Sep 30

Today’s News 30th September 2021

  • War In Syria Heating Up Again, Prompting Tense Putin-Erdogan Summit
    War In Syria Heating Up Again, Prompting Tense Putin-Erdogan Summit

    On Wednesday Russia’s Vladimir Putin met with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan in their first face-to-face summit in a year-and-a-half, also as tensions soar between the two countries on Syria policy. Their meeting in Sochi was lengthy, lasting about three hours, and comes just as Putin left self-isolation after members of his staff were infected with Covid-19.

    In Syria this week Russia’s military has expanded airstrikes near Idlib in support of the Syrian Army which is ramping up efforts to recapture a key highway in the northwest, but which has in turn triggered a Turkish troop build-up to deter pro-Assad forces from making advances in Idlib. 

    According to Al-Monitor a number of defense related issues have further complicated Russia-Turkey relations: “Coming days after Erdogan aired his dissatisfaction with NATO ally the United States, suggested that Turkey would acquire a second set of the Russian made S-400 anti-missile system and asserted that US forces should leave Syria, the stage is set for what may have otherwise been a less cordial reception at the Kremlin,” the report previewed. 

    Via TASS

    Official Russian press releases revealed scant details as far as specific stances taken during the meeting, but underscored the desire for “stability” in the Middle East region. 

    A statement via Russian state media indicated:

    In particular, Putin pointed to the successful cooperation of the two countries on the situation in Syria and Libya. He also focused on the work of the center to control the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the Russian leader, this cooperation “is a strong guarantee” of stability in the region.

    The two leaders also talked energy cooperation, following the big announcement that the Russia-Germany natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 has reached completion early this month.

    Putin thanked Erdogan for his stance on the construction of TurkStream, owing to which Ankara feels safe amid the difficulties on the European gas market. The Turkish leader, for his part, touched upon the issue of a joint project – the construction of the first Akkuyu nuclear power plant in the country, whose first power unit may be unveiled already next year.

    But most likely Syria was the most contentious issue at the forefront, despite official assurances of “cooperation”. Despite the war long having fallen out of global headlines, indicators suggest it will ramp up again given Assad is looking to finally take back al-Qaeda occupied Idlib. But both the US and Turkey will without doubt condemn any aggression and bring charges of war crimes and threats to intervene militarily (similar to all prior Syrian Army attempts to enter Idlib).

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    Both Moscow and Damascus have charged Turkey in particular with continuing to aid and abet terrorists in Idlib. Recall that the last time the war grew hot there, a major Russian airstrike killed at least 37 Turkish solders and a number of more Turkish-backed militants. That followed the 2015 downing of a Russian Su-24 jet by a Turkey F-16 fighter along the Turkey-Syria border, which saw relations between Putin and Erdogan plunge to a low point. 

    Syrian state sources have meanwhile confirmed Assad is preparing to advance operations in and around Idlib. Syrian newspaper Al-Watan reported the following days ago: 

    “The Syrian army and Russia have strong cards capable of forcing the [Turkish] regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan to review the bad [decisions] its has taken to deescalate the situation.”

    Further Watan’s sources described that “the circumstances are now appropriate to impose a comprehensive settlement in Idlib, at least in the area south of the M4 highway. Such a settlement would require the withdrawal of terrorists from it to its northern side and to a depth of six kilometers in preparation for opening it [the road].” 

    This suggests a coming showdown between the Biden administration and Assad, also involving Russia – akin to the intensity of 2018 which resulted in the Trump White House bombing Damascus.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 02:45

  • UK Energy Crisis Shows Danger Of Net-Zero Emissions Policies: Aussie Senator
    UK Energy Crisis Shows Danger Of Net-Zero Emissions Policies: Aussie Senator

    Authored by Daniel Khmelev via The Epoch Times,

    The push for Australia to legislate a net zero emissions target has spurred discord from some government officials who firmly believe the climate policy could harm Australia’s energy security and industry amid the UK’s own unravelling energy crisis.

    Australia has faced criticism for not setting a 2050 net zero target—a goal already undertaken by many of the world’s developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

    But Nationals Senator Matt Canavan suggested that the UK’s unfolding energy crisis is a direct consequence of its “net zero” emissions plans via a shift to so-called renewables and banning coal power.

    “The UK has been trying to reach net zero. They’ve passed legislation to do that,” Canavan told 2GB radio.

    “They’re not there yet, but they’re on the path. And already down that path, they are seeing a situation where industry is being asked to shut down just to keep the lights on.”

    Over the last 50 years, the UK has weaned itself of coal generation and become more dependent on gas as its primary source of electricity generation – much of which is imported from Europe.

    Further, heavy investment into renewables over the last decade has also boosted wind output, contributing to 24 percent of total generation in 2020.

    The United Kingdom’s coal, gas, nuclear and renewable energy consumption from 1965 to 2019. Source: Our World in Data. (The Epoch Times)

    However, the UK has recently experienced a 400 percent spike in gas prices, and a 250 percent price rise for electricity after a confluence of unforeseen factors throttled the country’s supply—including record low wind levels, a fire at a major France-UK electricity interconnector, nuclear plant outages, and a gas shortfall sweeping Europe.

    This has already led to the collapse of some energy providers while forcing other industries—such as steelmaking and manufacturing—to opt to shut down during peak hours to avoid paying exorbitant energy fees.

    Canavan cautioned against a repeat of the policies that have led to the UK crisis, saying he disagreed with the current “net zero” approach, which does not include nuclear, as the legislation could undermine Australia’s critical infrastructure.

    “We should maintain the energy independence—we are lucky to have and grow our coal and gas production,” Canavan told The Epoch Times.

    Nationals Senator Matthew Canavan at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on Jun. 22, 2021. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

    Canavan also said that Australia could not afford to lose its energy independence amid concern of growing hostilities from Beijing.

    “I just don’t think this is the right decision for our country, especially at a time when our leaders and defence officials are very worried about the risk of conflict in our region, potentially being dragged into a risk of conflict with China. This is not the right priority,” Canavan told 2GB radio.

    “The right priority right now, surely, is to get more things [that are made in Australia]. That’s what we’ve got to do.

    “If you do not have a strong industrial economy, you will not defend yourself. If you cannot be energy independent, you will not defend yourself,” he said.

    “And so why would we seek to shut down our coal and gas industries which create an energy independence for us as a nation?”

    Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and leader of the National Party, Barnaby Joyce, has not explicitly spoken against a net zero target, but has said that Australia should also consider the economic impact caused by a shutdown of the nation’s coal industry.

    On the other hand, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that a lack of a concrete net zero deadline could undermine investments flowing into Australia.

    “Markets are moving as governments, regulators, central banks, and investors are preparing for a lower emissions future,” Frydenberg said in an address to the Australian Industry Group.

    “Increasingly, institutional investors are themselves committing to the net zero goal, like BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard, three of the biggest fund managers in the world.”

    Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg speaks in Melbourne, Australia, on June 28, 2021. (Photo by WILLIAM WEST/AFP via Getty Images)

    Frydenberg said Australia’s economy relied heavily on imported capital to stimulate growth across the economy—including foreign investment stock worth $4 trillion (US$2.9 trillion).

    “Australia has a lot at stake,” Frydenberg said. “We cannot run the risk that markets falsely assume we are not transitioning in line with the rest of the world.”

    Environmental groups have also pressed Australia to fast track its emissions reduction efforts to address their concerns around ecological damage and global warming.

    Climate change advocacy organisation, the Climate Council, has urged Australia to commit to a net zero deadline ahead of the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

    “Australia is refusing to increase its 2030 emissions reduction target, or commit to net zero emissions,” said Climate Council spokesperson and Emeritus Professor at Australian National University, Will Steffen. “The science is clear that the world urgently needs to reduce emissions this decade, but none of Australia’s commitments are a meaningful contribution to this goal.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 02:00

  • We Will Not Comply: Red States Should Offer Sanctuary To Businesses, Military, & Medical Personnel
    We Will Not Comply: Red States Should Offer Sanctuary To Businesses, Military, & Medical Personnel

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    All it takes is one free place to change the dynamic between the public and an authoritarian regime. Just one.

    This week has been an extremely busy news cycle and there is a lot to cover, so along with my normal weekly analysis on one major topic, I am going to start writing shorter synopsis articles on developing news items happening in real time. I think everyone has noticed a marked and aggressive shift in the vaccine passport agenda being railroaded into existence by the Biden Administration and governments around the world. Remember when they all said that they were never going to demand forced vaccinations and that the passports were a “conspiracy theory”? Well guess what? We “conspiracy theorists” were right yet again.

    It used to be that we would predict a particular agenda or event and it would take a couple years to unfold. These days we make predictions and all it takes is a few weeks or a few months for them to happen. This suggests to me that the establishment and the globalists are on a specific timeline and that for whatever reason they MUST get 100% vaccination and the passports in place soon. I believe we have less than a year left before we see them attempt full bore medical tyranny in the US on a scale similar to what is happening right now in Australia, or perhaps worse.

    I continue to suspect that the reason for this sudden dive into totalitarianism is because there is something wrong with the vaccines themselves and if there are tens of millions or hundreds of millions of unvaccinated people left, then these people will act as a control group. That is to say, they will act as proof that the vaccines are not safe if things go awry. The establishment can’t allow that.

    As I have noted in past articles, the average vaccine is tested for 10-15 YEARS before it is released for use on human beings. This is to ensure that there are no damaging health side effects that might not become visible until months or years after the initial jab. A particular danger is the development of autoimmune disorders and infertility associated with mRNA and spike protein technology. These debilitating ailments might not be noticed for a couple of years after a population has been given the experimental vax. It has already been about a year since the covid vaccines were introduced by emergency authorization, so time is running short for the globalists.

    The bottom line is, there has been ZERO long term testing of the covid mRNA vaccines. At least none that has ever been revealed to the public. There is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that the covid vaccines are safe in the long term, they were developed and released within months of the covid outbreak. Yet, the establishment seems hell bent on forcing 100% of people to take these untested vaccines against their better judgment. It has been almost a century since we last saw government tyranny on this level, but this time it is almost all governments around the world acting in unison to implement mass controls on the public, instead of just a handful of nations.

    The Biden Administration and its corporate partners are now implementing a blitzkrieg against the American citizenry. Biden’s vaccine executive orders are creating a culture of “paper’s please” fascism among larger businesses and Big Box retailers. He has recently announced that part of the mandates will include fines against businesses that refuse to enforce proof of vaccination on their employees. These fines will range from $70,000 to $700,000, which could destroy a medium sized company if they actually had to pay.

    Medical personnel, primarily in leftist blue states, are now being fired from their positions because they have refused to comply with the vax. This is leaving massive gaps in medical response in places like New York. The unelected governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, claims she has the right to give herself dictatorial powers through executive order, and that these powers include deploying National Guard troops to take over medical duties. If you are familiar with the sordid history of VA hospitals, then you know that you do not want around 90% of military doctors operating on you in any capacity.

    Hochul is also raising eyebrows with a recent speech to a church audience in Brooklyn where she claimed that all the “smart people” have taken the vaccines and that the covid jabs are a “gift from God.” Her assertion was that if you defy the vaccine mandates, then you are ignoring God.

    This sounds rather familiar. Authoritarians often have a habit of declaring divine providence to justify their oppressive actions. Even Hitler did this, at least initially, holding state sponsored Passion plays and asserting that the Third Reich was the hand of God, until after they had secured an empire and then Hitler attacked Christianity. These types of people tend to use religion as a tool to get what they want and then they dump it in the gutter when they are finished with it.

    Keep in mind that none of these mandates are actual “laws”. None of them have been voted on by a legislature or the American people. They are color of law violations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be defied at every opportunity.

    And let’s not forget about Biden’s latest actions which seek to punish US troops that refuse the vaccines with dishonorable discharge. I’m not sure if Biden knows that a dishonorable discharge generally requires a trial by court martial in the military, or maybe this is what he actually wants for every single person that will not take the vax. In any case, the goal here is to terrify military members into submission and into accepting illegal orders. And yes, demanding that a soldier act as a lab rat for an experimental vaccine with no long term data to prove its safety is an illegal order.

    It’s hard to say yet what the real stats are, but recent polling suggests that at least 30% of the US military plans to refuse the vaccinations, including many members of special operations units.

    All of this over a virus with a tiny median death rate of 0.26%? Just to force people to take a vaccine that has been proven completely ineffective in countries like Israel where vaccination rates are high? When over 60% of people hospitalized with covid are fully vaccinated, then what is the point of the vaccines? It makes no sense unless the purpose was always tyranny and not public safety. So, where does this leave us?

    There are larger scale solutions to this problem, there are peaceful short term solutions, and there are more violent long term solutions. I will be discussing the violent options in my next article, but for now I think the best path forward is for red states and maybe even red counties is to offer safe haven or “asylum” to people who are under attack from these mandates.

    Red states could, hypothetically, give financial protection to businesses that refuse to comply with federal mandates and refuse to pay the fines. If thousands or tens of thousands of companies simply ignore the passports and the fines, what is Biden going to do about it? Well, he would have to send people form a federal agency, maybe the IRS, to collect by force. If states and communities stand in their way then there is nothing Biden can do to hurt businesses that believe in freedom.

    There is supposedly a shortage of experienced medical staff across the country right now, yet states like New York are firing up to one-third of their hospital workforce. Why not take advantage of their stupidity and offer these trained professionals jobs in red states or red counties? If these people know they have a safe place to go, then this might help give them the courage to continue their resistance.

    Finally, I think it’s a no-brainer that red states should offer help for military personnel that are facing discharge for vax refusal. A fight is coming, make no mistake, and free states need as many trained combat veterans on our side as we can get. Being dishonorably discharged makes future employment difficult in many career fields, and we can help these men and women to live normal lives if they make a stand. States like Kansas are already taking steps to make this happen.

    Conservative states and communities are going to have to step in, take risks and draw a line in the sand right here and now. We can stop this nightmare from gaining any further ground, but we have to act. I and many others are willing to help defend any business or any person that will not comply with the mandates, and state representative can send the same message to Biden by creating safe havens for free people. We need to continue to make it clear that we will not comply.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 00:00

  • Watch: NYC Garbage Truck Drags Dining Shed 10 Feet With Patrons Inside
    Watch: NYC Garbage Truck Drags Dining Shed 10 Feet With Patrons Inside

    The last 18 months haven’t exactly been a lazy boat ride for the people of NYC. COVID and a wave of hurricanes have taken their toll, and to top it all off, rostitutes and drug dealers re-emerge in to the city’s streets while surging violent crime and on-again, off-again protests have left the NYPD defunded and disillusioned.

    Underlying it all is the growing sense that the Big Apple is no longer “safe” for regular people. And as if a daytime shooting in crowded Times Square wasn’t enough, now diners need to worry about being steamrolled by a preoccupied city worker while trying to enjoy a meal in one of the outdoor dining sheds that have become commonplace across America’s city’s (and particularly New York) since the pandemic began.

    According to Gothamist, a Department of Sanitation truck plowed into an outdoor dining shed, dragging it and the diners inside about ten feet before it finally came to a stop. Shocking footage shared by Gothamist captures the aftermath. Fortunately, the two people inside the shed weren’t badly injured during the incident, according to the NYPD.

    A manager at the Greenwich Village restaurant Bar 6, described the incident as shocking.

    “It was shocking, definitely felt like an earthquake, seeing a structure drag across the street,” said Anna Socolof, a manager at Bar Six. “I was worried for the safety of our customers, and also for the safety of everyone involved.”

    Socolof complained to Gothamist that the bar had previously warned a local newspaper about “just such a possibility”

    But police played down the incident, telling the press that nobody was injured and no summons were issued to the driver.

    “Sanitation Workers have an incredibly difficult job keeping our streets clean,” DSNY spokesperson Joshua Goodman said. “We are relieved that no one was hurt in this incident, and will be conducting a full investigation.”

    As more garbage piles up in the city, and reports of rat infestations soar, the overburdened DSNY might find it increasingly difficult to successfully keep the city’s streets tidy while not pancaking pedestrians.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 23:40

  • Why The Globalists Hate Populism
    Why The Globalists Hate Populism

    Authored by M.Roberts via AmericanThinker.com,

    As a member of the U.S. government’s security apparatus, I have witnessed a level of groupthink that would shock even the most accredited academics associated with the leading internationalist think tanks.  As the professional class of international relations thinkers and their elitist dopamine peddlers in mainstream media continue launching their crusade against the so-called threat of populism, the people are again being actively pushed out of foreign and domestic policy. 

    The boogieman-version of populism that is being thrust upon cable news viewers is not entirely accurate.  This misconstrued definition in the modern American lexicon purports that populism is synonymous with authoritarian strongmen who intend to push nativist policies inherently referred to as racist. 

    But at its core, populism is concerned with the people and attending to the ordinary citizens of a nation, regardless of race and ethnicity, by giving them a voice in their respective societies.  The authoritarian context has been married to the term through a series of foreign demagogues who have utilized the façade of populist policies to gain momentum for their own political gains.  There is no shortage of names on the list of offenders, and there is no real purpose to go through them but to highlight that this concept has been hijacked by the global internationalist class as a window to achieve their own personal gain. Most ironically, the left has decided to label modern conservatism as a breeding ground for populist ideas; and I believe this to be a badge of honor that conservatives must take up with pride.  Clearly, leftist elitists still believe that their globalist-centered policies have created positive change by trying to remake the world in their own image.  Let us take a brief moment to review the fruits of the left’s endeavors.

    From the time of the United States’ unipolar moment in the 1990s until the present, the idea of globalization and U.S. economic and militaristic dominance became synonymous and interchangeable terms.  The elitists hoped to create supply chain diversity and free markets which, in turn, forced societies to live more harmoniously as they were all interconnected.  We can see that the only real positive change had eventually benefitted the corporate class who now had free reign in shaping the rules of the road and playing by their own rules.  The common people were left behind, failing to adapt to the vertical integration of society that came with globalization.  No longer were the Democrats concerned about projecting the idea that they were fighting on behalf of the working class.  No longer were they concerned about First Amendment issues.  In fact, the Democrats, who purported to be the party of anti-trust, had ultimately facilitated the growth of tech oligarchies into unimaginable monopolistic empires that censored First Amendment protected speech as a result of their incessant desires to obtain capital for their re-election campaigns.  Again, the people were left out of these conversations entirely.

    In parallel with a recent public awakening on America’s domestic policy pivots, we are seeing a seismic shift in public sentiment toward internationalist and globalist views of how America should act abroad.  We constantly hear from the think-tank class that domestic policy is foreign policy, and vice versa.  If that were true, then we would see an American foreign policy focused on American citizens’ interests.  We are constantly reminded that it is in America’s interest to be embroiled in Middle East conflicts and powerplays in Eurasia with a declining power that have no social and economic value for the average U.S. citizen.  We know these are empty statements, and even outright lies, as global lenders and the military-industrial complex became the primary benefactors from these entanglements.  So, what can be done? Part of the answer lies in the fact that the public cannot, and will not, be able to stay silent on their political beliefs much longer with the advent of new media outperforming legacy media.  The public is starved for honest journalists, real domestic initiatives that empower and employ the population with growth potential, and a foreign policy that is focused on the citizenry’s interests. 

    A logical solution to enacting positive change is to encourage the next generations to apply for government positions.  The permanent bureaucracy of government is arguably the most influential power structure that dominates our way of life.  The bureaucracy is charged with collecting your taxes, protecting you from crime, providing health benefits, and so on.  Even more, these individuals are not elected by you.  They are hired as you are within your respective lines of work.  They are meant to be accountable to you as public servants.  However, this bloated class of bureaucrats has become the most sclerotic, yet authoritative, entity that serves the outdated goals of the internationalists.  We often elect new leaders who vow for change and then become excited at the prospect of a shift in policy with a new incoming administration.  This age-old tale is retold, in different forms, every four years with no real shift in policies at the levels of government that matter.  We can thank the unelected permanent bureaucracy for this continual inaction, as they are beholden to the ideologies that have gained them their respective power in the halls of their workplaces.  If we are to change the way that government works for the people, we must encourage the future to invest in government service.

    The U.S. government has a funny way of listening to outside advice: it does not.  The bureaucracy is stuck in their assessments of the world within the context of their 1990s sense of idealism.  Analytical frameworks surrounding foreign policy and national security priorities often do not account for the people’s benefit.  If the think-tankers were correct about the synergy of foreign and domestic policy, then we would see a foreign policy that benefitted working-class people of all colors and creeds. 

    • The GOP must break away from their reactionary inklings of clinging singularly onto cultural war issues and pursue a strategy of ensuring the American public that the party supports their best interests, economically and socially. 

    • On the flip side, the Democrats have completely abandoned the notion of even considering the working-class voter in policy implementation, which presents an even greater advantage for GOP strategists to show voters the state’s obvious neglect. 

    What other choice do we have as a people but to make a change from inside the apparatus?  Encouraging young individuals to embark on a life of government service may not be easy, as the pay does not attract the attention that a silicon-valley tech giant might offer.  However, joining this system may yield the most consequential benefit for society: true representation within our government.

    *  *  *

    M. Roberts is a government security official who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 23:20

  • Victims "Stunned" After International Court Drops Probe Into US War Crimes In Afghanistan
    Victims “Stunned” After International Court Drops Probe Into US War Crimes In Afghanistan

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor is seeking approval to resume an investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan but will “deprioritize” investigating suspected crimes by the US and its allies.

    Karim Khan, who took over as ICC prosecutor in June, said he would focus on Taliban and ISIS-K, citing recent allegations. ISIS-K took credit for the August 26th suicide attack at the Kabul airport that killed over 100 Afghan civilians and 13 US troops.

    Via Der Spiegel 

    Khan’s reasoning is that the ICC has limited resources, and the Taliban and ISIS-K are responsible for more recent alleged crimes. But the last known US airstrike in Afghanistan took place on August 29th, and it killed 10 civilians, including seven children.

    According to Al Jazeera: 

    A lawyer for alleged victims of US torture in Afghanistan was “stunned” after Khan announced he would “deprioritize” the investigation into American forces, a probe that has long enraged Washington.

    There were other instances in the final weeks of the US war in Afghanistan of civilians being killed by US airstrikes. In early August, US airstrikes in Lashkar Gah killed destroyed a health clinic and a school, killing at least 20 civilians.

    In 2020, the ICC moved forward with an investigation into alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan. The Trump administration reacted by slapping sanctions on ICC officials, which were lifted by the Biden administration in April. The investigation was on hold as the now-defunct US-backed Afghan government was promising to do the investigation on its own.

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    While the Biden administration has lifted ICC sanctions, it has come out in opposition to the court’s decision to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the ICC is “unfairly” targeting Israel even though the ICC said it will also investigate claims made against Hamas.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 23:00

  • Did The President Of Robinhood Dump All His AMC Stock Right Before They Restricted Trading?
    Did The President Of Robinhood Dump All His AMC Stock Right Before They Restricted Trading?

    It may seem like ancient history now, but back in January the great WallStreetBets short squeeze was all the rage, having sent heavily shorted meme stocks like GME and AMC to unprecedented heights as millions of retail daytraders used their Robinhood account to pile on and buy in wave after seemingly endless wave in the process crushing reputable hedge funds such as Melvin Capital which needed multi-billion capital infusions to avoid being margin called to death. That wave, however, came to an abrupt end on January 28 when Robinhood took the unprecedented action to “render the financial system inaccessible” to millions of customers and investors, as a recently filed class-action lawsuit claims, when it went into sell-only made as the retail brokerage found itself short on regulatory capital as a result of the unprecedented buying tsunami, and imposed temporary bans on purchases of 13 heavily shorted stocks in the process ending the epic momentum wave and allowing a fresh round of short sellers – which the lawsuit claims included such financial scions such as Citadel – to generate material profits.

    The fact that Citadel also happens to be Robinhood’s biggest customer and pays the retail brokerage hundreds of millions to frontrun retail orders placed on the Robinhood brokerage in the form of Payment for Orderflow, only added to the complexity and reflexivity of the situation.

    We discussed this episode in great detail back in February in “Exposing The Robinhood Scam: Here’s How Much Citadel Paid To Robinhood To Buy Your Orders“ in which we said “Frankly, we’ve had it with the constant stream of lies from Robinhood and neverending bullshit from the company’s CEO, Vlad Tenev.” And while we laid out all the lies we had observed from both Robinhood’s CEO and Citadel, including Citadel’s threats to sue us into oblivion for alleging they frontrun their own customers only for FINRA to accuse Citadel of doing just that (resulting blessed silence from Citadel’s lawyers as far as we are concerned), the best summary of the entire January farce belonged to Michael Burry who on February said in a since deleted tweet that “The #mainstreetrevolution is a myth. Zero commissions and gamified apps were designed to feed flows to the two most influential WS trading houses. A few HFs got hurt, but if retail is moving toward more trading and away from fundamentals, WS owns that game. #Stonks by design.” Jeffrey Gundlach also piled on.

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    Still, memories fade, and Robinhood’s dismal abdication of its fiduciary responsibilities was mostly forgotten especially after the company – which for a brief moment in late January was insolvent and urgently needed billions in rescue funding – went public and now has a market cap of over $37 billion.

    Yet not everybody forgot and a recent filing in a class action lawsuit filed in April in the Southern District of Florida (case 21-md-02989), revealed that a lot of what Robinhood and Citadel called conspiracy theories, was in fact true, culminating earlier this week when the top trending hashtag on twitter was #KenGriffenLied.

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    Remarkably, the latest populist uprising against Citadel and Robinhood (incidentally, the same venue where most of those who slam Robinhood on social media also trade), prompted the two financial firm to respond to the renewed criticism of their actions during January’s meme-stock frenzy. As we reported on Monday, Citadel – whose founder Ken Griffin testified about the episode during a February congressional hearing and claimed there was no back and forth between his firm and Robinhood – fired off a series of tweets late Monday denying allegations that it pressured Robinhood to restrict trading. Apparently having gotten under Citadel’s skin, the defensive tweets continued late on Tuesday when the HFT-heavy internalizer first mocked conspiracy theorists saying that “there are those who still refuse to believe an American landed on the moon. Internet conspiracies and Twitter mobs try to ignore the facts, but the fact is that Citadel Securities was the pre-eminent market maker to the retail brokerage community in January 2021” before stating that “Citadel Securities never requested, intimated, agreed or otherwise sought to limit or to restrict the trading of such securities. On January 27th, we executed an astonishing 7.4 billion shares on behalf of retail investors.”

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    At the same time, Robinhood said in an emailed statement Tuesday that the lawsuit paints “a false narrative of collusion” with Citadel Securities.

    Ken Griffin added a statement of his own on Tuesday: “It must frustrate the conspiracy theorists to no end that Vlad and I have never texted, called or met each other. But I must say, kudos to Vlad and his team at Robinhood for their remarkable success story.” Of course Griffin will be delighted by Robinhood’s success in enticing tens of millions of Gen-Z Americans to daytrade: after all frontrunning their orderflow (for which it generously paid Robinhood) is what allowed Citadel Securites to record its best year ever in 2020.

    In fact, when Griffin was congratulating Robinhood, he was really toasting to the success of Citadel Securities – which is perhaps best known for being the biggest buyers of Robinhood stock and option orderflow (which remains a perfectly legal strategy for Wall Street exchanges) with the intent of “price improvement” – in a year that was defined by economic pain and despair for many, but will go down as the most profitable for Wall Street firms in history. It will also allow Ken to add several more massive mansions to his already staggering collection.

    In any case, while we would love to take Ken Griffin on his word that nothing illegal took place, we will leave that to the discovery process. In the latest lawsuit, plaintiffs allege that Citadel Securities amassed a substantial short position in GameStop and other stocks that exploded in value, and that the market-maker pressured Robinhood to stop customers from purchasing those shares, which the online brokerage did on Jan. 28.

    In fact, it appears we already know that Griffin lied: according to the complaint filed Sept. 22 in federal court in Miami, senior executives at both Citadel Securities and Robinhood had “numerous communications with each other that indicate that Citadel applied pressure on Robinhood.”

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    According to the plantiffs who managed to obtain internal chat transcripts, on January 27 the day before the restrictions were implemented, high level employees of Citadel and Robinhood had numerous communications with each other, contrary to what Ken Griffin told Congress. Furthermore, the plaintiffs allege that Citadel applied pressure on Robinhood to throttle (and eventually block) purchases in the heavily shorted names.

    The plaintiffs also argue that Citadel Securities stood to gain from stopping the short squeeze by purchasing new shorts positions at the peak of the squeeze and then profiting from the decrease in share prices as the buying momentum fizzled. As the next chat session between an unnamed Robinhood employee and Jim Swartwout, President and COO of Robinhood, indicates, on Jan 27 – after being told that several “very large” firms are having really bad nights, he had just had a conversation with Citadel which was “unbelievable” and revealed a “total mess.”

    Perhaps Swartwout can testify for the record just what this “unbelievable” conversation he had just had with Citadel was all about.

    James Swartwout, Robinhood President and COO

    So on to the infamous January 28 when shortly before Robinhood announced it would implement the dreaded PCO or “position closing only” policy which the plaintiffs allege was designed to artificially suppress the prices of Suspended Stocks – despite indicating that “we are too big for them to actually shut us down” referring to Tenev’s allegation that the NSCC was the one seeking the trading halt – we read from yet another internal chat that at least one Robinhood employee correctly predicted that “we are going to get crucified… for pco’ing.”

    Curiously, someone else had a similar bad feeling about the PCO: Citadel. According to the lawsuit, “former Citadel Securities Senior Vice President, in an internal chat with Citadel Securities Head of Execution Services, on January 28, 2021, at 1:48pm UTC, ““Robinhood moving the following EQUITY positions to CLOSING ONLY: AMC, GME, NOK, BB, NAKD, KOSS, EXPR, BBBY all PCO.” Citadel acknowledged, “this may cause some big moves.” (Emphasis added.) When asked about options at 1:55 p.m. UTC, Citadel stated, “options moving too . . . closing only in all symbols.”

    But while the nuances of who knew in advance, or who demanded, or who profited from the “code red” the PCO, and whether Citadel pressured and stood to profit from said PCO, will eventually be decided upon by the judge, one thing is a flashing red light that Gary Gensler and the SEC should immediately follow up on.

    On page 4 of the MDL amended complaint (docket 21-2989) we read that ahead of the PCO, “Robinhood  knew  at  the  highest  levels  of  the  company  that  its  risk  management  system was strained to the breaking point during the week of January 25th. Robinhood Securities President and COO, James (Jim) Swartwout, who Tenev points to as making the ultimate call to PCO, says in an internal chat on January  26, 2021, “I sold my AMC today. FYI  –  tomorrow morning we are moving GME to 100% – so you are aware.”

    Source

    Now, while the “we are moving GME to 100%” may refer to Robinhood demanding 100% margin on GME stock as of Jan 27 as the firm realized it didn’t have nearly enough client margin to satisfy regulatory requirements, the preceding fragment, “I sold my AMC today” can mean just one thing: Swartwout sold all his AMC stock on January 26, two days before the firm blocked tens of millions of clients from being able to buy it, in the process triggering a price collapse.

    It wasn’t until February 5, or one week later, that Robinhood would remove all restrictions in the trading of the meme stocks.

    Which brings us to the question posed by Dave Portnoy, whose long-running feud with Vlad Tenev is well-known: did “The President of Robinhood sold all his AMC right before they restricted trading.“

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    We conclude with one tangent: every time Citadel is cornered and asked if they are frontrunning retail orderflow, they immediately change the subject and explain how they are making the market more efficient and saving investors so much money in commissions. Of course, what they don’t explain is how and why they end up making far more than the money they kick back to the brokerage for lost commissions. Here’s the answer:

    This, for lack of a better word, is frontrunning pure and simple. But because frontrunning is illegal if only when peasants do it, and sounds so much more sophisticated and noble when it is framed as “high frequently trading” and “payment for oderflow”, the market will remain broken because the corrupt, bought and paid for SEC will never dare to explain to ordinary Americans what a giant crime scene our markets have become. It’s also why nothing will ever change, and after all these lawsuits are settled, Citadel and Robinhood will be order to pay a few million dollars in settlement fees and life in the corrupt world of capital markets will go on as usual.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 22:40

  • Generals Confess That Pentagon Knew "Within Hours" Drone Strike Killed Afghan Civilians
    Generals Confess That Pentagon Knew “Within Hours” Drone Strike Killed Afghan Civilians

    It took a full week after a New York Times visual investigation for the Pentagon to very belatedly admit its “tragic mistake” in a drone strike which killed 10 civilians, including 7 children. In total this was three weeks after the attack itself. Prior to that, military leaders had held firmly to the narrative that the Aug.29 airstrike stopped an “ISIS-K terrorist” – despite the narrative fast unraveling, yet they continued to talk about “confidence” in the intelligence. 

    A not so little detail emerged in Wednesday’s Senate hearing of top commanders: the narrative has now dramatically shifted to the Pentagon having known “within hours” that innocent civilians had been taken out in the botched attack, which in the end targeted a local humanitarian aid worker. Yet a Pentagon statement on the day of the attack said, “We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time” – which clearly downplayed the possibility civilian deaths and left it in doubt. 

    Getty Images

    The confirmation (and contradiction) of just what US military leaders knew and when they knew it came after Mississippi Republican Rep. Trent Kelley pressed top brass on the issue during Wednesday’s hearing. 

    “Well, so, we knew the strike hit civilians within four or five hours after the strike occurred, and U.S. Central Command released a press release saying that,” CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie said. “We did not know, though, that the target of the strike was in fact in error, a mistake, until sometime later. It took us a few days to run that down.” Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley agreed it was the “same thing” for him. 

    Recall that Milley had previously hailed the operation as a “righteous strike”. But The Washington Examiner is now pointing out that the latest testimony confirms the Pentagon spin and outright falsehoods: 

    But it is not true that CENTCOM issued a press release confirming the airstrike hit civilians.

    CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Bill Urban released an initial statement on Aug. 29 saying, “U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International airport. We are confident we successfully hit the target.” Urban added, “We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time.”

    And more:

    Later that day, the CENTCOM spokesman released an “UPDATE,” in which he said, “We are aware of reports of civilian casualties following our strike on a vehicle in Kabul today,” claiming that “a large amount of explosive material inside” the car “may have caused additional casualties.” He added, “It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further. We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life.” The statement did not confirm civilian injuries or deaths.

    Again, the generals have now testified they knew within hours.

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    So the Pentagon knew about the confirmed deaths “within hours” but continued to keep casting doubt on civilian deaths and holding the possibility at a distance, likely hoping reports of the deaths would get buried, or would remain ambiguous accusations – as the language of their early press releases suggest (with words like “unclear” and “may have happened” and the “potential” of civilian deaths based on being “aware of reports”). 

    It’s easy to conclude that had The New York Times not conducted its own detailed investigation, which included photos and video from on the ground, the Pentagon and Biden administration never would have been “caught” – and never would have admitted anything. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 22:20

  • The COVID Caste System
    The COVID Caste System

    Authored by Dinesh D’Souza, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

    Caste systems are not merely unjust; they are also ugly to behold. Commenting to me once on India’s caste system, when I was a child, my father said, “People in this country still use the word ‘untouchable,’ which is if you think about it a very unlovely term.”

    While India’s caste system persists despite being outlawed, America traditionally has not had a caste system.

    Until now.

    We can see emerging, right here in America, a sharp divide between progressive elites and ordinary citizens.

    This divide can be seen in multiple areas.

    Progressive elites have high walls protecting their homes, even as they declare that “walls don’t work.”

    They have private security, even as they insist Americans don’t need guns to protect themselves.

    They somehow elude accountability even when they break the same laws that get ordinary citizens into major trouble.

    Nowhere, however, is the new American caste system more evident than with COVID-19.

    Did you see Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) at the Met gala? The publicity focused on her “Tax the Rich” dress, but just as notable was the video, released by Vogue magazine, of AOC in full Cinderella mode, flanked by multiple attendants, straightening out her hair, fixing her dress, holding up the long train, adjusting her heels. They were all masked; she was not.

    This was hardly an isolated case. Shortly before the Met gala, the Obamas held a massive party to celebrate Obama’s 60th birthday. Again, the guests that included political leaders, business moguls, and Hollywood celebrities were all unmasked. The chefs, the servers, the valets, and the other staff were all masked. An upper caste and a lower caste, both playing their roles in Obama’s large tent.

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also just had a birthday, and video showed a small, unventilated room in which Jayapal and her maskless friends all partied together. It was the same story with San Francisco mayor London Breed, who violated her own mask mandate while partying at a club. “I was feeling the spirit,” she explained, “and I wasn’t thinking about a mask.”

    The Emmys, too, featured clip after clip of unmasked actors, producers, and directors walking the press photo line, and only when they crossed over to the other side could you see all the staff and attendants, masked of course, taking them back to their seats. Asked about this double standard, LA County’s  Health Department put out a statement saying that mask “exceptions are made for film, television and music productions,” because “persons appearing on the show are considered performers.” The virus, evidently, has no interest in infecting “performers.”

    To understand what’s going on in its widest significance, consider the true meaning of the famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.” What does this phrase mean? At one level, certainly, it means that we enjoy equality of rights. The Constitution goes on to specify not merely equality of rights but also equal treatment under the law.

    This concept of equality of rights should not, as Abraham Lincoln emphasized, be confused with equality of outcomes. Human beings are obviously unequal in height, in speed, in beauty, in intelligence, even in moral character. An equal start in the race does not mean, obviously, that all individuals or even all groups must hit the finishing tape at the same time.

    Yet at the same time there’s a broader meaning to the equality provision that goes beyond rights. We are not merely equal as human beings, we are “created” equal. This means that we are equally the children of God, and it follows from this that God loves us equally and therefore there’s an equal dignity in persons that derives, ultimately, from the fact that they’re created by a transcendent God.

    How does this equal dignity play out in American life? It simply means that someone—say Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates—might have more money than you or me, but they are not better than you or me. In America, we have maids but not servants, and in many restaurants we call even the waiter “Sir,” as if he were a knight. The political philosopher Irving Kristol once said there’s no restaurant in America to which a CEO could go in the absolute assurance that he would not also find his secretary dining there.

    So the Declaration of Independence affirms a social equality that is the very antithesis of a caste system. Yet precisely what our founding documents reject, the progressive elite, mostly made up of Democrats, is attempting to create for the first time in America a society divided into an elite upper caste and a mass lower caste, with separate rules applying to each group, in accordance with their caste status.

    It’s unlovely. It’s downright ugly. It’s also immoral. And it’s certainly un-American.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 22:00

  • Australia's Corporations Rebel Against Government's Draconian COVID Lockdowns
    Australia’s Corporations Rebel Against Government’s Draconian COVID Lockdowns

    Australia’s corporate sector has finally had enough of the ongoing lockdowns that have left the country’s economy hobbled and its people cut off from the rest of the world for months.

    Increasingly frustrated by a slow vaccine rollout and the ongoing lockdowns, the leaders of many of Australia’s biggest companies, including BHP, Macquarie and Qantas have signed a letter demanding that the government acknowledge it’s time to “learn to live with the virus,” as many other countries have done, since “COVIDZero” has finally been exposed as an impossible dream.

    In the letter – which was reported on by the FT – the signatories allege that Australia is making “big mistakes” in failing to reopen to the world. By making the lockdowns so severe (and so unceasingly long), the Australian government is putting politics before the well-being of the Australian people ahead of the federal elections that must be held by the end of May – when the Senate’s present term is slated to expire.

    The companies that signed the letter “…employ almost one million Australians” and warned that lockdowns were having “long-lasting” effects on the economy. However, this shouldn’t be news to Australia’s political elite: Economists at Australia’s central bank, the RBA, already lowered their growth projections after a stronger-than-expected Q2 GDP print.

    But all the incremental data seen so far suggests that Q3 could be a disaster – well that, coupled with the intensifying economic pressure from Beijing, which is trying to win a geopolitical stare-down contest with the Australian government by blocking a growing number of imports.

    As for Australia’s infamous “drawbridge” border policy, the letter’s signatories insisted that the decision to close Australia’s borders was a colossal mistake. 

    “The borders should have never been closed,” Graham Turner, chief executive of travel company Flight Centre, told the Financial Times. “We’re making some very big mistakes here.”

    “It’s time for corporate Australia to turn its disquiet and rumblings into a roar,” said Greg O’Neill, the chief executive of Melbourne fund manager La Trobe Financial, one of the signatories to the open letter sent by the Business Council of Australia. “It is time for courage and honesty. Not politics.”

    Australian COVID cases have finally plateaued…

    …Yet, the country still has among the lowest vaccination rates in the developed world. Only 41.4% of the population is fully inoculated — well behind the UK (66.7%) and Canada (70.4%) and below the US, where 54.7% are inoculated.

    In the letter, the Business Council of Australia also warned about a quiet “mental health crisis” plaguing the country, a result of the lockdowns and other anti-COVID measures – “some of the impacts of current lockdowns are hidden, and the effects will be long lasting.”

    Corporate behemoths aren’t the only ones struggling with Australia’s COVID rules. Groups representing small businesses have made similar complaints. Alexi Boyd, CEO of the Council of Small Business Organizations, said the refusal to reopen internal and external borders has hampered the country’s economic recovery.

    Anti-lockdown protests have flared in Melbourne in recent weeks, leading to hundreds of arrests and chaos like protesters shutting down a major highway. The government in Victoria tried shutting down construction sites in the area after workers participated in the protests. Unsurprisingly, this only made demonstrators angrier. 

    In recent weeks, the Aussie government has shown some acknowledgement that they might have chosen the wrong course. But with his conservative Liberal Party trailing the Labor opposition in the polls, PM Scott Morrison is under a lot of pressure to stay the course and pray that the latest delta-driven wave finally subsides.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 21:40

  • President Biden's New Plan To Tackle Rising Food Prices
    President Biden’s New Plan To Tackle Rising Food Prices

    Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

    Watch it slip
    Watch it slide
    I bet $10 on the losing horse
    Feel the grip
    Of my bride
    Watch me do it again

    Where’s my dinner?!

    – Short Lip Fuser, Rocket from the Crypt

    Empty Stomachs

    Evergrande’s going down.  And it’s taking the life savings of countless good people down with it.

    But while Evergrande’s going down.  Food prices are going up.  Moreover, they’re going up a lot.

    According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global food prices were up nearly 33 percent year over year in August.  Vegetable oil, grains, and meat all cost more.  Unfortunately, rising food prices – and empty stomachs – often presage social chaos and revolution.

    If you recall, a decade ago food inflation triggered the Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.  And food shortages were commonplace in Communist Romania in the 1980s.  That was before the country’s dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown, tried by a kangaroo court, lined up against a wall, and executed by firing squad on Christmas Day in 1989.

    Rare is the revolution ignited by a populace with a full stomach.  Historically, surges against an oppressive regime are sparked by a steep and extended rise in food prices.

    Leading up to the French Revolution, for example, famines were frequent.  In one instance, when Louis XVI’s clueless wife, Marie Antoinette, learned the peasants had no bread, she remarked, “let them eat cake.”

    What followed were the Flour War riots.  Not long after that, Louis XVI’s head rolled off the guillotine chopping block.  Then things really got bad.

    The Reign of Terror, led by the woke Jacobins, reigned over the land.  And the assignat currency, backed by land seized from the Catholic Church, blew up in a destructive episode of hyperinflation.  Before it was over Napoleon had channeled the discontent of a generation into a damaging misadventure to invade all of Europe.

    If only there had been a little more bread to go around.

    “I Don’t Eat Bread”

    When adjusted for inflation and annualized, the cost of food is higher than nearly anytime in the past six decades, according to FAO data.  Alastair Smith, senior teaching fellow in global sustainable development at Warwick University in the United Kingdom, recently noted:

    “Food is more expensive today than it has been for the vast majority of modern recorded history.”

    Governments officials from Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Romania, India, Turkey, Russia, and many more, are working overtime to somehow combat the menace of rising food prices.  Price controls, export taxes, fines, subsidies, trade restrictions…you name it.

    With a little luck, these efforts will support lower prices in the short-term.  But these failed policies always make things worse in the long-term.  When government officials artificially set the price of something below what it costs to produce they guarantee that supply will disappear.

    The Prime Minister of Romania, Florin Citu, is taking a more pragmatic approach.  He’s determined to avoid Ceausescu fate.  Thus, he wants to reduce his country’s dependence on imported processed foods.  He thinks this will reduce costs and narrow the trade deficit.

    We wish him well.  When recently asked about the rising cost of a loaf of bread, he remarked: “I don’t eat bread.”

    Does he eat cake?

    Yet it’s not just developing countries that are feeling the pinch…

    In the United Kingdom, for example, rising natural gas prices are threatening the food supply.  Several fertilizer plants in the UK have had to suspend operations because of soaring natural gas prices.  And now carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fertilizer production, is in short supply.

    Carbon dioxide, if you didn’t know, is used to stun chickens and pigs before slaughter, and for packaging and dry ice to keep meats frozen during delivery.  Without carbon dioxide, the food supply chain breaks.  Already, deliveries of frozen food to customers have been halted.

    Who would have thought that carbon dioxide, something world improvers consider a poisonous greenhouse gas, was so valuable?

    President Biden’s New Plan to Tackle Rising Food Prices

    Here in the USA rising food prices have Whitehouse staffers working overtime too.  Their primary purpose at this point is to assign blame to someone else.

    Government lockdowns and the resulting supply chain breaks and labor shortages are mysteriously overlooked as causes of rising food prices.  The creation of upwards of $4 trillion in printing press money is largely ignored…other than noting that government stimulus kept per capita demand for meat steady.

    No, in the eyes of Whitehouse staffers the government can do no wrong.  Instead, these scholarly elites have come up with a real boogeyman for people to rail against.  In their very own Whitehouse blog – chock-full of bar charts, line graphs, and infographics – their culprit is explicitly identified.

    According to President Biden’s underlings, rising food prices in America are the direct result of “pandemic profiteering” by the four large meat processing companies.  Here’s their rationale:

    “Four large conglomerates overwhelmingly control meat supply chains, driving down earnings for farmers while driving up prices for consumers.  The meatpacking industry buys cattle, hogs, and chickens from farmers and ranchers, processes it, and then sells beef, pork, and poultry on to retailers like grocery stores.  The industry is highly consolidated, and serves as a key choke point in the supply chain.

    “That consolidation gives these middlemen the power to squeeze both consumers and farmers and ranchers.  There’s a long history of these giant meat processors making more and more, while families pay more at the grocery store and farmers and ranchers earn less for their products.  Absent this corporate consolidation, prices would be lower for consumers and fairer for farmers and ranchers.”

    To be clear, we have little inside knowledge of the meat processing industry.  From what we can tell it’s likely just as corrupt and crooked as the banking industry, the auto industry, the oil industry, the retail industry, the healthcare industry, the high-tech industry, the mining industry, the entertainment industry, and every other industry out there.

    Quite frankly, there’s no industry left that hasn’t been spoiled and besmirched by one fraud or another.  But no industry is more crooked than the U.S. government.  And like most policy reports outlining the case for ramping up government intervention, the argument is incomplete.

    Do the authors know why the meat processing industry consolidated in the first place?  Do the authors really know that absent consolidation prices would be lower for consumers?

    In truth, they care little about the answer to these questions.  What they care about is that consolidation in the meat processing industry makes a good story for why food prices are rising.  What’s more, this story provides justification for the government to spend gobs of money that isn’t theirs for the noble purpose of making the world a more comfortable and agreeable place.

    Per the Whitehouse blog:

    “As we restart the world’s largest economy and make great strides in the economic recovery, the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to restarting right for the American people—consumers and producers alike—by transforming the food system.  This is a pivotal moment of opportunity to build back a better food system that is fair, competitive, distributed, and resilient.”

    Hence, President Biden proposes to tackle the meat processing industry head on.  He plans to funnel $1.4 billion in COVID-19 pandemic stimulus money to small meat producers and workers.  He promises to “crack down on illegal price fixing.”  He’s also formed a new White House Competition Council to “make the food system fairer and more equitable.”

    Without question, anyone with half their marbles already knows how this story ends…

    Government intervention discourages production, inflates prices, and, if pushed far enough, leads to empty shelves at the supermarket.  After that, it leads to empty stomachs…and the social chaos that follows.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 21:20

  • Saving For A Home-Downpayment Now Takes Even Longer… Thank The Fed
    Saving For A Home-Downpayment Now Takes Even Longer… Thank The Fed

    America’s working-poor, or put another way – whatever is left of the middle class – continue to get screwed by the Federal Reserve and their easy-money policies that have inflated both home prices and rents to unaffordable levels. 

    For the average person, saving 10% of monthly income towards a 20% down payment on a median-priced US home has jumped one year, from seven before the virus pandemic to now eight, according to Bloomberg, citing new data from Tomo, a real estate startup.

    The Fed buying $40 billion per month in MBS has kept mortgage rates pinned at ultra-low levels; and combined with extremely tight housing inventory, this was the perfect trigger to spark bidding wars that pushed home values across the country to record high levels. 

    Renters who had hopes of living the American dream by owning a home have become shocked by the surge in home prices over the last year…

    Skylar Olsen, the principal economist at Tomo, said the people who save for a down payment “are the people who can. Folks who have a lot of rent burdens tend to save nothing, and there’s always a fairly sizable share of the population who have a pretty substantial rent burden.” 

    Tomo data showed the highest years-to-save on a per metro basis. The highest was Los Angeles at 19.2, San Francisco at 17.9, and San Jose at 18.2. In Seattle and New York, it takes about 12.3 years and 11.9 years, respectively, for the average person to save for a down payment.

    Even then, waiting more than a decade indicates prices will continue to go higher unless the Fed reverses course on easy monetary policy. 

    Recent data from the National Association of Realtors shows first-time buyers’ share of existing- home purchases declined to 29% last month. 

    At some point, people will figure out The Fed is the root cause of the housing mania, and most importantly, why they can no longer afford a home and are stuck in ‘renter nation’ where they can hardly build any savings.

    As Ron Paul recently noted, this is the biggest lie of all – while The Fed was taking extraordinary efforts to ‘stimulate’ the economy, the unelected officials in the Marriner Eccles Building enabled the impoverishment of ordinary Americans, enrichment of the elites, and facilitated unprecedented government debt and deficits.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 21:00

  • A Dose Of Reality About Crime In America
    A Dose Of Reality About Crime In America

    Authored by Andrea Widburg via American Thinker (emphasis ours),

    Whether one agrees with David French or not, he is a bright man.  When he writes about alternative approaches to treating criminals, given the unprecedented rise in crime over the last year, perhaps it’s worth paying attention.  Or perhaps it’s not.  A brilliant Twitter thread exposes facts that French conveniently ignores.  More than that, the thread reveals that soft-headed criminal justice reform is incredibly cruel to the communities most affected by crime.

    After a wordy introduction meant to prove his woke bona fides, French gets to the point: there’s been a 29% increase in crime over the last year.  French skips completely over the “why” of this increase (hint: “defund the police”) because he wants to discuss a more Sunday sermon point, which is that the system has been riven in the past with injustice, and we now have the opportunity to change that.

    French accurately says there is no justice when criminals or police get away with violating the law.  Under-policing is also a form of injustice, he says, although how he manages to say this and then takes eight paragraphs before mentioning the defund the police movement is beyond me.

    That’s just a warm-up, though. The real point French wants to make is that “vengeance is unjust” and that “proportionality is an absolutely indispensable element of justice.”  May I quote my kids from their teenage years here?  “Well, duh.”

    And that’s when French falls into the fallacies every leftist does, which is to point to the fact that lots of people in America are imprisoned for having committed crimes.  And of course, he castigates Three Strikes laws, which are easy targets (although I’m betting a lot of people in Chicago who are preyed upon by people revolving through prison doors would love a little Three Strikes justice, or any justice, for that matter).

    And then it’s all about over-incarceration, and the 2021 Brennan Center for Justice study, and, of course, “the vast racial disparities in both incarceration and sentencing.”

    But you know what?  According to Delano Squires, who, like French’s adopted daughter, is Black, that’s a gross over-simplification that leads to policies that harm people in those neighborhoods most affected by crime.  Let me turn this post over to him and his powerful, fact-based, very polite tweets:

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    Continued:

    As is the case in many other areas of American life, the people with the loudest megaphones have NO IDEA what they are talking about. They make arguments based on well-worn talking points, euphemisms, and a desire to look like compassionate, empathetic people. This inability or unwillingness to deal honestly with the data causes the second problem—misplaced sympathies. You hear it even in how the issues are framed—CRIMINAL justice vs. PUBLIC safety. So French and others think America has an “over incarceration” problem.

    But he never says what the appropriate level of incarceration should be. Reformers never do. They note a disparity and assume the main problem is the effect, not the cause. He also notes that prison doesn’t have the rehabilitative effects many citizens desire. But what people who live FAR from belly of the beast fail to realize is that while it is amazing to see a person turn their life around in prison, the main point of removing ppl from society is to PROTECT the law-abiding and innocent from the law-breaking and guilty.

    I highly doubt French would argue that we should rethink prosecuting hate crimes because perpetrators may become even more racist in prison. And I certainly don’t see him writing an article in The Root explaining to black people why such a move would advance the cause of justice.

    Lastly, there is the issue of policy trade-offs. If reformers think that theft under $1000 should not be prosecuted, they should be prepared to speak honestly about the effects that decision will have on the victims—whether CVS or the mom-and-pop store—and the community at large. Same with other offenses, including violent ones. When order declines—often abetted by bad public policy—the slide into chaos is quick and costly. Reformers talk a good game until the first shot pierces their window or until their child is the one who is carjacked at gunpoint.

    *  *  *

    When Dennis Prager played on my local radio station, I remember him saying, quite often, “Being kind to the cruel means being cruel to the kind.”  David French, like so many White liberals, has let his condescending biases and inaccurate facts get in the way of advancing policies that will genuinely help crime-ridden neighborhoods.  His view will simply perpetuate a system in which well-meaning, racist, and uninformed Whites push for policies that are indescribably cruel to the poor people of all colors trapped in neighborhoods affected by those bad policies.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 20:40

  • Biden Admin Denies Entry To Chartered Rescue Flight Carrying American Citizens & Afghans
    Biden Admin Denies Entry To Chartered Rescue Flight Carrying American Citizens & Afghans

    A nonprofit organized by a loose network of veterans and current service members to help evacuate vulnerable Americans and Afghans from Kabul is seeing a chartered flight with more than 100 Americans and green-card holders being denied entry to the US by the Department of Homeland Security, according to a Reuters report.

    Bryan Stern, a founder of non-profit group Project Dynamo, which organized the flight, told Reuters during a call from the plan that they are being held up in Abu Dhabi after arriving from Kabul with 117 people including 59 children. The flight includes a mix of American citizens, green card holders and SIV holders.

    “They will not allow a charter on an international flight into a U.S. port of entry,” Stern said of the Custom’s and Border Patrol, which is part of DHS.

    Stern spoke to journalists from aboard the chartered plane, leased from Kam Air, a private Afghan airline. Stern said the group had been sitting for 14 hours already with no clear resolution in sight.

    Stern’s Project Dynamo is one of several groups working on organizing these types of flights, aimed at getting those who have been approved for entry into the US out of Afghanistan.

    It’s not clear why the Biden Administration would bar entry to the flights. A DHS official hasn’t commented on the situation to the press.

    An official who spoke off the record to Reuters said they weren’t familiar with the situation, but that the US sometimes takes time to review flight manifests before allowing chartered flights into the country. After all, Biden has repeatedly said that repatriating Americans and Afghans in danger is a top American priority.

    According to Stern, 28 Americans, 83 green card holders and six people with SIVs.

    Stern expressed his frustration with both the delay and the radio silence from the Biden Administration.

    “I have a big, beautiful, giant, humongous Boeing 787 that I can see parked in front of us,” he said. “I have crew. I have food.”

    Stern said that he had planned to transfer his passengers to a chartered Ethiopian Airlines flight that would eventually get the to JFK. Customs had cleared the trip, but then suddenly changed the clearance to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, before denying the plane landing rights anywhere in the US.

    Stern said he had received approval from local Afghan Aviation authorities (controlled by the Taliban government) before organizing the chartered flight.

    While there of course might be legitimate reasons for the holdup, going this long without any kind of communication seems like a screwup, or maybe something worse.

    We can’t help but wonder how the Trump Administration would have handled this.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 20:20

  • Kemp: China's Electricity Crisis Caused By Coal Shortage
    Kemp: China’s Electricity Crisis Caused By Coal Shortage

    By John Kemp, Reuters energy reporter and columnist

    China is in the grip of a severe shortage of both coal and electricity as the economy has resumed strong growth after the coronavirus recession but coal mine output has failed to keep up, leaving generators short of fuel.

    Reflecting a booming economy, China’s electricity generation increased by 616 Terawatt-hours (13%) in the first eight months of 2021 compared with the same period last year.

    Consumption growth has been led by the service sector (+22%) and primary industries (+20%), with somewhat slower but still fast increases from manufacturing (+13%) and residential users (+8%).

    Most of the increase has been supplied by thermal generators, principally coal-fired power stations, which increased output by 465 TWh (14%) in the first eight months, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

    Hydro-electric output has actually fallen slightly this year and is running at the lowest level since 2018, intensifying pressure on thermal generators to make up the shortfall.

    Thermal generation units ran for an average of 2,589 hours in the first seven months of the year, up from 2,321 last year, an increase of 12%, according to the China Electricity Council, which represents power producers.

    Confirming the increase in thermal generation, freight movements on the national rail network were up 11% in the first eight months of the year.

    Coal is the most important commodity hauled by rail, accounting for 50% of the tonnage loaded and 42% of the tonne-kilometres. Rapid growth in rail freight so far this year is consistent with heavy demand for coal from power generators and industrial users.

    But coal mine production has climbed by just 6% compared with 2020, according to monthly reports from the NBS.

    The result has been a severe depletion of coal inventories which has contributed to low stocks at many power plants and upward pressure on coal prices.

    Coal prices have more than doubled to almost $210 per tonne, up from just $90 this time last year, based on the most actively traded contract on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange.

    Responding to the shortage, top regulators at the National Energy Administration and the National Development and Reform Commission have emphasised the need to increase domestic coal and gas production to secure energy supplies this winter.

    The largest and most efficient coal mines in the provinces and autonomous regions of Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi have been instructed to boost output urgently to help replenish coal stocks.

    Provincial governments and power generators in northern provinces and on the east coast are also trying to buy additional supplies from Mongolia, Russia and Indonesia, which is pushing up international prices.

    As the crisis has intensified, China’s State Grid, responsible for transmission across most of the country, except for the far south, has pledged to maintain electricity supplies to residential customers and an all out fight to meet basic power needs this winter.

    But the fact so many organizations and senior officials have felt the need to emphasize their determination and plans for ensuring winter fuel supplies is an indication of how serious the coal and electricity situation has become.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 20:00

  • Dems Propose Subsidized 20-Year Mortgages For First-Generation Homebuyers
    Dems Propose Subsidized 20-Year Mortgages For First-Generation Homebuyers

    In a world where the biggest asset bubble in history means home prices are now rising at a never before seen 20% pace, dooming tens of millions of of potential homeowners to a life of renting, Democrats have had another glorious solution how to “fix” the problem of unaffordable housing, which may help in the short run only to lead to an even greater crisis a few years down the line. It is, of course, even more market-warping subsidies.

    As part of the raft of new legislation designed to spur first-time homeownership in America, a remarkable bill has joined the fray: its sponsors propose creating a new subsdizied 20-year-fixed-rate mortgage program through Ginnie Mae, HousingWire reports.

    According to the bill, Ginnie Mae in tandem with the Department of the Treasury would subsidize the interest rate and origination fees associated with these 20-year mortgages, so that the monthly payment would be in line with a new 30-year FHA-insured mortgage. The move – which is an explicit subsidy of one share of the population by another – could, in theory, “allow qualified homebuyers to build equity-and wealth- at twice the rate of a conventional 30-year mortgage.” Instead, what it will do is lead to is an even bigger housing bubble.

    The legislation, dubbed the “Low-income First Time Homebuyer (LIFT) Act,” would create a program through the Department of Housing and Urban Development that would sponsor low fixed-rate 20-year mortgages. The bill is sponsored by Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), and Jon Ossoff (D-GA).

    To qualify, one would have to be a first-time, first-generation homebuyer, with an income equal to or less than 120% of the area median income.

    An example of how the subsidized mortgage would work:

    • Today, a first-time homebuyer of modest means purchasing a property for $210,000 is likely to put down $10,000 and take out a $200,000 mortgage. In today’s market, a lender would offer this borrower a 2.75% 30-year FHA-insured mortgage, for which the borrower would pay an annual 0.85% FHA insurance fee and a 1.75% up-front insurance fee, which would be folded into the mortgage. The borrower would have a monthly payment of $970.
    • Under the LIFT program, the lender would instead offer this homebuyer a 1.50% 20-year FHA insured mortgage, which would include a 4.00% up-front FHA fee that would be folded into the loan and no annual FHA premium. The borrower would have a monthly payment of $1,004.
    • By paying roughly the equivalent monthly payment, a borrower with a LIFT loan would build equity twice as fast.

    • Furthermore, because LIFT rates are tied to the FHA 30-year, even if mortgage rates rise, a LIFT loan would continue to pay down – and build wealth – at about twice the rate of the 30-year mortgage.

    “The number one way that middle class Americans build wealth is through homeownership, an opportunity that due to racism and structural inequality has been denied to too many families of color,” Warner said in a statement. “Today, Black families in this country have an average net worth just one-tenth the size of their white counterparts.”

    In the past couple of months two versions of the $15,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit and Rep. Maxine Waters’ (D-CA) Down Payment Towards Equity Act of 2021 were introduced as alternatives for addressing housing inequity.

    The response from some fair housing advocates to the LIFT Act has been lukewarm so far. Some sources expressed worry that if significant money is allocated to this program, funding for Rep. Maxine Waters’ down payment assistance bill – a favorite among fair housing advocates – might not come.

    Former FHA commissioner, Dave Stevens, said that Warner’s bill has the potential of getting traction in Congress.  This first-time homebuyer bill has a “unique combination of Republicans and Democrats that have aligned on how this thing can work,” Stevens said.

    Additionally, the legislation is “very limited” and specifically geared towards first-generation homebuyers, addressing worries of a bill being too broad, resulting in minority homebuyers getting pushed out of purchasing a home.

    “In Congress right now, and I would guess the White House, they would like to see both Maxine Waters down payment assistance bill and this one make its way to the reconciliation process,” added Stevens. “If you could get a modest amount of dollars for both Chairwoman Waters’ piece of legislation as well as for the LIFT bill, you get some really good dollars targeted for first time homebuyers.”

    Dave Dworkin, CEO of the National Housing Conference, said that down payment assistance is still the number one option for increasing homeownership: “[The LIFT Act and Waters’ down payment assistance] have to go together,” he said. “Our first priority is creating homeowners and our second priority is to accelerate wealth building.”

    Dworkin added that NHC “would like to see at least $20 billion to $50 billion go to down payment assistance.”

    Meanwhile, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, commented that there are upsides to the bill, mainly that it “preserves affordability and supports homeownership” while also allowing homeowners to rapidly accumulate equity.

    “LIFT is among the most effective ways policymakers have to address the nation’s pernicious problem of large and widening economic disparities,” he said. The only troubling language with the LIFT Act, said Stevens, may be the attestation clause.

    “I mean, the real question is how do you prove that you’re a first-generation buyer,” said Stevens. “As long as a borrower attests to the fact that they’re first generation, they technically are able to apply.” As a reminder, the 2007 housing crisis was in large part the result of tens of millions of Americans lying about their income and their net worth on (multiple) mortgage applications. Everyone knows how that ended.

    “That’s the only area where I think there could be some moral hazard,” Stevens concluded as if that wasn’t enough. .

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 19:40

  • Republicans Warn DHS Is Planning To Fire Unvaxx'd Border Patrol Agents
    Republicans Warn DHS Is Planning To Fire Unvaxx’d Border Patrol Agents

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Republicans have warned that according to an insider at the Department of Homeland Security, the agency’s head Alejandro Mayorkas plans to FIRE border agents who are unvaccinated.

    The whistleblower claims that the DHS will off a significant potion of the border workforce if they do not comply with the vaccine mandate and get the shots before November.

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    The ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan wrote to Mayorkas asking for an explanation.

    “While our border is facing this serious crisis, we have learned that you are threatening to terminate a significant portion of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) workforce,” Jordan wrote.

    Jordan added “On September 9, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14043 requiring federal employees to fully vaccinate against Covid-19 or face termination of their employment.”

    “It has come to our attention that the men and women of CBP have been given official notice that they must be fully vaccinated by November 2021 or face termination,” Jordan further stated, urging that “It is simply unbelievable that the Biden Administration will allow Covid-positive illegal aliens to surge across the border but will terminate dedicated law-enforcement officers who do not comply with Biden’s mandate.”

    The development comes after Mayorkas declared that the flood of illegal migrants at the border, and the subsequent release of thousands of them into the U.S. is “one of our proudest traditions.”

    Fox News host Chris Wallace asked why the Biden administration hasn’t erected a “wall or a fence” in response to the crisis.

    Mayorkas responded “It is the policy of this administration: we do not agree with the building of the wall.”

    When asked exactly how many migrants have come into the U.S. from the latest wave, Mayorkas said “I think it’s about ten thousand or so, twelve thousand,” adding “It could be even higher. The number that are returned could be even higher. What we do is we follow the law as Congress has passed it.”

    Wallace also noted that almost half of the migrants are never seen again, failing to appear at asylum court hearings.

    “There are more than 11 million people in this country illegally. Clearly, despite your best efforts, millions of people end up in this country and don’t – just disappear,” Wallace noted.

    Watch:

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 19:20

  • Here Is How Immunity To COVID Varies By Country: Goldman
    Here Is How Immunity To COVID Varies By Country: Goldman

    As evidenced by Goldman Sach’s decision to cut its growth outlook for China to zero in the face of the unfurling energy crisis plaguing the world’s second-largest economy with unexpected blackouts, the coronavirus is no longer the single biggest threat to global growth (particularly as Europe faces a potential energy crisis of its own).

    That being said, gauging the global population’s present (and projected) immunity levels is critical to an investment bank’s broader global economic forecasts (along with being the subject of frequent client inquiries, we suspect). And so, after assiduously monitoring the global delta wave (with forecasts that have been mostly accurate with a few exceptions) Goldman’s team is taking on the task of gauging global immunity. It’s a hefty undertaking: after all, plenty of Democrats refuse to even acknowledge natural immunity, even as some studies have shown it might be even more effective against delta than the Pfizer jab.

    Goldman’s forecast relies on a few critical assumptions that are at least partly borne out by “the science”:

    • Vaccine efficacy against hospitalizations remains close to 90% for most vaccines six months after vaccination.

    • This implies elevated effective protection rates against hospitalizations across most major economies, at around 70% in the US, the UK, and the Euro Area, 60% in China and India, 50% in Japan, and 65% on a global GDP-weighted basis, nearly 50pp higher than six months ago.

    • Presently, 80% of the American population now has some immunity through either vaccination or infection.

    • We find an effective protection rate against infections of around 60% in the US, the UK, and the Euro Area, 55% in India, 45% in Japan, 40% in China, and 50% on a global GDP-weighted basis, all below the theoretical herd immunity threshold required to eliminate the highly transmissible Delta variant.

    Goldman points out that recent studies confirm that vaccine protection wanes over time and the rate varies by vaccine. But Goldman calculated an average rate and charted how odds of infection vs. hospitalization and death (which are much, much lower) decline over the first few months after vaccination.

    Exhibit 2 shows Goldman’s latest US immunity estimates. The analysts estimate that 80% of the American population now has some form of immunity through either vaccination or infection. Combined, that leaves us with an effective protection rate against infections of 60%.

    Looking at the emerging world, immunity rates are understandably significantly lower – by roughly 20% on average compared with the US.

    Here’s how that breakdown looks for the developed world.

    According to Goldman, their analysis effectively comes with some good news, and some bad news. The bad news is that, since herd immunity is effectively out of reach for humanity at this point, reviving certain types of economic activity like nightclubs, concerts, and other live events to their pre-pandemic levels will be difficult. The good news is at least humanity’s resistance to COVID is improving, not degrading.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 19:00

  • Are Democrats Repeating The Mistakes Of 2016?
    Are Democrats Repeating The Mistakes Of 2016?

    Authored by Conrad Black via AmGreatness.com,

    Anti-Trump and NeverTrump Republicans won’t help Democrats. America and the world should start preparing for Donald Trump’s return…

    As we get to the midpoint between the last presidential election and next year’s midterms, all political sides are expending extraordinary effort to ignore the 900-pound gorilla in the formerly smoke-filled room of American politics.

    This, of course, is Donald Trump. 

    The Democrats are still outwardly pretending Trump has gone and that his support has evaporated. They also pretend they can hobble him with vexatious litigation and, if necessary, destroy him again by raising the Trump-hate media smear campaign back to ear-splitting levels. 

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), even as she finds the ground shifting beneath her feet over the administration’s incontinent spending ambitions, is seeing her effort to promote the January 6 trespass at the U.S. Capitol as an outrage on the scale of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 overshadowed by the Afghanistan disaster and the cascade of other blunders and improvidences of the Biden Administration.

    Apart from a few veteran and some recently recruited NeverTrumpers joining in the tired pieties about the regrettable January 6 episode, the Democrats appear to be repeating the mistakes of 2016. They hope formerly mainstream Republicans who failed to repel the GOP base from supporting Trump will have better luck this time. 

    It remains true that a large group of Republicans (and no small number of Democrats) basically agree with most or all of Trump’s policies but regard the man as a distasteful carnival operator whose “Trump University” and health care plan (consisting of urinalysis and vitamins for a healthy quarterly fee) are simply not acceptable for a holder of the great office of president of the United States. Many have implied by their ambiguity that they could live with Trump again if his manners improved and his tactics became less bombastic. The acid test being unwisely applied to Trump’s acceptability as a rehabilitated candidate is his humble acceptance of the legitimacy of the election of Joe Biden as president.

    There are two serious problems with this criterion, which even the Wall Street Journal seems to embrace. The first problem with the requirement of a full recognition of the unassailability of Biden’s legitimacy as president is that former President Trump and his scores of millions of supporters don’t accept that that is true. The second problem is that it probably is not true.

    There are more serious concerns about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election than any in the history of the country except the Hayes-Tilden contest of 1876. That controversy was addressed by a bipartisan commission voting on an exact party split, which was accepted by the candidates under three conditions posed by the Democratic candidate, Governor Samuel Tilden, and which were accepted and honored by General Rutherford B. Hayes. 

    No one knows who really won in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Nixon declined President Dwight Eisenhower’s urging that he demand a comprehensive review of the many extremely close states. Nixon has received little credit for taking the position that such a state of uncertainty could be destabilizing to the country at a critical moment in the Cold War.

    A similarly uncertain situation played out in the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. That year, the U.S. Supreme Court shut down the decisive Florida recount and the state officially went to Bush by 537 votes out of 5.8 million cast, but no one will ever know whether he was the real winner or not. In 2020, there were more than 40 million mailed or harvested ballots usually mixed in after the polls closed with normally cast ballots and, therefore, unverifiable. About 45,000 votes in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan would have flipped the election to Trump.

    The former president was foolish to claim that he had actually won a majority of the popular vote, which is nonsense. But no fair observer can begrudge Trump his severe state of irritation at the extremely suspect abnormalities that afflicted the vote in six states that were clearly targeted for unusual alterations of voting and vote-counting procedures ostensibly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    It is also easy to identify with the ex-president’s profound disappointment that the judicial system declined to judge on their merits any of the 19 lawsuits that specifically challenged the integrity of the voting or vote-counting process, as opposed to taking up an individual or a small number of apparently improperly treated ballots. 

    Moreover, it appears to have been the political decision of the Supreme Court not to put itself in the position of having to try to reel back and possibly overturn a presidential election. In doing so, the justices may have spared themselves a full-on assault to expand the court. They remain fully armed to deal with unconstitutional legislation, which seems to be the core of the radical Democratic program that the administration hopes to jam through on a strained reconciliation bill as the window narrows before they likely lose their paper-thin congressional majorities next autumn. Again, Trump is to blame for warning of the problems of ballot harvesting but having no adequate team on the ground to record and film its operation and to launch legal challenges forcefully starting on the day after the election.    

    All of this leaves the Democrats relying on anti-Trump or at least non-Trump Republicans to impose upon the Republican presidential candidate selection process for 2024 an unacceptable condition.

    Despite the gathering chatter that Trump’s base support is receding and that too many Republican officeholders are afraid of his ability to make or break their performance in the midterm elections next year, the obvious but rigorously unrecognized facts are:

    1) Trump can take the nomination of his party easily if he so wishes, and

    2) the unspeakable shambles of the incumbent administration is making his return to office simpler and more probable every day.

    In the early blush of optimism that the dreadful Trump meteor had passed, the Democratic character assassination squads inside the docile media outlets set upon Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as Trump’s most likely successor . As it dawns on the always losing NeverTrumpers, an angry and unscrupulous minority within a minority, who see the strength of Trump within his party every day, some are trying to build back DeSantis as someone who would enact most of Trump’s policies, enjoy Trump’s goodwill, but who is not Trump. Others, like Representative Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio) are alienated, seeing, as former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake did, that “it’s the president’s party now,” that is, it’s Trump’s party and seems likely to remain so.

    The great effort to stamp out any questioning of the legitimacy of the last presidential election has failed. The attempt to perpetuate the Trump-hate smear and legal harassment campaign is sputtering to an end, even as the John Durham inquiry, advancing at the speed of wet cement on a slight grade, has begun its indictments of those responsible for turning the intelligence services and the FBI into arms of the Democratic National Committee-Clinton campaign dirty tricks division. The fantasy that Trump’s support is eroding or that his comparative silence does him anything except good, will probably be vaporized at the first encounter with the voters. 

    The daily failures of the Biden Administration show no signs of letting up, nor does the damage from unsustainable levels of illegal immigration, intolerable levels of urban violent crime, aggressively rising inflation, the COVID Tower of Babel, and constant pressure from America’s foreign enemies as the Biden regime stumbles from continent to continent. Such an inexorable procession of failures drives masses of voters into the arms of the chief political alternative, with increasing disregard for the fineries of the alternative president’s sense of etiquette.

    Unless the administration has a miraculous infusion of competence and aptitude, or some alternative Republican appears as a messianic deus ex machina, or a relatively silent Donald Trump commits an act of electoral suicide that is a hydrogen bomb escalation on his most egregious faux pas to date, then America and the world should start preparing for Trump’s return. As Bismarck said of Disraeli, “Das ist der Mann.” He is not easily recognizable as the standard-bearer of the Grand Old Party, but in these steadily more distressed circumstances, he is the man.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/29/2021 – 18:40

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