Dec 03

Today’s News 3rd December 2023

  • Kissinger: America's Most Prolific War Criminal
    Kissinger: America’s Most Prolific War Criminal

    Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

    Henry Kissinger is dead at 100.

    He rose to power from humble beginnings. His middle-class Jewish family escaped Germany for the United States in 1938. After graduating high school and attending one year of college (studying accounting, of all things), Kissinger would enlist in the Army and serve in Germany until 1947.

    Upon his return to the States, and through the advice of a mentor, he would gain admission to Harvard, where he excelled as an undergraduate and graduate student. His academic career at Harvard, starting in 1951, was also the beginning of his professional trajectory. Kissinger would establish himself as an important foreign policy theorist and a “recognized expert on the role of nuclear weapons in American foreign policy.” At the same time, by way of his position at Harvard, he would forge relationships with prominent American and foreign political figures. Kissinger’s network, and really his scope of influence, would further grow after his 1955 appointment to the Council of Foreign Relations, where he was brought in contact with “many of the most powerful men in the nation” including the Rockefellers.

    Through the later 1950s and into the 1960s, Kissinger would cement himself as a best-selling author (Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy in 1957) and prolific writer. For all the talk of Kissinger’s genius (then and now), many of his ideas at that time were unoriginal, illogical, and near-delusional. For example, in Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, Kissinger argued in favor of limited nuclear war (as opposed to all-out nuclear war). To avoid the escalation from limited nuclear war to all-out nuclear war – a very real and obvious danger – Kissinger proposed conditions by which such a war could take place, such as using “diplomacy to convey to our opponent what we understand by limited nuclear war, or at least what limitations we are willing to observe.” He argued that “a war which began as a limited nuclear war would have the advantage that its limitations could have been established” in advance of hostilities. These ideas were as ludicrous then as they are now, and were criticized as such after publication. As one writer more recently observed, “Kissinger’s limited nuclear war had to be conceived and waged as an Ivy League fencing match.”

    Kissinger would eventually obtain a tenured professorship at Harvard in 1962. Yet he was not destined for academia; his appetite was for high-stakes policymaking. He was the foreign policy advisor for Nelson Rockefeller’s failed presidential campaigns and in 1968, when Nixon won the Republican nomination, Kissinger made it clear that he wanted to be part of the potential Nixon Administration. (Kissinger was adept enough to leave open the possibility of a position in the Humphrey administration, had he defeated Nixon.)

    The lengths Kissinger might go to assist then-candidate Nixon – and thus ensure Kissinger’s ascent – were revealed in 1968, as President Lyndon B. Johnson sought to begin peace negotiations and bring about an end to the Vietnam War. This would undoubtedly benefit Democrat candidate Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon learned of that peace effort via leaks from Kissinger, who was serving as an advisor to President Johnson and attended the Paris Peace talks with the North Vietnamese. Nixon then instructed his closest advisor, H.R. Haldeman, to “monkey wrench” the negotiations. The South Vietnamese were pressured to “hold firm” by Nixon’s allies. With the understanding that Nixon could deliver better terms, the South Vietnamese boycotted the talks. Nixon would win the election. Over 25,000 more Americans would die in Vietnam before the war eventually concluded.

    Kissinger’s duplicity was rewarded with his appointment of National Security Advisor after Nixon took office in 1969. Seizing on Nixon’s distrust of the State Department, Kissinger executed a “quiet coup” to exclude other agencies and officials from the foreign policy decision-making process (an idea Nixon liked), effectively guaranteeing his “position as the foreign policy czar.”

    This structure allowed for streamlined decisions, Executive control, a reduction in bureaucratic meddling, and secrecy. Beginning in the Spring of 1969 through 1973, the Nixon and Kissinger conducted a secret and illegal and extensive bombing operation (codenamed MENU) of purported North Vietnamese routes and alleged headquarters in Cambodia. The architect and overseer of this plan was Kissinger. In fact, Kissinger maneuvered to ensure Nixon’s approval of the plan after the Secretary of State objected.

    In the first 14 months of the operation (codenamed MENU), there would be a total of 3,630 flights dropping 110,000 tons of bombs. In total, U.S. planes “dropped 500,000 or more tons of munitions.” Gunships would rake children. The Nixon Administration and Kissinger conspired to keep the carpet bombings secret while Kissinger oversaw its execution and “approved each of the 3,875 Cambodia bombing raids” with “full knowledge of it effect on civilians.” Kissinger’s instructions for strikes (following Nixon’s demands) weren’t to hit military targets, but “anything that moves.” Many times, innocent Cambodian villages would be “hit with dozens of payloads over the course of several hours. The result was near-total destruction.”

    Sites bombed in Cambodia (source: Yale).

    Interviews of Cambodian victims by The Intercept reveal the first-person horror. One woman described what she experienced as a young girl, stating “At around 10 a.m., an airplane dropped a bomb on my home. My parents and four siblings were all killed.” Thousands of others had similar stories: “I lost my mother, father, sisters, brothers, everyone.” It is estimated that as many as 150,000 civilians were killed – all at the direction of Henry Kissinger.  

    Subscribers to The Reactionary can read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 23:20

  • TEXIT Progress: Secession Question Expected To Appear on 2024 Texas Primary Ballot
    TEXIT Progress: Secession Question Expected To Appear on 2024 Texas Primary Ballot

    As the US government hurtles toward insolvency while political and cultural divisions intensify across the country, Texans are poised to take their long-simmering flirtation with secession to the next level, as a non-binding proposition is expected to appear on the statewide GOP primary ballot in March 2024.  

    On Friday, the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) announced that it had obtained the number of signatures required to compel the Republican Party of Texas to include this question on the primary ballot: “Should the State of Texas reassert its status as an independent nation?”

    The party’s State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) is meeting this weekend to finalize the list of ballot propositions. According to TNM, the SREC’s wishes are not relevent, as the Texas Election Code empowers voters to place a proposition on a ballot by collecting the signatures of 97,709 Texans who want the question to appear. TNM says it has more than 102,000. 

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    “We could actually bypass the SREC’s ballot proposition process and compel the party to place the question on the ballot,” said TNM President Daniel Miller in a Friday letter submitted to the SREC in support of the proposition. He emphasized that including the proposition doesn’t equate to a Texas GOP endorsement of secession. Rather, he wrote, ballot propositions serve as a means of pursuing clarity as to the “greatest concerns of Republican voters.”

    The drive for statewide votes on secession has spanned several years. While the SREC’s resolutions committee added it to a preliminary list in 2015, the SREC struck it. At the party’s 2016 convention, a plank calling for a statewide referendum of all voters was forwarded for inclusion in the Texas GOP platform, only for it to be struck down by the Permanent Platform Committee.

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    Later Republican plank attempts were successful. The SREC will be under greater pressure to green-light the primary ballot proposition on Saturday, given presence of two planks in the current Texas GOP platform: 

    • Plank 33, addressing “state sovereignty,” asserts that “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.”
    • Plank 225, “Texas Independence,” urges the legislature to require a general election referendum “for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”

    “Whether you are for, against, or undecided TEXIT, we should all be able to agree that the platform matters, the Texas Bill of Rights matters, and the Republican voters matter,” said TNM’s Miller in his letter to the SREC.

    A “TEXIT” sticker on a pickup truck (via Texas Nationalist Movement store)

    The GOP primary proposition won’t have any power of law, but is sure to intensify discussion of the idea inside Texas and out. Secessionists in other states are keeping a close eye on the Texas secession movement, seeing it as a flagship that, if successful, will accelerate the trend elsewhere.

    Covering the latest development in Texas, the anonymous, non-Texan author of the Red-State Secession Substack newsletter argues…

    If Texas eventually withdraws from the Union, other red states will suddenly realize they need to follow. If Texas announces a future independence date, red states will have a choice to make: stay in a Union dominated by blue states, or follow Texas’ lead.

    Since a Republican can’t win a presidential election without Texas’ electoral votes, the red states will have to follow Texas to avoid the tyranny, perversion, and bankruptcy that incompetent Democrat rule will bring to the remainder of the US… even if these states hadn’t favored secession until presented with this dilemma.

    After seceding from Mexico, Texas was an independent country from 1836 to 1845 and, economically, is extraordinarily well-suited for independence today. It’s by far the largest oil producer of any US state, accounting for a whopping 42% of American production, with no other state exceeding even 10%. It has deep-water ports, abundant agriculture, and is a major high-tech hub. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 22:45

  • Congressional Commission Urges US To Expand Nuclear Arsenal Amid China, Russia Threat
    Congressional Commission Urges US To Expand Nuclear Arsenal Amid China, Russia Threat

    Authored by Andre Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

    U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Nov. 8, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The United States must expand and modernize its nuclear arsenal beyond planned improvements to deter combined aggression from communist China and Russia, according to a new congressional report.

    Planned nuclear capacity “limits” the United States’ ability to effectively prevent a war with China and Russia, says the report (pdf) by the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

    “Given current threat trajectories, our nation will soon encounter a fundamentally different global setting than it has ever experienced: we will face a world where two nations possess nuclear arsenals on par with our own,” the report says.

    “The size and composition of the nuclear force must account for the possibility of combined aggression from Russia and China.”

    The report emphasizes that a new conflict with either or both of the powers could realistically result in nuclear catastrophe and would need to be deterred.

    “There is a growing risk of confrontation with China, Russia, or both. This includes the risk of military conflict,” the report says.

    “Unlike World Wars I and II, a major power conflict in the 21st century has the potential to escalate into a large-scale nuclear war.”

    US Nuclear Forces ‘Not Sufficient’ for Deterrence

    In all, the report says that current plans for modernization of the nation’s nuclear forces are “necessary, but not sufficient,” given the increasing capability of China and Russia to jointly threaten the United States with their nuclear arsenals.

    “Deployed strategic nuclear force requirements will increase for the United States in such a threat environment,” the report says.

    Hudson Institute senior fellow Marshall Billingslea, who co-authored the report, said a key factor in the commission’s decision-making was the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal.

    “They’re on pace to either rival or perhaps surpass the number of fielded nuclear weapons that we ourselves possess,” Mr. Billingslea said during a Nov. 30 talk at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

    “Let’s be clear, when you have a China that has gone from, let’s say, around 250 nuclear weapons to … around 700 by 2027 … that’s a fundamental game changer.”

    Mr. Billingslea’s comments referred to the Pentagon’s most recent China Military Power Report, which found that the regime likely already has 500 deployed nuclear warheads and will have more than 1,000 by 2030.

    Moreover, because of China’s size and economic power, he said the nation cannot rely on coercive economic methods to bring China to the nonproliferation table.

    “When you’re talking about China, which has an economy nearly as large as ours … some of the tools that we traditionally have relied upon to deal with the Russias and the Irans and the Venezuelas and the North Koreas, are simply not available in a Chinese context.”

    As such, he said the commission recommended the United States increase the number of its “shorter and medium-range” missiles and invest in “hypersonics” to deploy both nuclear and conventional weapons.

    “The sheer increase in the number of targets implied by this Chinese buildup … [suggests] that the program of record that was foreseen back in 2010 is not sufficient,” he said.

    Similarly, Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs, also a co-author of the report, said the new posture was necessary to counter a united China and Russia, which have entered an unprecedented comprehensive strategic partnership.

    “What the report finds is that the United States must be able to deter both Russia and China simultaneously,” Ms. Heinrichs said.

    “That’s obviously going to change the United States’ strategic posture.”

    Selling the idea of supplemental spending for nuclear weapons may not be an easy task. Concerns about war profiteering are growing amid unprecedented defense spending by the Biden administration.

    Additionally, the Hudson Institute’s close financial relationship with key defense corporations may diminish its credibility with some in Congress. According to the organization’s financials (pdf), defense contractors gave the think tank more than half a million dollars last year.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 22:10

  • Cryptos Soar After Largest Inflows In Two Years
    Cryptos Soar After Largest Inflows In Two Years

    Anticipation of an eventual US spot Bitcoin ETF – which Bloomberg’s analysts assign a 90% probability of being approved by the SEC in January…

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    … as well as surging prices, have helped to spur inflows into digital-asset investment products for a ninth consecutive week, the largest run since the crypto bull market in late 2021.

    According to a recent report from CoinShares, these products which include trusts and exchange-traded products, saw inflows of $346 million last week, with Canada and Germany contributing to 87% of the total. Only $30 million came from the US, a sign of continued low participation from the country, the asset-management firm said. Of course, that will change as soon as investors start seeing double digit percentage weekly gains, and reallocating their money into crypto in droves, just like they did in 2020 and 2021.

    Since early October, the crypto market has surged as traditional asset managers like BlackRock prepared for spot Bitcoin ETFs, potentially bringing in many more investors into the asset and resulting in inflows of tens of billions in fresh capital.

    “The combination of price rises and inflows have now pushed up total assets under management to $45.3 billion, the highest in over one and half years,” the report said.

    Bitcoin products raked in $312 million last week, pushing inflows to over $1.5 billion since the start of the year. Ether products saw $34 million in inflows last week, almost negating outflows all of 2023.

    Amid the surging inflows, and amid expectations for imminent ETF approval by the SEC and a surge in March rate cuts odds, bitcoin and ethereum have continued their furious ascent, with the former now trading just shy of $40,

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 21:35

  • Megyn Kelly's New Media Moment
    Megyn Kelly’s New Media Moment

    Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClear Wire,

    Megyn Kelly was worried. And more recently, indignant. Righteously, of course.

    She craved another chance and felt confident, while watching from home, that she could deliver in a way that was a hell of a lot better than the competition, harboring the sort of personal ambition and professional jealousy that develop as a matter of course in all who have fought for survival in prime time.

    Talent and earned experience and the trust of a large audience. She has had all of it. The only thing she needed now was a television network. And so, she will borrow one.

    She is set to return as a debate moderator next week to referee the fourth Republican presidential debate, this one in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and this time on NewsNation as part of a partnership with that network, Sirius XM, and the Free Beacon. It is a noteworthy milestone; she had a front-row seat eight years ago to the rise of populism. It is also a test of the new media; she bridled a similar kind of populism to continue her career.

    And that’s why, for just a while, she worried. Independent journalists don’t often get to call marquee prize fights. But Megyn Kelly does.

    “Malpractice, absolute journalistic malpractice!” That’s how Kelly describes the most explosive exchange from the Miami debate moderated by NBC News anchors Lester Holt and Kristen Welker. Nikki Haley had called Vivek Ramaswamy “scum” after the businessman took a shot at her adult daughter. Reliving the moment in an interview with RealClearPolitics, Kelly was incredulous: “And the moderator did not stop to say, ‘Wait, did you just call him scum? Mr. Ramaswamy. Do you care to respond?’”

    “How did that not happen?” she asks before immediately offering an answer. “Because these moderators are too tied to their written questions. They’re not nimble. They are afraid to deviate from what their producers put in front of them. That isn’t good television!”

    “There’s a reason why they call it broadcast journalism. It’s not just about journalism. It’s also about seizing the moment,” she explains. “You feel the moment, go with the moment.”

    Kelly could have just as easily been describing her own career. A trial lawyer before entering journalism, Kelly jumped from the courtroom to cable news to network television over the last two decades.

    And then the wilderness. Veteran journalists who go it alone hardly ever regain prominence. Some decamp to college campuses. Others write books. Most generally fade. Kelly, instead, seized the digital moment.

    Three years ago, after an unsuccessful stint at NBC News, she launched “The Megyn Kelly Show,” a daily podcast that was later picked up on Sirius XM and that posts on YouTube, where her interviews regularly attract millions of viewers. Professional indifference, as much as independence, was an advertised feature of the new venture. The name of her production company: “Devil May Care Media.”

    “Fourth or fifth acts in broadcast media are rare,” explains Brian Stelter, “and she is pulling it off.” Hardly a conservative fanboy, the veteran media reporter and former host of CNN’s Reliable Sources occasionally tunes in to the show during his commute, programming he described as “a hard-right, anti-woke rage fest.” But Stelter admits the Kelly renaissance “is a pretty rare success story.”  

    A seat at the desk of a presidential debate, though, the crown jewel of any career in political journalism? Even Kelly felt that would be out of reach “this time around.” Those gigs traditionally go to legacy media, and for good reason. Deep pockets, not to mention a wealth of experience, are needed to pull off a prize fight in prime time. All the same, Kelly says she “wound up with three different offers to co-moderate a debate.” But even with NewsNation handling all the technical logistics, would the ordeal be worth the fuss?

    Former President Donald Trump has walked away from the stage, leaving his primary challengers to cannibalize each other as they trail by more than 45 points. “Does it matter at all?” she asked herself when deciding whether to moderate an undercard debate without the biggest name in politics. Sequels often fall flat, and her first debate had catapulted her to the journalism equivalent of superstardom.

    It has now been eight years since Trump and Kelly, then of Fox News, clashed at the first Republican presidential debate. A stampede of magazine writers followed.

    “Blowhards, Beware,” declared Vanity Fair in 2016, “Megyn Kelly Will Slay You Now.” And later Vogue dubbed her “Megyn Unbound” as she prepared to decamp Fox for NBC the next year, speculating that, once split from the conservative news juggernaut, she could finally be “a force for good.” Eventually, the names of the magazines that profiled her said as much about her career as the interviews: Variety, then Success, and finally More.

    The quotes changed. The formula for each glossy cover story stayed the same. An elegant photo shoot, a couple thousand words complete with anecdotes about unscripted off-air moments, deviations on one common theme. One gushing headline summed up the shared sentiment: “Megyn Kelly Always Wins.”

    She chuckles at that past coverage, and then the new queen of independent journalism returns to a no-brainer for anyone else with a byline. “In the end, I concluded, yes,” Kelly says of her reason for reprising her role as debate moderator, noting that “Trump is vulnerable in some unique ways” – from the frontrunner’s legal jeopardy to, “with all due respect,” the septuagenarian’s health. Between the Thanksgiving holiday and debate prep sessions, she insists “there are all sorts of reasons” for the GOP to consider “at least the next best option.” One of the candidates not named Trump “could pull an inside straight,” she muses. “It’s not likely,” Kelly concludes, “but who am I to rule it out?”

    Haley, Ramaswamy, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have qualified for that contest. None would likely appreciate her analysis of their chances. All of them know her already, however, and there is a level of comfort with Kelly inside party headquarters and among the grassroots. She may not be a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. She can at least speak their language.

    “This does get to an interesting tension point about the debates,” Stelter mused. “Who should be asking the questions: Should it be Hugh Hewitt and Megyn Kelly, or Lester Holt and Bret Baier?” In his estimation, since going independent, the woman once crowned “the First Lady of Fox,” someone who cultivated a brand as “unpredictable,” has become reliably “more Rush Limbaugh than Brit Hume.”

    It was Hume who first spotted Kelly and passed her demo tape along to Fox News brass, who eagerly recruited her to be a reporter. The rest is history, including a cautionary tale about cultivating talent. According to talk show host Erick Erickson, NBC drafted Kelly without an adequate plan to leverage her conservative celebrity. “They could have built a credible brand around Megyn,” he says, “but chose not to because she did not have enough of a left-wing orthodoxy.”

    Erickson, like many others on the right, was quick to celebrate her return to the moderator role. “She can speak the language of the people from whom she came,” he explains, “even though she’s been elevated into this New York world of the media.”

    Conservatives have long loved to hate the media, and moderators are no exception. Ramaswamy delighted the right with his modest proposal at the last debate that Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and Tucker Carlson should be calling the contest. Kelly arguably has more mainstream appeal, less baggage, and better hair than all of them. And according to Erickson, a unique kind of credibility. “You don’t have to be a card-carrying member of the vast right-wing conspiracy to be taken seriously by conservatives,” he insisted. “You just have to be willing to treat them as humans with valid opinions.”

    Kelly won’t sign any party membership card. “I’m a registered independent,” she says to almost preempt her admission in the next breath that “my sensibilities are center-right.” And so, when she takes her seat behind the desk in Alabama and looks out over the field of candidates, she won’t bother with a view from nowhere. On the eve of that contest, Kelly advertises “complete fluency” in the ideological concerns of conservatives. And then she offers up a professional disclaimer directed at the politicians she will square up with: “I’m never going to share a jersey with these people.”

    “Am I willing to vote for a Democrat over a Republican at the presidential level these days? I’ll be honest, probably not. I have voted for plenty of Democrats in the past, but the world is so insane right now, and I’ve become almost a single-issue voter on what we’re doing to children in the trans lane,” she admits.

    “But my point is even though I’m probably rooting for these guys over a Democrat, you won’t be able to tell that on debate night, and that’s all you can ask of a good moderator. They don’t have to have no politics. They don’t have to have no ideology. They have to be able to check it. They go out there such that both sides are satisfied that this person was tough but fair,” she continues.

    Each of the candidates who will walk on stage next week has sat for in-depth interviews with her already, and even Trump made peace with her. Of course, it was only temporary. That segment included a lengthy cross-examination about his handling of classified documents, and days after it aired, hostilities resumed. “She was pretty nasty,” the former president complained to an Iowa crowd, “didn’t you think?” Kelly could care less.

    She already got the interview. Now she’s about to get her debate, a contest she playfully likens to “a dinner party” where her role is that of the “bad host” who chooses chaos. “Instead of introducing fun topics on which guests might agree, you’re introducing the thorny ones,” Kelly says, laying out in broad strokes her plans for the evening. Should any of the candidates arrive low energy, she warns, well, “Maybe you take out the cattle prod.”

    She plans to invite arguments and doesn’t expect “a hug” from anyone on stage afterward. “As soon as you declare yourself a presidential candidate, we’re not friends,” Kelly explains. The biggest bully in politics helped solidify that fact in her mind: “The nature of the relationship becomes adversarial. And as much as Trump came after me and made my life unpleasant after the 2015 debate, he wasn’t wrong.”

    “I threw a punch at him that was considerable, and he threw many, many punches back. You could argue it was excessive. I certainly think it was. But my point is simply that part of it is accepting your role as someone who these guys are not going to like that much. If you’re doing it right, they shouldn’t,” she says, recalling her first big brush with the populist who went on to the presidency.

    She talks in calculated, almost cold-blooded, terms but her inviting tone never loses its warmth. Such is the duality of Megyn Kelly: She is as disarming and kind as any suburban mom anywhere, and yet she has a plan to end the career of any unprepared politician she meets.

    Scott Walker has tangled with Kelly before, and the former Wisconsin governor, who now serves as president of the Young America’s Foundation, has blunt advice for any 2024 candidates who might be tempted to underestimate the blonde brawler: Don’t.

    “Just because she articulates conservative views doesn’t mean any of the candidates will get a pass from her,” Walker cautions. “They’d better be bringing their A-game to the debate stage.”

    While her confrontation of Trump eight years ago dominates the memory of that contest, her questions to the rest of the field were no less aggressive. For instance, she didn’t lob a softball and invite Walker to explain why he opposed abortion. She threw high and inside. “Would you really let a mother die rather than have an abortion?” Kelly asked. The governor kept his balance, defended his position, and answered that his pro-life position was “in line with everyday America.”

    Others weren’t so lucky that night, as Kelly weaved right as quickly as she bobbed left. One moment, she asked former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who had leaned on Scripture to justify his expansion of Medicaid, why conservative voters, “who generally want to shrink government” should “believe you won’t use your Saint Peter analogy to expand all government?” The next, she hit him with this question: “If you had a son or daughter who was gay or lesbian, how would you explain to them your opposition to same-sex marriage?”

    The left-right routine was enough to win Kelly praise from all corners. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, declared Kelly “the toughest person on the debate stage,” while Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the eventual Democratic nominee the next year, said the moderators had raised “the quality of the debate.”

    Campaigns are rewatching that debate and pulling clips from her show to prepare. “They should review my show,” she laughs. “It’s full of interesting content. They won’t find clues in there, though.” Kelly stubbornly refuses to talk outside of school. She says only that she and her co-moderators, Elizabeth Vargas of NewsNation and Eliana Johnson of the Washington Free Beacon, will be “unsparing.” The trio has binders full of “A+ level questions” designed to shove candidates off their talking points and into real moments of conflict.

    “If the three of us could shrink into obscurity that night, it would be a total win. If it’s just all about the three of them, or four of them, and not at all about the three of us, that would be great,” Kelly says.

    The four of them? “I know Trump loves Alabama. I do know this,” she says of a perhaps hoped-for surprise appearance. “He loves Alabama. So, there’s some possibility he’d decide to show up.” Should that happen, Kelly says the trio of moderators will be prepared. They’ve studied the candidates and the current moment.

    “This Republican Party is a far more dynamic, interesting, and complex one than what we had even six to eight years ago,” she reports, before suggesting “that’s probably actually good for the country” and then declaring, “that’s definitely good for a debate.”

    Take foreign policy, for instance, the foundation of the previous debate. Kelly cuts the party roughly into thirds for the sake of example. There is “the populist, Trump MAGA wing,” she says, and “then you still have the neoconservatives.” The remainder, in her quick estimation, are “the war-weary” who are skeptical of foreign intervention, “but who aren’t MAGA and certainly aren’t pro-Trump.”

    Pick a different issue. Slice, dice, and repeat. “There are a bunch of factions right now in the Republican Party,” she says, in between debate prep sessions, “which for me, as somebody who has a show, a journalist, and as a debate moderator, spells opportunity.”

    Familiarity will not lead to fondness, though. The only class Kelly seems to dislike more than politicians are members of the media. So much of her current rise is a reaction to their coverage, or perhaps an antidote. She complains that “the liberals who dominate the news” fail to account for their own biases, let alone check them in any meaningful way. “They’re cheerleaders,” Kelly says, “and that’s why independent media has exploded.”

    “The populist rising that we’ve seen in our politics has tilted over to media,” she replies when asked how she fits into that phenomenon. “My own coverage, I wouldn’t describe it as populist, but it is definitely anti-elite and anti-institution because they’ve earned that disdain. And people have had it. They’ve come to understand that these institutions are not rooting for them.”

    Next week may be the biggest opportunity yet for independent media when Megyn Kelly returns to live television. She predicts that some of her questions will be objectionable to one wing of the party and acceptable to another. “You have the chance to both please and displease a large constituency,” she says, “which is a win.” 

    “No one should be feeling super warm and fuzzy when the debate is over, like they just want to give the debate moderator a hug,” she adds. “They should be feeling like, ‘I loved this stuff. I hated that stuff. Overall, I found it very informative.’”

    More than anything, though, Kelly stresses that she and her co-moderators will go with the moment. “We are going to make this entertaining,” she promises. “Trust me when I tell you, we know how. It’ll be fun to watch.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 21:00

  • Trump Is Not Immune From Lawsuits Over Jan. 6: Federal Court
    Trump Is Not Immune From Lawsuits Over Jan. 6: Federal Court

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump is not immune to lawsuits over the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, a federal appeals court ruled on Dec. 1.

    Former President Donald Trump speaks to a crowd of supporters at the Fort Dodge Senior High School in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

    President Trump has not proven that he has presidential immunity from suits regarding his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, the court said.

    The ruling was largely based on the determination that President Trump’s campaign for another term was not an official presidential act, so did not fall under presidential immunity.

    “In arguing that he is entitled to official-act immunity in the cases before us, President Trump does not dispute that he engaged in his alleged actions up to and on January 6 in his capacity as a candidate. But he thinks that does not matter. Rather, in his view, a president’s speech on matters of public concern is invariably an official function, and he was engaged in that function when he spoke at the January 6 rally and in the leadup to that day. We cannot accept that rationale,” U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan, appointed under former President Barack Obama, wrote in the ruling.

    “While presidents are often exercising official responsibilities when they speak on matters of public concern, that is not always the case. When a sitting president running for re-election speaks in a campaign ad or in accepting his political party’s nomination at the party convention, he typically speaks on matters of public concern. Yet he does so in an unofficial, private capacity as office-seeker, not an official capacity as office-holder. And actions taken in an unofficial capacity cannot qualify for official-act immunity,” Judge Srinivasan added.

    Judge Gregory Katsas, appointed by President Trump, concurred, while Judge Judith Rogers, appointed under President Bill Clinton, concurred in part.

    The panel ruled on an appeal lodged by President Trump after U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, appointed under President Obama, ruled in 2022 that President Trump was not protected by presidential immunity for his speech on Jan. 6.

    “To deny a president immunity from civil damages is no small step,” Judge Mehta wrote at the time. “The court well understands the gravity of its decision. But the alleged facts of this case are without precedent, and the court believes that its decision is consistent with the purposes behind such immunity.”

    The ruling is not final, Judge Srinivasan emphasized.

    The rejection of President Trump’s appeal “is necessarily tied to the need to assume the truth of the plaintiffs’ factual allegations at this point in the proceedings,” he wrote. “President Trump has not had a chance to counter those allegations with facts of his own. When these cases move forward in the district court, he must be afforded the opportunity to develop his own facts on the immunity question if he desires to show that he took the actions alleged in the complaints in his official capacity as President rather than in his unofficial capacity as a candidate. At the appropriate time, he can move for summary judgment on his claim of official-act immunity.”

    The Dec. 1 decision “is not necessarily even the final word on the issue of presidential immunity,” he added, so “we of course express no view on the ultimate merits of the claims against President Trump.”

    Lawyers for President Trump and the other parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    President Donald Trump speaks at the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Jenny Jing/The Epoch Times)

    Positions

    The decision came nearly a year after the parties argued in front of the appeals court panel. The appeals court normally issues decisions in about a third of the time.

    The ruling came after President Trump was sued by Democrats and law enforcement officers over his actions on Jan. 6.

    Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, for instance, accused President Trump of conspiring to prevent them from their duty in approving the 2020 electoral results because of his speech, in which the president called on supporters to march to the Capitol.

    President Trump, who is the Republican frontrunner for 2024, has argued that the speech consisted of “political statements and discourse by a sitting president during his term of office” and should thus be covered by presidential immunity.

    The immunity protects presidents from civil lawsuits over official acts, or acts taken with the “outer perimeter” of his official responsibilities, under a 1982 Supreme Court ruling.

    “In the run-up to January 6th and on the day itself, President Trump was acting well within the scope of ordinary presidential action when he engaged in open discussion and debate about the integrity of the 2020 election,” lawyers for the former president wrote in one filing.

    Lawyers for the other parties had told the appeals court that Judge Mehta ruled correctly.

    President Trump “was acting far beyond the “outer perimeter” of his office when he conspired to use violence and intimidation to prevent members of Congress from carrying out their constitutional duty to count Electoral College votes and certify the results of the 2020 presidential election,” they said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 19:50

  • Pickup Trucks Dominate US Auto Sales
    Pickup Trucks Dominate US Auto Sales

    Celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, the Ford F-Series is no less than an American icon.

    Ford’s immensely popular line of pickup trucks has been the best-selling truck for 46 consecutive years and the country’s best-selling vehicle for the last 41 years. And since it’s very hard to overtake an F-Series truck, both literally and figuratively, the F-Series will once again be America’s number 1 vehicle this year.

    As Statista’s Felix Richter reports, according to Car and Driver, Ford sold 573,370 units of its heavyweight truck in the first nine months of 2023, including 12,260 electric F-150 Lightning trucks. In a testament to America’s love of pickup trucks, the F-Series is trailed by the Chevy Silverado and the Ram Pickup in second and third place, before the Toyota RAV4 is the first non-heavy-duty vehicle in this year’s ranking of best-selling cars and trucks.

    Infographic: Big & Bold: Pickup Trucks Dominate U.S. Auto Sales | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The enduring love affair between Americans and pickup trucks is deeply ingrained in the nation’s automotive culture. Rooted in the early 20th century, when trucks were primarily tools of trade, their evolution over time saw them transition from workhorses to versatile, multipurpose vehicles catering to a diverse range of lifestyles. Capable of seamlessly transitioning from hauling heavy loads at a worksite to serving as a family vehicle for weekend adventures, the spacious cabins, towing capacity and off-road capabilities of modern pickup trucks cater to a wide spectrum of consumer needs.

    Moreover, the ‘American Dream’ narrative has often been intertwined with these trucks. The very essence of the pickup truck embodies the spirit of the country itself – bold, ambitious and unyielding. In recent years, the market for pickup trucks has expanded beyond traditional demographics. Their appeal now extends to urban dwellers, outdoor enthusiasts and even environmentally conscious consumers with the introduction of electric pickup trucks.

    Tesla’s Cybertruck is just the latest such example, and when looking at Tesla’s track record combined with America’s love of heavy-duty trucks, it looks like a surefire hit.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 19:15

  • 'Disturbing Gibberish': New Trans Textbook For Psychiatrists Could Harm Millions Of Kids, Critics Say
    ‘Disturbing Gibberish’: New Trans Textbook For Psychiatrists Could Harm Millions Of Kids, Critics Say

    Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A new “cutting-edge” textbook on transgenderism written with the help of activists will be used to train psychiatrists and could harm millions of children in the future, some experts have warned.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    “Gender-Affirming Psychiatric Care,” just released on Amazon at $58, is a textbook printed by American Psychiatric Association (APA) Publishing.

    The textbook signals early on that it’s more subjective than objective, quoting a feminist studies professor saying, “Scientific neutrality is a fallacy.”

    The content has prompted some critics to question the textbook’s reliance on a mix of transgender-identifying professionals writing about their experiences, limited scientific studies, and neo-Marxist critical theories.

    “This is a huge issue; millions more kids will be harmed,” said Dr. Lauren Schwartz, a psychiatrist in Oklahoma speaking out against the rush to “transition” children.

    The textbook’s introduction says the book is based on an “evidence-informed approach” instead of an evidence-based approach, which is more scientific, she told The Epoch Times.

    The 26 chapters are written by 56 authors, 50 of whom are in the transgender community, according to the textbook’s foreword.

    Chapters include affirming “two-spirit people,” a term used to refer to someone who believes he or she is both sexes, and one about “double queer” people—or people who identify as transgender and have a mental disability.

    The book’s editors are listed as an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and investigator at the National LGBT Health Education Center; and a transgender-identifying psychiatry resident at the University of Pennsylvania, whose work is influenced by her background as a “non-binary/trans, queer, neurodivergent, chronically ill, Jewish person.”

    Dr. Schwartz noted that the authors were chosen by “prioritizing lived experience, diversity of perspectives, and community impact of prior work over academic titles.”

    ‘Disturbing Gibberish’

    The problem is the textbook will be perceived as authoritative because it was printed by the APA’s publishing arm, she said.

    “Anyone wanting to practice gender-affirming care, any attorney wanting to defend it, and any legislator who wants to protect it, now they have a new peer-reviewed textbook, not just ‘evidence’ in a journal or a study,” she said.

    Alan Hopewell, a prescribing neuropsychologist in Texas who saw transgender-identifying patients decades ago, called the textbook “disturbing.”

    “This is nonsensical gibberish which has no foundation whatsoever in science,” he told The Epoch Times.

    Hospitals could demand doctors go by the textbook because the APA put it out, or it could even be used to remove the license of doctors who don’t go along with it, he said.

    Abigail Martinez (R), the mother of a transgender teen who committed suicide, sheds tears as Erin Friday comforts her and transgender activists block TV cameras from capturing her story in Anaheim, Calif., on Oct. 8, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    “This reminds me of brain-damaged hippies free-associating at a commune,” Mr. Hopewell said.

    The book foreword says that most of the contributing authors recognize they are “obscenely privileged” as English-speaking doctors with access to elite schools.

    It asserts that the psychiatric field was built on “the work [and assumptions] of European, white, cisgender men, including their colonial, Anglo-centric, cis-heteropatriarchal worldview and pathologization of experiences that did not fit their own ‘norm.'”

    “For millennia, outside of European colonial influences, gender diversity has flourished to varying degrees among hundreds of indigenous communities around the world,” the foreword reads.

    The idea that Western countries were colonizing land stolen from indigenous people is part of critical race theory (CRT), which critics say is rooted in neo-Marxism.

    Straight White Bias

    CRT and gender theories see white people and heterosexuals in Western civilization as “oppressors” of minority identity groups, who are viewed as victims.

    Activists are encouraged to dismantle oppressive societies in order to right discrimination of the past, according to ideology architects such as Ibram X. Kendi, who wrote “How to Be an Antiracist.”

    Detransition advocates meet outside of the annual Pediatric Endocrine Society conference held in San Diego, Calif., on May 6, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Proponents of CRT and gender theories contend that discrimination against identity groups such as white people and heterosexuals is needed to right the wrongs against racial and sexual minorities.

    “The entire document is predicated on an uncritical acceptance of queer theory, which is more accurately queer Marxism,” conservative author James Lindsay told The Epoch Times.

    Queer theory is a gender ideology advocating the destruction of traditional sexual norms; some queer theorists support sexual acts such as pedophilia and bestiality that aren’t accepted by society.

    The textbook describes heterosexuals as cisgender people who are part of a “cultural and systemic marginalization” of LGBT people who don’t align with societal norms.

    To prove the point, the authors object to the idea that only women can have babies.

    “For example, naming an obstetrics and gynecology practice a women’s health center is cis-normative because it assumes the practice will only serve patients with one gender,” the foreword reads.

    Mr. Lindsay, author of “The Marxification of Education,” said the idea of “treating” gender dysphoria with hormones or surgery is akin to performing lobotomies on the mentally ill decades ago.

    History teaches that communist theories applied to the real world have deadly results, he said.

    Mr. Lindsay pointed to the forced application of Trofim Lysenko’s Soviet agriculture program based on pseudo-science as an example of a communist idea gone bad.

    The program caused millions of innocent people in the former Soviet Union to starve by forcing them to plant seeds close together in the belief that plants from the same class never compete with each other. The theory contributed to widespread famine.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 18:40

  • Recession Risk: Which Sectors Are Least Vulnerable?
    Recession Risk: Which Sectors Are Least Vulnerable?

    If, and when, a recession ever occurs again in any of our lifetimes – certainly not in the golden age of Bidonomics, pain will be felt disproportionately as usual.

    Sectors which fare better will typically exhibit;

    • Less cyclical exposure
    • Lower rate sensitivity
    • Higher cash levels
    • Lower capital expenditures

    As such, Visual Capitalist‘s Dorothy Neufeld takes a look at the sectors most resilient to recession risk and rising costs, using data from Allianz Trade. 

    Recession Risk, by Sector

    As slower growth and rising rates put pressure on corporate margins and the cost of capital, we can see in the table below that this has impacted some sectors more than others in the last year:

    Generally speaking, the retail sector has been shielded from recession risk and higher prices. In 2023, accelerated consumer spending and a strong labor market has supported retail sales, which have trended higher since 2021. Consumer spending makes up roughly two-thirds of the U.S. economy.

    Sectors including chemicals and pharmaceuticals have traditionally been more resistant to market turbulence, but have fared worse than others more recently.

    In theory, sectors including construction, metals, and automotives are often rate-sensitive and have high capital expenditures. Yet, what we have seen in the last year is that many of these sectors have been able to withstand margin pressures fairly well in spite of tightening credit conditions as seen in the table above.

    What to Watch: Corporate Margins in Perspective

    One salient feature of the current market environment is that corporate profit margins have approached historic highs.

    As the above chart shows, after-tax profit margins for non-financial corporations hovered over 14% in 2022, the highest post-WWII. In fact, this trend has been increasing over the past two decades.

    According to a recent paper, firms have used their market power to increase prices. As a result, this offset margin pressures, even as sales volume declined.

    Overall, we can see that corporate profit margins are higher than pre-pandemic levels. Sectors focused on essential goods to the consumer were able to make price hikes as consumers purchased familiar brands and products.

    Adding to stronger margins were demand shocks that stemmed from supply chain disruptions. The auto sector, for example, saw companies raise prices without the fear of diminishing market share. All of these factors have likely built up a buffer to help reduce future recession risk.

    Sector Fundamentals Looking Ahead

    How are corporate metrics looking in 2023?

    In the first quarter of 2023, S&P 500 earnings fell almost 4%. It was the second consecutive quarter of declining earnings for the index. Despite slower growth, the S&P 500 is up roughly 15% from lows seen in October.

    Yet according to an April survey from the Bank of America, global fund managers are overwhelmingly bearish, highlighting contradictions in the market.

    For health care and utilities sectors, the vast majority of companies in the index are beating revenue estimates in 2023. Over the last 30 years, these defensive sectors have also tended to outperform other sectors during a downturn, along with consumer staples. Investors seek them out due to their strong balance sheets and profitability during market stress.

    Cyclical sectors, such as financials and industrials tend to perform worse. We can see this today with turmoil in the banking system, as bank stocks remain sensitive to interest rate hikes. Making matters worse, the spillover from rising rates may still take time to materialize.

    Defensive sectors like health care, staples, and utilities could be less vulnerable to recession risk. Lower correlation to economic cycles, lower rate-sensitivity, higher cash buffers, and lower capital expenditures are all key factors that support their resilience.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 18:05

  • House Passes Bill To 'Permanently Freeze' $6BN In Iranian Funds
    House Passes Bill To ‘Permanently Freeze’ $6BN In Iranian Funds

    Via The Cradle,

    On Thursday the US House of Representatives in a 307-119 vote passed a bill that would force the White House to permanently freeze $6 billion in Iranian funds released back in September as part of a successful prisoner exchange deal.

    “Giving Iran access to these funds for any purpose frees up money for its malign activities, including its support to proxies, like we saw on 7 October, like Hamas,” Representative Michael McCaul – who introduced the bill – told reporters.

    House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) speaks in support of the “No Funding For Iranian Terror Act”. YouTube/House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans

    House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) speaks in support of the “No Funding For Iranian Terror Act” on the House floor on Nov. 30, 2023. Credit: YouTube/House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans.

    The US Senate has introduced similar legislation to freeze the Iranian funds but has yet to pass it out of committee.

    Despite the accusations from western officials, Iranian authorities maintain they had no previous knowledge of the plans by Hamas to launch Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and have repeatedly stressed Tehran has no interest in seeing the hostilities expand into a regional war.

    In September, Tehran and Washington completed a landmark prisoner exchange deal brokered by Qatar that also saw the transfer of $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds seized by South Korea due to US sanctions.

    The billions were transferred by Seoul to the Qatari accounts of several Iranian banks using the SWIFT system, thanks to a sanctions waiver provided by Washington.

    Despite US officials claiming in the wake of the deal that they would police the use of the funds, Iranian authorities stressed these would be used to acquire “whatever the Iranian people need.”

    At the time, Washington-based think tanks considered the deal a softball maneuver by the White House to publicly kickstart the easing of tensions with Tehran. This move was seen as a way to navigate around the resistance of congressional representatives and pressure from Israeli hawks against reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 

    The Neocon wing of the Republicans have long sought to block the Biden move to free up the $6BN, but Thursday’s vote had bipartisan support…

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    Nonetheless, days after the start of the Gaza-Israel war on 7 October, the White House announced Iran “would not be getting the money for the time being.” At the time, State Secretary Anthony Blinken said Tehran had not “touched the money yet.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 17:30

  • Americans Couldn't Care Less About Christmas Markets
    Americans Couldn’t Care Less About Christmas Markets

    Even though most Western and many other countries around the world observe Christmas as a public or religious holiday, the traditions differ wildly not only from region to region but also from country to country.

    Statista’s Florian Zandt reports that their Consumer Insights Christmas Special shows that when it comes to Christmas markets, a long-held tradition in Western Europe, attitudes are divided by an ocean in the markets analyzed – literally and figuratively.

    Infographic: Americans Couldn't Care Less About Christmas Markets | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While 58 percent of German survey respondents say that Christmas markets are essential and almost half of those looking forward to the holiday season are excited about mulled wine and gathering around wooden huts in festive cheer, not as many participants in the United Kingdom share these sentiments.

    When looking at the United States, most respondents could probably do entirely without Christmas markets, with only 13 percent each seeing it as an important tradition and looking forward to it.

    For U.S. survey participants, having a Christmas tree (55 percent) listening to Christmas music, and watching Christmas movies (50 percent each) are the top 3 essentials for the holiday season.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 16:55

  • New CDC Director Defends Vaccine Mandates, School Closures
    New CDC Director Defends Vaccine Mandates, School Closures

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Nov. 30 defended COVID-era policies like vaccine mandates in her first appearance before Congress.

    “I’m very proud of the work we did in North Carolina,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, the new director, told Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) after he asked if she regretted any of the policies put into place in North Carolina, such as school closures, when she was the state’s health secretary.

    “I feel like we did that in a way that was very inclusive,” she added.

    U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen testifies in Washington on Nov. 30, 2023. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    When Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) noted that Dr. Cohen supported harsh measures as health secretary, including vaccine mandates, Dr. Cohen said it was time to “look forward” and start a “new chapter.”

    “You have to remember, at different moments in time, we needed different solutions,” she said in response to how Americans would know whether the new director will support the same measures at the federal level.

    “The good news is that we’re in a different place than we were before. We both have different tools and have different mechanisms to respond,” she said to another question, about whether she’d shut down schools if a pandemic happened again. “I can’t really address a hypothetical but I think we’ve learned a lot about how to approach things.”

    Did closing schools harm students?

    “We always knew in-person instruction was incredibly beneficial,” Dr. Cohen said.

    “You’d be great in the sales department,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) said, prompting a rare smile from the new director.

    Dr. Cohen replaced Dr. Rochelle Walensky, President Joe Biden’s first CDC director, over the summer. Dr. Walensky was an advocate for COVID-19 vaccines, masks, and school closures.

    Dr. Cohen also indicated she supports mask mandates, saying all masks, including cloth masks, worked as a “barrier” and protected against COVID-19. The CDC recommends wearing “well-fitting” masks for protection.

    Dr. Cohen’s answers sparked frustration from lawmakers of both parties.

    “My neighbor would say, should I wear a cloth mask? I don’t know from your answer what I should tell them,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) said.

    Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said that Dr. Cohen was in the perfect place to help the CDC reestablish credibility.

    “If the CDC wants its credibility back, you’ve got to have a mea culpa moment. You’re in the perfect position to do it, because you had nothing to do with their decisions at the time. So there’s no reason to defend it,” he said.

    “It’s ok to say ‘it didn’t make any sense to shut down schools.’ The data shows that now. ‘It didn’t make sense to do major lockdowns.’ The data shows that now. ‘It doesn’t make sense to mask kids.’ The data shows that now. It’s okay to say it. And the public will reward you for it,” he added later.

    But Dr. Cohen refused to say authorities in North Carolina or at the CDC did anything wrong, repeatedly steering the discussion back to the future, not the past.

    She did refer broadly several times to lessons learned during the pandemic, including being more transparent.

    Answers on Illness in China, Lab in California

    Dr. Cohen also answered questions about other topics, including a bout of illness in China.

    Dr. Cohen said that the CDC was in touch with counterparts in China, where the agency has an office, and that the surge in respiratory infections in China was not, based on current information, from “a new or novel pathogen.”

    The World Health Organization and Chinese officials have also said the illnesses are from existing illnesses such as influenza.

    “The Chinese officials have shared with us that there are no novel pathogens, and we were able to corroborate that information across other sources from our European Union partners and others to make sure that we’re getting a complete picture,” Dr. Cohen said.

    Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said the situation in China “brings us back, sadly, to the early days of COVID-19” when there was a “lack of reliable information coming out of China.”

    “We are hoping that you can put some pressure in an attempt to try to get China to not mislead the world as they did with COVID-19,” Rep. H. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said.

    Some lawmakers pressed Dr. Cohen on a laboratory in China that was operating without permission, after a House report said the CDC refused to speak for months to local officials who raised the alarm.

    Dr. Cohen said the CDC investigated quickly and found no indications the lab was experimenting with Ebola or other select agents.

    She echoed an earlier CDC statement that said the report “includes numerous inaccuracies, including both the charge that CDC did not respond to local requests for aid and the false implication that CDC had the authority to unilaterally investigate or seize samples from” the lab. The agency said it was actively engaged in the investigation into the facility.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 16:20

  • Inmate Who Shanked Derek Chauvin 22 Times Is Former FBI Informant Who Led Mexican Mafia Faction
    Inmate Who Shanked Derek Chauvin 22 Times Is Former FBI Informant Who Led Mexican Mafia Faction

    A 52-year-old man who stabbed former police officer Derek Chauvin with an “improvised knife” is a former FBI informant, according to court documents filed on Dec. 1.

    John Turscak stabbed Chauvin 22 times before being subdued by responding corrections officers. He later told them that he would have killed the man convicted for the murder of George Floyd (who had an elephant dose of fentanyl in his system and died ‘with’ Covid).

    The stabbing occurred on Nov. 24 around 12:30 p.m., the day after Thanksgiving known commonly as Black Friday. Turscak waived his Miranda rights and told FBI agents that he ‘did not want to kill Chauvin, but had been thinking about attacking him for a month,’ taking the opportunity when both of them were in the law library at the Federal Correctional Institution Tucson.

    “Turscak stated that his attack of [Mr. Chauvin] on Black Friday was symbolic with the Black Lives Matter Movement and the ‘black hand’ symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia criminal organization,” said prosecutors.

    As the Epoch Times notes, Turscak was charged with four counts, including assault with a dangerous weapon and assault with intent to commit murder. He was moved after the stabbing to an adjacent federal penitentiary in Tucson, where he remained in custody Friday, inmate records show.

    Mr. Turscak did not have a lawyer listed on the court docket.

    A lawyer for Mr. Chauvin did not return an inquiry about the charges.

    Federal officials have said an inmate at the Tuscon facility was stabbed on Nov. 24 and that the inmate was rushed to a hospital. They said they would not identify the inmate.

    “For privacy and safety reasons, we are not providing the name of the victim or their medical status,” a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

    Minnesota officials had said that Mr. Chauvin was the inmate and that he was expected to survive.

    Carolyn Pawlenty, Mr. Chauvin’s mother, wrote on Facebook on Friday that she is seeking answers regarding the stabbing.

    “The FBI and BOP are not giving me any answers other then [sic] ‘he is in stable condition and it is under investigation,'” she wrote.

    “Who did this, where were the guards, where is the video showing what happened?? How could you let this happen?” she wondered.

    Gregory Erickson, a lawyer who has represented Mr. Chauvin, told The Epoch Times via email a day after the attack that none of Mr. Chauvin’s family members nor his lawyers had been apprised of his condition or location. “I view this lack of communication with his attorneys and family members as completely outrageous. It appears to be indicative of a poorly run facility and indicates how Derek’s assault was allowed to happen,” he said.

    BOP declined to respond directly but a spokesperson said it “takes seriously our duty to protect the individuals entrusted in our custody, as well as maintain the safety of correctional employees and the community.”

    Sent to Federal Prison

    Mr. Chauvin, 47, was sent to FCI Tucson from a maximum-security Minnesota state prison in August 2022 to simultaneously serve a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights and a 22½-year state sentence for second-degree murder.

    Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer at the time had advocated for keeping him out of the general population and away from other inmates, anticipating he would be a target.

    In November, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of his murder conviction. Separately, Mr. Chauvin is trying to overturn his federal guilty plea, claiming new evidence shows he didn’t cause Mr. Floyd’s death.

    Mr. Floyd’s death was determined to be a homicide, with the man suffering a heart attack while being restrained by law enforcement officers on May 25, 2020.
    Mr. Chauvin while detaining Mr. Floyd knelt on Mr. Floyd’s back and neck, according to the medical examiner and expert testimony at his trial. But Mr. Floyd also had a fatal level of drugs in his system, his autopsy showed.

    Inmate’s History

    Mr. Turscak led a faction of the Mexican Mafia in the Los Angeles area in the late 1990s and went by the nickname “Stranger,” according to court records. He became an FBI informant in 1997, providing information about the gang and recordings of conversations he had with its members and associates.

    The investigation Mr. Turscak was aiding led to more than 40 indictments. But about midway through, the FBI dropped Mr. Turscak as an informant because he was still dealing drugs, extorting money, and authorizing assaults. According to court papers, Mr. Turscak plotted attacks on rival gang members and was accused of attempting to kill a leader of a rival Mexican Mafia faction while also being targeted himself.

    Mr. Turscak pleaded guilty in 2001 to racketeering and conspiring to kill a gang rival. He said he thought his cooperation with the FBI would have earned a lighter sentence.

    “I didn’t commit those crimes for kicks,” Mr. Turscak said, according to news reports about his sentencing. “I did them because I had to if I wanted to stay alive. I told that to the FBI agents and they just said, ‘Do what you have to do.”’

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 15:45

  • Watchdog To Probe FBI Headquarters Selection Process Amid Claims Of Political Bias
    Watchdog To Probe FBI Headquarters Selection Process Amid Claims Of Political Bias

    Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the General Services Administration (GSA) will investigate whether politics influenced the agency’s selection process for the location of the FBI’s new headquarters.

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters in Washington on Nov. 6, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The GSA announced on Nov. 9 that it had chosen Greenbelt, Maryland, over two other potential locations.

    The move sparked concern about a “political conflict of interest” from FBI Director Christopher Wray, who wrote in an internal email obtained by The Associated Press that the choice was made after a GSA executive overruled a board to pick land owned by a former employer.

    As one of the other sites in contention was in Springfield, Virginia, that news angered Virginia’s congressional delegation and Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who claimed the process had been “tainted” by politics.

    “We are deeply disturbed to learn that a political appointee at the General Services Administration overruled the unanimous recommendation of a three-person panel comprised of career experts from the GSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, concluding that Springfield, Virginia, is the site best suited for the new FBI headquarters,” the officials said in a joint statement.

    “We have repeatedly condemned political interference in the independent, agency-run site selection process for a new FBI headquarters. Any fair weighing of the criteria points to a selection of Virginia. It is clear that this process has been irrevocably undermined and tainted, and this decision must now be reversed.”

    Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) raised those concerns in a Nov. 15 letter to the GSA’s Acting Inspector General Robert Erickson. On Nov. 30, he received a reply confirming that an investigation would be launched.

    “My office is initiating an evaluation of GSA’s selection of the site,” Mr. Erickson wrote. “Our objective will be to assess the agency’s process and procedures for the site selection to relocate the FBI Headquarters. We intend to begin this work immediately and will share with you and the relevant committees a copy of any report which may result from this evaluation.”

    Technically independent, the GSA OIG is a watchdog dedicated to investigating internal matters at the GSA.

    Under Pressure

    According to the GSA, the Greenbelt location was selected because it presented “the lowest cost to taxpayers, provided the greatest transportation access to FBI employees and visitors, and gave the government the most certainty on project delivery schedule.”

    The agency added that the chosen location would also provide “the highest potential to advance sustainability and equity.”

    “GSA looks forward to building the FBI a state-of-the-art headquarters campus in Greenbelt to advance their critical mission for years to come,” GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said in a statement.

    The decision followed a sudden change to the selection criteria in July, when the agency announced that it was increasing the weight of cost and social equity in its decision-making process and reducing the importance of transportation and the location’s proximity to other FBI facilities, like its Quantico facility in Virginia.

    The changes were made after officials in Maryland argued that convenience had been weighted too heavily as a factor—a fact Virginia officials pointed to as evidence that the decision was “fouled by politics.”

    Praising Mr. Erickson’s decision to open an investigation, Virginia’s congressional delegation agreed it was the “appropriate next step.”

    “We applaud the inspector general for moving quickly and encourage him to move forward to complete a careful and thorough review,” they said in a joint statement. “In the meantime, the GSA must pause all activities related to the relocation until the IG’s investigation is complete.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 15:10

  • Boeing Drops Out Of USAF's 'Doomsday' Replacement Plane Competition
    Boeing Drops Out Of USAF’s ‘Doomsday’ Replacement Plane Competition

    The US Air Force (USAF) eliminated Boeing Co. from the replacement competition of a half-century-old “Doomsday” plane that can survive a nuclear war. This leaves Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) as the sole remaining known competitor. 

    Sources told Reuters that Boeing – the incumbent manufacturer of the E-4B Nightwatch – could not agree with the USAF on data rights and contract terms for the replacement plane that began flying in the 1970s. In other words, the planemaker did not want to sign a fixed-price agreement. 

    “We are approaching all new contract opportunities with added discipline to ensure we can meet our commitments and support the long-term health of our business. We remain confident our [E-4B replacement] approach is the most comprehensive, technically mature and lowest-risk solution for the customer and Boeing,” a Boeing spokesperson told the military blog Breaking Defense. 

    Boeing added, “Our proposal is based on 60 years of military commercial derivative aircraft knowledge and experience, including the design, development, and sustainment of the E-4B Nightwatch, which currently serves the national security command and control mission.” 

    A review of Boeing’s latest financials shows its defense unit lost a whopping $1.3 billion this year due to fixed-price development programs amid supply chain snarls, elevated inflation, and high interest rates. Since 2014, the planemaker has lost $16.3 billion on fixed-price programs. 

    “Rest assured, we haven’t signed any fixed-price development contracts nor (do we) intend to,” Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer, told investors in October. 

    The USAF’s four E-4B aircraft fleet dates back to the early 1970s and is used as a mobile command post for the National Command Authority, namely the US President.

    The Survivable Airborne Operations Center is spearheading the move for the new replacement aircraft. The contract is scheduled to be awarded in the second quarter of 2024. SNC is the only known competitor to provide the USAF with a new Doomsday plane. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 14:35

  • CBP Whistleblower Alleges "Problematic Practices" And "Substandard" Health Care For Migrants In Custody
    CBP Whistleblower Alleges “Problematic Practices” And “Substandard” Health Care For Migrants In Custody

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

    A senior Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employee turned whistleblower is alleging years of “problematic practices” in the agency’s treatment of migrants under detention at the border.

    Illegal immigrants wait in along the border wall to board a bus after surrendering to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol agents on the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on May 12, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

    In a letter sent to Congress on Nov. 30 by the Government Accountability Project, an advocacy group, on behalf of Troy Hendrickson, the CBP employee detailed the alleged failures of the agency’s medical contractor, Loyal Source Government Services.

    Mr. Hendrickson, a 15-year CBP veteran, said the actions of the medical contractor—the sole provider of medical care for people under CBP custody—were “compounded by the unwillingness of the CBP contracting office” to hold it accountable for its alleged failures and ensure oversight.

    According to its official website, Loyal Source Government Services is a Florida-based company focusing on government health care, technical and support services, engineering, and travel health care.

    The letter to Congress states that Mr. Hendrickson was assigned to work with the CBP Office of the Chief Medical Officer (OCMO) as a Contracting Officer Representative, beginning in August of 2021.

    During this time, he “immediately raised concerns internally regarding problematic practices he witnessed, including unfit medical providers, severe understaffing, privacy breaches, and a failure to report sexual harassment in a CBP medical facility,” according to the letter.

    The negligence, according to Mr. Hendrickson, resulted in “substandard” health care for migrants held in CBP custody.

    “Mr. Hendrickson’s complaints, made with the support of OCMO leadership, went largely ignored and unaddressed by the CBP Office of Acquisition, the entity with authority to hold Loyal Source to the terms of the Medical Services Contract,” the letter said.

    “Despite his multiple requests over several months to take corrective action, such as issuing mandated performance appraisals and sending a remedial notice known as a ‘cure letter’ instructing Loyal Source to fix their performance problems, the Contracting Office consistently refused to hold the contractor accountable,” the letter stated.

    Whistleblower Suffered Retaliation

    Mr. Hendrickson further states that officials from CBP retaliated against him for raising the alleged problems by removing him from his position and preventing him from working on any future CBP medical contracts.

    Nearly a year after Mr. Hendrickson allegedly raised his concerns, in May 2023, eight-year-old Anadith Reyes Alvarez, a Panamanian girl with sickle cell anemia and congenital heart disease, died at a CBP facility in Harlingen, Texas, after being detained by border officials.

    An independent report later found that the young girl’s death could have been prevented and that she was denied repeated requests for care.

    Mr. Hendrickson’s letter said the young girl’s death was due to “avoidable medical negligence” by Loyal Source Personnel.

    The whistleblower is urging Congress to ensure thorough and prompt oversight of Loyal Source’s alleged ongoing failures to comply with mandated medical care of migrants in CBP custody.

    He is also calling for increased oversight into the CBP contracting office’s “gross mismanagement, gross waste of taxpayer dollars, and abuse of authority in its refusal to hold Loyal Source accountable for the company’s contract performance failures.”

    Congress must also ensure that Mr. Hendrickson and any other current or former CBP or Loyal Source employees who turn whistleblower are not subjected to retaliation, the letter stated.

    “Today we and our client, Mr. Troy Hendrickson, demand accountability for the years of dangerous underperformance of the CBP medical contractor and the alarming lack of oversight of CBP’s critical mandate to provide medical services to noncitizens in the agency’s custody,” Government Accountability Project Immigration Counsel Andrea Meza said in a statement.

    Texas Army National Guard look on as illegal immigrants board a bus after surrendering to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol agents for immigration and asylum claim processing following the end of Title 42 on the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on May 12, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

    Medical Contractor Received ‘Millions’ of Taxpayer Dollars

    “The CBP Office of Chief Medical Officer and the Medical Services Contract were created in direct response to an ongoing pattern of deaths of children in CBP custody. It is unconscionable that when the contractor, receiving millions of taxpayer dollars, failed to meet OCMO’s medical standards, contracting officials refused at every turn to hold the contractor to account and instead retaliated against Mr. Hendrickson,” Ms. Meza continued.

    Loyal Source Government Services received a $25 million-per-month contract from the CBP, according to The Washington Post.

    “Mr. Hendrickson has been sounding the alarm within CBP and to multiple oversight entities for years, and had his warnings been heeded, Anadith Reyes Alvarez might be alive today. It is long past time for Congress and federal oversight entities to take action so that no other family will suffer the loss of their child due to medical negligence in CBP custody,” the letter concluded.

    Responding to the letter, a CBP spokesperson told Forbes that the agency “takes its obligations to investigate whistleblower allegations seriously,” and “remains committed to ensuring that contract oversight—and the procurement process writ large—are conducted correctly.”

    The spokesperson added that the health and safety of migrants in CBP custody is “a top priority” and that the agency has taken a number of “significant steps” to improve care and decrease the amount of time migrants spend in CBP custody, including via new leadership into the Office of the Chief Medical Officer.

    Elsewhere, U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a Nov. 30 statement that the whistleblower’s allegations raise “serious concerns.”

    “These systemic failures to conduct proper oversight of its contractor severely impacted the quality of medical care available to individuals in CBP’s custody, endangering vulnerable migrants such as Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez,” the lawmaker said.

    The Democrat vowed to investigate the issue further and take steps as needed to better “protect migrants in government custody.”

    The Epoch Times has contacted Loyal Source Government Services for further comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 14:00

  • "Two Words… Tucker Carlson": Greg Gutfeld Gores Fox After Musk Blasts Activist Advertisers
    “Two Words… Tucker Carlson”: Greg Gutfeld Gores Fox After Musk Blasts Activist Advertisers

    Greg Gutfeld just took a major shot at his employer, Fox News, saying what we all knew: Tucker Carlson, the highest-rated on-air host in television history, was fired due to pressure from special interest groups.

    While discussing Elon Musk’s “fuck you” moment over advertiser attempts to blackmail the billionaire, Gutfeld joked that it would be like “extorting Jerry Nadler with salad, or blackmailing sports fans by threatening to cancel PBS.”

    He then said that Musk was the last man standing against “the censorship-industrial complex, which is made up of government, media and tech forces.”

    Then, Gutfeld stated what we’ve all suspected since it happened…

    “He [Musk] realizes that advertisers have no spine and can be easily cowed by special interest groups in cahoots with political allies – if you don’t believe me I got two words for ya – Tucker Carlson.“

    Watch (h/t Modernity.news):

    Carlson says ‘global freedom hinges on Musk and X’

    Meanwhile, in an interview with VC David Sacks, Tucker Carlson says he thinks that the fate of free speech hinges on X.

    “I’m worried about the pressure being brought to bear on X because it’s the only huge international free speech platform with hundreds of millions of people,” said Carlson, adding “The existence of X where anyone around the world can get for free a whole range of opinions that aren’t controlled — that changes everything.“

    Watch the full interview below:

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 13:25

  • Israeli AI 'Assassination Factory' Plays Central Role In Gaza War
    Israeli AI ‘Assassination Factory’ Plays Central Role In Gaza War

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

    Tel Aviv has been relying on an AI Program dubbed “the Gospel” to select targets in Gaza at a rapid pace. In past operations in Gaza, the IDF ran out of targets to strike in the besieged enclave.

    A statement on the IDF website says the Israeli military is using the Gospel to “produce targets at a fast pace.” It continues, “Through the rapid and automatic extraction of intelligence,” the Gospel produced targeting recommendations for its researchers “with the goal of a complete match between the recommendation of the machine and the identification carried out by a person.”

    Getty Images via Bloomberg

    Aviv Kochavi, former head of the IDF, said the system was first used in the May 2021 bombing campaign in Gaza.  “To put that into perspective, in the past we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year,” he said. “Now, this machine produces 100 targets a single day, with 50% of them being attacked.”

    The IDF does not disclose what it inputs into the Gospel for the program to produce a list of targets.

    Thursday, the Israeli outlet +972 Magazine reported Tel Aviv was using AI to pick targets in Gaza. A former Israeli official told the +972 that the Gospel was being used as a “mass assassination factory.” The program is selecting the home of suspected low-level Hamas members for destruction. Sources told the outlet that strikes on homes can kill numerous civilians.

    One source was critical of the Gospel. “I remember thinking that it was like if [Palestinian militants] would bomb all the private residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at home on the weekend,” they said.

    On Friday, the Guardian expanded on the +972 article by reporting that the Gospel plays a central role in the Gaza military operations.

    A former senior Israeli military source told the Guardian that operatives use a “very accurate” calculation of the number or rate of civilians fleeing a building before an impending strike. However, other experts disputed that assertion. A lawyer who advises governments on AI and compliance with humanitarian law told the outlet there was “little empirical evidence” to support the claim.

    During the nearly two-month-long conflict, Israel has hit over 15,000 targets. According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives on the Gaza Strip. The IDF reports that it has only killed between 1,000 and 2,000 suspected Hamas members. At the same time, at least 15,000 civilians have reportedly been killed, including an estimated 6,000 children.

    Richard Moyes, a researcher who heads Article 36, said the images of Gaza prove the Israeli bombing of Gaza has not focused on accuracy. “Look at the physical landscape of Gaza,” he explained. “We’re seeing the widespread flattening of an urban area with heavy explosive weapons, so to claim there’s precision and narrowness of force being exerted is not borne out by the facts.” This week, the BBC reviewed drone and satellite images of Gaza and determined that over 100,000 buildings have sustained damage.

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

    Israeli sources speaking with +972 also disputed the claim that the IDF has attempted to avoid civilian casualties. A senior intelligence officer told his officers after October 7 that the goal was to “kill as many Hamas operatives as possible,” for which the criteria around harming Palestinian civilians were significantly relaxed, the outlet reported.

    A second source said that the massive bombing campaign was due to the embarrassment the Israeli government suffered on October 7. “All of this is happening contrary to the protocol used by the IDF in the past,” they stated. “There is a feeling that senior officials in the army are aware of their failure on October 7, and are busy with the question of how to provide the Israeli public with an image [of victory] that will salvage their reputation.”

    On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Israeli government had been aware of Hamas’s plans for October 7 for more than a year. The article explained that Israeli officials believe “Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so. That belief was so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 12:50

  • Bidenomics Winning? 60% Of Americans Report Their Income Does Not Keep Up With Inflation
    Bidenomics Winning? 60% Of Americans Report Their Income Does Not Keep Up With Inflation

    The Biden Administration has been complaining about the American public’s negative views on the economy, arguing that people are operating on “false perceptions influenced by right-wing media.”  

    But is this really the case?

    Is the economy really booming under Bidenomics and the majority of the US populace is simply ignoring their good fortune?

    Never has there been a point in US history when financial conditions were good and everyone preferred they be bad. 

    In fact, government officials and the media have a well established habit of misrepresenting economic data as a means to convince the public that the system is healthier than it is, and Biden is no exception.  People know when their wallets are hurting, gaslighting them is not going to be effective.

    Yet another data point released this week supports the position of the public that the nation is not as prosperous the government would like us to believe.

    Consumer financial services company Bankrate has released a survey showing that the American jobs market is cooling, indicating that high interest rates are starting to puncture the inflationary consumer spending bonanza along with the explosion in retail hiring triggered by over $8 trillion in covid stimulus.  The effects of the helicopter money are fading.  

    More important, however, was the survey’s data on wages. 

    Over 60% of Americans reported that their wages were lagging well behind inflation. 

    Among workers who did get a raise or better-paying job, more than half (53 percent) say their earnings lost ground to inflation, up from 50 percent in 2022.  In other words, inflation is still eroding worker gains despite the much hyped decline in CPI the past few months.

    This information contradicts the claims made by Biden and Democrats that wages are accelerating and beating back inflation. 

    The situation is actually getting worse by the year.  While CPI might show a narrow window in time for inflation, it is diluted by hundreds of consumer categories and services instead of focusing on necessities, where the real price explosion has been.  Furthermore, CPI is not an indicator of accumulated inflation over the past few years, which amounts to 25%-30% on average. 

    A 30% increase in cost of living in the span of three years is a disaster; it’s not surprising that Biden and the establishment media would seek to hide it. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/02/2023 – 12:15

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