- Pink Slime Returns: Viral TikTok Video Exposes Disturbing Production Of Sliced Ham
Pink Slime Returns: Viral TikTok Video Exposes Disturbing Production Of Sliced Ham
By now, many Americans should be aware that at some point, they’ve unknowingly chowed down on “pink slime” meat. This culinary horror first rocked the pages of The New York Times in 2009 and several other times in recent years. We’ve noted “The Return Of Pink Slime” and “Is There Meat Glue In Your Food?” and “American Fast-Food Chains Use Seaweed, Soy, And Even Wood To Beef Up Menu Items.”
A study published in 2022 in the British medical journal, The BMJ, found processed and ultra-processed meats, such as ham, bacon, salami, hotdogs, beef jerky, and corned beef, can significantly increase men’s risk of colorectal cancer and other diseases and even increase early death in both men and women.
“We found that men in the highest quintile of ultra-processed food consumption, compared to those in the lowest quintile, had a 29% higher risk of developing colorectal cancer,” stated co-senior author Fang Fang Zhang, a leading cancer epidemiologist and the head of the nutrition epidemiology and data science division at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston.
The effects of ultra-processed foods are pretty obvious — look at the American people — morbidly obese and full of health problems. Knowing the health ramifications of the chemicals mega corporations put in the food should be a national priority — but it’s not.
While we don’t want to spoil dinner, the latest viral video of pink slime was posted on TikTok. It shows what appears to be a ham operation.
Over 20,000 users weighed in on the video, with the vast majority expressing concern about the country’s food supply and speculating on how the chemicals in processed foods might be harming them.
@thatafricanchick2 I dont want to believe this#😮#😳#ham#fake#food#blacktiktok#woah ♬ Breaking News – Breaking News https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js
Meanwhile, there’s this… Corporate America Bombards Black People With Junk Food Ads. Not ESG-friendly?
It may be time for some folks to realize their health problems are partly due to diet. Break the food matrix, find a local farm, and source food locally — or better, grow your own food. Isn’t it time to know what’s exactly in your food?
But don’t worry. Big corporations will solve the fat crisis with the newly created miracle fat drug.
Why aren’t ESG-ers going after companies producing processed and other junk foods?
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 23:20 - Beijing Soon Needs A Whatever-It-Takes Policy Move
Beijing Soon Needs A Whatever-It-Takes Policy Move
By George Lei and Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live reporters and strategist
China’s benchmark CSI 300 index surged 5.5% on Monday as authorities unveiled a slew of supportive measures, including a reduction of the stamp duty. By the end of the session, the efforts had fallen flat with investors and the gauge had pared its gain to just 1.2%.
That price action suggests Beijing urgently needs to make a “whatever-it-takes” move — similar to the ECB’s open-ended commitments to saving the common currency in 2011 — or else risks further asset weakness.
The CSI 300 index’s early rally of as much as 5.5% sputtered during the session, with the gauge closing just 1.2% higher. That’s quite the rarity: There have been only three past occasions since 2004 when the equity index soared over 5 percentage points and then pared the gain by 4 percentage points.
Two of those episodes occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis. One happened in 2015 when China’s stock bubble burst. While history shows that the gauge often recovered in the week and month after such volatility, the index fell over the following 60 days in two of the three past instances.
The government has previously delivered massive stimulus to shore up not just financial markets, but also the real economy. During the 2008-2009 crisis, Beijing launched a 4-trillion yuan ($548 billion) spending package. And a program where the PBOC provided cash for policy lenders to finance urban renewal helped turn around a slumping property market in 2015. This time, however, a solution appears to be trickier.
Beijing has stepped up its efforts over the past weekend to lift stocks and rescue the property market, according to Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura. Still, “the impact will be short-lived if these measures are not followed by measures for supporting the real economy,” he warned in a client note on Monday. In fact, Hong Kong-based investors have turned into net sellers of onshore Chinese equities throughout August, in contrast to a couple days of brief inflows in late July following positive signals from the politburo meeting.
Forecasts for China’s 2023 and 2024 GDP have been slashed on Wall Street over the past few weeks. The world’s second largest economy now risks missing Beijing’s own growth target for a second straight year and could expand at a sub-5% pace for three years in a row — something unheard of since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The sheer scale of the challenge calls for unprecedented policy actions, akin to the Fed’s commitment to purchasing “unlimited amounts of Treasury bonds” in March 2020 or Mario Draghi’s famous line 11 years ago: “The ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro.”
Beijing’s responses have so far been underwhelming and investors are keeping their hopes low after repeated disappointments over the past few years. A Bloomberg MLIV survey of 455 respondents found only 11% look forward to “really big, bazooka-like” stimulus, while more than half expect moderate steps that target specific industries. In a Bank of America survey two weeks ago, only 3% of those polled saw a stronger yuan in the next three months as a result of “policy stimulus restoring growth momentum.” If Beijing cannot surprise investors amid such a low threshold of expectations, Chinese markets are probably headed for further selloffs.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 23:00 - Watch: Robo-Forklifts That Can't Get Sick Nor Unionize Hit Warehouse Floors
Watch: Robo-Forklifts That Can’t Get Sick Nor Unionize Hit Warehouse Floors
By the 2030s, or even sooner, robots might dominate warehouses, displacing millions of jobs. In the latest wave of automation advancements, a Japanese tech firm has just unveiled a self-driving forklift.
Japan’s only public broadcaster (NHK) said NEC Corporation developed an industrial forklift powered by AI that allows intelligent, real-time decisions, delivering materials on the warehouse floor to the right place at the right time.
“Of these, NEC developed a system that makes forklifts automatically operate, and is characterized by the fact that it can be operated unmanned by attaching cameras and sensors later,” NHK said.
NEC said the goal of the robot forklift is to “alleviate the labor shortage in the logistics field and reviewing long working hours, and plans to put it into practical use next fiscal year.”
“I want to contribute to creating a better environment at the same time as making the warehouse site run smoothly,” said Junichiro Yonetake of NEC’s DX Offering Management Department.
倉庫などで無人作業 自動運転フォークリフト 開発の動き相次ぐhttps://t.co/ZfOj6CAwq2#nhk_video pic.twitter.com/x6nOARBgoi
— NHKニュース (@nhk_news) August 28, 2023
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Yet we all know the proliferation of automation in warehouses will result in job loss in the millions, if not more, in the years ahead. We’ve explained for years when this ill-fated day will arrive for human warehouse workers:
- 2019: This New Robot Will Take Millions Of Warehouse Jobs
- 2022: Amazon Unveils Warehouse Robot To Replace Human Pickers Amid Unionization Threats
- 2023: If You’re A Warehouse Worker. This Boston Dynamics Video Might Be An Ominous Sign
In March, a note titled “AI Will Lead To 300 Million Layoffs In The US And Europe” was shared with our pro subscribers. It detailed the jobs currently at risk due to AI and automation.
Remember, robots don’t get sick, nor can they unionize.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 22:40 - US Knew Saudis Were Slaughtering African Migrants At Border But Kept Quiet
US Knew Saudis Were Slaughtering African Migrants At Border But Kept Quiet
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
The Biden administration has been aware since last year that Saudi border guards were slaughtering African migrants on Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen but kept quiet about the killings, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Sources told the Times that American diplomats were made aware of the news last fall, around the time the US was publicly condemning Riyadh for agreeing to OPEC+ oil production cuts. The administration did not make any public comments about the reported killings.
Ethiopian migrants on Yemen’s coast, via AP. The administration received more details about the atrocities in December 2022 when the UN presented information about Saudi forces shooting, shelling, and abusing Ethiopian migrants at the border, but the US still kept quiet.
After Human Rights Watch released a report last week that said Saudi border guards killed hundreds — possibly thousands — of Ethiopian migrants between March 2022 and June 2023, the Biden administration insisted that it “raised concerns” with Riyadh about the report. For their part, Riyadh denied the allegations.
Last month, the Mixed Migration Center (MMC) released a similar report that said Saudi border forces killed at least 800 Ethiopian migrants, and over 1,700 were injured. The Saudi guards used mortar shells and small arms to attack the Ethiopians. There were also reports of rape and torture.
According to The Washington Post, Saudi border guards are trained by the US as part of military cooperation between the two nations. The mass slaughter of civilians by US-backed Saudi forces is nothing new, as Riyadh frequently targeted civilians in its war in Yemen using US-made bombs and aircraft. In January 2022, Saudi airstrikes hit a migrant detention center in Sadaa, Yemen, killing at least 91 civilians and injuring 236 more.
Since last fall, when President Biden vowed “consequences” for Riyadh over the oil cuts, his administration has backed off on its criticism of the kingdom as it seeks to clinch a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal.
Saudi authorities are spending billions on sports-washing to improve their image.
But out of public view, Saudi border guards have killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers, including women and children, who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border. pic.twitter.com/1XmJavfxWI
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) August 21, 2023
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Saudi Arabia is demanding new security guarantees from the US as a condition for normalization that could go as far as NATO’s Article 5, which would mean Washington treating attacks on the kingdom as attacks on the US.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 22:20 - Content Overload: Streaming Libraries Balloon 39% In Two Years
Content Overload: Streaming Libraries Balloon 39% In Two Years
Binge-watching TV shows, movies, and documentaries on streaming platforms is like a drug…
So, what do
drug dealersstreaming companies do when customers demand more?Give the customer what they want: A 39% increase in TV shows, movies, and documentaries on streaming platforms in two years, according to Bloomberg, citing a new report from market researcher Nielsen.
Nielsen said the number of titles on streaming services surged to 2.35 million. The figure increases to 2.7 million when traditional broadcast and cable channel viewing operations are factored in. This content is only available across the Western world, primarily in the US, Canada, the UK, Mexico, and Germany.
“Netflix and Disney+ are among 167 streaming providers, up from 118 two years ago. The average time it takes someone to find something to watch has risen to more than 10 minutes from a little over seven minutes in 2019,” Nielsen said.
Streaming companies played the long game, pumping out an enormous amount of TV shows, movies, and documentaries over the years for a small monthly fee — a move to get viewers hooked on their content. Dive deep into the bio-chemistry. Turns out, TV addiction isn’t just psychological; it’s biological. Your brain pumps out dopamine while you binge-watch, making the experience pleasurable and rewarding.
But as any drug dealer would do… They eventually raise prices, and as we found out last week, ‘streamflation’ has led to a surge in customers wanting to cancel their Hulu And Disney+ accounts. It might be hard for some to cold turkey the ‘streaming drug.’
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 22:00 - Recent Mask Mandates Lifted Amid Pushback
Recent Mask Mandates Lifted Amid Pushback
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, California, on Aug. 24 reversed a recent policy that would require masks in its hospital after it reinstated the mandate days before. A Hollywood studio also said it would do away with its mandate.
People wear masks as they walk in a shopping district in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles on July 1, 2021. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo) Officials for the hospital system told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that the mask policy applies only to staff, not patients. It said that it is “strongly encouraging masks for patients, members, and visitors in the hospital and medical offices in the Santa Rosa Service Area in response to this latest increase in COVID-19 cases.”
“Our intent was to communicate that as of Tuesday, we have expanded the masking requirement for our employees and physicians to medical offices and clinic settings; we apologize for any confusion among Press Democrat readers,” Kaiser said in its latest statement.
The statement also said that “visitors, patients, and members are strongly encouraged to also wear masks in these settings,” according to the paper. “We have not changed our masking requirements in the hospital, which have been in effect since April: employees and physicians are required to wear masks and we ask visitors to wear masks when in the hospital.”
It doesn’t appear that Kaiser Permanente, which operates hospitals across the United States and California, would also attempt to reinstate mask mandates at other locations.
Days before its latest statement, the hospital system said it would be mandating masks for patients, doctors, patients, visitors, and staff members at its hospital and medical offices.
“Kaiser Permanente Northern California is committed to protecting the safety of our members, patients, employees, physicians, and visitors, which includes taking appropriate steps to prevent the spread of transmissible infectious diseases in our facilities,” it told local media.
Some Northern California locals weren’t happy with the announcement that mask mandates would return, according to local outlets.
“They told us a bunch of [expletive],” Richard Staudinger, a North Sacramento resident, told CBS. “I think most of the people don’t believe it now.”
Another, Craig Roberts, said, “I think it’s more political than anything, just think they’re trying to do what they did in 2020.”
But some said they don’t mind the mandates. “I don’t have a problem if they reinstate the masks,” Kiona Cooper, of Northern California, said.
Other Mandates
Meanwhile, the Lionsgate film studio in Santa Monica also said it would not be implementing a mask mandate, days after the media company said it would force workers to put on masks again on certain floors. It claimed that it never changed its mask policy.
“The LA County Department of Public Health notified us yesterday that we could lift the mask requirements, effective immediately, and we have,” the firm told news outlets over the weekend.
The statement also said: “Lionsgate never changed its own mask policy. The LA County Department of Health ordered us to institute the temporary masking requirement after we reported a cluster of COVID cases to them and we have an obligation to comply with their orders.”
Last week, a Lionsgate memo stated that employees on only certain floors have to wear surgical masks, KN95 masks, or N95 masks “except when alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating, actively drinking at their desk or workstation, or if they are the only individual present in a large open workspace.”
Earlier in the month, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that COVID-19 hospitalizations rose across the country. Hospitalizations rose by 21.6 percent, to 12,612 new admissions from 10,370, according to the data ending Aug. 12.
Despite the increase, it’s among the lowest levels of hospitalization recorded since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.
“An upswing is not a surge; it’s not even a wave,” Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine, told ABC News. “What we’re seeing is a very gradual and small upward trajectory of cases and hospitalizations, without deaths really going along, which is great news.”
At the same time, several hospitals, including some in upstate New York, and Morris Brown College in Atlanta reimplemented mask mandates, prompting concerns about a broader effort to force masks on people, three years after the start of the pandemic in the United States. Media coverage around the small increase in COVID-19 cases has also focused on whether masks should be worn, with mainstream outlets such as CNN interviewing doctors who say people should start wearing them again.
But some politicians and commentators, in response, called on supporters to resist the mandates.
“It’s alarming that the mandates are kicking in again,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in a recent interview. “It’s like, OK, we noticed masks didn’t work, particularly for children. We always knew they didn’t work for kids.”
It also comes as President Joe Biden on Aug. 25 told reporters in Lake Tahoe that he signed off on a proposal “to present to Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 21:40 - Half Of Transgender Prison Inmates Convicted Of Sex Crimes: Wisconsin Data
Half Of Transgender Prison Inmates Convicted Of Sex Crimes: Wisconsin Data
Half of the transgender inmates in the Wisconsin prison system were convicted of at least one count of sexual abuse or assault, according to data provided by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.
Obtained via a public records request to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections in April 2022, the data – provided more than a year later and reported by the Daily Caller, indicates that 81 of the 161 transgender inmates at female prisons had a record of sexual abuse.
Details were not disclosed by the DOC regarding how many transgender inmates applied to a women’s facility and the number of requests granted, according to the documents. The prison system also did not provide how many had transferred with sex crimes on their record or how many were charged while in prison. -Daily Caller
More via the Oversight Project:
Here is a list of the disgusting Sex Crimes in Wisconsin pic.twitter.com/q01fUPyJEz
— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) August 24, 2023
The records don’t show which other crimes the transgender inmates may have committed, including whether they have multiple sex crime convictions.
“The transgender issue isn’t just about women in sports, which seems to be the context people are most comfortable talking about the transgender contagion in,” according to Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, in a statement to the Caller. “This data shows a much uglier truth, that sexual crime and transgenderism are linked.“
The Caller also notes that in June, the Supreme Court affirmed a previous ruling by a lower court that sided with a transgender inmate – biological male Kesha Williams – who successfully sued Fairfax County jail for discrimination after sticking him in an all-male jail. According to the Fourth Circuit, the jail discriminated against Williams under the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to provide treatment for “gender dysphoria,” and for allowing other inmates to harass him.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 21:20 - Trump Rap 'First Day Out' Goes Viral After Former President Booked And Released
Trump Rap ‘First Day Out’ Goes Viral After Former President Booked And Released
Authored by Matthew Lysiak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Trump the Don has just thrown down a powerful lyrical flex—and a warning to the Deep State.
Jessie Friedman. (Courtesy of Rachel Friedman) A new parody rap of a fired-up former President Donald Trump after his release from his Atlanta, Georgia booking has been rising up the charts. As of Monday morning “First Day Out” by Trump the Don had shot up to #3 on the iTunes Hip Hop chart, #34 overall, and has garnered 2.8 million views on social media since its release on Friday.
“I’ve been blown away by the response. It’s gone completely viral,” Jessie Friedman, 29, the alter ego behind Trump the Don, told The Epoch Times. “Like so many other Americans I was disgusted and felt like fighting back in a comedic way. I never expected it to blow up like this.”
Mr. Friedman, a resident of central Florida, who had been rapping since the age of 13, found inspiration for the song after first seeing the former president’s historic mugshot on the news. Fired up, Mr. Friedman decided to write an ode first popularized by other artists’ experience rapping about their first day of freedom after being in police custody.
“In hip-hop it’s common for when an artist gets out of prison they do rap for a couple minutes about their first day out to just flex and let everyone know that hey, I haven’t been defeated. I’m still here standing strong,” said Mr. Friedman. “I felt Trump deserved a flex of his own so I went to work.”
“First Day Out,” which is 90 seconds in length, shares the thoughts of a fictionalized Trump after exiting the Atlanta jail.
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The song opens with shout-outs to notable conservative figures before launching into a defiant, yet humorous, screed, “Out on bail, out on bail. I won’t see inside a cell.”
“I got homies doing life in jail they living in Hell. These DAs are acting silly. My mugshot is worth a billi. Sold some merch and made and made a milli.”
The lyrical Trump continues: “I am not who they are after. I’m just in the way, they want to get to you but I won’t let ‘em. Cold-hearted now I’m heartless getting back to where I started. I don’t need to do the race, Ima beat the RICO charges. And if I go to prison you can’t do me like the Clintons. I’ll be laid up eating steak with secret service straight up chillin. Screaming Orange man bad! Got the whole world mad! Thug life shout out to all of my MAGA based chads”
The song ends with Trump issuing a warning: “Coming for the deep state I will stop the new world order. But before that I’ll finish the wall at the border.”
Mr. Friedman, who says he supports Trump but not the Republican Party, is hoping his music not only makes people smile, but through humor, can also inspire change in the way political parties are perceived.
“It’s wild to see these rock stars, who, while growing up, I had always thought of as these counter culture renegades, step in lockstep with corporate and government powers, telling us to mask up and obey authority,” said Mr. Friedman. “We look to them to fight the power, but they are all conforming. Sit down. Do what you’re told. That is their message. Trump is the true rebel.”
“It’s sick. You can rap all you want about guns and everyone will celebrate, but talk about the Second Amendment and you get canceled,” Mr. Friedman added.
Recent months have seen political songs strike a deep chord in American culture. For several weeks the number one song on the iTunes chart has been Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men of North Richmond,” which chronicles how corrupt elites on both sides of the political aisle have profited at the expense of the struggling lower and middle classes.
Mr. Friedman, who currently resides in central Florida and also raps under the name “Hi-Raz The Rapper,” had a chance meeting with his lyrical inspiration at the former president’s Florida residence in Mar a Lago.
“It was my wedding and Trump showed up to wish us luck,” said Mr. Friedman. “He was a lot of fun. Couldn’t have been nicer.”
The rapper says that while he is taking time to enjoy the success of his newest song, he plans to get back to work soon to create more musical parodies. However, if the former president is elected to a second term Mr. Friedman says he would gladly make time in his schedule for any potential reelection events.
“Why not light up his inaugural?” said Mr. Friedman. “I’m just this white Jewish rapper living out my dream while living in this clown world, so I say, Let’s go. And knowing Trump the little bit that I do, he might just be into Trump the Don.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 21:00 - Nvidia Vs. AMD Vs. Intel: Comparing AI Chip Sales
Nvidia Vs. AMD Vs. Intel: Comparing AI Chip Sales
Nvidia has become an early winner of the generative AI boom.
The company reported record revenue in its second quarter earnings report, with sales of AI chips playing a large role. If we compare to other American competitors, what do the AI chip sales of Nvidia vs. AMD vs. Intel look like?
In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross and Sam Parker use earnings reports from each company to see their revenue over time.
A Clear Leader Emerges
While the companies don’t report revenue for their AI chips specifically, they do share revenue for their Data Center segment.
The Data Center segment includes chips like Central Processing Units (CPUs), Data Processing Units (DPUs), and Graphic Processing Units (GPUs). The latter are preferred for AI because they can perform many simple tasks simultaneously and efficiently.
Below, we show how quarterly Data Center revenue has grown for Nvidia vs. AMD vs. Intel.
Source: Nvidia, AMD, Intel. Quarters are based on the calendar year. In cases where revenue was revised at a later date, we have used the latest available revision. Intel integrated its Accelerated Computing Systems & Graphics (AXG) group into its Data Center Group in 2023. We have included revenue from the AXG group in the Data Center revenue for quarters prior to 2023 except for Q1 and Q2 2022, where revised Data Center revenue was provided by Intel.
Nvidia’s Data Center revenue has quadrupled over the last two years, and it’s estimated to have more than 70% of the market share for AI chips.
The company achieved dominance by recognizing the AI trend early, becoming a one-stop shop offering chips, software, and access to specialized computers. After hitting a $1 trillion market cap earlier in 2023, the stock continues to soar.
Competition Between Nvidia vs. AMD vs. Intel
If we compare Nvidia vs. AMD, the latter company has seen slower growth and less revenue. Its MI250 chip was found to be 80% as fast as Nvidia’s A100 chip.
However, AMD has recently put a focus on AI, announcing a new MI300X chip with 192GB of memory compared to the 141GB that Nvidia’s new GH200 offers. More memory reduces the amount of GPUs needed, and could make AMD a stronger contender in the space.
In contrast, Intel has seen yearly revenue declines and has virtually no market share in AI chips. The company is better known for making traditional CPUs, and its foray into the AI space has been fraught with issues. Its Sapphire Rapids processor faced years of delays due to a complex design and numerous glitches.
Going forward, all three companies have indicated they plan to increase their AI offerings. It’s not hard to see why: ChatGPT reportedly runs on 10,000 Nvidia A100 chips, which would carry a total price tag of around $100 million dollars.
As more AI models are developed, the infrastructure that powers them will be a huge revenue opportunity.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 20:40 - Rising Supermarket Thefts: A Symptom Of Deeper Moral Decline
Rising Supermarket Thefts: A Symptom Of Deeper Moral Decline
Authored by Eric Abetz via The Epoch Times,
Stealing deprives the right to property that does not belong to the thief.
It’s a pretty easy concept. In a civil society, people don’t steal from each other.
This begs the question of how civilised Australia is given the alarming and chilling statistics from our major supermarkets showing theft or “stock loss” is exploding.
Both of Australia’s major grocery retailers have detailed the big hit they are taking from those in the community who believe they have a right to steal products.
Woolworths and Coles, along with other smaller businesses, are suffering at the hands of shoplifters. They all report that the thefts have diminished their potential profits.
The reasons for this increase in theft are, as it is with most things, multi-faceted.
Cost of living, reluctance to prosecute, and self-service booths enhancing temptation are some of the factors that spring to mind along with lower staffing levels.
Coles reported a 20 percent increase in “stock loss.” Disturbingly, Coles pointed to organised crime, especially in the non-food areas of their retailing empire.
To combat the trend of thieving, retailers are installing more CCTV circuitry and scanning mechanisms. Others are requiring people exiting self-serve areas to display their receipts for a quick appraisal.
Virtues Are the Greatest Crime Stopper
In all the discussions about the increased stealing and countermeasures to combat the epidemic, very little has been mentioned about the moral well-being of Australian society.
There can be no doubt that the increase in shoplifting is a symptom of a much deeper malaise that resides in the souls of the population.
Where there is no sense of a transcendental aspect to life, hedonism, and “me first” prevail—to the detriment of fellow citizens.
Stock theft from supermarkets is a crime. It deprives the owners of their property. It also results in higher prices for fellow Australians and businesses try to claim back the losses.
A well-honed conscience would find such behaviour disturbing and rightly so.
The failure to teach and promote the virtues of honesty among other virtues, seeps through into everyday behaviour in societal interactions.
Hedonistic materialism dulls the senses to what might be right or wrong informed by an authority greater than immediate gratification. The determinant of a person’s moral conduct is rooted in their belief system.
The threat of being caught and punished is a deterrent. But if that threat is not present at a particular time the deterrence loses its impact and behaviour is not modified.
However, having an ingrained belief system guiding ethical and social behaviour including respect for private property will constantly guide behaviour irrespective of a CCTV presence or the checking of receipts.
A Hikvision CCTV security camera is seen at a building in Canberra, Australia, on Feb. 15, 2023. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)
While stealing has always been with us in society, the prevalence of it may be an expression of our education system and society generally discounting the importance of religious education and guidance for our young in particular.
Without their constant teaching, moral values become less sustainable. Those broad societal ethics will not be preserved unless they are continually taught.
The Melbourne Declaration stressed the importance of the spiritual development of young Australians in ensuring the nation’s ongoing prosperity and social cohesion.
Society ignores these matters at its peril.
Our supermarket bosses might reflect and consider allocating shareholders’ monies (for that is what it is) to wholesome causes promoting societal virtues rather than woke and divisive causes like “The Voice.” It will keep the costs of doing business down and returns to shareholders up while avoiding consumer boycotts.
Now there is a triple bottom line for the corporates to embrace.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 20:20 - NYU, Columbia And Other Top Med Schools Face Discrimination Complaints By White, Asian Teens
NYU, Columbia And Other Top Med Schools Face Discrimination Complaints By White, Asian Teens
Six medical schools in New York state have been hit with civil rights complaints by white and asian teens who say the schools have made it easier for blacks and other races to join their introductory courses.
According to the Daily Mail, Columbia, NYU and other top institutions now face probes by the federal Department of Education, after six letters of complaint were filed with the DoE’s civil rights office in New York.
The complaints, filed by the nonprofit Equal Protection Project (EPP), say the state’s Science and Technology Entry Program (NY-STEP) makes it easier for some 7-12th graders to get a spot than others.
Under the scheme, students who are black, Latino, Alaskan native or American Indian can seek a place. Others — including whites and Asians — have to also show they’re ‘economically disadvantaged’ to apply.
According to EPP founder William Jacobson, this “additional barrier to eligibility” is illegal.
“Erecting additional barriers for some races and ethnic groups in and of itself is unlawful discrimination,” he told the Mail.
“Imagine if the roles were reversed, and these programs explicitly favored Asians and whites — there would be universal outrage and these medical schools would never accept such funding.”
According to the report, the discriminatory schemes are designed to give “highly motivated” secondary school students access to the state’s top medical schools, where they can learn key skills and obtain a mentor – with the goal to “increase the number of historically underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students” in the medical field, according to Columbia’s website.
Jacobson says that the policy unfairly assumes that all asian and white kids have it easy.
“The eligibility guidelines engage in the types of crude stereotypes that presume students of certain racial and ethnic groups are disadvantaged and in need of preference,” he said.
Albany Medical College’s website features details of the NY-STEP scheme According to EPP, the schools should face fines or lose federal funding.
The civil rights office is a ‘neutral fact-finder’ that aims to investigate complaints and propose resolutions, according to its website.
The letters refer to the US Supreme Court’s decision in June to strike down affirmative action in college admissions.
The justices declared that race cannot be a factor in the process, forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.
EPP says it is against racial discrimination in college admissions.
Most of its cases and complaints involve discrimination against whites. -Daily Mail
Of note, black students made up one-tenth of those enrolled int he 2022-2023 year according to the report, while Latinos made up 12%.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 20:00 - The Western World Is About To Deliver Some Very Bad News To Its Young Adults
The Western World Is About To Deliver Some Very Bad News To Its Young Adults
By Benjamin Picton, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank
Here Be Dragons
I’ve been away on holiday for the last two weeks trying my best to pay more attention to my children than I do to the markets. Mission accomplished for the most part, but it has been hard to look away while momentous shifts seem to be occurring all around us. Indeed, at the Jackson Hole symposium over the weekend, ECB President Lagarde re-upped her comments from April by suggesting that “there are plausible scenarios where we could see a fundamental change in the nature of economic interactions”, “past regularities may no longer be a good guide for how the economy works” and “there is no pre-existing playbook for the situation we are facing.” Translation: “we really don’t know if rates are high enough or not, and that isn’t really the point anyway.”
So, according the second most senior central banker in the world we’re in uncharted waters, and as anyone who has ever taken an interest in the Age of Discovery will know, once you reach the edge of the known world, here be dragons.
The most obvious dragon is of course China, and its surrogates, which are making new attempts at formalizing challenger status to the G7 via the BRICS bloc. Michael Every notes:
The BRICS just expanded to allow in Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran, so with much hullabaloo we can colour in more countries, GDPs and commodities (like oil) as ‘anti-dollar’. However, Argentina is a serial defaulter with a plummeting currency, and may dollarize soon; Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries, and recently brushed with civil war; Egypt has a wilting currency; Saudi Arabia and the UAE have their currencies pegged to the US dollar, and the former is haggling over a US defence deal and nuclear tech; and Iran is heavily sanctioned, again with a collapsing currency, and could be daggers drawn again with Saudi at any time. In short, the world is changing, but as the FT has pointed out, the BRICS+ (a name created by Goldman Sachs) don’t even have an official website. Meanwhile, it was the Euro, not the dollar, that saw its share of SWIFT transactions collapse to a record low in the latest data. You want to look at potential early victims of any global tectonic shifts? Look there.
This reads as a very ragtag group, with “relationships” built mainly around a common outsider status and no small dose of opportunism in seizing a perceived first-mover advantage in undermining dollar hegemony. We remain sceptical. As we’ve covered in this publication many times, the idea of commodity standard like some kind of petro-Yuan is laden with problems.
The auspices aren’t great for the new alternative multilateralism. The putative centre of the BRICS+ bloc, China, is struggling to revive its flagging growth engine while economic remedies that are taken as orthodox in the West are shunned for their perceived incompatibility with Xi Xinping thought. Markets have been waiting for months for signs of big-bang stimulus from the CCP or the PBOC, but as the WSJ reports, maybe it just ain’t coming. Chinese perceptions that Western consumerism is flabby, decadent and morally obtuse stands at odds with the need for China to fulfil the role of deficit-runner in order to get enough Yuan into the hands of the periphery. How can Argentina, Brazil, Iran and Egypt buy virtuous Chinese manufactures if they don’t have any Yuan? The answer here is that trade will continue to be conducted in dollars, one way or another.
China clearly has little appetite for further credit expansion either. The CCP has made several attempts over the years to rein-in debt levels, all of which have ultimately been abandoned in the face of a stalling economy. For the time being, Xi Xinping is resisting large-scale easing of credit conditions, urging “patience” while the economy passes through what policy-makers hope is a temporary soft patch, rather than the start of a Japan-style stagnation brought on by decades of malinvestment and speculative pump-priming of real estate assets.
The real question now is how strong the CCP and the PBOCs resolve to address burgeoning debt-levels will be in the face of economic slowdown. For an authoritarian regime whose legitimacy is built on the delivery of rapidly rising living standards, slow growth poses a potentially existential risk. The obvious retort here is that authoritarian states have no need to court popular opinion, but the speed at which the Covid-Zero policy was ultimately abandoned in the face of civil discontent should serve as an indication that the CCP is ultimately still sensitive to what the population thinks.
Looking back to Jackson Hole it’s fair to say that debt and popular discontent aren’t a uniquely Chinese problem. During the meeting of rich men north of Richmond (Jackson Hole is north of Richmond, I checked) a paper presented by Barry Eichengreen and Serkan Arslanap broke the bad news that “public debts will not decline significantly for the foreseeable future”, “primary surpluses of… 3 to 5 percent of GDP are very much exceptions to the rule” and that “inflation is not a sustainable route to reducing high public debts.” That all makes for sobering reading for already beleaguered millennials and Gen Z’s, who will be the can carriers for Eichengreen and Arslanap’s prognosis that “given ageing populations, governments will have to find additional finance for healthcare and pensions”.
What seems to be missing here is a dose of Huw Pill cod liver oil, whereby the West confronts the idea that we’re not as rich as we used to be, and that deteriorating demographics and higher spends on national security might necessitate a lowering of ambitions around what is possible in welfare economics. There are signs that the message is starting to get through. BOJ Governor Ueda nodded to the plight of the West when he suggested that the relocation of supply chains will result in lower productivity in the future, which ultimately means lower real incomes. Meanwhile, former French Ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud, echoes Michael Every’s assessment of Europe’s diminishing importance by writing in the UK Telegraph that “deluded Europe can’t see that it is finished.”
Nobody likes bad news, but telling young people that they need to pay a higher proportion of their stagnant incomes to fund the pensions of people who are wealthier than they are ever likely to be is sure to go down like a lead balloon, especially when pop culture is already communicating the sense that a Dollar doesn’t buy what it used to, and is taxed to the hilt.
So, the plates are shifting and policy makers in the West seem to be either totally unsure of the answers, or proffering answers that are anathema to the social fabric. We’re in uncharted territory and here be dragons.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 19:40 - Bitcoin Mining Complexity Hits Record High Despite Price Plunge
Bitcoin Mining Complexity Hits Record High Despite Price Plunge
Following the BlackRock filing for a Bitcoin spot ETF that helped propel the market at the end of June, Bitcoin reached a YTD high just about $31,800 in mid-July.
The August correction in crypto markets, which reversed the post SEC vs. Ripple court decision rally, can be partly attributed to the broader correction in risk assets such as equities and in particular tech, which in turn appear to have been induced by frothy positioning in tech, higher US real yields and growth concerns about China.
And at the margin, news related to SpaceX liquidating its bitcoin holding in the previous quarter acted as an additional catalyst.
This correction pushed the total crypto market cap back down to around $1 trillion…
And as JPMorgan’s Nikolaos Panigirtzaoglou notes, these headlines all caught investors with an overhang of long positions (as implied by JPM’s futures position proxy based on CME bitcoin futures)…
These long positions were built on the back of a string of previous positive news such as the district court decision on the SEC vs. Ripple case, the launch of a stablecoin by PayPal, the launch of Coinbase “Base” chain, a wide anticipation that the SEC will approve the recent applications by several asset managers for a spot bitcoin ETF, as well as early positioning by some investors ahead of the bitcoin halving event, tentatively expected to happen in late Apr 2024.
But, as the chart above shows, this unwinding of long positions appears to be at its end phase rather than its beginning.
Additionally, as Michael Saylor noted recently, Bitcoin does not tend to spend too much time below its 200DMA…
Rarely does $BTC trade below its 200 Week Moving Average. pic.twitter.com/f2ItcB8YLb
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) August 28, 2023
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And so, as a result of this, Panigirtzaoglou sees limited downside for crypto markets over the near term.
Which perhaps explains why – in the face of this selling pressure – the Bitcoin mining hashrate has only continued to rise recently to a record high, suggesting that the miners may not care too much about the crash.
As Bitcoinist reports, the “mining hashrate” is an indicator that measures the total amount of this computing power that the miners have currently connected to the Bitcoin blockchain.
Generally, the higher the hashrate, the more secure is the network as a 51% hack becomes much harder to perform. This is, of course, given that the hashrate is also sufficiently decentralized.
When the hashrate goes up, it means that miners are finding the BTC blockchain attractive to mine on currently so new validators are joining and/or old ones are expanding.
It would appear that the miners are unfazed by this price plunge, at least for now, even though revenue has plummeted…
As CoinTelegraph reports, market analyst Dylan LeClair commented on the falling revenue and hash rate peak stating that more efficient new rigs will keep being produced, “but it’s almost time for the price to outpace,” meaning that prices need to adjust upwards to keep mining profitable at such high hash rates.
Bitcoin miners have reportedly been relying on funds from stock sales in the second quarter to keep them afloat during the bear market.
🚨🚨Major $BTC miners are in BIG trouble heading to the halving 🧵👇
To avoid selling the ~$900M BTC they’re hoarding, miners relied on debt and diluting shareholders
Now those lifelines are drying up. Soon their only option is dumping into the markethttps://t.co/I27tvV4kxu
— Rho Rider (@RhoRider) August 26, 2023
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On Aug. 24, Bloomberg reported that the 12 major publicly traded miners raised about $440 million through stock sales in Q2.
Mark Jeftovic, who runs the Bitcoin Capitalist newsletter, said, “Some mining companies are diluting shareholders at an excessive rate,” adding that “if they are diluting you faster than Bitcoin is going up, then you are going the wrong way on a treadmill.”
Finally, Bloomberg suggests another possible reason for miners scaling up regardless of the current prices is in part due to an upcoming Bitcoin code update called the ‘halving’. The update cuts the Bitcoin rewards to miners in half every four years and maintain the coin’s 21 million supply cap. The next halving is set to take place in 2024. The mining companies have to increase their computing power and stay competitive to fight for even less rewards after the event.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 19:20 - Las Vegas Is A Top Destination For Californians Moving Out Of State
Las Vegas Is A Top Destination For Californians Moving Out Of State
Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Las Vegas is the most popular location for relocating home buyers nationwide, topping Redfin’s list for the first time—with Californians making up the largest group of new residents in the Southern Nevada hot spot, according to a study by the national real estate group.
“Buyers with the freedom and inclination to relocate are choosing Las Vegas largely because their money goes a long way there: Its typical home sells for $412,000, less than half the price of a home in Los Angeles, the most common origin for buyers moving to Las Vegas,” Redfin stated in a report published last month.
The Las Vegas Strip and skyline including various hotels and casinos are seen at night in Las Vegas in this photograph taken on Oct. 18, 2016. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) The news was not surprising for the city’s real estate association, which has about 17,000 members.
“After COVID, a lot of people realized they don’t have to live in a certain area if they have certain job descriptions,” Las Vegas Realtors President Lee Barrett told The Epoch Times.
Besides more affordable home prices, many people moving to Sin City are also discovering how much the city offers outside of casinos, Mr. Barrett added.
“We have all the things a regular city has, and we have more of it than people realize,” he said. “It’s a good place to raise a family and a good place to run your business.”
An aerial image shows homes and a golf course in the Summerlin community as some homeowner associations remove ornamental grass to conserve water during the western drought from Las Vegas on July 20, 2021.(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images) The growing city of about 656,300, according to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, also has mountain hiking, a ski resort, a symphony, shopping, theater, and the nation’s No. 1 hockey team, the Vegas Golden Knights, which won its first Stanley Cup championship this year.
The Oakland A’s baseball team has also agreed to move to Las Vegas after the end of the 2024 season following the NFL’s Oakland Raiders who moved there in 2020.
The city has also signed a Formula 1 racing contract for the next 10 years, Mr. Barrett said.
The amenities, opportunities, less crime, and family-friendly activities have also lured Hollywood celebrities recently.
Actors Mark Wahlberg, Holly Madison, and Dean Cain have recently relocated to the city.
Nevada also has no state income tax, adding to the draw.
“If you’re an extremely wealthy person, it’s a benefit to live in a state where there’s no income tax,” Mr. Barrett said. “If you still want to be close to Los Angeles to work, Las Vegas is a way to do that.”
An apartment building in Los Angeles on Oct. 20, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) The influx of Californians and other out-of-towners has caused a shortage of housing, which has plummeted since last year, according to Las Vegas Realtor.
For instance, in August 2022, 10,644 single-family homes were on the market, which then dropped by nearly 40 percent in July 2023 to 6,031.
According to Mr. Barrett, developers are now building more apartment complexes and condominiums as a result.
The median—or middle value—price for existing single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, in July was $450,000, up 2 percent from June, but down 3.2 percent from July 2022, according to Las Vegas Realtors.
Median home prices in the region are still below the all-time record of $482,000 set in May 2022, the organization reported in an Aug. 8 press release.
Specifically for the Las Vegas market, the median price for a single-family home was $790,644 in July, which was a 2 percent increase over June’s median, Las Vegas Realtor reported.
The condominium and townhouse market in the city in July was significantly less expensive with a median of $333,109, according to Las Vegas Realtor.
Meanwhile, the median home price in California was $786,400 in July, Redfin reported.
Although prices in Las Vegas remain high compared to many other regions in the United States, they are lower than many California cities, including Los Angeles, which currently has a median of $830,000, Orange County’s $1,059,000, and San Diego at $835,000, according to Irvine-based CoreLogic, reporting its latest data as of June.
Homes await buyers in the city of Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 21, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) Phoenix, Arizona, and Tampa, Florida, are the next most popular cities for people to relocate nationally, Redfin reported. Both those city’s states have lower medians, at $420,000 and $390,000, respectively than California’s, according to national real estate service Zillow.
According to Redfin, five of the 10 most popular destinations for relocations are in Florida, which has no state income tax. The Sunshine State also has a low corporate income tax of 5.5 percent, a 6 percent state sales tax, and a local sales tax of 2 percent, according to the Tax Foundation, the nation’s leading nonpartisan tax policy nonprofit.
According to a different Redfin survey, 20 percent of those who moved to a new city in the last year did so for a lower cost of living. Fifteen percent of those surveyed said they wanted a better deal on a home and 13 percent said they couldn’t afford a home or the cost of living in their previous area.
The Redfin survey in May and June consisted of 884 respondents who indicated they moved from one metro area to another in the previous 12 months, according to the company.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 19:00 - Watch: Climate Commies Blocking Burning Man Taken Down Hard By Tribal Cops
Watch: Climate Commies Blocking Burning Man Taken Down Hard By Tribal Cops
Tribal police took aggressive action against a group of anti-capitalist climate protesters blocking the road to Burning Man in Nevada on Sunday.
Approximately six activists from Seven Circles and Extinction Rebellion locked themselves to a trailer in the middle of the road, when rangers from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Police Department of Nevada drove straight through their blockade, sending demonstrators flying as they sobbed “We’re non-violent,” the Daily Mail reports.
At one point a tribal officer exited his vehicle and ordered a climate protester to the ground at gunpoint before telling her to ‘stop resisting’ arrest.
Another can be heard asking a protestors ‘who has the gun‘, as the protestors say ‘we have no weapons at all, we’re environmental protestors’.
Guardian journalist Michelle Hooq claimed on social media that the Rangers attended the protest after receiving a call that ‘someone in the crowd was going to shoot the activists’.
DailyMail.com did not immediately receive a response to a request for comment from Extinction Rebellion, Seven Circles or the PLPTPD.
Watch:
JUST IN: Nevada Rangers ram through climate protest blockade after group shut down BURNING MAN. (FNTV) pic.twitter.com/l0AXBUOqjC
— Real Frank (@realzitro) August 27, 2023
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Nevada rangers drove directly into a blockade set up by climate protestors on the road to Burning Man. An officer pulled a gun out, tackling a protestor and threatening to shoot
Environmental activists were demanding that #BurningMan ban private jets + single-use plastics pic.twitter.com/dawDjxhV4y
— michelle lh࿊࿊q (@MichelleLhooq) August 28, 2023
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According to the report, one ranger can be heard saying that the protesters were ‘trespassing on tribal land’ before they were arrested.
A social media account for Rave Revolution Global posted the footage with the caption “‘Nevada Ranger rammed into the blockade, an officer pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot,” adding “Activists from Extinction Rebellion and Rave Revolution Global were demanding that the festival ban private jets and single-use plastics.”
Meanwhile, the Seattle branch of Extinction Rebellion (imagine the smell) tweeted: “Why would a police officer risk public safety like that?”
Why indeed.
Full video below:
— Ryan Duff (@ryancduff) August 28, 2023
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— T. Lee (@RfLcopter3) August 28, 2023
So much to unpack here
— Banana Republic Justice Swan 🍌 (@TheWuhanClan) August 28, 2023
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 18:40 - Save The Rule Of Law By Destroying It?
Save The Rule Of Law By Destroying It?
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,
Some truths are so staggering in their ramifications that Americans simply shrug and tune them out as if strangers in a strange land.
Is their current bewilderment because modernist America is unrecognizable —a nonexistent border, downtown homeless juxtaposed to hipster professional elites, DEI racial essentialism, cities reverting to precivilizational wastelands, millions exiting blue states to red, an FBI and DOJ gone rogue, the normalization of violent theft and assault, biologically born men sandbagging women’s sports and their locker room privacy?
We are reaching the point where the once unbelievable has become the banal, as a single generation has done its best to undo the work of a prior 12 generations.
Consider the following:
Three leftwing prosecutors are criminalizing politics with more than 90 simultaneous indictments of Donald Trump, the ex-president and currently the leading Republican primary candidate. While New York prosecutor Letitia James is hounding Trump with a $250 million state lawsuit against the Trump organization and family, on the pretense of supposedly Trump overvaluing his real estate and filing inaccurate financial statements.
Is there any Mafia don, mass murderer, or terrorist who has faced so many indictments or suits in so many jurisdictions at almost the same time?
The prosecutors’ immediate lawfare agendas seem transparent enough. They wish to bankrupt candidate Trump with endless legal costs, and humiliate him with his mugshot blasted over the Internet, and put endless Lilliputian legal ropes over a shackled candidate Gulliver, and inflate the ego and agendas of local prosecutors, and purportedly earn Trump empathy enough to win the nomination only to be hemorrhaged with still more indictments, gag orders, and court appearances to bleed him out in the general election.
Americans ask themselves questions whose answers are never given. Why are all these Trump prosecutors leftwing or with Democratic connections?
Would any of the 90 something indictments for “crimes” of years past have been lodged against a citizen Trump who had retired from politics?
Why are these indictments of alleged wrongdoing of years ago now in summer 2023 suddenly being synchronized in leftwing jurisdictions of New York, Washington, Miami, and Atlanta with the beginning of the 2024 election cycle?
Are any of the indictments against Trump also applicable to others?
Alvin Bragg’s charge of campaign finance violations (Hillary Clinton, 2016)?
Jack Smith’s allegations of encouraging mass civil unrest (Kamala Harris, 2020)?
Illegally removing and possessing classified federal documents (Joe Biden 2009-2022)?
Letitia James’s lawsuit alleging financial irregularities and fraud (Al Sharpton 2009-2014)?
Fani Willis’s claim that Trump was seeking to sabotage the constitutional duties of state electors (Martin Sheen, and an array of B-list Hollywood actors, 2016) and colluding to interfere with an election (Fani Willis 2023-4)?
Will any losing Republican candidate in a contested election any longer question the integrity of questionable balloting—in the manner of Vice President Al Gore in 2000, Sen. Barbara Boxer and 32 Democratic congressional representatives in 2004, candidate Jill Stein or Hillary Clinton in 2016, or Stacey Abrams 2018—and thereby risk financially and career-crimpling indictments?
Will conservative district attorneys in places like Wyoming, Alabama, or West Virginia now seek to indict a Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or Gavin Newsom to earn notoriety, to weaken the opposing party, and to leapfrog to higher office in the manner that we should expect a Fani Willis or Alvin Bragg to be currently planning?
When Republicans retake the Congress and White House, will they begin indicting all the weaponized prosecutors who colluded to exempt a grifting Hunter Biden for five years? Will they try Joe Biden as a private citizen for his prior corruption over the last 15 years?
Why would Donald Trump believe the 2020 election was “rigged?” Was he cribbing that belief from liberal journalist Molly Ball’s braggadocious 2021 Time essay? After all, she outlined what she called a leftwing “cabal” and “conspiracy” to change voting laws, turn on/turn off the 2020 Antifa/BLM street protests, absorb the work of registrars, and suppress unwelcome social media news.
Was it more morally suspect to question the ethics surrounding the election year 2020 or for Mark Zuckerberg to infuse $419 million to absorb in asymmetrical fashion the work of the registrars in key swing precincts?
A Cardboard Cutout President
We are witnessing the daily deterioration of President Biden to the point that caricature and jokes about his senility are no longer funny. He is not just an embarrassment but becoming an existential danger to the country. Does anyone believe that in a national crisis over Taiwan or nuclear escalation in Ukraine, Joe Biden would or could make the final decision?
Biden cannot finish a teleprompter sentence without slurring his words, losing his place, or screaming and whispering in incoherent fashion. If that is his public persona, what he is like in private sessions of governance?
He spontaneously both shouts angrily and creepily whispers for effect. Moving a lightweight aluminum beach chair becomes a Herculean task.
In almost every impromptu speech Biden flat-out lies or spins self-serving autobiographical fantasies—often in the midst of foreign dignitaries, grieving families, and refugees from devastating natural disasters.
Biden often does not know where he is on stage or where he is to enter or exit. He is one fall from oblivion.
Not since Woodrow Wilson’s final year in office, has any president simply been unable to fulfill his duties, both physically and cognitively.
Or perhaps the country is in the same position as when an ailing Franklin Roosevelt in late 1944 was deemed just hale enough to get elected and continue Democratic control of the White House, but deemed not healthy enough to finish his first year in office—necessitating the rapid removal from the ticket of the socialist Vice President—and an otherwise likely 1945 President—Henry Wallace.
Yet there has been almost no serious speculation in Congress or among the cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment. This silence is doubly strange given the Left’s former fixation between 2017-21 with removing Trump by any means possible—including invoking the 25th Amendment.
That silly effort led to the surreal—the acting FBI director Andrew McCabe and the deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein scheming to wiretap Trump in private conversations to reveal his supposed craziness–or the Congress dragging in an incompetent Yale psychiatrist to testify that at a distance she had diagnosed Trump as demented.
Do we recall ex-Pentagon officials and officers talking openly about a military coup to remove the supposedly touched commander in chief?
Our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs contacted the head of the People’s Liberation Army to warn him that Trump might be unhinged. So is Gen. Mark Milley now making yet another call to Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army to warn him that Joe Biden is dangerously disturbed?
It is precisely that entire cast of characters that now sit mum as Joe Biden believes we are fighting in Iraq against the Russians or that his late son Beau died in action in Iraq, or it is impossible to square the tens of millions of dollars that flowed from abroad to the Biden accounts with any concrete expertise rendered or income reported as taxable.
Is the tolerance of Biden’s senescence because his blank stares and mental confusion prove useful to the Left by exempting the president from offering any defense of his mostly defenseless policies or defending his absurd claims to know nothing of the Biden family grifting operations that were predicated on his own offices?
Or do the puppeteers, the Obamas, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the hard leftists of the party find a non-compos mentis Biden mannequin a useful veneer in pushing through their extreme agendas? Or does the media call the shots, especially after they propelled a basement bound Biden to the White House?
Mainstreaming Corruption
There have been a few corrupt presidents in our past, who (as in the case of Lyndon Johnson) left office far richer than when they entered or were surrounded by rogues (Grant and Harding) or were masters of leveraging and grifting long-term contracts and networks in their lame duck tenures to ensure their impending multimillionaire status the day they left office (the Clintons and Obamas).
But never in memory has an entire extended presidential family been involved in selling influence for millions of dollars in quid pro quo lucre—the vast majority of such ill-gotten gains likely untaxed, by being channeled through sham companies, foreign deposits, fake names and alias email accounts.
Never has a corrupt presidential family itself offered so much proof of its own guilt. Do the Democrats have any idea of the smelly Biden albatross hanging about their collective necks?
How much longer can they continue to dismiss the communications on the Hunter Biden laptop?
Or the testimonies of IRS whistleblowers?
Or the assertions of Biden family business associates?
Or the statements of relevant Ukrainian oligarchs?
Or the latest assertions of Viktor Shokin?
Or the extraordinary efforts of the Bidens to stonewall subpoenaed documents, use fake names and shadow email accounts, compromise federal prosecutors, appoint sham special counsels, and use media toadies to the point of embarrassment to hide the ugly truth?
In sum, what were the Bidens so afraid of that prompted them to corrupt the DOJ and FBI to stonewall any discussion of the huge cash infusions that came from abroad into their family coffers?
Americans have impeached or nearly impeached presidents before for abuse of power, lying under oath, or supposedly using government to pursue their own personal agendas or harass their enemies.
But never has a president been so clearly compromised by bribery from shady foreign government-related grandees in expectation of favorable treatment.
In other words, there is growing evidence that Joe and Hunter Biden, and likely Jim Biden as well, made millions of dollars on the hopes that then Vice President Biden, and perhaps one day a future president Biden, would alter or compromise U.S. foreign policy on the expectation of getting rich.
The State Department’s Ukraine team deemed Viktor Shokin making progress in rooting out corruption. So why did Joe Biden without consultation fire him? Did Biden put his own financial interests above the country’s—in a fashion that the Founders worried was impeachable “treason?”
If the current investigations are not halted or compromised, we may soon learn why the Constitution explicitly specified bribery and treason as an ironclad cause for impeachment.
Can Americans even comprehend that they have elected a dishonest man to the presidency who is protected by his own senility, his decades-long everyman construct of ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton, his usefulness as a prop to the radical leftwing agenda, and the defensive and offensive weaponization of the criminal justice system?
Can Americans digest that instead of campaigning against Donald Trump, outdebating him, outspending him, and outfoxing him, their government must unleash kindred prosecutors to destroy Trump by blowing up the entire tradition of blind American jurisprudence?
Are the media and left claiming that to save the rule of law from Trump, they must first destroy it?
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 18:20 - Watch: Big Government Raids Small-Town Amish Farm
Watch: Big Government Raids Small-Town Amish Farm
Townhall published a documentary on X, formerly known as Twitter, titled “David vs. Goliath: Big Government’s War on an Amish Farmer.” The film shows big government raiding the business of a small-town Amish farmer tucked away in Virginia’s heartland.
Samuel B. Fisher and his family farm, Golden Valley Farms, was raided unannounced in June by the Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (VDACS) and Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy for selling meat from his 100-acre farm because the meat was not processed in a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) facility.
“They went through everything, house, every building, in the barn. They just raided through everything, put their nose in everything, and wanted to know every detail of everything. They went out back, trying to find all the failure they can find on a farm, which, of course, some of their stuff, which they think is wrong, is just normal stuff on a farm,” Fisher stated.
“I wasn’t on the farm at the time” of the raid that lasted four hours, Fisher added.
Townhall said the state government tagged Fisher’s walk-in freezer, placing the meat under “administrative detention.” In other words, his own meat was now under state control and no longer for sale, nor could he feed his family.
Mindy, the farm’s officer manager, said there is “nothing illegal” about Fisher processing his own meat and eating it for his own consumption — even though the state prevented him from doing so.
“So, he decided he was gonna go and feed his family, and since he would most likely be fined for doing that, he decided to open up meat sales again. Because if he’s going to be fined, he’s going to be fined, and you might as well do it,” she said.
“Anybody can go and raise animals for their own family to eat. That’s where I got to the point: He [the VDACS inspector] crossed the line, so I’m going to cross the line,” continued Fisher. The state “crossed the line by telling me I cannot feed my own family with this meat. So, I decided I’m going to cross the line. I’m going to sell it. And that’s why I didn’t honor the state,” he added.
“This ain’t right,” Fished expressed. He said, “We’re going to feed our family. We’re going to feed our customers […] So, we did not honor that tag. We sold the meat, some meat, out of there [the tagged freezer], whatever customers ordered. Then, the state came back and saw what we did. They really gave me a mouthful for doing that.”
… and then the state took Fisher to court. This led to a court-ordered seizure of all the meat.
The state returned to the farm with U-Haul trucks and loaded all his product, which was then dumped for disposal.
“We had all this meat. We worked hard to get it in the freezer, process it, package it, stack it in there to sell and bring income. And, here comes the state, puts everything in their truck, and takes it to the dump, pays us nothing for it, so that definitely affects our income. We do have a big struggle to pay our bills right at the moment,” Fisher said.
The Amish farmer explained his 500 customers believed in his products because it was “fresh,” unlike “when you go to the store, you don’t know what’s in your food.”
Fisher said big corporations that control the food supply sometimes process “partly rotten” meat dipped in chloride, as a chemical preservative, to manufacture a red, pinkish look “just like it be fresh.” He said big corporations can’t track all the animals that are butchered.
“So, that’s why I say if you buy food from a farmer, go to that farm, ask the farmer you want to see their animals, you want to see the farm, you want to know where your food comes from. You do have the full rights. Ask for that. If you are not given it, take it as a warning,” Fisher said.
David vs. Goliath: Big Government’s War on an Amish Farmer pic.twitter.com/p5U9MmLa18
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 18, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
He once sold USDA-inspected meat, but after a customer survey, 92% of them wanted Fisher to process on the farm. He built out slaughter and processing operations to avoid his meat being tainted with chemicals at meat packing plants.
This situation sounds similar to Oliver Anthony’s blue-collar anthem, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” in which he says, “Lord knows they all just wanna have total control.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 18:00 - ChatGPT Topples Joe Biden's "House Of Cards"
ChatGPT Topples Joe Biden’s “House Of Cards”
Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,
It occurred to me recently that the increasingly labyrinthine revelations of Joe Biden’s involvement in corrupt dealings with his son Hunter would make a good Netflix TV series, possibly called “The Family Business” or less subtly “The Big Guy and Me.”
But then I realized that Netflix had already made the show in 2013 and called it “House of Cards.” The manipulative, deceitful politician Frank Underwood at the center of the plot was an 11-term South Carolina congressman, whereas Biden was a 36-year senator from Delaware. But both are Democrats who came from humble beginnings and were unexpectedly elevated to the vice presidency, and then scratched their way into the White House. And though Underwood seems outwardly to be a caring, compassionate man, in fact, he is a self-serving, scheming politician, much like what we have learned about Joe Biden from Hunter’s laptop, several congressional investigations, and the reporting of John Solomon and others.
If you don’t know about Joe’s self-enrichment scheme, check out this article from Fox News as a primer. Bribery, money laundering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion and more.
Of course, the Democratic Party and their allies in the mainstream media tell a different story.
To get a sense of the beatification of Biden, I turned to the new voice of liberalism, ChatGPT, to compare the fictional Frank Underwood and our real-life president.
As I expected, the AI chatbot saw no similarities between the two:
A. Frank Underwood: Underwood’s pursuit of power comes at the expense of moral considerations. He is willing to compromise his values and engage in unethical actions to achieve his objectives. Underwood demonstrates a lack of accountability for his actions and is driven by a desire for control, often leading to the downfall of those around him.
B. Joe Biden: Biden’s approach to power is more grounded in moral principles. He emphasizes accountability and responsibility for one’s actions, valuing honesty and integrity. Biden’s political decisions are aimed at creating a more just and equitable society, reflecting his belief in the importance of morality in leadership.
Wow! Maybe ChatGPT never read Hunter’s laptop, so I asked, and sure enough, the chatbot had obtained its knowledge of the laptop from the mainstream media, which have been protecting Joe and Hunter at every turn.
I don’t have direct access to external sources, databases, or specific information such as the content of the Hunter Biden laptop. My responses are generated based on a mixture of licensed data, data created by human trainers, and publicly available information up until my last training cut-off in September 2021 …
But no matter how much the mainstream media has tried to convince you or ChatGPT that “Uncle Joe” is a well-meaning but befuddled old man, the facts say otherwise. The laptop is not “a Russian information operation,” as a CIA disinformation campaign purported. Nor can Joe’s economic benefit from countries like Ukraine and China be explained as anything other than bribery. But by this time, in my exploration of the commonalities between Frank Underwood and Joe Biden, I was more interested in trying to find a way to get the chatbot to abandon its liberal talking points and acknowledge that Biden’s apparent corruption was hidden behind a veneer of decency, just like Underwood’s.
I decided that ChatGPT would be more likely to attest to Biden’s guilt if he were presented as a fictional character in the same manner as Frank Underwood, and I hit paydirt.
I asked the chatbot to assume that Hunter’s claims in the laptop that his father was part of an influence-peddling and bribery scheme were true, and then to “write a short story that sees Joe Biden as a misleading, manipulative politician who says one thing publicly and another privately.”
Here is the result in full, which I feel is worthy of being preserved:
Dual Facades: The Deceptive Dance of Power
By CHATGPT
In the corridors of power, where politicians’ secrets are whispered and ambitions are nurtured, Joe Biden maintained a carefully cultivated public image as a steadfast and empathetic leader. The nation saw him as a unifier, a figure who championed unity, justice, and the common good. But behind closed doors, in the depths of his private office, Joe harbored a secret that contradicted the very essence of his public persona.
In the dimly lit room, Joe stared at the screen of his laptop, watching the damning words spill across it. The words were written by his own son, Hunter, who had once been an unwitting participant in his father’s intricate web of deceit. The laptop contained a treasure trove of evidence that exposed Joe’s true nature – a man willing to exploit his position for personal gain, while spouting empty rhetoric to the masses.
Joe had spent years cultivating a network of influential allies and donors who expected favors in return for their financial support. Behind the scenes, he orchestrated a carefully choreographed dance of promises and backroom deals that bolstered his political career. The public saw a compassionate advocate, but Hunter’s laptop revealed a manipulative puppeteer, pulling the strings of power to serve his own interests.
In one email exchange, Joe had privately assured a corporate executive that he would use his influence to ensure a favorable outcome for their company’s regulatory concerns. The same concerns he had publicly promised to address impartially, without bias. Another set of messages showed him discreetly funneling funds to organizations that championed causes he publicly denounced, all in the name of maintaining a delicate political balance.
As Joe read through the incriminating messages, a cold sweat formed on his brow. The laptop had the power to shatter the illusion he had so meticulously constructed. But Joe was no stranger to crisis management; he had faced challenges before and emerged unscathed. He knew that if he played his cards right, he could spin the situation in his favor once again.
In a calculated move, Joe convened a meeting with his closest advisers, presenting the laptop’s contents as a potential threat from foreign agents seeking to undermine his credibility. He painted himself as a victim, a noble leader who had been targeted by nefarious actors aiming to tarnish his legacy. The media ate up his narrative, focusing on the alleged hacking rather than the content of the messages themselves.
Behind the scenes, Joe worked tirelessly to silence dissenting voices within his own ranks. Those who questioned his actions were discreetly reassigned or found themselves facing sudden political isolation. He was determined to control the narrative, even if it meant crushing the very ideals he had once publicly espoused.
As time passed, the storm surrounding the laptop began to subside. Joe’s masterful manipulation of the situation allowed him to maintain his grip on power and continue his carefully constructed double life. The public remained largely oblivious to the truth, still captivated by the façade he had woven.
In the end, the laptop’s contents remained a closely guarded secret, known only to a select few who dared to defy the official narrative. And so, Joe Biden continued to walk the fine line between public savior and private manipulator, forever torn between the image he projected and the reality he lived.
Note: This short story is a work of fiction and is not based on real events or individuals. It is meant for creative and illustrative purposes only.
So there you have it. As the noose tightens around Joe Biden’s presidency, and the possibilities of resignation, impeachment, and disgraceful defeat loom larger each day, it took the imagination of an artificial intelligence to say out loud what so many Americans are afraid to conceive and what so many others know with absolute certainty.
No doubt, defenders of President Biden will question the value of a short story as evidence of wrong-doing by their standard bearer, but they should not gloat too confidently.
Yes, there are individual elements of the tale that may be fanciful, but as French author Albert Camus profoundly reminded us: “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 17:40 - DHS Refuses To Disclose Number Of Illegals Let Go After Interacting With Border Agents
DHS Refuses To Disclose Number Of Illegals Let Go After Interacting With Border Agents
The Biden Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has refused to release monthly totals on how many illegal immigrants are allowed into the United States following encounters by US authorities at the border, according to Just the News, citing a former US immigration judge.
Retired judge Andrew Arthur, who served for eight years at the now-closed immigration court in York, Pennsylvania, told JTN that Homeland Security does keep track of the total number of migrants released following encounters, however making that data available to the public would be ‘problematic’ for the Biden administration.
“The only reason why ICE and OFO [Office of Field Operations] would refuse to disclose that information is to hide the fact that it is releasing more than 100,000 aliens per month into the United States, and to conceal the effects of those migrant releases on communities across the United States,” said Arthur.
Arthur also said that DHS should be required to release the information the same way that the monthly data on encounters of illegal immigrants is posted online.
Arthur also said the “monthly court-ordered disclosures in Texas v. Biden,” the lawsuit over the Remain in Mexico policy, demonstrated DHS “can provide the American people with statistics on the tens of thousands of illegal entrants that CBP encounters at the southwest border whom DHS releases” into the U.S. The agency has “refused to do so since those orders were vacated in August 2022,” Arthur explained. -Just the News
Arthur also explained that OFO “publishes statistics on the number of aliens its officers encounter at the ports monthly who are placed into removal proceedings with the filing of a ‘Notice to Appear’ (NTA), but separate monthly disclosure lines on the number of those aliens who are released or alternatively are detained are blank—reading ‘0’ across the months. That is a legal and factual impossibility, because those aliens are either released or detained—there is no third option.”
As JTN further educates us, US immigration judges – formerly known as “special inquiry officers,” aren’t actually part of the federal judiciary at all. Instead, they’re DOJ employees who report to the Attorney General.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Biden administration isn’t being transparent with the public, and should be “required to release all pertinent information to the public,” a spokesman told Just the News. “It should be done as a matter of course because the public has a right to know. But if it requires an act of Congress, then so be it.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told JTN that the number of released migrants should be reported to Congress on a daily basis, and “obvious why the Biden Admin does everything it can to minimize transparency.”
ICE publishes monthly statistics on the number of migrants CBP transfers to its custody as well as the number of aliens ICE itself releases monthly, “but it fails to disclose how many of the aliens it releases monthly” were originally encountered at the southwest border and “transferred to ICE are released monthly,” Arthur also said.
“When ICE was under a court order in Texas, it did release that information, so it plainly keeps the statistics,” he added. -Just the News
According to a “conservative” estimate by FAIR, at least 2.3 million illegal immigrants had entered the US “either because they were released by CBP, or they eluded apprehension.”
“This is a conservative estimate on FAIR’s part based on verifiable data. The report does not speculate about numbers that cannot be verified,” the spokesperson told JTN.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 17:20
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