Singaporean startup, Grab launched on the Nasdaq in late 2021, reaching a roughly $40 billion valuation—a record according to data from Dealogic. As well, issuance is creeping back upward, a sign that the SPAC market could be staging a comeback.

  Who saw this coming? John Battelle, co-founder of Wired Magazine, wrote “In 2021, SPACs will lose their luster.”

  PREDICTION 7: China will have a strong 2021

  

  China had an impressive first half of the year, but growth slowed down by Q3.

  Interestingly, it wasn’t so much COVID-19 that ended up hurting the Chinese economy. Rather, the country struggled with supply chain issues, along with a drastic regulation crackdown by the CCP that ended up hamstringing domestic industries.

  Investors were so spooked by the Chinese government’s crackdown, that from Oct 2020 to Oct 2021, investors sold more than $1 trillion in Chinese equities.

  Who got this right? James McGregor, China chair of public affairs firm APCO Worldwide, said that “China is going to be ahead of everyone economically, however, its global reputation is not going to improve.”

  PREDICTION 8: Big Tech backlash will continue

  

  From congressional hearings to massive fines, the tech backlash continued into 2021.

  Big Tech CEOs were hauled before the U.S. government numerous times, including the misinformation hearings of May 2021 and the antitrust hearing in July. Tech companies also faced a rough ride in Europe as regulators didn’t hesitate to hand out hefty fines. In just two examples, WhatsApp was hit with a €225 million fine and forced to make changes to its privacy policy, and Amazon was fined over €1.1 billion by Italy’s antitrust watchdog for abusing its dominant market position.

  While Big Tech in general faced plenty of criticism, it was Facebook (now Meta) that bore the brunt of the scorn. This was especially the case after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen leaked thousands of internal documents to the Wall Street Journal, which Haugen claimed shows that the company prioritizes profits over the wellbeing of its users. The pressure is on for U.S. lawmakers to enact new regulations that hold social media companies more accountable, but decisions on what these new regulations would look like haven’t been made.

  In contrast, European regulators have managed to get a plan in motion. The EU plans on enacting the Digital Services Act by 2022, which would require tech companies to immediately remove hate speech and other illegal content from their platforms, or pay significant fines.

  

  Two powerful counterpoints to the bluster directed at tech companies are that stock prices are largely up and users still continue to use these services. Even Facebook, which is arguably the most heavily-criticized brand has never seen a drop in users, quarter-on-quarter.

  Who predicted this? John Battelle saw this one coming, too: “Nothing will get done on tech regulation in the US.”

  PREDICTION 9: Millennials answer the call of the suburbs

  

  Millennials did move away from the city, but not so much to the suburbs. Rather, small towns and rural areas saw the most growth as people streamed away from large, expensive cities.

  As people migrated from cities, businesses followed suit. According to data from the National Association of Realtors, urban centers in America experienced a net migration loss (meaning more businesses left the area than moved in) while small towns and rural areas in the U.S. experienced a net migration gain.

  Who saw this coming? Joe Tyrrell, president, ICE Mortgage Technology “People are shifting away from metropolitan areas to more rural ones. We expect this migration trend to continue as people redefine what home means for them.”

  What’s in Store for 2022?

  We publish our annual Predictions Consensus to give readers a big-picture understanding of what experts predict for the coming year.

  With supply chain issues, climate woes, and geopolitical tensions continuing to simmer, 2022 is set to be just as uncertain as 2021 was. To help prep you for another turbulent year, keep an eye out for our 2022 Predictions Consensus, which will be published in early January.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 23:00

• Stockman: 'Patriotic Duty' My Eye
  Stockman: ‘Patriotic Duty’ My Eye

  Authored by David Stockman via The Brownstone Institute,

  Rough Rider Teddy must be rolling in his grave as he looks down upon these poseurs gathered in the Roosevelt room. For crying out loud, every one of them is double vaxxed and totally boosted. And they have issued orders to force the same upon more than 130 million of their countrymen—allegedly to prevent the latter from becoming walking vectors of disease and killers of their neighbors.

  

  Yet if the Vaxx is actually a spread stopper, why do they sit there in their masks? What’s the need to protect Biden from Fauci when the sainted doctor is armed to the teeth with vaxxed-in antibodies? And why is Biden festooned with the medical equivalent of Depends when he’s already got the accident-prevention protection of the Vaxx?

  Or does he? That is to say, if it doesn’t work to stop the spread, the benefit is only private and not public and hence there is no earthly reason for mandating it against the will of millions of citizens who fear that the risks outweigh the benefits. And if it does stop the spread—despite the manifest evidence to the contrary—-why all the face mask virtue signalling on live TV?

  In short, this “photo op” is worth a thousand words. It’s a live action illustration of what’s been wrong since the beginning in March 2020. Namely, the predicate that one-size-fits all social control mechanisms—lockdowns, closures, distancing, masking, vaxxing—must be preemptively and harshly employed by arms of the state in order to stop the spread of an aerosolized airborne virus which cannot be seen and cannot be stopped.

  Indeed, the latest argument for mandatory vaxxing—-that it prevents not transmission and infection but just a serious course of the disease—makes the picture patently absurd. What are these cats afraid of then?

  The real contagion at loose in the world—especially among the western nations which noisily congratulate themselves as model liberal democracies to be emulated by the more benighted nations inhabiting the purported darker corners of the planet—is a virulent outbreak of statist authoritarianism. 

  That is, a definitely not Black Plague virus of the type that has challenged mankind o’er the ages has become a universal excuse for the wholesale cancellation of civil liberties and property rights like never before—even in times of world war.

  Take the pathetic case of the United Kingdom. It is governed by a Conservative Party that’s traitorous to the cause of liberty and led by an unkempt Donald Trump wanna be who has assaulted the essence of liberal democracy to such a sweeping extent that his most authoritarian predecessors  (i.e. Winston Churchill, among others) scarcely dreamed of it and the Donald himself couldn’t hold a candle to it.

  BoJo, in fact, is right now hauling out all the tools of public health authoritarianism in response to what amounts to a run-of-the-mill winter flu among the British population.

  And that latter proposition is not debatable. Not when you compare the peak January data, when virtually no one was vaccinated compared to 80% of adult Brits today, with the 7-day rolling averages through last week. Thus,

  • The case rate last week was 1,138 per million or 30% higher than the 875 per million recorded at the January 2021 peaks, but–

  • The death rate last week of 1.64 per million was down by a god-is-apparently-smiling 91% compared to the 18.21 rate at the January 2021 peak.

  Of course, peek under the covers and what you have is the same old, same old. Not only is the Omicron variant far more transmissible and massively less lethal than earlier variants–for the inherent reasons that sensible virologists and epidemiologists have explained ad infinitum—but the propaganda contagion of the state’s Virus Patrol appears to be even more virulent.

  That is to say, as the government, the BBC, the Guardian and their mass media ilk have stirred the fear pot one more time, the UK testing rate has also skyrocketed and is now well more than double the rate of last January at the previous winter season peak. Thus:

  Alas, the public health machinery has so effectively stirred the fear quotient among the populace that the positivity rate has fallen dramatically. Compared to a 10.8% rate in January 2021, the current rate is just 6.0%.

  Obviously, what is happening is that more and more asymptomatic and completely healthy well people are getting tested in response to the drumbeat, which testing surge has generated the predictable wave of new “cases” and new measures of propaganda and control from the Virus Patrol.

  And remember, folks, the UK is allegedly governed by “conservatives”, which gets us to what’s coming down the pike from Sleepy Joe and the crypto-socialists who actually move his lips.

  As we learned, they are fixing to launch a massive new round of free stuff—this time in the form of 500 million home testing kits to be mailed out to Americans just like so many unrequested mail-in ballots, meaning that we have surely come full circle: Until March 2020 under the prior regime of private medical practice based on doctor-driven testing and treatments tailored to one-at-a-time patients, we are now to have the equivalent of a one-size-fits-all testing regime, delivered by the government-run post office!

  As it happens, however, America has already done nearly 800 million tests, yet has some of the worst WITH-Covid mortality statistics in the western world. So we are at a complete loss to comprehend how more government-mediated “testing” will accomplish anything constructive.

  Then again, the chart below tells you everything you need to know. Despite all the panic in New York City and other hotbeds of Blue State orthodoxy, the American public is not panicking enough to keep the Virus Patrol in business. As of the latest 7-day data, the US testing rate is 3,380 per million (= 1,000X the per 1,000 rate shown in the chart below).

  Now, that’s actually down by 40% from the 5,670 rate per million at the January 2021 peak, and, even more to the point, it’s just 18% of the 18,810 rate now being posted among the semi-hysterical population of the UK.

  To be sure, even at the more modest US testing rate rate shown below, the positivity rate has fallen from 13.3% during last January’s peak to just 10.8% at present. Therefore, to keep the scam going the US needs at hell of a lot more testing—especially in the Red states—in order to get a lot more cases.

  As it is, last week’s US case rate of 365 per million was down 52% from the peak January rate of 757per million, and can’t hold a candle to the Brits. The latter currently are lugging a case rate of the aforementioned 1,138 per million or 3.1X the current US rate.

  If we were of the tinfoil hat wearing persuasion we’d be inclined to think that Biden’s minions are trying to goose the Red States into a testing and cases panic in order to keep the faltering argument for his misbegotten vaxx mandates alive.

  Indeed, why on this day is there another fusillade of fear and admonition streaming from the presidential bully pulpit when we are dealing with a variant that has so far produced only one-death and a 1.7% hospitalization rate among the infected (compared to 19% at the comparable stage of Delta) in largely unvaccinated South Africa (26%), where it apparently originated?

  As to the surge of US cases—again largely asymptomatic or just mildly ill—where’s the beef that justifies another presidential call to arms? As dramatized by the chart below, the 7-day case rate in the US as of December 20 was just 420 per million. That was still well below the 495 per million rate reported on September 3rd and far, far below the 757 per million rate reported at last January’s peak.

  As for South Africa, which brought us this latest Covid brouhaha, it basically says to America’s authoritarians in government and Karens on the streets “oh, just shut up and sit down!”

  Here’s the current South Africa data and it reminds once again that Biden’s teleprompter scripters have no idea what they are talking about. Between November 11 and December 19, the case rate in South Africa exploded from less than 5 per million to 388 per million or by 85X. Meanwhile, the death rate has barely budged from 0.48 per million to 0.55 per million. That is to say, it was a rounding error before and remains one now.

  At the end of the day, of course, there is no case for mandates on anything—from lockdowns to masking and vaxxing—because the Covid just isn’t the Black Plague.

  After 22 months of counting every death in America with the remotest Covid connection—including postmortem testing of the human residue of motorcycle crashes—the annualized mortality rate for the population under 50 years of age is about 500 per million—-the same figure as for traffic accidents and other unintentional injuries. That is to say, for the 211 million Americans who are not in the higher risk, immune system compromised older population, the Covid risk is the same as the risks inherent in everyday modern life that we have long ago learned to live with.

  Alternatively, for the population under 65 years of age, the survival rate for the estimated 110 million Americans (40%) in that cohort who have contracted the virus since day one (i.e. February 2020) is 99.87%; and if you take the healthy sub-population without significant underlying comorbidities, the risk of death is virtually nil.

  So here we are with another public hysteria, fueled by another speech from the White House, promising yet another mobilization of the public health apparatus of the state, including use of the defense production act to commandeer the manufacture of hundreds of millions—nay, billions before its over—of test kits that will only fuel the hysteria.

  That’s pretty scary. And even more so is Biden’s renewed attack on the 60 million unclean Americans—overwhelmingly in the younger, low risk cohorts—who have exercised their constitutional liberty and have chosen not to take the jab:

  Biden sought to draw a clear contrast when describing how the omicron surge will affect the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, issuing a dire warning to 60 million unvaccinated Americans.

  “How concerned should you be about omicron, which is now the dominant variant in this country and it happened so quickly. The answer is straightforward: If you’re not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned……Omicron is serious, potentially deadly business for unvaccinated people,” Biden said

  Sorry, Joe. But it’s none of your business what people chose to do about a vaccine that does not stop transmission and infection from this latest mutation; and it is most certainly not the “patriotic duty” of Americans who think the risks are not worth the benefits to take the jab on your say so.

  In a word, we are in the midst of the greatest and most fraught science experiment of all time, starting with the attempt to completely reconstruct all patterns of normal interaction, the closing of vast institutions on grounds that they are not essential, and now ending with more than 11 billion shots having been administered already around the world. 

  The private benefit of the vaccination for the elderly holds up but rather than even acknowledge the rapidly fading risk/reward equation for much of the population—most especially the children—the powers that be trotted out a teleprompter reader in his dotage to stoke the public hysteria.

  The only real patriotic duty under these circumstances, of course, is to adopt the words of the other Joe from West Virginia and utter a loud “I’m a no!” when it comes to Biden’s mandates.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 22:15

• Marines Have Now Booted 169 For Vaccine Refusal – All Religious Exemptions Denied
  Marines Have Now Booted 169 For Vaccine Refusal – All Religious Exemptions Denied

  As of end of this week the US Marine Corps has kicked out at least 169 Marines over their refusal to get the coronavirus vaccine by the mandated deadline. This after the past week alone has seen 66 additional Marines discharged on top of the initial service members booted.

  Amid the new Omicron fears, of which there may be a mere handful of cases across the US military, the Marine Corps said in a new statement that “The speed with which the disease transmits among individuals has increased risk to our Marines and the Marine Corps’ mission.”

  

  The Marine Corps lags behind other branches in overall vaccination rates, with 95% of all personnel having received at least one shot. This is compared with the other branches, including the Army, Air Force, and Navy which are all at 98%.

  Crucially, the Marines have been at the forefront among the branches of kicking out troops, while also denying all vaccine exemptions based on religions reasons.

  “The Marine Corps has been the most aggressive in discharging troops who refuse the vaccine,” The Associated Press reports. “And it also has denied all religious requests for vaccine exemptions that have been processed. As of Thursday, 3,080 of the 3,192 requests received — or more than 96% — have been processed and rejected.”

  Meanwhile, the big Covid and military headlining story this week was that seven staffers traveling with the Pentagon’s #2 highest overseer tested positive for Covid-19, with extensive contact tracing now underway given they visited multiple major military installations. Much of the delegation that traveled with Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks is now quarantining. Of course, all the infected were vaccinated.

  In other branches, there are continuing threats from commanders over the vax mandate. “The Army said it has reprimanded more than 2,700 soldiers and will begin discharge proceedings in January, while the Air Force has discharged at least 27 members,” NBC recently reported.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 21:30

• The Top 10 Woke Tweets Of 2021
  The Top 10 Woke Tweets Of 2021

  Authored by Ophelie Jacobson via Campus Reform,

  Leftist professors in academia didn’t hold back when it came to sharing their woke ideas on Twitter this year.

  

  From a professor defending sex work to a professor praising Joseph Stalin, Campus Reform reported on some of the most outrageous hot takes on Twitter out of higher education.

  10. UC prof: Zionism has ‘politically toxified our schools’

  A professor at the University of California-Riverside tweeted in January 2021 claiming that Zionism has “politically toxified our schools.”

  Dylan Rodriguez tweeted, “most California public education administrators don’t understand how Zionism politically toxified our schools and curricula. It prevents us from teaching historical material about entire populations. This must not continue.”

  According to Rodríguez, the tweet was part of the “Save Arab American Studies twitter storm.” He encouraged others to join in the social media movement, tweeting, “Retweet and join with #DefendEthnicStudies. I support a California Ethnic Studies curriculum that is rigorous and inclusive of vital fields like AAS.” 

  9. UNT gives ‘mask-urbate’ guidelines for sex during COVID

  The University of North Texas’s Student Health and Wellness Center had some advice for students on how to have sex and avoid COVID-19 at the same time. 

  In a since-deleted tweet, the school tweeted “Mask-urbate?! Read below to learn more,” along with an image suggesting that ill students should “skip sex and stay in.”

  “Mask-urbate! Use face coverings during mutual masturbation to reduce your risk,” read the infographic, complete with the university’s logo.

  The image also encouraged students to “be creative with physical barriers & sexual positions to prevent close face-to-face contact,” and to wear masks as well as condoms during sex.

  8. Prof blames ‘every single’ future COVID death on the GOP

  A professor at the University of Rhode Island tweeted in July 2021 arguing that the Republican Party will be to blame for “every single” future COVID-19 death.

  “The thousands of upcoming COVID deaths are entirely the fault of the Republican Party. Every single one,” Loomis tweeted. “Though, it is worth noting, people do have agency and if they were bamboozled by the Republican Party, they also wanted to be.”

  This tweet came just one day before American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten tweeted that “Millions of Floridians are going to die for Ron DeSantis’ ignorance and he’s choosing to profit from it. He doesn’t care about Floridians; he cares about furthering his own cruel agenda.”

  7. Stanford prof says ‘Whiteness’ explains parents’ opposition to school mask mandates

  A professor at Stanford University tweeted in August 2021 claiming that protestors of school mask mandates are doing so because of their “Whiteness.”

  Hakeem Jefferson tweeted “make no mistake, this crazy opposition to mask wearing that is leading folks (read white ppl) to act violently at school board meetings & council meetings & everywhere else—yeah, you can’t disconnect it from whiteness. And discussions that don’t acknowledge this are incomplete.”

  Jefferson also attributed White identity as the cause of the January 6 Capitol riots, saying, “It’s like my reaction to jan6. You don’t have to be an expert in identity to know that whiteness is driving the behavior.”

  The professor also retweeted a reply to his thread stating, “Whiteness is the most pressing threat to the nation that isn’t climate change.” 

  6. Iowa State professor says she limits interactions with white people ‘as much as possible’

  A professor at Iowa State University allegedly tweeted in February 2021 that she limits her interactions “with yt people as much as possible.”

  Rita Mookerjee tweeted “Lately, I try to limit my interactions with yt people as much as possible. I can’t with the self-importance and performance esp during Black History Month.” 

  The term “yt” is often used online in place of the word “white” in conversations involving race. 

  5. Phylicia Rashad, dean at Howard U, celebrates Bill Cosby’s release from prison

  The dean of the College of Fine Arts at Howard University tweeted in June 2021 celebrating Bill Cosby’s release from a Pennsylvania prison.

  Phylicia Rashad, who is also an actress, said in a since-deleted tweet, “FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted- a miscarriage of justice is corrected!”

  Rashad, who played Cosby’s fictional wife on The Cosby Show, immediately received criticism for her “insensitive and disrespectful” comments.  

  Rashad then tweeted “I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward. My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth. Personally, I know from friends and family that such abuse has lifelong residual effects. My heartfelt wish is for healing.”

  4. Prof: ‘The problem with academia today is that it has too many conservatives’

  A professor at the University of Massachusetts tweeted in April 2021 claiming that higher education institutions have “too many conservatives” on campus.

  Asheesh Kapur Siddique tweeted “The problem with academia today is that it has too many conservatives. They run the university. They sit in admin & on university boards enforcing manufactured austerity, combating unionization, & casualizing most of the professoriate.”

  He also added that “those who think that the ideological character of the university can be discerned by the political leanings of its faculty betray a fundamental misunderstanding of how institutions work. You have to look at management, not labor.”

  3. California professor says Joseph Stalin was a ‘very successful revolutionary’

  A professor at Riverside City College tweeted in June 2021 defending Joseph Stalin and saying he was one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, citing the dictator’s contributions to Marxism. 

  Asatar Bair tweeted, “People say I ‘idolize’ Stalin. Not true, I hold a fair and balanced view. The man was neither savior nor saint, but he was, at once, a very successful revolutionary, a great contributor to Marxist theory, and said to be a great listener and collaborator during discussions.”

  Bair also added that he “would certainly conclude that he is one of the great leaders of the 20th c[entury] though.”

  2. DISGUSTING: Profs rejoice in Rush Limbaugh’s death

  Conservative talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh passed away at the beginning of the year from lung cancer. Limbaugh hosted a variety of conservative television and radio programs over the course of decades, including The Rush Limbaugh Show. He was one of the most influential talk radio hosts in the United States and was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.

  However, not everyone saw him as a legend. Multiple professors from different colleges and universities tweeted in February 2021 celebrating the passing of Limbaugh. 

  A professor at Yale University’s law school tweeted, “I wouldn’t say I was happy that Rush Limbaugh died. It’s more like euphoria.” Scott Shapiro’s tweet has since been deleted tweet.

  The chair of the religious studies department at the University of Pennsylvania tweeted an ambiguous celebratory GIF about an hour after the news broke. 

  A professor at Georgia Southern University called Limbaugh “one of the most harmful and poisonous people in the modern United States of America.” 

  Jared Yates Sexton also added that “his pursuit of wealth and power hurt untold numbers of people and wrought incalculable damage to politics as a public good, society as a whole, and the planet itself.”

  Ryan Devlin — an assistant professor at the Pratt Institute — tweeted a GIF of a body thrown into a dumpster. The tweet has since been deleted. 

  1. U of Ottawa professor: ‘Sex work’ is ‘the best thing young people can do early in their careers’

  An adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and a Canadian Lawyer tweeted in June 2021 endorsing sex work for “young people” calling it “the best thing” they can do early in their careers. 

  Naomi Sayers tweeted, “unpopular opinion: the best thing young people can do early in their careers is do #SexWork on the side because your early career prospects will be unstable, unpredictable, low pay, likely contract work and very much exploitative.”

  She then addressed the idea of sex work being exploitative by comparing it to capitalism.

  “That’s how capitalism works… People out here saying young people can be exploited in sex work. Literally, that’s capitalism. Lol. And quite literally, that’s any kind of work.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 20:45

• TikTok Moderators Sue After Being "Traumatized" By Content
  TikTok Moderators Sue After Being “Traumatized” By Content

  Back in July, a band of former Facebook content moderators rebelled against Zuck & Co., proclaiming that they would seek to invalidate NDAs that Facebook forces all its content moderators to sign so they don’t squeal to the press about the freakshow of mayhem and debauchery that they’re subjected to every day while reviewing flagged content that can include depictions of sexual abuse, violence, murder torture and mayhem (remember the Christchurch video?) and – of course – politically incorrect content and news stories, often with a conservative slant.

  “No NDA can lawfully prevent us from speaking out about our working conditions,” the FB workers said at the time.

  While TikTok has become most closely associated with teenage wannabe prostitutes shaking their assets for views, there are other indications that the Chinese-designed app might be intentionally working to corrupt the youth of America.

  As we reported, the app has already been slammed for feeding depictions of drug use, sex, porn, kinks and other topics that might unsettle parents to children as young as 13. All the while, Beijing has limited use of the Chinese version of the app to just 40 minutes a week for the youth of China.

  Now, fresh off TikTok being named the most dominant social media platform of the year, it appears their content moderators have learned from their comrades at Facebook – comrades, who, lets remember, technically worked for third-party contractors whom FB hires to handle the content moderation – that they might be able to make a quick buck by suing the social media giants for psychic damage accrued while performing content moderation duties, often while working as contractors with little job security and few benefits.

  To wit, the Verge reported that a TikTok content mod named Candie Frazier has filed a class-action lawsuit in the California Central District Court alleging that TikTok-owner ByteDance and its contractors “failed to meet industry standards intended to mitigate the harms of content moderation. These include offering moderators more frequent breaks, psychological support, and technical safeguards like blurring or reducing the resolution of videos. TikTok and its contractors closely monitor the time moderators spend moderating videos, effectively forcing workers to keep their eyes on an overwhelming orgy of debauchery for long hours with few breaks.

  

  This has led to workers being “traumatized” by the content they’re supposed to be moderating, according to the lawsuit.

  In a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in the California Central District Court, Candie Frazier says she spent 12 hours a day moderating videos uploaded to TikTok for a third-party contracting firm named Telus International. In that time, Frazier says she witnessed “thousands of acts of extreme and graphic violence,” including mass shootings, child rape, animal mutilation, cannibalism, gang murder, and genocide.

  Frazier says that in order to deal with the huge volume of content uploaded to TikTok daily, she and her fellow moderators had to watch between three and ten videos simultaneously, with new videos loaded in at least every 25 seconds. Moderators are only allowed to take one 15 minute break in the first four hours of their shift, and then additional 15 minute breaks every two hours afterwards. The lawsuit says ByteDance monitors performance closely and “heavily punishes any time taken away from watching graphic videos.”

  […]

  As a result of her work, Frazier says she has suffered “severe psychological trauma including depression and symptoms associated with anxiety and PTSD.” The lawsuit says Frazier has “trouble sleeping and when she does sleep, she has horrific nightmares. She often lays awake at night trying to go to sleep, replaying videos that she has seen in her mind. She has severe and debilitating panic attacks.”

  Frazier claims in her suit that she has screened videos involving freakish cannibalism, crushed heads, school shootings, suicides, and even a fatal fall from a building, complete with audio.

  Content moderators are critical to helping some of the world’s most profitable companies continue to stay in business.

  Frazier’s lawsuit was filed by the Cali-based Joseph Saveri Law Firm, which previously filed a similar lawsuit back in 2018 against Facebook on behalf of moderators. That case resulted in a $52M settlement paid by the social media giant. So, it looks like Frazier has picked well.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 20:00

• Three Easy Pieces For Xmas: How To Teach Your Grandmother Bitcoin
  Three Easy Pieces For Xmas: How To Teach Your Grandmother Bitcoin

  Authored by Robert Warren via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  A defining feature of the Digital Era has been the rise of digital entities of incredible complexity, which manage to maintain such simplicity that your grandmother can use them.

  

  Famously, the iPhone arrives in a box with no user guide. It is so well designed and self obvious in function that a child is capable of deftly navigating the control interface and can fill your camera roll with off-angle selfies, or drain your bank account with a few loose settings in the App Store.

  The same applies to algorithmically-based organizations. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, among others, have highly-intuitive user interfaces. For the lay user, certain strings of words or visual inputs are expected to produce certain types of outcomes, and the “feed” itself has a non-random feel to it that even the most casual scroller can sense.

  There’s a machine in there behind the pixels, but you never get to see it directly.

  You never really need to.

  You don’t crack open your iPhone to understand how to best use it, or peer into the code base of your favorite social media platform to understand which selfies and tweets to post (though every influencer knows which posts will perform well with the algorithm). In this sense, the technical innovation is almost completely hidden, and the simplified experience you get from the product itself reigns primary. One ready example is Google: The innovation was keyword indexing, but the value and experience on the user side was natural language search.

  Nobody cares about your comprehensive technical index, but everyone wants to know how to bake a pie or make a martini.

  When we consider how product development typically occurs in companies, we run into a problem applying the same use logic to Bitcoin. We would normally run surveys, talk to customers, study usage data and advocate within our organization to build X or Y product or service to better serve the customer.

  But the nature of Bitcoin is decentralization. There is nobody to send the survey to, no master list of phone numbers to call. Innovation in Bitcoin is emergent, as opposed to the centralized ideate, build, beta test and launch techniques of most companies around the world.

  So how do we get our grandmothers to grok Bitcoin like the shadowy super coders we always wanted them to be? In a world where tech companies have always intentionally developed products and refined them for a set audience (see: the Facebook ”like” button), everything happens exactly via emergence in Bitcoin.

  Today, there is no perfect user experience solution for Bitcoin, no killer app that ties everything neatly together, but by presenting and explaining how three key elements of Bitcoin operate in your physical space, I contend that you can begin to teach even your grandmother about Bitcoin over tea and brownies.

  PIECE ONE: THE MINING RIG

  Counter intuitively, we should start our journey with the mining rig.

  Whether you head into the basement, out on the covered patio, or into the side yard to open up your Black Box mining enclosure, you should begin the Bitcoin journey with proof of work and decentralization.

  Your mining rig is there, converting electricity into digital security and processing the transactions of the entire network, maintaining digital scarcity and immutability alongside hundreds of thousands of other miners scattered around the world. From this vantage point, we grasp decentralization and permissionlessness.

  We are participating in a digital game, and this machine runs the code that allows us to play the game. Nobody can stop us from converting our electricity into digital efforts, and we can’t infringe on the right of anyone else to play this game either.

  And do we play this game out of the goodness of our hearts? No!

  We play this game because by playing the game we secure our own participation while achieving a financial reward for playing. The more efficiently we can play the game, via cheap electricity or climates conducive to mining, the bigger that reward. Everyone knows the rules to play, and anyone who cheats is immediately disqualified from the rewards of the game via the code itself.

  We have just described a Nash equilibrium, a state where our incentive is to play the game as efficiently and fairly as we possibly can, because cheating in any way can only hurt us.

  So, we see that mining is a game of securing and deploying computing power efficiently and creatively.

  PIECE TWO: THE NODE

  Coming in from the backyard, or up from the basement, we can head over to the router or office, where our node lives.

  It may be a Nodl, Umbrel, Start9 or even an old laptop running Linux and Core, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that our node allows us to explore the state of the participants of the game. In this sense, we are the referees of the Bitcoin network.

  By logging into our node, we see our current block height and all of the verified transactions that live within each block on the chain. By using a block explorer like mempool.space (often from our node), we can dive into the transaction data that we know to be 100% accurate and verified on the blockchain. (I also recommend https://symphony.iohk.io/ for exploring the Bitcoin blockchain, it is an incredibly beautiful audio and visual representation of Bitcoin)

  Here we have immutability and verifiability. Every node runner is keeping an eye on the state of the game being played, and rejecting any transactions that does not operate by the rules of the code. Because of that, they can not only verify every transaction that has happened on the Bitcoin blockchain, but they can have confidence that should they want to submit a transaction to the mempool and be included in a block, it would be executed in accordance with the rules of the game.

  We have made real the hard working security team and the ever observant referee, so how do we now actually participate in this transactional game?

  PIECE THREE: THE HARDWARE WALLET (OR SIGNING DEVICE).

  Maybe you’re in the office now, or headed into the safe, or flipping over that fake rock you keep in the plant by your window.

  Here we have the hardware wallet, made by various manufacturers with an assortment of bells and whistles. Some look like vintage calculators, some like sleek Apple products, all serving the same fundamental purpose: to protect a digital secret that you and only you must know to transact on the Bitcoin network.

  Regardless of your wallet interface, you should have the option to transact on the network using your own node. (Note: Without going down a rabbit hole here, the major difference between using your own node versus a wallet interface that doesn’t require a node is that when you use your own node, you are broadcasting and verifying a transaction yourself, and when you aren’t using a node, you’re trusting someone else to broadcast your transaction, which allows them to see every transaction you are making.)

  And what of this “digital secret”?

  This digital secret, most often stored as a set of 12 or 24 random words, is what allows you to generate a wallet with public and private keys, the secure digital accounts that allow individuals to use bitcoin.

  Nobody in the world has a set of secret words exactly like yours, so in the same way you protect your house with locks and a security system, you must protect your secret words, so as not to leave the front door open and let just anyone inside.

  To receive a transaction to our secure digital account, all we need to do is to share the public address (like a P.O. Box or home address) and individuals can send bitcoin to us.

  To send bitcoin to someone else, we use our private key to sign a transaction to the recipient bitcoin address (their P.O. box or home address), then we broadcast that signed transaction to the miners we mentioned above, to include our transaction in the upcoming blocks they mine.

  By creating and protecting a “digital secret,” we are able to use the Bitcoin network to both store our wealth without anyone being able to take it from us, while also having the ease of use to send it to anyone, anywhere in the world, at the click of a button.

  PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

  In only three physical devices — the miner, the node and the hardware device — we encapsulate the operation of the most powerful value network on the face of the earth, and push ever closer to finding that “killer app” which allows billions of people, of all ages, to rapidly grok Bitcoin.

  I don’t believe that we have the metaphors to fully teach Bitcoin to the masses quite yet, but I do believe that we are crossing a communications chasm that links cypherpunks, Core developers and thousands of lines of code with the average life of the average human across the world.

  It is our job in an emergent system to build those metaphors and to broadcast them to the network that is humanity, so as to better educate others on the massive positive externalities of secured value and hard money.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 19:15

• Biden Admin Rejected October Proposal For "Free Rapid Tests For The Holidays"
  Biden Admin Rejected October Proposal For “Free Rapid Tests For The Holidays”

  The Biden administration – which first said they ‘didn’t see Omicron coming‘ – only to be rebuffed by Anthony ‘oh yes we did‘ Fauci, rejected an October proposal to provide rapid at-home tests to Americans before the holidays, allowing them to screen themselves at will and thereby help reduce transmission.

  

  The plan, obtained by Vanity Fair, called for an estimated 732 million tests per month, and recommended – right on the first page – a nationwide “Testing Surge to Prevent Holiday COVID Surge.”

  The plan, in effect, was a blueprint for how to avoid what is happening at this very moment—endless lines of desperate Americans clamoring for tests in order to safeguard holiday gatherings, just as COVID-19 is exploding again. Yesterday, President Biden told David Muir of ABC News, “I wish I had thought about ordering” 500 million at-home tests “two months ago.” But the proposal shared at the meeting in October, disclosed here for the first time, included a “Bold Plan for Impact” and a provision for “Every American Household to Receive Free Rapid Tests for the Holidays/New Year.” -VF

  We’re sure the same lefties who spent most of 2020 and 2021 dramatically criticizing Trump’s response to Covid will chime in anytime…

  The proposed tests, while less accurate that polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, would detect the virus when patients are at their most contagious.

  Three days after an Oct. 22 meeting to discuss the tests, the Covid-19 testing experts – from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as well as the Rockefeller Foundation, the COVID Collaborative and several other organizations received a back-channel communication from the White House. Their idea, they were told, was dead.

  “The White House, in baseball terms, was playing small ball,” said Dr. Steven Phillips, a vice president of science and strategy for the Covid Collaborative, a team of high-level experts working to develop consensus recommendations for policy makers (via Vanity Fair). “When it comes to rapid testing, they’re bunting the players along.”

  

  According to an administration official who attended the Oct. 22 meeting, while everyone present thought it was a good idea, the plan wasn’t feasible at the time. “We did not have capacity to manufacture over-the-counter tests at that scale,” they said – noting that the FDA had only authorized a handful of different home tests, and those that were authorized couldn’t be made fast enough.

  In short, the Biden administration couldn’t manage to finally do what many other countries had already done.

  Instead, as Omicron began carving a path of serious sniffles through US states, the Biden admin announced a ‘smattering of smaller-scale plans that included requiring insurance companies to reimburse privately insured patients who buy at-home rapid tests,’ which sell for as much as $35 for a box of two tests. Now, most Americans can’t find them as widespread shortages persist.

  Adding insult to injury, White House Press Secretary scoffed at the idea of nationwide home tests three weeks ago.

  “Should we just send one to every American?”

  Jen Psaki somewhat mockingly asks reporter at the White House Daily Press Briefing if the US should be sending out rapid #COVID19 tests to every household.

  In the UK you can order 1 pack (containing 7 tests) everyday. https://t.co/ErnSsiLxxl pic.twitter.com/L7ruKWdy5n

  — Matt Karolian (@mkarolian) December 6, 2021

  Read the rest of the report here as you consider what a horrible person Jen Psaki is, and the administration she represents.

  Is she deliberately sending a message by wearing black before Christmas or does she just have bad taste?

  — Ed ☯️Free Thinker & Oracle (@DowdEdward) December 23, 2021

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 18:30

• US Warship Stuck In Port After COVID-19 Outbreak Among "100 Percent Immunized" Crew
  US Warship Stuck In Port After COVID-19 Outbreak Among “100 Percent Immunized” Crew

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

  A U.S. Navy warship has paused its deployment to South America due to a Covid outbreak among its “100 percent immunized” crew, the Navy announced on Christmas Eve. The USS Milwaukee, a litorral combat ship, is staying in port at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, where it had stopped for a scheduled port visit. It began its deployment from Mayport, Fla., on December 14 and was heading into the U.S. Southern Command region, the AP reported.

  “USS Milwaukee (LCS 5), a Freedom variant littoral combat ship, remains in port as some Sailors test positive for COVID-19,” the U.S. 4th Fleet said in a statement.

  “The crew is 100 percent immunized and all COVID-19 positive Sailors are isolated on board and away from other crew members. A portion of those infected have exhibited mild symptoms. The vaccine continues to demonstrate effectiveness against serious illness.”

  

  It had departed Dec. 14 from Mayport, Florida, and was heading into the U.S. 4th Fleet area of operations to support Joint Interagency Task Force South’s mission, which includes counter-illicit drug trafficking missions in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

  The U.S. 4th Fleet’s statement did not quantify the number of those infected, nor how many among them are exhibiting mild symptoms.

  The specific COVID-19 variant has yet to be determined. The ship is following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for contact tracing and testing.

  COVID-19 cases have recently increased drastically across the United States amid the spread of the contagious Omicron variant.

  The ship is also “following an aggressive mitigation strategy” in accordance with Navy and CDC guidelines.

  In early 2020, a separate Navy warship, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt that was operating in the Pacific region, was sidelined for about 10 weeks in Guam owing to an outbreak of COVID-19. About 1,000 of the 4,800 sailors on the ship got infected, and a 41-year-old sailor died from COVID-19.

  About 4,000 sailors were moved ashore for quarantine and treatment while about 800 remained aboard to protect and run the high-tech systems, including the nuclear reactors that run the vessel.

  More than 98 percent of all active-duty sailors have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from the Navy.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 17:45

• German, Russian Envoys To Meet To Ease Political Tensions Over Ukraine
  German, Russian Envoys To Meet To Ease Political Tensions Over Ukraine

  With tensions over Ukraine spilling over and the western media now reporting that Russia is deploying mercenaries to East Ukraine in what is either a sharp escalation in “pre-kinetic” activity, or an acceleration in the false flag narrative, some hope for de-escalation emerged on Christmas Day when Reuters reported that according to a German government source, senior German and Russian government officials agreed to a rare in-person meeting next month in an effort to ease political tensions over Ukraine.

  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s foreign policy adviser Jens Ploetner and Russia’s Ukraine negotiator Dmitry Kozak agreed to meet after a lengthy phone conversation on Thursday.

  The Reuters sources added that “Berlin doubts more than Washington whether Russia actually wants to attack Ukraine” and is keen to de-escalate tensions.

  While there has been no official comment from the German government, there have been a flurry of phone calls between western leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent months over Russia’s military build-up on the Ukrainian border and resulting fears of an invasion. Meanwhile,in-person meetings between senior Western and Russian government officials have been few and far between, though U.S. President Joe Biden held talks with President Putin in Geneva last June.

  Since taking office this month, Scholz has emphasized the need for dialogue with Russia over its military build-up on the Ukrainian border while joining western allies in backing sanctions should Moscow invade.

  Germany has been accused by critics of being beholden to Putin because of its need for Russian gas, attacking construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between the countries, bypassing Ukraine. Berlin says Nordstream 2 is not political and would be only one of several pipelines transporting Russian gas to Europe.

  “The German side’s goal remains to achieve a swift reactivation of the Normandy format,” the German government source said, referring to multilateral talks between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany.

  SPD parliamentary leader Rolf Mutzenich told Reuters the party was not “naive” and knew who it was dealing with, adding that it still believes that engagement could help to de-escalate the Ukraine situation.

  Meanwhile, Russia’s energy giant Gazprom said on Saturday that accusations by Western officials against Moscow over allegedly halting gas supplies to Western Europe to push the approval of Nord Stream 2 are false.

  “All accusations alleging that we undersupply gas to the European market are absolutely baseless, unacceptable and inconsistent with reality,” Gazprom’s spokesman, Sergey Kupriyanov, told journalists, adding that all such statements are nothing but “lies.”

  The heated statement came in response to accusations leveled against Moscow by some Western officials earlier this week. Gazprom’s Yamal-Europe pipeline, which brings gas from Russia to Germany through Poland and Belarus, halted its shipments.

  

  The development prompted some politicians to assume that Russia is playing politics and pushing for the approval of its recently built Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is yet to be greenlighted by the German regulator. Fully constructed in September, the pipeline faced vehement opposition from Poland and Ukraine – two transit nations bypassed by the Baltic Sea pipeline – as well as the US. Berlin recently said it would decide the project’s fate on a non-political basis.

  The Russian gas giant said it simply fulfilled all its existing contractual obligations and did not receive any new supply requests from the relevant European nations, like Germany and France. The company supplied 50.2 billion cubic meters of gas to Germany alone this year, Kupriyanov said, adding that it was 5.3 billion cubic meters more than last year.

  Gazprom also fulfilled all its obligations related to gas supplies through the Ukrainian gas transport network as early as on December 15 but still continues to transport gas through Ukraine’s territory.

  “All the problems were created by Western Europe itself,” Kupriyanov said, adding that one should “look in the mirror” instead of “placing the blame on Gazprom.” The spokesman also said that the company is ready to supply additional volumes of gas within the existing contract framework.

  On Friday, even Bloomberg confirmed that a halt in deliveries was not due to some malicious schemes in Moscow but because of the fact that Gazprom’s western buyers had hit their contractual limits for 2021.

  Europe saw gas prices skyrocketing this autumn, sparking fears of an energy crisis and leading to initial accusations against Moscow. This week, gas prices soared, prompting another wave of heated rhetoric from the West, before a flotilla of US LNG cargoes headed for Europe and brought hopes for significant new supplies, sending the price of European nat gas sharply lower.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 17:00

• This Is What Happened When College Students Were Asked If "Frosty The Snowman" Is Inclusive Enough…
  This Is What Happened When College Students Were Asked If “Frosty The Snowman” Is Inclusive Enough…

  Authored by Logan Dubil via Campus Reform,

  With Christmas upon us, holiday songs have made their way back to the radio. But in today’s hyper-politically correct culture, some of these songs could be viewed as problematic.

  

  Campus Reform’s Logan Dubil interviewed students at the University of Pittsburgh about the fact that the classic tune “Frosty the Snowman” assumes Frosty’s pronouns, and fails to consider the possibility of Frosty choosing to be non-binary or gender non-conforming.

  The majority of students were receptive to the idea that the song fails to be gender inclusive.

  “I haven’t thought of that, but I definitely do agree,” one student said.

  Another told Dubil that “saying man versus woman can definitely exclude people.”

  Other students explained how they themselves do not take offense to the song, but how they also could see how others might.

  “I guess I can see how people might be offended by a snowman not being too inclusive, but personally it’s not a very big issue in my mind,” a student said.

  Watch the full video above to see their reactions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 16:15

• Where Do Your Christmas Decorations Come From?
  Where Do Your Christmas Decorations Come From?

  Billions of dollars worth of Christmas decorations are exported around the world each year. And while they adorn many homes across the globe, Visual Capitalist’s Raul Amoros notes you may be surprised to know that a majority of these decorations are manufactured in just a handful of countries.

  Using data from the UN Comtrade Database, this festive visualization highlights the world’s top exporters of Christmas decor.

  

  Ranked: Top 10 Exporters of Christmas Decorations

  China accounts for 87% of global Christmas decoration exports (excluding candles, electric lighting sets, and natural Christmas trees), with a total export value of $6.62 billion in 2020.

  Here are the top 10 countries by export volume:

  

  China’s market share dwarfs its competitors. Netherlands comes a distant second, capturing only 3.95% of the market, while Poland is third with just 0.91%.

  Another interesting fact we can extract from the data is that the top 10 countries own a 96.91% share of the Christmas decoration export market, which leaves just 3.09% of the market to the other 185 countries around the globe.

  The Other Side of the Coin: Imports

  We’ve covered who the biggest exporters of Christmas decorations are, but this begs the question—which countries are importing all of this festive fare?

  Here are the top five countries by import volume:

  

  The United States is by far the biggest importer of Christmas decorations, importing 57.34% of the total market share of Christmas decorations with a total value of $3 billion. The top five importers have a market share of 73.33% with a total value of $3.9 billion.

  Why Are Christmas Decorations More Expensive This Year?

  Yiwu, a Chinese city situated 175 miles southwest of Shanghai, is the world’s biggest hub for manufacturing Christmas decorations, accounting for nearly 80% of the Christmas products exported from China.

  Factories in Yiwu are suffering a shortage of raw materials which is causing an increase in production costs.

  On top of that, since mid-October, Yiwu, like many other cities, has been affected by China’s ongoing electricity shortage, which has forced manufacturers to install power generators or even stop their manufacturing activities altogether.

  As if that wasn’t enough, shipping from China has become a lot more expensive in 2021. Over the past year, it’s become 4x more expensive to ship a standard container from China to Europe.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 15:45

• Inflation Is A Policy That Cannot Last
  Inflation Is A Policy That Cannot Last

  Via SchiffGold.com,

  Are we heading toward a Fed policy that fixes inflation at a permanent rate of five to six percent?

  

  We could be.

  But inflation is a policy that cannot last.

  We’re currently experiencing a massive wave of price inflation. This should come as no surprise. The Fed has increased the M2 money supply by around 40% since the end of 2019. The US government showered that newly created money on American consumers in the form of stimulus. Meanwhile, governments effectively shut down the US economy. That led to a big drop in production. This created the perfect inflationary storm. We have more money chasing fewer goods and services.

  Prices are rising.

  Now the Federal Reserve has a big problem. It needs to tighten monetary policy to take on inflation. But the economy depends on easy money. Economic growth is built on borrowing. Any significant tightening of monetary policy will pop the bubble and the whole house of cards will fall down.

  The Fed has finally abandoned the “transitory” inflation narrative and it appears to be getting more serious about addressing the issue. But how will the central bank really play this?

  In an article published by the Mises Wire, economist Thorsten Polleit asserts there are basically two scenarios in play.

  (1) The Fed means business; it really wants to lower consumer goods price inflation back toward the 2% mark.

  (2) The Fed just wants to keep inflation from spiraling out of control, but it does not want to abandon the new regime of increased inflation.

  Scenario (1) is not impossible, but it is relatively unlikely. Under the prevailing economic and political doctrine, the Fed is not meant to curb inflation at the expense of triggering another economic and financial crisis. Weighing the costs of a recession against the costs of higher inflation, the latter is considered the lesser evil, especially since many people have probably not lived through a period of high inflation and do not know much about the economic, social, and political damage caused by persistent higher inflation.

  Scenario (2) appears to be more likely. That means that the Fed would take its foot off the monetary policy accelerator a little—by reducing its monthly bond purchases (that is, reducing the rate of increasing the quantity of money) and/or raising interest rates. However, such tightening of policy would not be intended to cause a recession-depression to rebalance the economy. It would only intend to keep inflation from spinning out of control and, at the same time, allow inflation to settle at a higher level, in the range of 4 to 6 percent per year, permanently.

  Let that sink in for a moment. If Polleit is correct, we could be looking at prices increasing by up to 6% per year as a matter of policy.

  Polleit believes this would postpone the inevitable, but it would not solve the underlying problem – which is inflation. You can’t fight inflation with inflation.

  Ultimately, inflation (in the true sense of the word – the expanding money supply) cannot last.

  Economist Ludwig von Mises warned against such an inflation policy.

  With regard to these endeavors, we must emphasize three points. First: Inflationary or expansionist policy must result in overconsumption on the one hand and in mal-investment on the other. It thus squanders capital and impairs the future state of want-satisfaction. Second: The inflationary process does not remove the necessity of adjusting production and reallocating resources. It merely postpones it and thereby makes it more troublesome. Third: Inflation cannot be employed as a permanent policy because it must, when continued, finally result in a breakdown of the monetary system.”

  The question then becomes: how long until that inevitable breakdown occurs?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 15:15

• "Alexa, You're Fired" – A Quarter Of Users Abandon Spying Devices Within 2 Weeks
  “Alexa, You’re Fired” – A Quarter Of Users Abandon Spying Devices Within 2 Weeks

  Anyone with an Amazon Alexa device has likely noticed that the smart speaker has tried to upsell them while asking about the weather in the last few months. This is because Amazon understands there is fading interest in its money-losing Alexa voice-controlled smart speaker division. 

  According to internal data obtained by Bloomberg, 15% to 25% of new Alexa users during 2018 through 2021 completely abandoned the device in the second week of ownership. 

  Amazon concluded that the market for smart speakers had “passed its growth phase” last year and would only grow 1.2% annually moving forward. 

  The company lost $5 on average per Alexa device sold, and by 2028 expects to halve that number. Generating revenue through the Alexa devices has been challenging, hence why Alexa now has features that tell you what to wear when asking about the weather and even suggest buying those clothes on Amazon.

  These statistics don’t paint an excellent outlook for Amazon’s money-losing Alexa division that employs more than 10,000 people with fixed costs of around $4.2 billion in 2021. Even though Amazon has focused on new ways to regain user retention, maybe people are just tired of Alexa smart devices spying on them. 

  

  There have been countless complaints, 75,000 and counting, of Amazon users fed up with the company’s surveillance capitalism tactics to harvest their data with the core purpose of profit-making. This has spawned into at least three class-action suits alleging that Amazon devices recorded people without permission.

  The always-on microphone has sparked controversy with privacy advocates, and their calls to drop the devices have grown louder. Perhaps people are figuring out that having a corporation monitoring their conversations is too intrusive and why user retention is sinking. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 14:45

• Your 2021 Holiday Dinner Political Survival Guide
  Your 2021 Holiday Dinner Political Survival Guide

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Below is my column in The Hill to help readers survive this year’s the holiday dinners with friends and family. The cards below can be printed and cut down for easy palming or secreting in a napkin for reference during meals.

  

  Here is the column:

  It seems like this Christmas is all Krampus and no St. Nick. People are in a foul mood, and politically it seems every day brings little offerings from the Caga Tió — from packing institutions or sacking individuals. in righteous indignation.

  Indeed, if you expect your holiday events are going to be an emotional powder keg, think of  dinner for Justice Sonia Sotomayor with the three newest justices after she said a “stench” of politics followed them to the Court. Then there is the happy gathering of the Democrats with senators like Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) after the White House basically called him a liar, and other members called him the killer of democracy for refusing to support the Build Back Better bill (BBB). Of course, the Republicans have a former president who hates the majority leader and house members who are seeking to sanction each other.

  Welcome to Christmas 2021, our hair-triggered holiday season.

  It is not surprising, therefore, to read the recent Quinnipiac University poll, which found a universal fear of holiday fireworks over political divisions. Some 66 percent of adults are hoping to avoid any discussion of politics. The problem is that 21 percent say that they are “looking forward” to hashing out political differences. That means that even with eight guests struggling to stay on football and fashion, two guests will be actively trying to steer the conversation onto immigration and insurrection.

  That means that you have to be prepared.

  Below are some Christmas crib notes to get you through holiday dinner. Each topic — abortion, the filibuster, court packing, and gerrymandering — is divided between comments you might expect from Democratic and Republican family members and friends. Just palm a few of these if your holiday dinner seem more Whodunit than Whoville:

  *   *  *

  

  Abortion is about to be outlawed

  No, the Supreme Court in Dobbs is deciding whether to return some — or all — of the power over abortion limits to the states. Even if Roe were overturned, it would simply make this a state issue — and most states would protect the right.

  Backside fun fact:

  Even Justice Ginsburg criticized Roe as “Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.”

  *  *  *

  

  Abortion has always been criminal

  Actually, some early laws were tied to the “quickening” for the first feeling of movement in a pregnancy. That would occur around the 14th week.

  Backside fun fact:

  At his confirmation hearing, Justice Clarence Thomas testified that he had never really thought about Roe v. Wade and had no firm view on the matter.

  *  *  *

  

  The filibuster is a racist relic that must be eliminated to protect democracy

  Actually, it is more a “relic” of the Julius Caesar era than the Jim Crow era. In ancient Rome, the filibuster was used to force the Roman senate to hear dissenting voices. It has been used in the U.S. Senate to protect minority rights and to encourage compromise.

  Backside fun fact:

  Then-Sen. Joe Biden denounced any termination of the filibuster as “disastrous” and would change “understanding and unbroken practice of what the Senate is all about.” Then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) denounced those seeking to eradicate the filibuster and warned that it would “put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only become worse.”

  *  *  *

  

  The filibuster has been part of our constitutional system since the Framers

  Actually, it can be traced to a procedural argument by former Vice President Aaron Burr to get rid of an automatic end to debate on bills in the early 1800s. The rule has been repeatedly modified, as in 1975 when the threshold to end a filibuster was reduced to 60 votes.

  Backside fun fact:

  The Democrats under then-Majority Leader Harry Reid crossed the Rubicon by removing the filibuster for votes on non-Supreme Court judicial nominees in 2013. The Republicans then removed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 to end the blocking of the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

  *  *  *

  

  Republicans packed the court first in the Merrick Garland nomination

  The Senate has the constitutional authority to vote or not vote on a nominee. The refusal to vote on President Obama’s nominee was not court packing. It did not add justices to force an instant majority in favor of one side.

  Backside fun fact:

  As a senator, Joe Biden called packing the Supreme Court “a bonehead idea,” “a terrible, terrible mistake. Packing the Court has also been opposed by justices including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Stephen Breyer.

  *  *  *

  

  Court packing is unconstitutional

  Actually, the number of Supreme Court justices is not set in the Constitution. The number has fluctuated through the years, with larger and smaller courts — tied to the number of federal circuits. Since justices once “rode circuit” and actually sat as judges in lower courts, Congress would add a justice when it added a circuit — or reduce the court with the elimination of a circuit. Thus, when a 10th circuit was added in 1863, a 10th justice was added at the same time.

  Backside Fun Fact:

  When the court first convened in 1790 in New York, at the Royal Exchange Building, it had just six members.

  *  *  *

  

  Democracy is dying

  The claim that democracy is dying without the federalization of elections ignores the fact the Constitution leaves most of the election rules to the states. Each state sets its election rules as a result of the democratic process, and both parties continue to engage in gerrymandering with Democratic majorities this year being challenged over such contorted maps to engineer victories.

  Backside fun fact:

  The precursor to the Democratic party (Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party) actually started gerrymandering. In 1812, Governor Elbridge Gerry, signed a bill to redistrict Massachusetts for the benefit of his party. In the 1980s, California Democrat Phil Burton boasted that his distortion of district lines to help the democrats was “my contribution to modern art.” Both Democratic and Republican states are gerrymandering this year.

  *  *  *

  

  Gerrymandering is what Democracy is all about

  Abuses like gerrymandering are inherently abusive and undermine the democratic process. The fact that courts have allowed states to engage in such abuse (unless it dilutes minority voting) is not an endorsement of the practice.

  Backside fun fact:

  In 1989, President George H.W. Bush, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and other Republicans pushed for the passage of “legislation aimed at outlawing gerrymandering.” The bill sought “‘neutral criteria’ to be used in drawing the nation’s congressional districts after the 1990 census.” Despite multiple bills, it was defeated by Democratic opposition.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 14:15

• NFL's Chief Medical Officer Warns There's Almost No Indication Of Asymptomatic Spread
  NFL’s Chief Medical Officer Warns There’s Almost No Indication Of Asymptomatic Spread

  In the latest sign that “the science” promoted by Dr. Anthony Fauci and the US government as justification for scaring half the country into staying home this Christmas really, truly, no longer applies, the NFL has changed its strategy for dealing with COVID to dramatically break from federal guidelines.

  ESPN reports that the league is suppressing the latest COVID surge with an understanding that symptomatic individuals are driving transmission within the team environment, said Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills on Thursday. Apparently, the League has taken its own look at the COVID Problem, and decided that asymptomatic players actually don’t spread COVID.

  

  Well, at least not in any meaningful way.

  Again, here’s Dr. Sills:

  “I think all of our concern about [asymptomatic spread] has been going down based on what we’ve been seeing throughout the past several months,” Sills told ESPN. “We’ve got our hands full with symptomatic people. Can I tell you tonight that there has never been a case when someone without symptoms passed it on to someone else? No, of course I can’t say that. But what I can say to you is that I think it’s a very, very tiny fraction of the overall problem, if it exists at all.”

  He clarifies further:

  “Clearly if you want to look at the overall pattern and concern about transmission, it is not being driven by people who have no idea that they are infected and they are infecting scores of others. This is being driven by people with symptoms and the exposures during that symptomatic period.”

  In response to omicron, the league and the NFL Players Association agreed last week to stop weekly testing on vaccinated players and begin random testing of a sample across teams and positions.

  Vaccinated players who report symptoms are required to be tested, and unvaccinated players continue to be tested daily, as the league is still performing 1,000 tests per day for players and staff.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 14:11

• "I'm Not F***King Around" – Pickaxe-Wielding Woman Robs LA Rite Aid
  “I’m Not F***King Around” – Pickaxe-Wielding Woman Robs LA Rite Aid

  A pickaxe-wielding woman in broad daylight casually walked into an LA-based Rite Aid, stole merchandise and then threatened store employees and customers with her large weapon, video footage shows.

  

  The footage captured the moment the as-yet-unidentified woman dragged a basket full of merchandise across the floor of the business toward the door.

  She seems to be headed for the door, with basket and pickaxe in hand, before stopping by the counter and telling an employee she’ll come back.

  “I’m not f*****g around,” she says as an employee tries to ask her to stop as she makes a grab for beauty products.”

  “I don’t want to smell like sh** when I’m knocking these b****** out,” she added.

  “Before leaving, she tells everyone at the store, ‘Don’t say sh*t, Shut the f*** up. Be quiet and follow suit.'”

  Police said no was injured during the incident and that they are still searching for the pickaxe-wielding suspect.

  Watch the video below:

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 13:45

• Buchanan: Has America Lost Its Faith?
  Buchanan: Has America Lost Its Faith?

  Authored by Pat Buchanan,

  Here we are on the day of joy set aside for celebrating the birth of Christ who came down to earth 2,000 years ago to show mankind the way to eternal salvation.

  Yet, the present mood of America at Christmas 2021 seems better captured by Jimmy Carter in his “malaise speech” in July of 1979, several days before he cashiered half of his Cabinet.

  “The threat” to America, said Carter, “is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”

  Carter’s speech, reflecting the mood of the nation, was initially well received. But when his dirge became contrasted with the optimism about America of Ronald Reagan, Carter was sent packing. He lost 44 states.

  The malaise speech came to mind while perusing the latest polls about how Americans feel about the institutions and the individuals who are directing the course of the world’s greatest democratic republic.

  

  Of President Joe Biden’s performance, the Economist, Politico and Rasmussen are all posting approval ratings, not yet a year into Biden’s term, that have sunk to 43 and 42%.

  While nearly half of Americans approved of the job the Supreme Court was doing last July, Gallup finds that that figure has now plunged to an all-time low for the high court of 40%.

  How many Americans approve of the job Congress is doing?

  One in seven Americans, 14%. Two out of every three Americans, 63%, disapprove of Congress’s performance, a 49-point gap.

  Is America on the “right track” under the new administration?

  According to the Economist and Politico polls, 63% of the nation answers, “No.” In the Economist poll, only one in four Americans, 26%, said their country was on the right track.

  These polls raise some fundamental follow-on questions:

  How long can a democracy endure if it continues to generate such sweeping rejection from the people in whose name it purports to act?

  How long before the American people, who consistently show a lack of confidence in the popular branch of government and in the course in which it is steering the nation, begin to lose confidence in the democratic system itself?

  If democracy is continuously perceived as failing, can it survive?

  Clearly, among the reasons for our present division and national malaise is that we have lost the great animating cause earlier generations had: the Cold War.

  Americans have found no substitute cause to replace the Cold War and no substitute adversary like the late Soviet Empire.

  George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order” excited only the elites. George W. Bush’s crusade for democracy did not survive the Afghan and Iraq forever wars he launched in its name.

  Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “rules-based order” will suffer the same fate.

  And even as we are losing faith in the democratic institutions and individuals who run them, Americans seem, too, to be losing faith in the faith of their fathers as well.

  Woodrow Wilson, in his campaign for president, declared:

  “America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the tenets of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”

  Harry Truman wrote to Pope Pius XII in 1947, “This is a Christian nation.” He did not mean we had an official religion or established church. He meant what he said to a conference of attorneys general in 1950:

  “The fundamental basis of this nation’s law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. … If we don’t have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.”

  What Truman was saying was consistent with what Thomas Jefferson was saying when he wrote:

  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.”

  On April 6, 2009, Barack Obama, speaking in Turkey, declared that the United States no longer regarded itself as a Christian nation: “Although we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”

  But Obama’s assertion also raises a follow-up question:

  If we were a Christian nation under Wilson and Truman, when exactly did America cease to be a Christian nation?

  And is there a causal connection, a correlation between the loss of faith in Christianity among our people and the loss of faith in democracy?

  And is the loss of faith in both reversible — or inexorable?

  Merry Christmas!

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 13:15

• Cash Is King For Christmas
  Cash Is King For Christmas

  While so-called “shopping holidays” like Cyber Monday and Black Friday have become synonymous with sales at big online retailers like Amazon and are mostly focused on consumer electronics, a majority of these products don’t even make the top 8 when it comes to this year’s Christmas gift preferences.

  As Florian Zandt shows in the chart below, based on data from Statista’s Global Consumer Survey shows, festive classics still dominate the ranking this year.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  For example, a third of U.S. respondents plan to give the gift of cold, hard cash or clothing items like the often ridiculed socks or ties, while 36 percent are looking to dole out vouchers or gift cards for Christmas.

  These three categories also dominate the preferences of the people potentially receiving gifts, with 39 percent answering they’d like to get some money to spend however they like. The first electronics items on the list are smartphones and tablets, with 15 percent of respondents planning to gift them while 22 percent hope to receive them. Participants favoring a one-way connection to the written word either on paper or via screen account for about 15 percent, on the gifting as well as on the preferential side.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/25/2021 – 12:45

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