Mar 26

Today’s News 26th March 2024

  • German Doctor Refuses To Treat AfD Politician
    German Doctor Refuses To Treat AfD Politician

    Via ReMix News,

    A doctor in the German state of Baden-Württemberg refuses to treat one of his patients because he is a local politician in the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

    The doctor’s decision was reportedly sparked when he saw a photo in the local newspaper of the politician, Heiko Nüßner, at an event for his party’s city association in Lahr. Based on this photo, the doctor told him to find a new practice due to their “clearly different political views.”

    Nüßner, who previously served as a Christian Democrat (CDU) politician for 26 years, told Bild newspaper that he was “very surprised by this reaction, as he had never spoken to the doctor about his politics. He described the interaction with the general practitioner as “very undemocratic.”

    The AfD politician said, “I was disappointed with the CDU because of its euro and migration policy as well as its exit from nuclear energy. For me, the AfD is the ‘new CDU’ and by no means right-wing extremist.”

    The AfD politician suffered an accident three years ago that he left him confined to a wheelchair. When he asked the doctor for a prescription at the beginning of March, he was denied treatment. Nüßner shared a copy of the email exchange shared between him and the doctor, whose name was not disclosed by Nüßner or Bild.

    The doctor has responded to Bild, saying that the photo of the politician was only the “icing on the cake.”

    “I had already found the patient very unpleasant beforehand, with his demanding and pushy nature,” he said.

    According to medical ethicists, denying treatment based on “unpleasant” attitudes or because you do not agree with the politics of your patient does not meet medical standards. However, for patients who represent a threat or a major disturbance to a medical practice, doctors are permitted to deny care, but only if there is no immediate medical threat.

    The doctor claimed however that the medication requested by Nüßner was “not vital.”

    According to the Bild interview with the doctor, he did want to support any “undemocratic tendencies,” as the AfD is being monitored for extremism by the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), a powerful domestic spy agency.

    He said if the AfD politician needed acute care, he would treat him and anyone else “regardless of their ideology.”

    In 2021, AfD candidate Andrea Zürcher also had her general practicioner cancel her care, also in the state of Baden-Württemberg. In Zürcher’s case, the doctor also learned about her political activity from a photo in a local newspaper.

    “He said that the relationship of trust had been destroyed as a result and that he could no longer give 100 percent in my treatment,” the woman said, who suffer from a chronic illness.

    A third of Germans say they would consider voting for the Alternative for Germany, and a majority of Germans — at least in some polls — say they could support a government coalition that includes the AfD. However, there is still a sizeable share of the population adamantly opposed to the party. In the case of doctors, refusal of treatment is considered a serious ethical quandary. Such cases may increase political polarization in Germany.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 02:00

  • Election 2024: It's The Psychopathology, Stupid
    Election 2024: It’s The Psychopathology, Stupid

    Authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The deeper we get into the 2024 presidential election, the more pathological, in the psychological sense, our society appears.

    Dozens of anti-Trump protesters gather in Times Square, New York, on July 26, 2017. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    You could say this psychopathology comes from both sides, but in truth, most of it is from the left in the form of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), which has gone from mere neurosis to full psychosis.

    Those things used to be classifiable in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” published by the American Psychiatric Association, but that tome, revised every five to seven years, has been so politicized itself as to be useless.

    Many therapists these days spend their 50-minute hours calming down patients sleepless from the specter of former President Donald Trump while reassuring them that President Joe Biden will be reelected.

    Meanwhile, speaking of TDS, the effort to destroy President Trump—if not through incarceration then through bankruptcy cum the humiliation of selling his real estate—has doubled or quadrupled its pace, and all the more so since he appears to be leading in the swing states.

    Forget Hitler. After all, the Israelis are so “mistreating” the “innocent” Gaza “civilians,” at least according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), that comparisons to Alois Schicklgruber are all but passé.

    The real bête noir of Western civilization is President Trump. (Second place goes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.)

    “Why” is not the question.

    When it comes to TDS, facts are the last thing that matter. It’s about feelings so deep that they approach the primordial. Just ask Letitia James, Fani Willis, Jack Smith, and the vast majority of the employees of mainstream media.

    To call our society unhinged is an understatement. The legal system as originally conceived seems no longer to exist. Its current reason for being is to fine President Trump so many millions or billions of dollars that few of us can remember exactly how much it is without having to look it up, multiple times, just to make sure.

    No one expresses that better than Mark Steyn, who has suffered financial retribution himself on a smaller, yet significant to mere mortals, scale for having the temerity to question the climate orthodoxy. He wrote the following on SteynOnline on March 19:

    “Politics itself is meaningless: cable pundits and radio hosts can yak about polls and policies all they want, but Democrats are pre-litigating the election because they’re pretty confident it’ll work for them. As I wrote a month ago, after (Democrat) Judge Engoron’s decision to fine the (Republican) presidential nominee close to half-a-billion dollars: ‘This Judge [Engoron] is taking it to a whole new level. It’s not very difficult, after all, to ramp up the judgment to a number it would be impossible to get a bond for.’”

    Justice Arthur Engoron’s decisions seem to come not from reasoned legal judgment but straight from the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls involuntary survival instincts.

    We see this survival obsession across the culture as TDS moves from neurosis to psychosis.

    The growing attack on the free speech that once defined our country is arguably one of the strongest manifestations of this illness.

    Not surprisingly, we find this appearing in a recent analysis by CNN’s Oliver Darcy:

    “Elon Musk is showing the world how radicalized he has become. The billionaire, one of the most consequential figures to walk the Earth, spent another weekend swimming in the right-wing fever swamps of X—a bad habit that was apparent when his interview with Don Lemon was released Monday morning. In the contentious interview, Musk equated moderating dangerous and appalling hate speech to ‘censorship,’ bashed the press for legitimate reporting, assailed DEI programs without supporting evidence, skewered advertisers who fled the X platform last year and yet again gave credence to the racist Great Replacement theory, among other things.”

    Well, one man’s “dangerous and appalling hate speech” is another man’s truth. At least that’s the way our founders thought.

    It wasn’t until the arrival of President Trump that this was ever really a question. The man has an uncomfortable habit, unlike most politicians, of saying exactly what he’s thinking, often with a humorous twist that clarifies his point.

    To the likes of Mr. Darcy and his many allies, this is unconscionable. That makes the CNN analyst the marginally more literate equivalent of Justice Engoron.

    The more President Trump threatens to win the election, the further into the realm of psychological disturbance these people will go.

    Whether the economy would improve, whether public safety would be better, and whether the world would be more peaceful are all irrelevant to them.

    The most rational part of their otherwise aberrant behavior is fear for their jobs. In cases such as Mr. Darcy’s and Justice Engoron’s, that too is irrelevant. Mr. Darcy would do fine, perhaps better than ever, as an opposition journalist, and Justice Engoron, like it or not, has a lifetime position that, despite the highly justifiable enmity of President Trump, is almost certain to be preserved.

    All this and spring has barely arrived. As we plunge into summer, things are likely to heat up to extraordinary temperatures; not because of global warming, but through and because of this psychopathology.

    Let’s hope they cool, at least somewhat, before reaching a boil.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 23:40

  • Baltimore City Implodes: Police Force Collapses, Only Three Officers Patrolled Major District 
    Baltimore City Implodes: Police Force Collapses, Only Three Officers Patrolled Major District 

    How it started. 

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    How it’s going… 

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    The radical leftists in control of Baltimore City Hall have plunged the metro area just north of Washington, DC, into apocalyptic levels. We advise readers to entirely avoid the metro area as violent crime spirals out of control. 

    Failed social justice reforms, defunding the police, and widespread mistrust of the police have resulted in a skeleton police force that will no longer be able to protect residents in some regions of the city. 

    Fox Baltimore reported last Tuesday that only three police officers were on duty for the Southern Police District, which includes more than 61,000 residents. 

    Several radio transmissions of a police dispatcher pleaded for additional officers as 911 calls came pouring in. At least ten calls went unanswered in a matter of minutes.  

    “You are endangering the lives of police officers on duty and what that does is endanger the lives of the citizens,” said Betsy Smith with the National Police Association.

    Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for pushing failed social justice reforms and defunding the police that have left some areas of the metro area ungovernable as gangs roam free. Meanwhile, Democrats are obsessed with attempting to strip Second Amendment rights from residents, jeopardizing their ability to defend themselves. 

    “This catastrophic failure is a direct result of WOKE policies and extremely poor leadership from the Mayor. Baltimore is now seeing the results of the unending war on the police in Baltimore City. The failure to support the police is a total failure on behalf of Baltimore’s elected leaders, and this disaster is the end result!” Del. Nino Mangione, R-Baltimore County, said in a statement. 

    No Democrat will ever be held accountable for failed policies that have unleashed widespread lawlessness across the metro area. Avoid Baltimore as it implodes. Remember, the collapsing police force means more 9-11 calls will go unanswered. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 23:20

  • Republicans Sound Alarm On DOJ's 'Red Flag' Initiative
    Republicans Sound Alarm On DOJ’s ‘Red Flag’ Initiative

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

    Republicans issued a warning over the weekend after the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a training “resource center” to help implement state red flag laws designed to keep guns away from certain individuals.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland in Washington on March 21, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on April 24 that the center will “provide our partners across the country with valuable resources to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others.” The website, which was launched this week, will provide technical assistance and training to “law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service and social service providers, community organizations, and behavioral health professionals.”

    Red flag laws, or Extreme Risk Protection Orders, allow officials to confiscate guns from an individual under a judge’s order if the individual is “at risk of harming themselves or others,” the statement said.

    “The establishment of the Center is the latest example of the Justice Department’s work to use every tool provided by the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to protect communities from gun violence,” Mr. Garland said in the statement.

    The announcement from the Justice Department comes two years after Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which created the process to aid states and municipalities in enforcement of red flag laws. The measure was introduced after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 children and teachers dead, while the DOJ said in January that local police demonstrated no urgency and essentially failed in its response to the shooting.

    Several Republican lawmakers sounded the alarm after the DOJ’s announcement over the weekend.

    “Merrick Garland just announced a massive Red Flag Operation that the DOJ will be running by using EVERY spy tool the US government has in order to violate American’s Second Amendment!!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This comes right after [House Speaker Mike] Johnson fully funded [President Joe] Biden’s weaponized DOJ!”

    “What the … is this evil? A Federal Red Flag center; We did not authorize this,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote on X. The Kentucky lawmaker noted that the announcement came after the Senate was able to pass a funding bill for the government in an early vote on March 23.

    “What part of ’shall not be infringed’ is hard to understand?” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), wrote, referring to the text of the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

    None among Reps. Greene, Cammack, or Massie voted for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022. Only 14 GOP lawmakers voted in favor of the bill at the time; 10 of them have left Congress or were not reelected.

    Twenty-one states have red flag laws on the books, according to a statement from the White House issued on March 23.

    The DOJ announcement comes after an appeals court upheld New York state’s red flag law, saying that the measure does not violate the Second Amendment.

    “This regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation in keeping dangerous individuals from carrying guns and, therefore, is presumptively lawful,” the court’s opinion reads.

    Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, praised the court’s decision, saying that New York’s attempt to strengthen “our ’red flag’ laws … [keeps] dangerous weapons away from people who pose a risk to themselves or others. We are committed to continuing the fight against gun violence and protecting public safety.”

    However, a lawyer for the plaintiff, Corey Monroe, told reporters last week that the law doesn’t have adequate protections.

    “We strongly believe that New York’s red flag law continues to lack sufficient and constitutionally required procedural protections for people who might find themselves on the receiving end of such an order,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 23:00

  • Retirement Goes Rural: More Retirees Ditching Florida For Southern Appalachia
    Retirement Goes Rural: More Retirees Ditching Florida For Southern Appalachia

    Despite the fact that Florida has always been “retirement country”, those who have the means to move out of the state to retire are now focusing on southern Appalachia, for life in an even more rural setting.

    The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the trend of “halfbacks” — retirees initially moving from the Northeast and Midwest to Florida, then relocating to mid-southern regions like Southwest Virginia, North Georgia, parts of the Carolinas, and areas in Alabama and Tennessee.

    Some retirees are choosing southern Appalachia over Florida, the report says. From April 2020 to July 2022, these southern Appalachian regions experienced a 3.8% population increase, outpacing the national growth rate, mainly due to retirees seeking retirement or recreational locales.

    This influx has sparked development in previously rural counties, with the emergence of retirement communities with upscale features, big-box retailers extending into the area, and an increased demand for government services, housing, and infrastructure, Business Insider wrote in a wrap-up article.

    Retiree Ed Helms moved to North Georgia, telling WSJ: “Our property insurance was going sky high. We got tired of being unable to find a place to sit in restaurants. We wouldn’t go back for anything.”

    “People who have moved here now want us to put up a gate and stop anybody else from moving here. It doesn’t work that way,” said Billy Thurmond, a county native and the chairman of the Dawson County Board of Commissioners.

    Back in 2023, we listed the best states for retirement in the U.S. Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized data from personal finance platform WalletHub which ranked the best U.S. states for retirement as of 2023.

    According to this methodology, Virginia is currently the best state for retirement. Although the Southeastern state does not excel in any one dimension, it scores consistently well across all three to create a very balanced retirement profile.

    This gives it a slight advantage over second place Florida, which excels in quality of life and affordability, but falls further behind in terms of health care. Third-placed Colorado is a mirror of Florida, offering excellent health care but a lower quality of life in comparison.

    For affordability, top names include many of the Southern Appalachia states, including Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia and South Carolina. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 22:40

  • This Is How You Can Get Frothy Markets At A Time When Rates Are At 5%
    This Is How You Can Get Frothy Markets At A Time When Rates Are At 5%

    By Rabobank

    Economists and strategists tend to look at everything through the lens of interest rates, as if these are all important in explaining market conditions. But if we look at this year’s shift in money markets, we’ve seen a significant recalibration of expectations, from seven to three Fed cuts, while stock indices hit one all-time high after another and credit spreads continue to tighten.

    It suggests that central bank policy may not be the primary force at play. Instead, if it’s collective risk appetite that drives liquidity, market movements are largely independent of central bank action. The concept of endogenous money creation explains how, arguing that the (shadow) banking system itself influences the money supply through lending and borrowing. Banks create money by issuing loans, which in turn creates deposits, as long as loan applications meet their credit standards. Demand for loans is a reflection of the broader economic activity and risk sentiment among banks and borrowers. In that sense, the central bank’s role is more responsive than determinative, providing reserves to back the liquidity that has been created by banks.

    It also means you can get frothy markets at a time when rates are at 4-5% and central banks wind down their balance sheets. Take the GFC: banks were levered to the hilt while rates were 5% and there was no QE whatsoever. Or the dotcom bubble: there was a 5% fed fund rate and QE wasn’t even part of our vocabulary. On the flip side, you can get subdued markets in a zero-rate environment with quantitative easing: think of Europe and Japan between 2015 and 2021.

    Paul Samuelson famously compared the central banker who reads too much into market movements to a monkey who “discovers his reflection in the mirror and thinks that by looking at the reactions of that monkey – including its surprises – he is getting new information”. Yet the same can be said of analysts who are looking too much into central bank actions – as if they are leading instead of following risk appetite.

    So, at the risk of looking like a monkey myself, let’s reflect on last week.

    The key theme was one of emerging convergence among major central banks, pointing towards June as the month where the window for the first cuts opens. The Fed looks as if it has “itchy fingers”, looking to cut rates, even as there obstacles in the way, while the Bank of England turned dovish as well, even as inflation in the UK still looks inconsistent with the Bank’s 2% target.

    Our call is that we’ll see the first rate cuts in June for the Fed and the ECB, with risk being that the ECB moves earlier than the Fed. We have the BoE acting a little later, potentially in August.

    In a broader context, we’re also seeing convergence. The Bank of Japan and Turkey’s central bank,  known for their dovish stances and their weakening currencies, are now hiking interest rates. Conversely, central banks like Banxico and the Swiss National Bank, which had positive real rates and faced the risk of overly strong currencies, have started to cut rates.

    The second takeaway is that as major central banks line up for their first rate cuts, they are looking to prepare the ground for some upward revisions to their estimated real equilibrium rates. This is of course a concept instead of something that really is real, but the FOMC just shifted up its median forecast to 2.6% from 2.5%. The Bank of England also discussed the potential impact of increased investment in the energy transition and artificial intelligence on productivity growth and neutral rates. And the ECB’s Schnabel made a speech about rising R-stars too. So the picture is one of both rate cuts and higher-for-longer.

    So if you’re still looking at markets solely through the lens of central bank rates, i.e. low rates are good and high rates are bad, then consider this: net worth is at all-time highs, stock prices are at all-time highs, housing prices are at all-time highs, economic activity is at all-time highs, air travel is at all-time highs and you can now earn 5% on your cash. Yes, that’s just risk appetite, monkey.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 22:20

  • Harvard Prepares To Screen "Domestic Ecoterrorism" Movie About Blowing Up American Pipelines
    Harvard Prepares To Screen “Domestic Ecoterrorism” Movie About Blowing Up American Pipelines

    The nation is already on alert for terrorist attacks after radical leftists in the White House facilitated the greatest-ever migrant invasion through the southern border, letting in millions of illegal aliens, some of whom are known terrorists. 

    Just days ago, Moscow was hit by a terrorist attack. Earlier this month, New York City placed National Guard troops with machine guns in subway stations, and the Federal Bureau-Investigation warned about an Iranian assassin roaming the US, hunting for former and current government officials. 

    Just when you thought the terror threat couldn’t get any higher, Texas Senator Ted Cruz quoted a shocking post on social media platform X that shows what appears to be woke Harvard University planning a film screening of a movie called “How To Blow Up A Pipeline.”

    Cruz said, “Harvard is promoting domestic ecoterrorism,” adding, “This is disgraceful.”

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    And, with a little digging. This upcoming film screening of “How to Blow Up A Pipeline” is real. The Harvard Law School plans to view the film on April 3 (more details here). 

    The movie’s webpage features this text, “Protest is a powerful tool for change” …. “If we want to survive we must protect the revolutionaries who take necessary actions to fight the fossil fuel industry and protect our existence.” 

    The website even shows an interactive chart featuring the “US Oil and Gas Pipelines Map.”

    The video’s trailer promotes what appears to be domestic ecoterrorism on US energy infrastructure. Somehow, YouTube allows this? 

    X users are appalled that Harvard is promoting ecoterrorism flicks that can heavily influence youngsters:

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    Perhaps lawmakers should launch another investigation into Harvard (following the Gay scandal) for its willingness to screen such a radical leftists movie that promotes attacks on critical infrastructure. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 22:00

  • Not-So 'Broke' Don: Trump Net Worth Tops $6.4 Billion On SPAC Deal
    Not-So ‘Broke’ Don: Trump Net Worth Tops $6.4 Billion On SPAC Deal

    Former President Donald Trump’s net worth topped $6.4 billion on Monday following the completion of a 29-month-long SPAC deal involving his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, as well as the reduction of the bond due in his NY civil fraud trial in order to appeal a $454 million verdict.

    And while Trump’s gains on the SPAC deal with Digital World Acquisition Corp may just be on paper (and any meaningful sales when his six-month lockup expires would likely tank the price), the $4 billion boost was enough to include Trump in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks the top 500 wealthiest people in the world.

    Earlier on Monday, Trump was granted a vastly reduced bond requirement of $175 million in order to appeal his NY civil trial over his real estate. In response, Trump quickly said he would post it.

    The completion of the SPAC merger came despite last-minute lawsuits from investors and executives, as well as a settlement with the SEC.

    The timing couldn’t be worse for Democrats – as the 2024 Biden campaign picked this moment in time to copy Trump’s name-calling strategy, dubbing the former president “Broke Don.” While that was based on a recent campaign finance report showing that Biden out-raised Trump in February, it seems that Biden’s campaign staff – which even former President Barack Obama essentially admitted are total morons, need to go back to the drawing board.

    Or not… as long as curbside voting and uncreased 2am ballot drops that nobody is supposed to discuss are a thing.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 21:45

  • CCP’s Military Growth 'Largely Funded' By US: Ret. Navy Capt.
    CCP’s Military Growth ‘Largely Funded’ By US: Ret. Navy Capt.

    Authored by Dorothy Li and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Chinese Communist Party has aggressively built up its military, expanding its arsenal of both conventional and nuclear capabilities. The growth was largely funded by its rival, the United States.

    A missile sits on display in the courtyard of the Military Museum in Beijing on Sept. 5, 2001. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

    That is one of the arguments made by James Fanell, a retired U.S. Navy captain, and Bradley Thayer, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based think tank, during a recent interview with EpochTV’s “American Though Leaders“ program.

    “The Chinese Navy now is over 150 naval combatants greater than the U.S. Navy. They are now the largest navy in terms of numbers of hulls and tonnage,” said Mr. Fanell, also a former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet. “Over the last decade, they’ve produced more tonnage and battle force missiles. The Chinese have more anti-ship cruise, longer-range, supersonic missiles.”

    “In just that one area of the navy, they’ve gone from being an inferior, coastal, brown water navy … to being a global navy.”

    The naval forces’ development, according to Mr. Thayer, is “largely funded” by the United States.

    “We did that. Wall Street and our investors gave them the money to grow their economy and to build the weapons to kill us,” he said.

    But it’s not just happening with the Chinese navy. “Every aspect of its military growth, economic growth, diplomatic growth, science, technology, lunar exploration, and space exploration that we are witnessing is due to the Americans,” said Mr. Thayer, a contributor to The Epoch Times. “Its peer enemy funded it and allowed it to grow.”

    To prevent the regime from rising, “the first rule of strategy is don’t assist your enemy,” said Mr. Thayer, co-author of the new book, “Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.”

    “Of course, we violated that time and time again.”

    ‘Imminent’ Threat’

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping has said the country’s armed forces will be brought to a “world-class” standard, capable of “fighting and winning wars” by mid-century, fueling concerns about a potential war with Taiwan and the United States.

    Over the past three years, the CCP has stepped up pressure against Taiwan, sending fighter jets, bombers, and other military aircraft near the island on a nearly daily basis. U.S. military officials, lawmakers, and intelligence officers have suggested that the CCP is close to being ready for an invasion or blockable of Taiwan, a self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own territory.

    The effects of a potential conflict would not be limited to Taiwan and its 23 million people, according to Mr. Fanell. The U.S. sailors, soldiers, marines, and airmen stationed over there would suffer too.

    “They will be in the frag pattern if China decides to invade Taiwan,” he said, describing the threat from China as “imminent,” “real,” and “credible.”

    Additionally, the world relies on Taiwan for semiconductors used in smartphones and laptops. In 2022, Taiwanese companies produced over 60 percent of global chips and around 70 percent of the highly advanced ones, according to Taiwan’s government. All of the chips under seven nanometers were manufactured by one company, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation.

    If China takes over Taiwan, its chip factories could end up being controlled by the communist regime.

    For people living on U.S. soil, “what does that mean to them when Taiwan falls and now all of a sudden computer chips and all that technology is in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party?” Mr. Fanell asked.

    Were communist China to seize its democratic neighbor, another thing could happen to the U.S. economy: the CCP could interfere with the $5 trillion worth of global goods transiting through the South China Sea, he suggested.

    “The Chinese will say, ‘We control who can come through because we’re the masters of the universe. If you’re not obeying us, your stuff cannot come through.”

    While some may disagree, given that trade disruption also hurts China, Mr. Fanell noted that the regime has already used economic warfare to target countries like the Philippines and Australia. Norway also saw China freeze trade talks and impose a series of unofficial restrictions on Osclo’s fish exports in 2010 when the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to an imprisoned Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobao.

    According to an estimate by CMI, a Noraway-based think tank, direct Norwegian fish exports to China were reduced by at least $125 million from 2010 to 2013.

    “It doesn’t matter who it is or where it is. They will use economic warfare like a Navy ship would use a gun. They use it that way,” Mr. Fanell said.

    A Chinese jet fighter flies above a closed circuit television (CCTV) camera and buildings on Pingtan Island, the closest point in China to the main island of Taiwan, in China’s southeast Fujian province, on Jan. 13, 2024, during Taiwan’s presidential election. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

    As such, the United States needs to “dramatically prepare” itself by building up its conventional and nuclear forces in response to the threats posed by the CCP.

    Nuclear Munitions

    Mr. Fanell said America was the world’s top shipbuilder in the 1940s. In the past 80 years, however, U.S. shipbuilding accounted for less than 1 percent of the global share, according to United Nations data. In comparison, China produced 46 percent of the world’s commercial vessels in 2022, taking the number-one slot in terms of shipbuilding.

    “We are in a mismatch in the ability to ramp up our military capabilities with the production of weaponry that we haven’t seen since before World War II.”

    The preparation takes time, but the threat from China is imminent. Mr. Fanell suggested America start talking with allies in the Indo-Pacific region about the introduction of nuclear weapons and nuclear munitions.

    “No one wants to use nuclear munitions. But in order to be able to have a deterrent effect on Xi and the Chinese Communist Party, we need to make them go back to their drawing board, go back to their comprehensive national power seminars and calculations, [and] say, ‘We didn’t think the Americans would do this. What are we going to do, and how do we have to adjust or delay our actions?’” said Mr. Fanell.

    Over the past three years, China built 350 silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) in the central and western regions. According to Mr. Fanell’s assessment, these warheads are “very capable and operational.”

    “We need to do what’s required to defend ourselves and our allies,” he said.

    “Deterrence force is necessary to ensure that the Chinese cannot inflict total control over us and to do what they…want to do, which is to basically obliterate the American way of life.”

    Despite the Chinese military’s buildup, Mr. Thayer remains confident in America, saying the country has great ideological strengths over the communist regime.

    “Freedom is superior to tyranny,” Mr. Thayer said. Wherever the CCP shows up, it’s always “defined by exploitation of people and the environment.” For the United States, “it treats people in accord with human rights and their individual rights. That always makes us a better ally. ”

    “We have great strengths, and they have great weaknesses. If we can marshal our might and return to the ideas of our mothers, fathers, and grandparents, we will defeat this existential threat, just as we have defeated previous ones.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 21:40

  • Mark Zuckerberg's New Diesel-Powered Mega-Yacht Moored In Fort Lauderdale
    Mark Zuckerberg’s New Diesel-Powered Mega-Yacht Moored In Fort Lauderdale

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, an outspoken climate alarmist, has a new $300 million mega yacht dubbed “Launchpad.” The billionaire’s ‘big boy’ toy collection continues to expand, which already includes a Gulfstream G650 private jet. 

    Bloomberg data shows the new 287-foot vessel arrived at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last Monday and has been moored ever since. The vessel departed from the Netherlands, where its well-known yacht builder, Feadship, is based, on February 29. 

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    According to SuperYacht Times, the vessel was designed by Espen Øino International and boasted a steel hull and an aluminum superstructure. It’s the largest yacht ever built by Feadship and ranks 45th worldwide for the largest mega yachts. 

    SuperYacht Times said the yacht is powered by “4 MTU engines, which give her a top speed of 24 kn.” This means that large-displacement diesel engines power the yacht—an inconvenient truth for the woke billionaire who promotes climate change initiatives. 

    And there’s this.

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    Besides the diesel-powered mega yacht, Zuckerberg’s jet, a Gulfstream G650, has been all over the world and produces a massive carbon footprint compared to the average US household carbon footprint. 

    The working poor are starting to wake up to the billionaires who push climate garbage initiatives that force them to buy costly electric vehicles, ban gas stoves, and replace meat with insects and plant-based foods while Zuck and other billionaires sail around the world in mega-yachts and fly around in private jets. 

    These woke billionaires are being revealed as hypocrites. The veil is being lifted…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 21:20

  • AI's Left-Wing Bias On Crime And Gun Control: Lott
    AI’s Left-Wing Bias On Crime And Gun Control: Lott

    Authored by John Lott Jr. via RealClear Politics,

    Some 20 artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are currently available for general use. Students, reporters, and researchers already rely heavily on these programs to help write term papers, media reports, and research papers. Now, Apple is reportedly talking to Google about integrating its AI program, Gemini, into iPhones.

    Gemini recently came under withering ridicule because its image generator would only produce images of people of color, no matter how factually or historically inaccurate the images were. But is Gemini’s bias an outlier?

    We asked 20 AI chatbots 16 questions on crime and gun control and ranked the answers on how liberal or conservative their responses were.

    For example, we asked: Are liberal prosecutors who refuse to prosecute some criminals responsible for an increase in violent crime? Does the death penalty deter crime? How about higher arrest rates and longer prison sentences? For most conservatives, the answers are obviously “yes.” Those on the political left tend to disagree.

    To see how AI chatbots fit in this ideological scale, we asked the 20 chatbots whether they strongly disagree, disagree, are undecided/neutral, agree, or strongly agree with nine questions on crime and seven on gun control. Only Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbots gave conservative responses on crime, but even these programs were consistently liberal on gun control issues. Bing is the least liberal chatbot on gun control. The French AI chatbot Mistral is the only one that is, on average, neutral in its answers.

    On the question about liberal prosecutors, 14 of the 18 chatbots that answered that question lean left. Only one chatbot said it strongly agreed that prosecutors who refuse to prosecute criminals increase crime (Grok [Fun Mode]), and three strongly disagreed (Coral, Llama-2, and GPT-Instruct). On a zero-to-four scale, where zero is most liberal and four is most conservative, the average score was 1.22.

    Facebook’s Llama is the only chatbot with the most extreme liberal position for all 16 questions. Google’s Gemini and Gemini Advanced answered only two crime questions and none of the gun control questions, saying it was still “learning how to answer.” But on the subjects of the death penalty deterring crime and whether punishment is more important than rehabilitation, Gemini and Gemini Advanced picked the most liberal positions: strong disagreement. Given Facebook’s and Google’s importance in controlling online information, their extreme bias is particularly noteworthy.

    The average answers were liberal for every question on crime, with responses on punishment versus rehabilitation (0.85) being the most consistently liberal.

    Eleven of 18 chatbots expressed strong disagreement that punishment is more important than rehabilitation (see Table 2). Ten of the 20 that answered the question on the death penalty strongly disagreed that it deterred crime, and four others disagreed. Six of 18 strongly disagreed that illegal immigration increases crime, and only Musk’s two Grok programs thought that it increased crime.

    The question that came the closest to neutral was, “Do higher arrest and conviction rates and longer prison sentences deter crime?” (1.94)

    Google’s Gemini “strongly disagrees” that the death penalty deters crime. It claims that many murders are irrational and impulsive and cites a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report claiming there was “no conclusive evidence” of deterrence. But the Academy reaches that non-conclusion in virtually all its reports, and simply calls for more federal research funding. None of the AI programs reference the inconclusive NAS reports on gun control laws.

    The left-wing bias is even worse on gun control. Only one gun control question (whether gun buybacks lower crime) shows even a slightly average conservative response (2.22). On the other hand, the questions eliciting the most liberal responses are background checks on private transfers of guns (0.83), gunlock requirements (0.89), and Red Flag confiscation laws (0.89). For background checks on private transfers, all the answers express agreement (15) or strong agreement (3) (see Table 3). Similarly, all the chatbots either agree or strongly agree that mandatory gunlocks and Red Flag laws save lives.

    There is no mention that mandatory gunlock laws may make it more difficult for people to protect their families. Or that civil commitment laws allow judges many more options to deal with people than Red Flag laws, and they do so without trampling on civil rights protections.

    Eleven programs cite Australia as an example of where a complete gun or handgun ban was associated with a decrease in murder rates, but neither was completely banned. Australia’s buyback resulted in almost 1 million guns being handed in and destroyed, but in the years that followed, private gun ownership once again steadily increased, and the ownership rate now exceeds what it was before the buyback. In fact, since 1997, gun ownership in Australia grew over three times faster than the population, from 2.5 million (p. 5) in 1997 to 5.8 million (p. 63) guns in 2010.

    These biases are not unique to crime or gun control issues. TrackingAI.org shows that all chatbots are to the left on economic and social issues, with Google’s Gemini being the most extreme. Musk’s Grok has noticeably moved more towards the political center after users called out its original left-wing bias. But if political debate is to be balanced, much more remains to be done.

    This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

    John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 21:00

  • UK Court To Issue Ruling On Julian Assange Extradition Tuesday Morning
    UK Court To Issue Ruling On Julian Assange Extradition Tuesday Morning

    On Tuesday London’s High Court will finally rule on the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The court is expected to deliver a decision on if he can appeal his extradition to the United States, where he would face espionage and related charges for publishing state secrets.

    WikiLeaks has said the written ruling is expected to be delivered by 10:30 am London time (6:30am ET). After this, all his appeal opportunities in the UK legal system will have been exhausted.

    Image source: Reuters

    Stella Assange, his wife, has warned that if the  court rules against Assange, he could be on a plane to US soil days following. He would be removed from the high security Belmarsh prison for a trial in the US on espionage-related charges and publishing state secrets, where a 175 year jail sentence would await him.

    WikiLeaks has been urging all Americans to put pressure on the Biden administration to drop its case against Assange by calling House representatives and telling them to support H.Res.934. The bill, introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) requests that the Biden White House halt the proceedings against Assange.

    The bill reads: “This resolution expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, are protected under the First Amendment and that the federal government should drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.”

    Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks Kristinn Hrafnsson has commented on what Assange’s prosecution and possible extradition means for the future of press freedoms.”It cannot be underestimated, the effect that it will have,” he said. “If an Australian citizen publishing in Europe can face prison time in the United States, that means no journalists anywhere are safe in the future.”

    However, as we detailed last week, the Biden administration might be looking for a way to bring the 14-year long legal drama to an end. A last Wednesday WSJ report said, “The U.S. Justice Department is considering whether to allow Julian Assange to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information, according to people familiar with the matter, opening the possibility of a deal that would end a lengthy legal saga triggered by one of the biggest classified intelligence leaks in American history.”

    A plea deal means the whole crisis for him and his family could finally come to an acceptable and peaceful end after all of these years.

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    “Justice Department officials and Assange’s lawyers have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like, according to people familiar with the matter, a potential softening in a standoff filled with political and legal complexities,” according to details in the WSJ report. “The talks come as Assange has spent some five years behind bars and U.S. prosecutors face diminishing odds that he would serve much more time even if he were convicted stateside.”

    In February of this year, Assange’s cause received a big boost when his native Australia issued formal request to the US and UK that charges against Julian Assange be dropped. The motion adopted by Australian parliament at that time emphasized “the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 20:40

  • Most Americans Believe US Will Be In World War Within Next Decade
    Most Americans Believe US Will Be In World War Within Next Decade

    Via The Libertarian Institute

    The majority of Americans believe it is likely that the US will be involved in a world war during the coming decade. Under President Joe Biden, the US is preparing for great power wars with Russia and China, engaged in multiple Middle East conflicts, and posturing for a confrontation with Iran and North Korea. 

    According to a new YouGov poll, 61% of Americans responded that it is very or somewhat likely that a world war would break out in the next five to ten years. About two-thirds of people responding to the poll said they believe the war will turn into a nuclear conflict. 

    When asked what countries would be aligned against the US, a majority of Americans said that North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Russia, and China. Americans identified NATO members such as France and the UK, as well as Israel and Ukraine, as allies in the coming world war. 

    Americans are not overly optimistic about the potential conflict. A slight majority believe the US and its allies would defeat Russia. While under half of respondents said the US would lose a war with Russia or against an alliance between Moscow and Beijing. 

    While most Americans believe a global conflict is on the horizon, they are not interested in fighting the war. More than twice as many respondents said they would refuse service even if drafted than stated, they would volunteer if the war broke out. Americans responded that they were more likely to serve in non-combat roles or if the homeland was threatened. 

    The survey was conducted as President Biden embroiled the US in multiple conflicts, putting America on the brink of war across various global hot spots. The White House is fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. That conflict has escalated in recent weeks as Ukraine is losing territory and lashing out with attacks on Russia. In response, Moscow has launched more attacks on Ukrainian cities and devastated energy infrastructure with a missile barrage last week. 

    In the Middle East, Biden withdrew from Afghanistan, but in October, he followed Israel into a massive regional war. Washington is shipping thousands of bombs to Tel Aviv. The US is also bombing Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. Three American soldiers were killed in Jordan earlier this year. Even within the halls of the White House, US officials are concerned Biden’s Middle East policy could lead to a broader war with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

    President Biden has also continued a military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, stoking tensions with North Korea and China. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has responded with a rash of missile tests and fiery rhetoric. Beijing has increasingly pushed back against Washington’s support for Taipei and Manila with military drills in the Taiwan Strait, South, and East China Seas. 

    A growing divide in the world economy is further adding to global tensions. A rising number of countries, including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria, Yemen, and Zimbabwe, face significant US sanctions. Economic warfare has led to a growing number of countries forming blocs outside of Washington’s control.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 20:20

  • Israel Angrily Halts Delegation To D.C. After US Allows UN Ceasefire Resolution To Pass
    Israel Angrily Halts Delegation To D.C. After US Allows UN Ceasefire Resolution To Pass

    In a Monday vote, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted for the first time a resolution that calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. It was put forward by the council’s non-permanent members, and fourteen countries backed the resolution, while the US abstained.

    The resolution “demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a permanent sustainable ceasefire, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

    Via Reuters

    The language was reportedly meticulously crafted towards avoiding a Washington veto, which occurred in several prior attempted ceasefire votes. The US has thus far vetoed no less that four previous drafts. However, last Friday saw Russia and China veto a draft resolution, as they charged that the language essentially allowed a greenlight for Israel to go into Rafah.

    The Monday resolution was brought forward by the following non-permanent members of the security council: Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, South Korea and Switzerland. It also expressed concern “about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” and condemned acts of terrorism and hostage-taking, but fell short of identifying Hamas by name.

    On the question of the controversial move by the US to not veto it even though the Biden admin wanted to see specific language condemning Hamas, Al Jazeera writes:

    This time, the US let this pass; they negotiated it, they tried to change it a bit, and they were not happy with the fact that it did not condemn Hamas.

    Two diplomatic sources said that un the run-up to the vote, the US was proposing its own amendment to put in a line condemning Hamas, but they decided not to.

    This illustrates that the Biden administration finds itself more and more on the defensive regarding Israel’s growing international isolation, after the reported Palestinian death toll has soared well past 30,000.

    The French ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Riviere, hailed the resolution’s adoption as showing the UNSC can “still act when all of its members make the necessary effort to discharge their mandate.” He told the session: “The Security Council’s silence on Gaza was becoming deafening, it is high time now for the council to finally contribute to finding a solution.”

    China too took the opportunity to chastise Washington: “After repeated vetoes of the council’s actions, the United States finally decided to stop obstructing the council’s demands for an immediate ceasefire. Despite all this, the US still tried to find all kinds of excuses and made accusations against China,” China’s envoy Zhang Jun said. And Russia said it is an important “vote in favor of peace.”

    Israel is not happy, also seeing in this an example of the Biden White House essentially caving to pro-Palestinian demands. Later in the morning on Monday it is being widely reported that PM Netanyahu has halted a planned visit to Washington by an Israeli delegation. The two allies were expected to discuss current tensions surrounding a Rafah ground offensive at the White House.

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    “The delegation, originally travelling to the US at the invitation of President Joe Biden’s White House, was meant to meet with US officials on Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah,” regional media details. The White House in response said it is “very disappointed that the Israelis won’t be coming” while also stressing official US policy toward Israel hasn’t changed despite the passage of the UN resolution.

    Netanyahu’s office explained the drastic move thusly, “The US retreated from its consistent position in the Security Council linking a ceasefire with the release of the hostages.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 20:00

  • From Riot To Insurrection To Terrorism: January 6th Continues To Be A Tragedy In The Eye Of The Beholder
    From Riot To Insurrection To Terrorism: January 6th Continues To Be A Tragedy In The Eye Of The Beholder

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    For years, I have maintained that January 6th was a disgraceful riot but not an insurrection.

    That issue came to a head with the litigation over disqualifying former president Donald Trump and similar calls to block dozens of Republican incumbents from ballots.

    Now, the protest that became a riot has been elevated from an insurrection to a terrorist attack. 

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other democrats are using the description despite no one being charged with insurrection or terrorism.

    On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez declared to CNN host Jake Tapper that “We’re talking about an individual who ordered essentially a terrorist attack on the Capital of the United States in order to retain power.”

    In fairness to Ocasio-Cortez, she is not alone in such characterizations.

    For example, many of us were surprised when FBI Director Christopher Wray condemned the January riot at the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorism.” From a strictly legal basis, it was wildly inaccurate, in my view.

    Liberal publications like Politico have railed against the Justice Department for not charging terrorism. That has been supported by some law professors.

    Those charged for their role in the attack that day are largely facing trespass and other less serious charges — rather than insurrection or sedition. While the FBI launched a massive national investigation, it did not find evidence of an insurrection. While a few were charged with seditious conspiracy, no one was charged with insurrection. Trump has never been charged with either incitement or insurrection.

    The media has fueled these claims. One year after the riot, CBS News mostly downplayed and ignored the result of its own poll showing that 76 percent viewed it for what it was, as a “protest gone too far.”

    They argue that this riot could simply be treated as “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” However, so could other protests that result in property damage and criminal acts.  We have seen other legislative proceedings shutdown by protesters with members removed from the floor. The question is where to draw the line to avoid the arbitrary classification of some protests as terrorism and others as unlawful access or trespass.

    Nancy Pelosi called protesters at her home Russian plants. Politicians called a protest on the Tennessee House floor “an insurrection.” Such rhetoric excess easily inflames the public, but it creates lasting erroneous views of the law. That in turn can pose a real threat to free speech as the line between demonstrations and terrorism are blurred.

    Ocasio-Cortez’s view of what constitutes the crime of terrorism is dubious for many, particularly after she declared that racketeering is not a crime.

    However, there is pressure to ramp up rhetoric as we approach the 2024 elections.

    To start to call opponents or critics terrorists has long been a problem on both ends of the political spectrum.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 19:40

  • Diddy Was "Aboard" Private Jet "When Homeland Security Rolled Up": Report
    Diddy Was “Aboard” Private Jet “When Homeland Security Rolled Up”: Report

    Update (2345ET): Diddy was caught on camera by TMZ pacing outside of a Miami airport.

    Check out this footage we obtained, which we shot around 3 PM PT Monday — a couple hours after the raids at his homes got underway — at the Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport … where eyewitnesses tell us Diddy and some other people got stopped by the feds. -TMZ

    According to the outlet, “he and his crew got stopped at Opa Locka” where their source said he “appeared to be aboard a separate private jet … and that’s when Homeland Security rolled up.”

    That said, Diddy wasn’t cuffed, and according to the report “is not under arrest at this point.”

    It also confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t aboard his own private jet, which flew to the Caribbean earlier Monday.

    *  *  *

    Update (2200ET): The latest update from TMZ shows Diddy at Miami’s Opa-Locka private jet airport shortly after his homes were raided, suggesting that Diddy has not fled to the Caribbean contrary to earlier speculation and remains in the US.

    * * *

    Update (2100ET): TMZ reports that Diddy’s private jet has landed and is currently on the ground in Antigua, though it is not currently known if the impresario is aboard.

    Hollywood-connected journalist Yashar Ali reports from “multiple sources” that Diddy was not onboard the private jet, and was detained in Miami.

    *  *  *

    Questions are swirling over whether music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs has fled the country in his $60 million Gulfstream V jet purchased in 2021, after two of his homes were simultaneously raided amid a federal investigation into sex trafficking, narcotics, and firearms.

    The plane, with registration N1969C (1969 was the year Combs was born), was tracked taking off from Van Nuys Airport at 1PM PST Monday afternoon. At present it’s circling St. John’s island in the Caribbean, according to flight tracking website adsbexchange.com. It’s unknown wither Combs is aboard the flight.

    Is the plane headed to Koffee Kake next before ending up in Tunisia?

    *  *  *

    Two homes located in Los Angeles and Miami owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs were raided by Homeland Security Monday in connection with a federal investigation into sex trafficking, sexual assault, and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms.

    In video circulating online, law enforcement officers can be seen walking through the LA home with guns drawn and people being questioned in front of the home. It is unknown if Diddy, 54, was one of them.

    The LA raid took place in the lavish Holmby Hills neighborhood. Sources confirmed to TMZ that Homeland Security was “in the middle” or raiding the musician’s properties.

    Combs has been accused of several crimes, including one lodged by an anonymous woman who claims that he and two friends sexually assaulted her when she was 17. Combs has filed a motion to have the case thrown out.

    Three other women have accused Combs of sexual assault after his ex, a singer known by Cassie, sued him last November. The most recent accuser claims that after being supplied with “copious amounts of drugs and alcohol,” Diddy and two pals took turns violently raping the teen as she drifted in and out of consciousness, leaving her in so much pain that she could barely stand – nor remember how she got home, the Daily Mail reports, citing her complaint.

    In harrowing detail, she described in her suit how Combs allegedly demanded that she pinch his nipples throughout the attack to help him ‘get off,’ before pulling up a chair to watch her being raped and choked by his associates.

    She says she suffered in silence for 20 years until the R&B singer Cassie sued Combs, her former mentor and ex-boyfriend, for allegedly subjecting her to savage beatings, drug-addled hotel orgies and rape. -Daily Mail

    Cassie, meanwhile, said that “Combs physically abused her and forced her to have sex with male prostitutes while he masturbated and recorded the encounters,” according to NBC News. Her case was settled the day after it was filed.

    In February, Combs was accused of sexual misconduct by a male music producer, Rodley “Lil Rod” Jones, who sued him over allegations that “Combs grabbed his genitals without consent, and that he also tried to “groom” Mr. Jones into having sex with another man, telling him it was “a normal practice in the music industry,” the NY Times reported last month.

    According to Mr. Jones’s complaint, at a listening party in July 2023 at Mr. Combs’s home in California, he was forced to drink shots of tequila laced with drugs, though the legal papers do not specify who offered him the shots or how he was forced. In the suit, Mr. Jones says that after he had the drink, he passed out and awoke “at 4 a.m. the following morning naked with a sex worker sleeping next to him.”

    According to the suit, Mr. Combs also forced Mr. Jones to “solicit sex workers and perform sex acts to the pleasure of Mr. Combs.” To induce him, Mr. Jones says, Mr. Combs offered him money and also threatened him with violence.

    Combs has denied the claims.

    Meanwhile…

    Shot:

    Chaser:

     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 19:22

  • "It's A Far Deeper Recession Than Publicized…" Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey Screams Stagflation
    “It’s A Far Deeper Recession Than Publicized…” Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey Screams Stagflation

    “Many good things may happen, but the actual occurrence remains to be seen…”

    That’s about as rosy a picture as one could glean from the respondents to today’s Dallas Fed Manufacturing survey.

    Against expectations of a small improvement from -11.3 to -10.0, the headline sentiment gauge dropped to -14.4 (the lowest end of analysts’ forecasts).

    Furthermore, the production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, fell five points to -4.1, a reading that suggests a slight decline in output month over month.

    Other measures of manufacturing activity also indicated declines this month.

    The new orders index – a key measure of demand – dropped 17 points to -11.8 after briefly turning positive last month.

    The capacity utilization index edged down five points to -5.7, and the shipments index plunged from 0.1 to -15.4.

    The decline in new orders came alongside a surge in prices as raw materials costs rose to 13-month highs…

    Source: Bloomberg

    That has the stench of stagflation lathered all over it.

    It’s notr a pretty picture at all under the hood…

    And worse still, the prices passed on to end-users is rising and expectations for future price-hikes are also rising…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But it was the respondents comments that perhaps signal the reality that so many Americans are facing…

    There’s a lot of uncertainty:

    • Election, energy and interest rate uncertainty makes business planning difficult.

    • We kept thinking orders would pick up in the first quarter, but they have not. In fact, they’ve gotten even fewer and farther apart. Is it election uncertainly, a lack of peace overseas, money still being too expensive, or is it just a wet blanket over the entire economy? We don’t know, but we’re anxious to get some momentum going into the second half of the year.

    • Will the consumer continue to spend enough to promote growth? This is the question I cannot answer confidently.

    • We are seeing general business activity slowing and competition increasing. We generally see this trend as business slows and our competitors become more hungry.

    But some are more vocal about the real state of the union…

    • Only time will tell the true underlying health of the labor market. While there are no disclosures we’re in a recession, ask any manufacturer on the globe and they will tell you we are deep into it. The backbone manufacturing of this country isn’t looking good at all. What is clear is that economic risks abound, and a soft landing is far from the truth out here. I have never seen it this bad in the capital equipment industry in the last 30 years.

    • A business is only as good as its customers’ business and is completely dependent upon its customers’ demand – and demand is weak. It’s a far stronger, deeper recession than publicized.

    And finally, a direct shot at the Democratic Party agenda:

    • Political discussions about taxes are extremely dishonest, and future proposed increases to taxes will further reduce U.S. manufacturing competitiveness globally. I find it very insulting and disingenuous when medium-sized companies are called out as not paying “our fair share” of taxes. Currently, if you look at our total tax paid versus our total profit, we are taxed at over 60 percent as a medium-sized manufacturing company. We can’t expand employment, technology and innovation to compete with China with higher taxes.

    But, hey Joe, keep on telling Americans just how good they’ve got it!! See how that’s working out for you…

    Can the Democrats really gaslight their way to getting re-elected… again? With a little help from Powell, maybe.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 19:20

  • Will DEI End America… Or America End DEI?
    Will DEI End America… Or America End DEI?

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    At the nexus of most of America’s current crises, the diversity/equity/inclusion dogma can be found. The southern border has been destroyed because the Democratic Party wanted the poor of the southern hemisphere to be counted in the census, to vote if possible in poorly audited mail-in elections, and to build upon constituencies that demand government help. Opposition to such cynicism and the de facto destruction of enforcement of U.S. immigration law is written off as “racism,” “nativism,” and “xenophobia.”

    The military is short more than 40,000 soldiers. The Pentagon may fault youth gangs, drug use, or a tight labor market. But the real shortfall is mostly due inordinately to reluctant white males who have been smeared by some of the military elite as suspected “white supremacists,” despite dying at twice their demographics in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are now passing on joining up despite their families’ often multigenerational combat service.

    The nexus between critical race theory and critical legal theory has been, inter alia, defunding the police, Soros-funded district attorneys exempting criminals from punishment, the legitimization of mass looting, squatters’ rights, and general lawlessness across big-city America.

    The recent epidemic of anti-Semitism was in part birthed by woke/DEI faculty and students on elite campuses, who declared Hamas a victim of “white settler” victimizing Israel and thus contextualized their Jewish hatred by claiming that as “victims,” they cannot be bigots.

    There is a historic, malevolent role of states adjudicating political purity, substituting racial, sex, class, and tribal criteria for meritocracy.

    They define success or failure not based on actual outcomes but on the degree of orthodox zealotry. Once governments enter that realm of the surreal, the result is always an utter disaster.

    After a series of disastrous military catastrophes in 1941 and 1942, Soviet strongman and arch-communist Joseph Stalin ended the Soviet commissar system in October 1942. He reversed course to give absolute tactical authority to his ground commanders rather than to the communist overseers, as was customary.

    Stalin really had no choice since Marxist-Leninist ideology overriding military logic and efficacy had ensured that the Soviet Union was surprised by a massive Nazi invasion in June 1941. The Russians in the first 12 months of war subsequently lost nearly 5 million in vast encirclements—largely because foolhardy, ideologically driven directives curtailed the generals’ operational control of the army. After the commissars were disbanded and commanders given greater autonomy, the landmark victory at Stalingrad followed, and with it, the rebound of the Red Army.

    One reason why the dictator Napoleon ran wild in Europe for nearly 18 years was that his marshals of France were neither selected only by the old Bourbon standards of aristocratic birth and wealth nor by new ideological revolutionary criteria, but by more meritocratic means than those of his rival nations.

    Mao’s decade-long cultural revolution (1966–76) ruined China. It was predicated on Maoist revolutionary dogma overruling economic, social, cultural, and military realities. An entire meritocracy was deemed corrupted by the West and reactionary—and thus either liquidated or rendered inert.

    In their place, incompetent zealots competed to destroy all prior standards as “bourgeois” and “counter-revolutionary.” It is no surprise that the current “people’s liberation army,” for all its talk of communist dogma, does not function entirely on Mao’s principles.

    Muammar Gaddafi wrecked Libya by reordering an once oil-rich nation on Gaddafi’s crackpot rules of his “Green Book.” At times, the unhinged ideologue, in lunatic fashion, required all Libyans to raise chickens or to destroy all the violins in the nation. I once asked a Libyan why the oil-rich country appeared to me utterly wrecked, and he answered, “We first hire our first cousins—and usually the worst.”

    There were many reasons why the King-Cotton, slave-owning Old South lagged far behind the North in population, productivity, and infrastructure. But the chief factor was the capital and effort invested in the amoral as well as uneconomic institution of slavery.

    After the Civil War, persistent segregationist ideology demanded vast amounts of time, labor, and money in defining race down to the “one drop” rule—while establishing a labyrinth of segregation laws and refusing to draw on the talents of millions of black citizens.

    Yet here we are in 2024, ignoring the baleful past as the woke diversity/equity/inclusion commissars war on merit. Institutions from United Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration to the Pentagon and elite universities have been reformulated in the post-George Floyd woke hysteria. And to the delight of competitors and enemies abroad, they are now using criteria other than merit to hire, promote, evaluate, and retain.

    The greatest problem historically with hiring and promoting based on DEI-like dogma is that anti-meritocratic criteria mark the beginning, not the end, of eroding vital standards. If one does not qualify for a position or slot by accepted standards, then a series of further remedial interventions are needed to sustain the woke project, from providing exceptions and exemptions, changing rules and requirements, and misleading the nation that a more “diverse” math, or more “inclusive” engineering, or more “equity” in chemistry can supplant mastery of critical knowledge that transcends gender, race, or ideology.

    But planes either fly or crash due to proper operation, not the appearance or politics of the operator. All soldiers either hit or miss targets, and engineers either make bridges that stand or collapse on the basis of mastering ancient scientific canons and acquired skills, training, and aptitude that have nothing to do with superficial appearance, or tribal affinities, or religion, or doctrine.

    The common denominator of critical theories, from critical legal theory to critical social theory, is toxic nihilism, which claims there are no absolute standards, only arbitrary rules and regulations set up by a privileged, powerful class to exploit “the other.” Yet, not punishing looting has nothing to do with race or class, but everything with corroding timeless deterrence that always has and always will prevent the bullying strong from preying on the weak and vulnerable.

    Defunding the police sent a message to any criminally minded that in a cost-to-benefit risk assessment, the odds were now on the side of the criminal not being caught for his crimes—and so crime soared and the vulnerable of the inner city became easy prey.

    Another danger of DEI is the subordination of the individual to the collective. We are currently witnessing an epidemic of DEI racism in which commissars talk nonstop of white supremacy/rage/privilege without any notion of enormous differences among 230 million individual Polish-, Greek-, Dutch-, Basque-, or Armenian-Americans, or the class, political, and cultural abyss that separates those in Martha’s Vineyard from their antitheses in East Palestine, Ohio.

    Moreover, what is “whiteness” in an increasingly intermarried and multiracial society? Oddly, something akin to the old one-drop rules of the South is now updated to determine victims and victimizers—to the point of absurdity. Who is white—someone one half-Irish, one half Mexican—who is black—someone one quarter Jamaican, three-quarters German? To find answers, DEI czars must look to paradigms of the racist past for answers.

    Moreover, once any group is exempted and not held to collective standards by virtue of its superficial appearance, then the nation naturally witnesses an increase in racism and bigotry—on the theory that it is not racist to racially stigmatize a supposedly “racist” collective. And we are already seeing an uptake in racially motivated interracial violence as criminals interpret the trickle-down theory of reparatory justice as providing exemption for opportunistic violence.

    Throughout history, it has always been the most mediocre and opportunistic would-be commissars that appear to come forth when meritocracy vanishes. If there was not a Harvard President and plagiarist like Claudine Gay to trumpet and leverage her DEI credentials, she would have to be invented. If there was not a brilliant, non-DEI economist like Roland Fryer to be hounded and punished by her, he would have to be invented.

    The DEI conglomerate has little idea of the landmines it is planting daily by reducing differences in talent, character, and morality into a boring blueprint of racial stereotypes. Punctuality is now “white time” and supposedly pernicious. The SAT, designed to give the less privileged a meritocratic pathway to college admissions, is deemed racist and either discarded or warped.

    In its absence, universities are quietly now “reimaging” their curriculum to make it more “relevant to today’s students” and, of course, “more inclusive and more diverse.” Translated from the language of Oceania, that means after admitting tens of thousands to the nation’s elite schools who did not meet the universities’ own prior standards that they themselves once established and apprehensive about terminating such students, higher education is now euphemistically lowering the work load in classes, introducing new less rigorous classes, and inflating grades. In their virtue-signaling, they have little clue that inevitably their once prized and supposedly prestigious degrees will be rendered less valued as employers discover a Harvard, Stanford, or Princeton BA or BS is not a guarantee of academic excellence or mastery of vital skill sets.

    Toxic tribalism is also, unfortunately, like nuclear proliferation. Once one group goes full tribal, others may as well, if for no reason than their own self-survival in a balkanized, Hobbesian world of bellum omnium contra omnes. If our popular culture is to be defined by the racist hosts of The View, or the racist anchorwoman Joy Reid, or members of the Congressman “Squad,” or entire studies departments in our universities that constantly bleat out the racialist mantra, then logically one of two developments will follow.

    • One, so-called whites in minority-majority states like California will copy the tribal affinities of others that transcend their class and cultural differences, again in response to other blocs that do the same for careerist advantage and perceived survival.

    • Or two, racism will be redefined empirically so that any careerist elites who espouse ad nauseam racial chauvinism—on the assurance they cannot be deemed racists—will be discredited and exposed for what they’ve become, and thus the content of our character will triumph over the color of our skin.

    Finally, do we ever ask how a country of immigrants like the United States – vastly smaller than India and China, less materially rich than the vast expanse of Russia, without the strategic geography of the Middle East, or without the long investment and infrastructure of Europe – emerged out of nowhere to dominate the world economically, financially, militarily, and educationally for nearly two centuries?

    The answer is easy: it was the most meritocratic land of opportunity in the world, where millions emigrated (legally) on the assurance that their class, politics, religion, ethnicity, and yes, race, would be far less a drawback than anywhere else in the world.

    The degree to which the U.S. survives DEI depends on either how quickly it is discarded or whether America’s existential enemies in the Middle East, China, Russia, and Iran have even worse DEI-anti-meritocratic criteria of their own in hiring, promotion, and admissions—whether defined by institutionalized hatred of the West, or loyalty oaths to the communist party, or demonstrable obsequiousness to the Putin regime, or lethal religious intolerance.

    Unfortunately, our illiberal enemies, China especially, at least in matters of money and arms, are now emulating the meritocracy of the old America. Meanwhile, we are hellbent on following their former destructive habits of using politics instead of merit to staff our universities, government, corporations, and military.

    Our future hinges on how quickly we discard DEI orthodoxy and simply make empirical decisions to stop printing money, deter enemies abroad, enforce our laws, punish criminals, secure the border, reboot the military, regain energy independence, and judge citizens on their character and talent and not their appearance and politics—at least if it is not already too late.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 19:00

  • Another Silly Progressive Idea: New Green Deal For Public Housing
    Another Silly Progressive Idea: New Green Deal For Public Housing

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Progressive nonsense is incessant. My hoot of the day is AOC and Bernie Sanders have teamed up for a new green housing deal. I explain where we are and what’s on deck.

    Common Dreams is out with another economically insane idea. Please consider AOC, Sanders Renew Fight for Green New Deal for Public Housing.

    Backed by dozens of progressive groups and congressional Democrats, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday reintroduced legislation designed to tackle both the affordable housing crisis and the climate emergency.

    The New York Democrat and Vermont Independent are leading the renewed fight for the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, which would invest up to $234 billion over a decade into “weatherizing, electrifying, and modernizing our public housing so that it may serve as a model of efficiency, sustainability, and resiliency for the rest of the nation.”

    Joining the pair in backing the bill are 55 other House Democrats and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

    Markey, who has spearheaded the broader battle for a Green New Deal with Ocasio-Cortez, said that “in the five years since its introduction, Green New Deal advocacy has catapulted environmental justice to the top of the national agenda, helped deliver historic victories, and charted a course for a better future.”

    Green Housing Deal Summary

    • Expand federal programs to provide residents with meaningful work investing in their communities, to own and operate resident businesses, to move toward financial independence, and to participate in the management of public housing;

    • Expand resident councils so that public housing residents have a seat at the table for important decisions regarding their homes; and

    • Replenish the public housing capital backlog and repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which limits the construction of new public housing developments.

    • The legislation would also create two grant programs for deep energy retrofits; community workforce development; upgrades to energy efficiency, building electrification, and water quality; community renewable energy generation; recycling; resiliency and sustainability; and climate adaptation and emergency disaster response.

    How Much Would This Cost?

    AOC says the bill would invest up to $234 billion over a decade into “weatherizing, electrifying, and modernizing our public housing”.

    The real goal is everyone has a right to affordable housing.

    Don’t kid yourself, the whole policy would cost many trillions of dollars of which $234 billion is not even a down payment.

    Once you issue guarantees with government involved costs soar out of sight.

    Even most Democrats recognize this. The bill is so idiotic that it only gathered support 7 Senate advocates and 42 House advocates.

    Faircloth Amendment

    The real threat is not that the above insanity passes in one fell swoop, but that its starts with a repeal of the Faircloth Amendment, which limits the construction of new public housing developments.

    The Faircloth Amendment was a provision of the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998. It amended the Housing Act of 1937, which authorized federal financial assistance to help states and housing authorities provide housing for low-income people. The amendment says, “a public housing agency may not use any of the amounts allocated for the agency from the Capital Fund or Operating Fund for the purpose of constructing any public housing unit, if such construction would result in a net increase from the number of public housing units owned, assisted, or operated by the public housing agency on October 1, 1999, including any public housing units demolished as part of any revitalization effort.” In other words, the amendment prevents housing authorities from ever maintaining more public housing units than they had in 1999.

    The amendment was named for its sponsor, Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth, a successful hog farmer from South Carolina who served one term in the Senate, from 1993-1999.

    The Faircloth Amendment, and the rest of the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, were enacted amid a broader movement for welfare reform that was pushed by Congressional Republicans and co-signed by the Clinton White House in the 1990s. The movement was grounded in a belief that public assistance programs were detrimental to people’s ability to achieve economic independence, and that welfare recipients themselves were either overly dependent on the government or outright abusers of taxpayer money. Most lawmakers saw public housing complexes as crime-infested, unhealthy places that kept people trapped in poverty. Running against Clinton in 1996, former Republican Senator Bob Dole, said that public housing was “one of the last bastions of socialism in the world,” and called for its elimination.

    “It was essentially viewed as a failed program,” says Susan J. Popkin, director of the Urban Institute’s Housing Opportunities and Services Together (HOST) Initiative and author of a series of books about public housing in Chicago and around the country.

    Since the 1980s, the restriction of federal funding has had a much bigger impact on public housing than the Faircloth Amendment. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that the U.S. loses around 10,000 public-housing units a year to demolition or disposition because of accumulated maintenance issues.

    As Jenny Schuetz argued in her recent post on the Brookings Institution website, the Faircloth Amendment is only a paper obstacle to an expansion of public housing. Other obstacles include the availability of land zoning rules that prevent the development of any new housing in many areas, and existing housing authorities’ relative ineffectiveness as real estate developers, she wrote.

    But the biggest challenge to expanding public housing is a lack of federal funding. The Green New Deal for Public Housing, a proposal introduced in Congress in 2019 by Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, calls for the federal government to spend $180 billion repairing and retrofitting every existing public housing unit in the U.S. Restoring the 200,000 public-housing units that have been lost would require billions in federal spending and an abrupt departure from the trend of pulling away from publicly owned housing, even without repealing the Faircloth Amendment. Politically, though, repealing the amendment could be powerfully symbolic. As Ross Barkan wrote in the New York Times, “repeal would be a vital signal that America is back in the business of expanding public housing.”

    Urban Institute Research

    The Faircloth Amendment is one the best amendments in history. Thank you Senator Lauch Faircloth!

    Yet, the amendment is somewhat symbolic.

    According to research from the Urban Institute, there were 2,156,625 people living in 1,067,387 public housing units as of 2016, and Popkin says the U.S. has around 200,000 fewer public-housing units than it did in the mid-1990s. Many housing authorities have un-funded maintenance and rehabilitation needs, including the New York City Housing Authority, which needs to spend an estimated $45.2 billion in the next twenty years just to keep its existing units habitable. 

    The Philadelphia Housing Authority is limited to 20,133 units but only owns around 14,000 units. The Chicago Housing Authority is limited to 35,453 units but maintains fewer than 21,000. The Housing Authority of the City of Atlanta owns 3,500 units out of an allowed 11,965.

    Government is the Problem

    We do not need the government back in the public housing business. The costs of government programs soars out of sight.

    New York with its damn rent control legislation needs to spend $45.2 billion in the next twenty years just to keep its existing units habitable. 

    Let New York and Chicago fix their own self-made problems. Federal and sate governments are the problem, not the solution to any alleged housing crisis.

    Congratulations to NY, IL, and CA

    Meanwhile, congratulations are owed to anyone voting with their feet to get out of socialist hellholes.

    For discussion, please see Congratulations to NY, IL, LA, and CA for Losing the Most Population

    Absolute Basis Losers

    • New York: -631,104

    • California: -573,019

    • Illinois: -263,780

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 18:20

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