Today’s News 4th October 2023

• EU Wants To Pay Off Hungary To The Tune Of €13BN So Orban Doesn't Veto Ukraine Aid
  EU Wants To Pay Off Hungary To The Tune Of €13BN So Orban Doesn’t Veto Ukraine Aid

  Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has long been an opponent of the mainstay of EU policy on Ukraine, having also persistently criticized Kiev for discrimination against Hungarian minorities, and demanding that a 2017 law restricting the use of minority languages be changed. He’s also refused to ratify Sweden’s entry into NATO.

  Orbán has further throughout the conflict stood against policies which escalate against Moscow, and has constantly warned against stumbling into a WW3 scenario involving direct NATO-Russia clash. He told Tucker Carlson in a recent interview that “the Third World War сould be knocking on our door so we have to be very careful.” With Budapest having been a consistent thorn in the side of the EU, Brussels now wants to pay the Hungarians off.

  

  “The European Commission is preparing to unfreeze around €13 billion in funds for Hungary to try to avoid Prime Minister Viktor Orbán vetoing EU aid for Ukraine, in a move likely to draw criticism from the European Parliament,” Politico reports Tuesday.

  “The Commission needs the unanimous backing of the bloc’s 27 countries for an update to the EU’s long-term budget, which includes a €50 billion funding pot for Ukraine,” the report adds.

  Akin to what’s currently going down in Washington with a group of Republicans holding up Ukraine funding, Brussels may soon have its own Ukraine aid blockage problem. EU aid for Kiev which was previously approved runs out in December, hence the urgency for EU leadership in wanting to push through a new package.

  A week ago, Orbán gave a speech declaring Hungary will no longer support Ukraine in any way unless certain significant policies are changed both in Kiev and in the European Union.

  He stressed in the words given before parliament that “Hungary is doing everything for peace” but that “unfortunately the Russian-Ukrainian war continues, tens of thousands of people are victims.” Thus, he continued, “Diplomats must take control back from the hands of the soldiers, otherwise it will be in vain for women to wait for their sons and fathers and husbands to come home.”

  The Hungarian leader has stood against ratcheting Western sanctions on Moscow, instead choosing to maintain a generally positive diplomatic relationship with the Kremlin.

  He also a week ago charged that Kiev and its backers have cheated Budapest by “Ukrainian grain dumping” into his country. He had also laid out, per The Hill:

  … that he was protesting a 2017 law in Ukraine that limits ethnic Hungarians from speaking their own language, particularly in schools and said Hungary would not support Ukraine on international issues “until the previous laws are restored.”

  Needless to say EU officials are panicking, and are readying a lucrative quid pro quo with Hungary (based on freeing frozen funds related to the prior years’ so-called “rule of law” punitive measures”), so that EU aid to Ukraine doesn’t get blocked at a crucial moment that Washington funding is drying up.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 10/04/2023 – 02:45

• Poland, Austria, & Czechia Introduce Temporary Border-Checks With Slovakia To Curb Illegal Migration
  Poland, Austria, & Czechia Introduce Temporary Border-Checks With Slovakia To Curb Illegal Migration

  Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

  Poland, Austria and Czechia will all introduce random checks at the countries’ borders with Slovakia from midnight on Wednesday following an influx of illegal immigration.

  

  Temporary checks will be conducted along the length of the border for an initial 10-day period until Oct. 13.

  They will focus specifically on road and railway border crossings, although, pedestrians and cyclists may also be asked for documentation. Anyone within the vicinity of the border may be requested to identify themselves.

  “The numbers of illegal migrants to the EU are starting to grow again,” said Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala following the announcement. “We don’t take the situation lightly.”

  “Citizens need a valid passport or identity card to cross the border,” the Czech Interior Ministry added.

  The Czech policy would also be adopted by neighboring Austria, the country’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner confirmed.

  Poland had already announced its intention to reintroduce checks on the Slovak border with the number of migrants along the Balkans migration route continuing to surge. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said last week he was “instructing Minister of Interior Mariusz Kamiński to check on buses, coaches, and cars crossing the border when it is suspected there could be illegal migrants on board.”

  “In recent weeks, we detected and detained 551 illegal migrants at the border with Slovakia. This situation causes us to take decisive action,” Kaminski added.

  Slovak caretaker Prime Minister Ludovit Odor acknowledged the growing issue of illegal migration in his country but insisted that the problem needs a European solution rather than individual nations restricting border access.

  He claimed that the decision by the three neighboring countries had been fueled by the Polish government, which is involved in a tightly contested election campaign, with Poles heading to voting booths on Oct. 15.

  “The whole thing has been triggered by Poland, where an election will soon take place, and the Czech Republic has joined in,” Odor said.

  Slovakia revealed last month that the number of illegal migrants detained by its authorities this year had soared nine-fold to over 27,000. The majority of detainees comprise young men from the Middle East using the Balkan migratory route through Serbia as they seek to migrate to northwestern Europe.

  The winner of Sunday’s general election in Slovakia, former Prime Minister Robert Fico, has vowed to tackle the issue more robustly by promising to reintroduce border checks with neighboring Hungary.

  “It will not be a pretty picture,” Fico told journalists as he threatened to use force to dispel illegal migrants detected on Slovak territory.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 10/04/2023 – 02:00

• No Privacy, No Property: The World In 2030 According To The WEF
  No Privacy, No Property: The World In 2030 According To The WEF

  Authored by Madge Waggy via SevenWop.home.blog,

  The World Economic Forum (WEF) was founded fifty years ago. It has gained more and more prominence over the decades and has become one of the leading platforms of futuristic thinking and planning. As a meeting place of the global elite, the WEF brings together the leaders in business and politics along with a few selected intellectuals. The main thrust of the forum is global control.

  Free markets and individual choice do not stand as the top values, but state interventionism and collectivism. Individual liberty and private property are to disappear from this planet by 2030 according to the projections and scenarios coming from the World Economic Forum.

  

  Eight Predictions

  Individual liberty is at risk again. What may lie ahead was projected in November 2016 when the WEF published “8 Predictions for the World in 2030.” According to the WEF’s scenario, the world will become quite a different place from now because how people work and live will undergo a profound change. The scenario for the world in 2030 is more than just a forecast. It is a plan whose implementation has accelerated drastically since with the announcement of a pandemic and the consequent lockdowns. 

  According to the projections of the WEF’s “Global Future Councils,” private property and privacy will be abolished during the next decade. The coming expropriation would go further than even the communist demand to abolish the property of production goods but leave space for private possessions. The WEF projection says that consumer goods, too, would be no longer private property.

  If the WEF projection should come true, people would have to rent and borrow their necessities from the state, which would be the sole proprietor of all goods. The supply of goods would be rationed in line with a social credit points system. Shopping in the traditional sense would disappear along with the private purchases of goods. Every personal move would be tracked electronically, and all production would be subject to the requirements of clean energy and a sustainable environment. 

  In order to attain “sustainable agriculture,” the food supply will be mainly vegetarian. In the new totalitarian service economy, the government will provide basic accommodation, food, and transport, while the rest must be lent from the state. The use of natural resources will be brought down to its minimum. In cooperation with the few key countries, a global agency would set the price of CO2 emissions at an extremely high level to disincentivize its use.

  In a promotional video, the World Economic Forum summarizes the eight predictions in the following statements:

  1. People will own nothing. Goods are either free of charge or must be lent from the state.

  2. The United States will no longer be the leading superpower, but a handful of countries will dominate.

  3. Organs will not be transplanted but printed.

  4. Meat consumption will be minimized.

  5. Massive displacement of people will take place with billions of refugees.

  6. To limit the emission of carbon dioxide, a global price will be set at an exorbitant level.

  7. People can prepare to go to Mars and start a journey to find alien life.

  8. Western values will be tested to the breaking point..

  Beyond Privacy and Property

  In a publication for the World Economic Forum, the Danish ecoactivist Ida Auken, who had served as her country’s minister of the environment from 2011 to 2014 and still is a member of the Danish Parliament (the Folketing), has elaborated a scenario of a world without privacy or property. In “Welcome to 2030,” she envisions a world where “I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.” By 2030, so says her scenario, shopping and owning have become obsolete, because everything that once was a product is now a service.

  In this idyllic new world of hers, people have free access to transportation, accommodation, food, “and all the things we need in our daily lives.” As these things will become free of charge, “it ended up not making sense for us to own much.” There would be no private ownership in houses nor would anyone pay rent, “because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it.” A person’s living room, for example, will be used for business meetings when one is absent. Concerns like “lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment” are things of the past. The author predicts that people will be happy to enjoy such a good life that is so much better “than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth.”

  Ecological Paradise

  In her 2019 contribution to the Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils of the World Economic Forum, Ida Auken foretells how the world may look in the future “if we win the war on climate change.” By 2030, when CO2 emissions will be greatly reduced, people will live in a world where meat on the dinner plate “will be a rare sight” while water and the air will be much cleaner than today. Because of the shift from buying goods to using services, the need to have money will vanish, because people will spend less and less on goods. Work time will shrink and leisure time will grow.

  For the future, Auken envisions a city where electric cars have substituted conventional combustion vehicles. Most of the roads and parking spaces will have become green parks and walking zones for pedestrians. By 2030, agriculture will offer mainly plant-based alternatives to the food supply instead of meat and dairy products. The use of land to produce animal feed will greatly diminish and nature will be spreading across the globe again.

  Fabricating Social Consent

  How can people be brought to accept such a system? The bait to entice the masses is the assurances of comprehensive healthcare and a guaranteed basic income. The promoters of the Great Reset promise a world without diseases. Due to biotechnologically produced organs and individualized genetics-based medical treatments, a drastically increased life expectancy and even immortality are said to be possible. Artificial intelligence will eradicate death and eliminate disease and mortality. The race is on among biotechnological companies to find the key to eternal life.

  Along with the promise of turning any ordinary person into a godlike superman, the promise of a “universal basic income” is highly attractive, particularly to those who will no longer find a job in the new digital economy. Obtaining a basic income without having to go through the treadmill and disgrace of applying for social assistance is used as a bait to get the support of the poor.

  To make it economically viable, the guarantee of a basic income would require the leveling of wage differences. The technical procedures of the money transfer from the state will be used to promote the cashless society. With the digitization of all monetary transactions, each individual purchase will be registered. As a consequence, the governmental authorities would have unrestricted access to supervise in detail how individual persons spend their money. A universal basic income in a cashless society would provide the conditions to impose a social credit system and deliver the mechanism to sanction undesirable behavior and identify the superfluous and unwanted.

  Who Will Be the Rulers?

  The World Economic Forum is silent about the question of who will rule in this new world.

  There is no reason to expect that the new power holders would be benevolent. Yet even if the top decision-makers of the new world government were not mean but just technocrats, what reason would an administrative technocracy have to go on with the undesirables? What sense does it make for a technocratic elite to turn the common man into a superman? Why share the benefits of artificial intelligence with the masses and not keep the wealth for the chosen few?

  Not being swayed away by the utopian promises, a sober assessment of the plans must come to the conclusion that in this new world, there would be no place for the average person and that they would be put away along with the “unemployable,” “feeble minded,” and “ill bred.” Behind the preaching of the progressive gospel of social justice by the promoters of the Great Reset and the establishment of a new world order lurks the sinister project of eugenics, which as a technique is now called “genetic engineering” and as a movement is named “transhumanism,” a term  coined by Julian Huxley, the first director of the UNESCO.

  The promoters of the project keep silent about who will be the rulers in this new world. The dystopian and collectivist nature of these projections and plans is the result of the rejection of free capitalism. Establishing a better world through a dictatorship is a contradiction in terms. Not less but more economic prosperity is the answer to the current problems. Therefore, we need more free markets and less state planning. The world is getting greener and a fall in the growth rate of the world population is already underway. These trends are the natural consequence of wealth creation through free markets.

  Conclusion

  The World Economic Forum and its related institutions in combination with a handful of governments and a few high-tech companies want to lead the world into a new era without property or privacy. Values like individualism, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are at stake, to be repudiated in favor of collectivism and the imposition of a “common good” that is defined by the self-proclaimed elite of technocrats. What is sold to the public as the promise of equality and ecological sustainability is in fact a brutal assault on human dignity and liberty. Instead of using the new technologies as an instrument of betterment, the Great Reset seeks to use the technological possibilities as a tool of enslavement. In this new world order, the state is the single owner of everything. It is left to our imagination to figure out who will program the algorithms that manage the distribution of the goods and services.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 23:45

• Aarg! Homeless Pirates Pillage Leisure Boats In San Francisco Bay
  Aarg! Homeless Pirates Pillage Leisure Boats In San Francisco Bay

  There’s a new, maritime dimension to the scourge of rampant crime in northern California cities, as homeless creeps are now taking to the water and preying on houseboats and yachts docked on San Francisco Bay, reports Fox News. 

  “Multiple vessels have been stolen and ransacked. Victims have had to resort to personally confronting the criminals to recover their property without the benefit of police support,” said former harbor master Brock de Lappe at a recent municipal meeting. “Is this appropriate activity for a 79-year-old senior?”

  The 3,000-slip Oakland-Alameda Estuary has been particularly hard-hit, as thieves use small boats to burglarize or steal private boats on the waterway. The pirates use stolen boats or old, abandoned dinghies to carry out their raids. 

  “Homeless pirates maraud in crime-ridden San Francisco Bay, USA”

  The California coast is increasingly plagued by pirates who use small motorboats to raid larger ships and houseboats. pic.twitter.com/gXUqJj8Bt9

  — Sprinter Monitoring (@SpriterMonitor1) October 2, 2023

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

  A boating school for children has seen four of its eight safety boats stolen and destroyed. The boats cost the school between $25,000 and $35,000 apiece. “We cannot run our program without these boats,” wrote Kame Richards, owner of the nonprofit Alameda Community Sailing Center, in a letter to his municipal commission.

  “The response we received from APD (Alameda Police Department) was that they could do nothing, and a warning not to approach the perpetrators if we located our boats,” added Richards. Sounds about par for the course in a state where the Senate has advanced a bill that would criminalize retail-store policies requiring employees to attempt to thwart thieves. 

  “We had all hands on deck to retrieve this stuff, and it took 35 hours to get a police report number from the Alameda Police Department,” said Richards during a municipal meeting. The school is on the verge of calling it quits.

  Another woman scared a troubling tale, telling Fox that she recently heard faint cries of “help me, please, please, anybody help me” coming from the inky darkness of the estuary. She dared to venture out with her kayak and a headlamp, and found a sailboat with a “panicked and terrified young man” aboard. He said pirates cut his sailboat line and set him adrift after a confrontation. 

  “If there had been any wind at the time I wouldn’t have been able to go out there and rescue this young man who had no motor and no ability to sail that boat,” said his rescuer, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. 

  What stage of collapse is “pirates?”https://t.co/ktfAjE95fr #FoxNews

  — Chris “Context Matters” Martenson, PhD (@chrismartenson) October 2, 2023

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

  Things have deteriorated to the point that a group that has regularly volunteered to clean up the waterway for the past six years cancelled this year’s event “because of safety concerns” arising from a particularly concerning homeless encampment. “Unfortunately, I don’t feel comfortable bringing children to the site until those are addressed by the city of Oakland,” said the group’s leader, Mary Spicer. 

  Alameda island has received high marks for suburban livability, but that’s in jeopardy as it’s increasingly feeling the ill effects of being across a narrow channel from Oakland and its skyrocketing homeless population. The island city has no maritime police equipment, and has seen its police force shrink by 30% in recent years. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 23:25

• Truth-Speaking & The Technocratic Cabal
  Truth-Speaking & The Technocratic Cabal

  Authored by Bert Olivier via The Brownstone Institute,

  Truth-speaking (or truth-telling) is not the same as truth. At least not in the familiar sense of a correspondence between what is stated and the state of affairs to which it corresponds – the so-called correspondence theory of truth. Or, for that matter, the coherence theory of truth, which judges the truth of statements by the criterion of whether it coheres with the body of statements within which it functions. 

  

  There are several other such theories of truth, for example the pragmatic theory of truth, which assesses truth in the light of what supposedly true statements do, or by their consequences for action (ancient Greek ‘pragma’: ‘thing done’; ‘act’; ‘deed’). 

  Truth-telling, or in ancient Greek, parrhesia, is something different. It is what one does when you tell or speak the truth exactly as you experience or perceive it, with no punches pulled. You don’t have to call the proverbial spade a shovel (unless this is what it takes to get through to your interlocutor), but you have to speak truthfully without holding back. This is particularly relevant for speaking (or writing) in public, where you run the risk of exposing yourself to harsh criticism. 

  It is also what you do when you feel constrained to tell a friend the barefaced truth about something that she or he has done, or is doing, and which falls short of the standards of honesty, or decency, or friendship, and because you care for your friend and value your friendship, you risk it by saying what has to be done to rescue it. It is not this kind of friend-to-friend parrhesia which concerns me here, in the first place, but rather the kind that sometimes, albeit seldom, occurs in the public domain. Here is Michel Foucault, in a justly famous philosophy seminar, talking about it: 

  In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind so that the audience is able to comprehend exactly what the speaker thinks. The word ‘parrhesia’ then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. Whereas rhetoric provides the speaker with technical devices to help him prevail upon the minds of his audience (regardless of the rhetorician’s own opinion concerning what he says), in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people’s mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes.

  This should sound very familiar to us today. Not because we are familiar with such truth-speaking, but precisely because we are not – at least not in the public domain, in the vast majority of cases. On the contrary, today one is mostly witness to the deliberate distortion of truth, and not even through the sophisticated use of rhetoric. It is usually straightforward, blatant lying.

  Foucault is careful to add that there are two types of parrhesia – sometimes the word is used to denote the genuine thing and sometimes it is employed pejoratively, to indicate that someone is just “chattering”, as Foucault calls it. Heidegger calls this “idle talk”. In both instances it means that someone says virtually anything that comes to mind, without exercising any discerning judgement about the sense or implications of what they say, or simply because it is the fashionable thing to say. 

  However, according to Foucault, most of the time when the term is encountered in classical Greco-Roman texts, it is in the affirmative sense of truth-speaking. Needless to point out, it is not a practice explicitly familiar to us today, in the specific sense with which it was endowed in antiquity. Nonetheless, it would not be difficult to find counterparts to parrhesia in contemporary society, particularly because there is an exigency for it in the present time. Why is that? In the text cited earlier, Foucault reminds one that: 

  …the commitment involved in parrhesia is linked to a certain social situation, to a difference of status between the speaker and his audience, to the fact that the parrhesiastes says something which is dangerous to himself and thus involves a risk, and so on…

  If there is a kind of ‘proof’ of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage. The fact that a speaker says something dangerous — different from what the majority believes— is a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes.

  To appreciate this, one should remind oneself that not every instance of speaking the truth can be considered as being parrhesia. Foucault explains:

  Someone is said to use parrhesia and merits consideration as a parrhesiastes only if there is a risk or danger for him or her in telling the truth. For instance, from the ancient Greek perspective, a grammar teacher may tell the truth to the children that he teaches, and indeed may have no doubt that what he teaches is true. But in spite of this coincidence between belief and truth, he is not a parrhesiastes. However, when a philosopher addresses himself to a sovereign, to a tyrant, and tells him that his tyranny is disturbing and unpleasant because tyranny is incompatible with justice, then the philosopher speaks the truth, believes he is speaking the truth, and, more than that, also takes a risk (since the tyrant may become angry, may punish him, may exile him, may kill him)…

  Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger: it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the ‘game’ of life or death.

  The well-known saying, ‘to speak truth to power’, is obviously related to this, and probably derives from Foucault’s (and also Edward Said’s) work.

  And have we not witnessed exemplary instances of this today, in the face of what is arguably the largest attempt at a (global) coup d’etat in the history of humanity! 

  We all owe those brave souls who have risked their reputations, their incomes, and sometimes their lives, by acting as parrhesiastes in the face of almost incomprehensible institutional, technological and media power, a huge debt of gratitude for setting an example for the rest of us. There are too many to list here, but among the names that come readily to mind are those of Dr Naomi Wolf, Robert F. Kennedy, Dr Joseph Mercola, Dr Robert Malone, Dr Peter McCullough, Alex Berenson, Dr Meryl Nass, Dr Denis Rancourt, and Todd Callender, among many others who have suffered and even died. 

  As Foucault said, parrhesia is dangerous and risky. But what choice does one have, if not merely your income, reputation and your life, but also – more importantly – your moral integrity as a human being is at stake? It takes courage to be a parrhesiastes. This is why Foucault observes that:

  When you accept the parrhesiastic game in which your own life is exposed, you are taking up a specific relationship to yourself: you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken. Of course, the threat of death comes from the Other, and thereby requires a relationship to himself: he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself.

  Here’s the thing: presumably all those people who contribute to, and most of those who read Brownstone articles, know what evil power is behind the attempts to cause the collapse of the world economy and decimate the world’s human population. I use the word ‘evil’ advisedly, for there is no way of saying more clearly and accurately what animates the actions of those agents in the service of the Leviathan in question, which has several fronts, among them most prominently the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). 

  Moreover, one cannot expect any parrhesia from them. On the contrary, as Foucault points out, “It is because the parrhesiastes must take a risk in speaking the truth that the king or tyrant generally cannot use parrhesia; for he risks nothing”.

  Nothing prevents us from practicing this ancient mode of address when we confront the tyrannical monstrosity in question, however, which is why I want to say to them that, contrary to what they believe, drunk with their own vaunted importance and supposed power, they should not be too sure of not risking their necks. The disgusting Klaus Schwab of the WEF himself talks about people being very “angry,” which is probably an understatement, judging by the opinions expressed by many people I know. 

  So, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates and your ilk – including the bankers who are hiding in the shadows – I cannot encourage you to examine your collective and individual conscience, because you evidently don’t have one. It is, after all, a telling characteristic of psychopaths to be devoid of a conscience, and therefore of the capacity to feel guilt or remorse. 

  But evidently you can feel fear, otherwise you would not have been sufficiently paranoid to surround yourselves with 5000 heavily armed troops at your exclusive boys’ club meeting at Davos in January. And you should be afraid, very afraid, because when this is over, you will be called to account.

  Signs are abounding that increasing numbers of people are realising that you and your empty ‘promise’ of ‘building back better’ are the engineers of the increasing economic hardships they face, and are showing in no uncertain terms that they will not allow that to continue indefinitely. 

  Hence, don’t start celebrating too soon about your desired success in getting the better of the putative ‘useless eaters’. Except, of course, that you don’t know how to celebrate; only truly human people know how to do that – people who know the joy of togetherness at a birthday celebration, or a wedding, or when you go dancing – something the love of my life and I do regularly, when our favourite bands perform live at a joint we frequent in the city. To quote the late, inimitable Leonard Cohen:

  So you can stick your little needles in that voodoo doll; 
  I’m very sorry baby, doesn’t look like me at all
  I’m standin’ by the window where the light is strong…

  Now, you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure:
  The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
  And there’s a mighty Judgement comin’…
  You see, I hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song…

  Therefore, you empty vessels, here is a concluding bit of parrhesia: on those cold winter nights (as Dolly famously sang to Horace Vandergelder) you can snuggle up to your AI robots, while we humans cuddle up for mutual warmth. You would be envious if you could imagine it, but I know you have no imagination. If you did, you would use all your money and technology to make the world a better place for all people; not just the few quasi-robots in your coterie, masquerading as people. But I can assure you that we shall make the world a better place – without you.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 23:05

• Tropical Storm Philippe Forecasted To Impact Maine Or Nova Scotia 
  Tropical Storm Philippe Forecasted To Impact Maine Or Nova Scotia 

  Several weeks after Tropical Storm Lee made landfall in the western part of Canada’s Nova Scotia province, another storm is brewing in the Atlantic Basin, with computer models forecasting parts of the US Northeast and Nova Scotia could be hit again. 

  The latest report from the National Hurricane Center states Tropical Storm Philippe was about 70 miles northwest of Anguilla and about 55 miles east-northeast of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, moving northwest at 10 mph with sustained winds of 45 mph.

  

  “It made landfall on the island of Barbuda on Monday with 50 mph winds and is now headed away from the Caribbean into the Atlantic, but its tropical-storm-force winds still extend out 175 miles,” according to Orlando Sentinel. 

  “On the forecast track, the center of Philippe is expected to pass just north of the British Virgin Islands today and then move away from the northern Leeward Islands beginning tonight,” NHC wrote in the 1100 ET update, adding, “However, the strongest winds and heaviest rains will likely occur in the islands to the southeast of the center.”

  Philippe moves slowly northwestward while bringing tropical storm conditions to the northeastern Leeward Islands. pic.twitter.com/mYYMp8mOOb

  — CIRA (@CIRA_CSU) October 3, 2023

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

  NHC said, “Little change in strength is forecast during the next day or two, but Philippe could begin to strengthen after midweek.” 

  Models expect the storm to turn north and parallel the US East Coast while at sea, with a potential landfall impact area from Maine to Nova Scotia by as early as Sunday. 

  

  So far, the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season has produced 18 named storms and is already above average, according to Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher with Colorado State University. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 22:45

• The SAFER Banking Act Is Anything But
  The SAFER Banking Act Is Anything But

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  After a long debate, the SAFER Banking Act is making its way out of committee and onto the floor of the Senate for a vote.

  The Act would allow banks to work with cannabis businesses without penalty. It currently enjoys bipartisan support in the Senate, but there are some sinister consequences for firearms businesses due to loose language hidden in the text of the Act.

  As currently written, the law does not sufficiently protect the firearms industry from the abuse of banks or regulators to harm firearms businesses in a manner similar to “Operation Chokepoint” of the Obama era.

  Thank you Senator @MikeCrapo for standing up to this nonsense!

  As written, the SAFER Banking Act “does not get the job done” to prevent Operation Chokepoint 2.0! 💯 pic.twitter.com/QxTwCLaNV1

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) September 27, 2023

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

  The law states that Federal Banking regulators can recommend to financial service providers de-bank businesses that they suspect of breaking a rule or condition from a federal agency like ATF.

  Consider that currently, the Biden administration has imposed a “Zero Tolerance Policy” on FFLs, which makes mundane and simple mistakes such as misspelling an abbreviation on a form into federal crimes for which a gun store could now be penalized.

  ATF’s published data concerning its compliance inspections in 2020 reflects that it conducted 5,823 inspections and found and reported errors in 43.7% of those inspections.

  ATF’s compliance inspections for 2022 increased over 2020 by 1,156 inspections to 6,979 inspections, and ATF’s data reflects that it found and reported errors in 45.5% of the inspected FFLs. In summary, a failure to clarify whether the language in the law applies only to banking regulations could result in nearly half of all gun stores losing access to financial services!

  Gun Owners know full well how statutory language can be redefined and weaponized with a simple rule change and agency definition.

  ATF routinely issues contradictory guidance letters to the firearm industry, refuses to publish the guidance publicly, and has even reversed such guidance in a way that criminalizes millions of customers and shuts down entire companies.

  Members of the firearms industry will not only have to deal with rogue ATF regulators in court but could also be cut off from essential financial services because of this “informal guidance.”

  In addition, a provision of the law imposes strict liability on account holders who deal with “a threat to national security,” someone involved in “other illicit financing,” or is “engaged in… any other criminal activity.”

  This could affect members of the firearms industry even if they were unaware that they were selling to potential national threats or criminals.

  For instance, criminals often deceive gun stores by lying on form 4473 to buy firearms illegally. During Operation Fast and Furious, the government even permitted Mexican cartel agents to buy guns from FFLs. Under this provision, firearms businesses could be de-banked for the actions of criminals regardless of whether the FFL was unaware of the criminal activity.

  The SAFER Banking Act also clarifies that federal regulators should recommend de-banking businesses whose customers pose a “national security threat,” posing a huge threat to the entire firearm industry. Especially given that national security agencies increasingly label gun owners as “Militia Violent Extremists” or “Domestic Violent Extremists.”

  Gun stores have little protection from this extensive and imperfect list of reasons to deny them financial services.

  Flaws in @SenSchumer‘s SAFER Banking Act could result in nearly HALF of all gun stores losing access to financial services & destroy the industry as we know it!

  This is unacceptable! https://t.co/ji9JIcg7XE

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) September 27, 2023

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

  So, what are we doing to combat this attack on the firearms industry?

  Gun Owners of America supports the Fair Access to Banking Act. This Act aims to prevent large financial institutions that benefit from federal funding, not just anti-gun regulators, from discriminating against the Second Amendment community.

  Considering that major banks owe their existence to federal bailouts and federal depository insurance, they shouldn’t dictate the scope of Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

  The SAFER Banking Act permits financial institutions to bypass federal marijuana restrictions but doesn’t grant the same leniency for gun ownership rights. The Act treats the Second Amendment as inferior.

  Gun Owners of America opposes any laws that promote the legal marijuana industry while undermining gun rights in states where marijuana use is legal.

  *   *   * 

  We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 22:25

• 'Not-ESG Friendly': New Panasonic EV Battery Plant In Kansas To Be Powered By Coal 
  ‘Not-ESG Friendly’: New Panasonic EV Battery Plant In Kansas To Be Powered By Coal 

  Panasonic’s new battery plant in Kansas will require an amount of energy equivalent to that used by a small city, forcing a nearby utility to halt the shutdown of a coal-fired power plant. This has sparked criticism that electric vehicle production and electric vehicles aren’t ‘ESG-friendly.’ 

  According to The Kansas City Star, citing documents filed by power company Evergy with the Kansas Corporation Commission, Panasonic’s 4-million-square-foot plant in Johnson County will double the utility’s load and require two new substations and upgrades to 31 miles of transmission lines. 

  

  Documents show Evergy will have to keep a Lawrence coal-fired power plant online until 2028 to meet the new load at the EV battery plant that will be ramped up as production begins at the end of 2025/early 2026. The utility plans to transition from coal to natural gas by the decade’s end.  

  “Beyond the sheer magnitude of load and load factor, Panasonic’s construction schedule, and, in turn, its energy needs, are being planned on a very aggressive schedule. With energy needs starting to ramp in 2024 and full load requirements by 2026, there is urgency to procure capacity and energy to fulfill the expected energy usage schedule,” said Kayla Messamore, Evergy’s vice president of strategy and planning. 

  Currently, no other power generation source in the area can supply enough on-demand power to the Panasonic battery plant. In testimony from Ryan Mulvany, Evergy’s vice president of distribution, he said the plant will demand approximately 200 to 250 megawatts (or the equivalent of a small city). 

  Despite the $4 billion cost of the factory, the Japanese company is “poised to get as much as $6.8 billion from provisions in last year’s federal Inflation Reduction Act,” the local paper said in July. The company is expected to receive over $8 billion in federal, state, and local incentives and support the plant in Johnson County. 

  Zack Pistora, a lobbyist with the Kansas Sierra Club, called the EV battery plant powered by coal a “shame”: 

  “Not only are we squandering an opportunity to access local Kansas clean energy resources that invest in our state, but it also is not doing anyone else a favor as far as more greenhouse gas pollution.”

  For readers, none of this should be a surprise. The whole ‘ESG’ movement is a scam. For years, we’ve noted “Some EVs Are “Dirtier” Than Conventional Vehicles; New Study Finds” and ‘Zero Emissions’ From Electric Vehicles? Here’s Why That Claim Has Zero Basis. Four years ago we said, “Electric Car-Owners Shocked: New Study Confirms EVs Considerably Worse For Climate Than Diesel Cars.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 22:05

• Trump, Newsom, And DeSantis – The Odd Throuple
  Trump, Newsom, And DeSantis – The Odd Throuple

  Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

  Appearing at the annual California Republican Party convention Friday, former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took an unusual political tack: They not only heaped scorn on President Biden and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, but on the state of California itself.

  “California really is the petri dish for American liberalism,” DeSantis told a dinner crowd of some 350 Republicans at the Anaheim Marriott. “What Biden is doing are things that California was doing many years ago. What California is doing now is likely what a second Biden term would do, or God forbid, Kamala Harris, or God forbid, Newsom himself.”

  

  A few hours earlier, at a sold-out luncheon with a crowd four times as large, Trump used his singular rhetorical style to make similar assertions. Expanding the hit list beyond Biden and Newsom to four members of California’s congressional delegation (Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Maxine Waters), Trump said, “Guess who is running your state? Bad people. It’s becoming a symbol of our nation’s decline.”

  Warming to the subject matter, Trump continued: “Gavin Newsom and the far-left Communists in Sacramento…San Francisco and L.A., cities which are absolutely being destroyed rapidly on a daily basis, have given you sanctuary cities, wide open borders, vast homeless encampments, and out-of-control taxes.”

  The former president also referred to Biden and his administration’s economic advisers as “lunatics,” vowed that if returned to the White House he’d investigate the “Marxist monsters unleashing mayhem” on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and called Newsom an “environmental maniac.” When it came to California’s governor, however, Trump’s heart didn’t quite seem to be in it. He quickly amended his statement to say that Newsom was appeasing California’s environmentalists “for political reasons,” adding as an aside that as president he and Newsom had worked well together.

  Trump expressed no similar sentiment for his fellow Republican who occupied the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, whom he ridiculed in a lengthy riff about the time DeSantis asked for Trump’s endorsement in his first gubernatorial election. A member of Congress at the time, DeSantis was trailing far behind in the GOP primary. After he endorsed DeSantis, his campaign started soaring, Trump recalled.

  “I said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and this guy went up like a rocket,” Trump said, claiming that he, not DeSantis, was responsible for turning Florida Republican red. Trump also boasted about receiving more than a million votes more than DeSantis did in 2020.

  Trump went on to wallow in his irritation at DeSantis’ “no comment” response to a reporter’s question last year about a presidential run. “That means he’s running!” Trump said. “And I started hitting him very early. I hit him hard, and he’s crashing like a bird seriously wounded in flight.”

  If Trump sounded like he was making up for lost time, there was a reason: He skipped Wednesday’s debate at the scenic Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and he wasn’t able to immediately rebut criticism from DeSantis and Chris Christie implying that Trump was wimping out.

  Moreover, even before the debate, DeSantis sensed it would be nearly impossible to break out of the bickering pack of seven Republican candidates, all desperate to shed their second-tier status and cut into Trump’s gaping lead.

  So with the focus of the political world on California, Team DeSantis released a campaign ad a day before the debate teasing the real showdown he’s counting on to change his trajectory: a mano a mano cage match between himself and Gavin Newsom over their ideals, ideology, and records as mega-state governors.

  After rattling off a series of comparisons between the state of Florida and California on violent crime, government deficits, and the economy, the ad wraps up with the words “Revival vs. Decline” flashing on the screen in bold letters against black-and-white images of a sunglass-clad DeSantis staring down a scowling Newsom.

  “Florida vs. California, conservative vs. progressive – It’s the debate we should be having at the national level,” the ad quotes Fox Business host Stuart Varney intoning.

  Actually, it is the debate Americans are already having – with the two governors leading the conversation joined by Trump, who likes taking pointed potshots at both Newsom and DeSantis. But there is a wrinkle, as is almost always the case with The Donald. Trump’s penchant for making all politics personal means that the three-way conversation has the feel of a tag-team wrestling match that doesn’t break along party lines: DeSantis is fighting them both.

  For his part, Newsom noticed DeSantis’ pre-debate trolling – and responded with some of his own. California’s governor played the smart-alecky host showing up at the Republicans’ Wednesday debate where he extolled California’s weather, lauded the scenic Reagan library, and jousted good-naturedly with Fox News host Sean Hannity about California’s sky-high gasoline prices. Then he got down to business, taking dead aim at DeSantis. As Newsom worked the post-debate spin room, he heckled DeSantis for “taking the bait” and agreeing to the faceoff, set to take place Nov. 30 with Hannity moderating.

  “DeSantis looks small debating a California governor that’s not running for president,” Newsom told a throng of reporters. “He’s getting smaller by the day.” Newsom also indicated that the animus between him and DeSantis is genuine, calling Florida’s governor a “liar” and a “hypocrite” who bullies “marginalized communities.”

  Newsom insists he’s not running for president himself – at least not in this cycle – but that hasn’t stopped the swirling speculation that he’s operating a shadow campaign and is ready to jump in if Biden isn’t able to answer the bell. On Friday night in Anaheim, DeSantis fired back, hitting Newsom and Biden on gas prices, stubborn inflation, and what he cast as a collapse of the American Dream. For the first time in the history of the Golden State, he told the crowd in the Anaheim Marriott ballroom, more Americans were leaving California than arriving. Many of them were arriving in Florida he added, appreciative of lower taxes and an absence of Democrats trying to micromanage their lives.

  “To me, the debate about what state is governed better, Florida or California, that debate has already been answered by people voting with their feet,” DeSantis said. Speaking less than a mile from the entrance of Disneyland, DeSantis began his speech with a puckish reference to his prominent role in the culture wars as the nemesis of the Disney Company.

  It was this battle that prompted Newsom to throw down the gauntlet last year when he went up on Florida airwaves targeting DeSantis’ war on woke and his socially conservative policies on abortion and public-school curriculum.

  “Freedom, it’s under attack in your state,” Newsom argued in the spot. “Republican leaders – they’re banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors.”

  DeSantis returned the favor earlier this year when visiting  San Francisco, a city Newsom ran for two terms as mayor, and touring the city’s homeless encampments in the Tenderloin district, a denizen of fentanyl dealing and overdoses. He then tweeted out photos of tents and squalor, labeling the city a “dumpster fire.” 

  DeSantis seems to like his chances in a battle against Biden or Newsom, but that might be fantasy land. The massive obstacle in his path isn’t a Democratic president or a Democratic governor. It’s the most recent Republican president.

  In recent weeks, the gap between Trump and DeSantis has grown to a chasm, increasing as each criminal indictment against the former president has piled up at his feet. Trump is now 43.9 percentage points ahead of DeSantis in the RealClearPolitics Average of polls, a 27-point jump in six months.

  That gap was on full display at the California GOP convention. Trump, the political reality TV star, attracted a larger crowd than DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy combined. He relished the attention, captivating his audience with his fiery freewheeling riffs, humorous jabs, wild exaggerations, and appalling insults.

  Trump spent the first 10 minutes telling  the largely supportive audience that he would have won California – a state he lost by more than 5 million votes in 2020 – if not for a “rigged election.” The former president also promised to take on “ultra-left-wing liars, losers, creeps, perverts and freaks” that, he said, “are devouring the future of this state like a swarm of locusts.”

  When it comes to rampant smash-and-grab thefts undermining retail businesses from here to Philadelphia, Trump offered a simple but shocking solution. “We will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store – shot,” Trump said.

  He promised to stand up to “crazy Nancy Pelosi,” who he said had “ruined San Francisco,” then shifted to mock her husband, who was a victim of a brutal attack in the family’s San Francisco home last October.

  “How’s her husband doing, anybody know?” he asked a crowd that laughed uncomfortably in response. “And she’s against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house – which obviously didn’t do a very good job.”

  Although Trump put most of the blame for the country’s ills on Democrats, toward the end of his remarks he punched hard at DeSantis too. 

  “I’m the only candidate that [Biden and the Democrats] don’t want to run against – they’ll take DeSanctimonious in about two seconds,” he remarked.

  He then rattled off the results of the most recent Morning Consult poll, showing him with 63% support nationwide compared to 12% for DeSantis. And in a recent CNN poll, DeSantis fell to fifth place in the New Hampshire primary, Trump jeered.

  Here in California, Trump holds an enormous, nearly 50% lead over DeSantis in the primary. Thanks to a new change in state Republican election rules, which the Republican National Committee still must approve, if Trump wins more than 50% of the March 5 primary vote, he would secure all 169 of the state’s delegates. If no candidate hits that threshold, delegates will be awarded proportionally.

  By now, DeSantis is accustomed to Trump’s slings and arrows. In the ballroom Friday night DeSantis seemed more relaxed and natural, sprinkling his remarks with quotes from Reagan and offering Reaganesque flourishes about American renewal and this generation’s “rendezvous with destiny.” He appeared to acknowledge his underdog status in the race but also his commitment to soldier on in what he described as a moral obligation to reverse the country’s trajectory.

  DeSantis also seemed slightly amused by all of Trump’s attention earlier in the day.

  “I understand that one of my residents was here earlier saying that he turned Florida red,” he remarked. “All I will say is, Ronald Reagan made the point [that] there’s no limit to what you can do when you don’t care who gets the credit. I just wish if he was the one that turned Florida red, that he wouldn’t have turned Georgia and Arizona blue because that’s not been good for us at all.”

  In an earlier Friday interview, DeSantis addressed Newsom’s attempt to ridicule him for agreeing to debate in the first place and brushed it off as disingenuous campaign jousting.

  “You know Sean [Hannity] asked him to debate. He said yes. So, then he asked me,” DeSantis recounted. “I’m like, ‘I’ll do it. Let’s do it.’ And now he’s acting like ‘Why do you want to debate me?’ Well, I’m debating you because you asked to do it, so let’s go and get it done.”

  “I do think it will be good, it will be instructive,” he added. “These are the types of debates America really needs to have.”

  Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ White House/national political correspondent.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 21:45

• Judge Denies SEC's Plan For Quick Appeal Against Ripple Ruling
  Judge Denies SEC’s Plan For Quick Appeal Against Ripple Ruling

  District court judge Analisa Torres has rejected the SEC’s motion to appeal its loss against Ripple Labs, the company responsible for issuing the XRP token.

  

  The SEC needed Torres’ permission to appeal her ruling because it wasn’t a final judgment.

  The regulator was also seeking to put on hold its suit against Ripple for allegedly offering unregistered securities while the appeal is pending.

  As CoinTelegraph’s Tom Mitchellhill reports, in the court order, Judge Torres denied the SEC’s motion, claiming that the regulator failed to meet its burden to show that there were controlling questions of law or that there were substantial grounds for differences of opinion on the matter.

  “The SEC’s motion for certification of interlocutory appeal is denied, and the SEC’s request for a stay is denied as moot.”

  

  As a reminder, Bloomberg reports that Torres’ initial ruling was widely hailed as a victory for the crypto industry, which has resisted attempts to categorize digital assets as securities subject to regulation.

  In her July 13 decision, Torres drew a distinction between sales of XRP to institutional investors, which she said met the test for an investment contract under federal securities law, and sales to the public on exchanges.

  Ripple’s XRP token is up over 6% following the headlines…

  

  Notably, the decision isn’t an outright loss for the regulator, as judge Torres scheduled a trial for April 23, 2024 to address the remaining issues on the matter.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 21:25

• Food Stamps Will Be Harder To Get From October
  Food Stamps Will Be Harder To Get From October

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  This month, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits will get a boost, but eligibility requirements have changed.

  

  The new rules, which went into effect Oct. 1, stipulate that able-bodied adults without dependents between the ages of 52 and 54 will have to prove that they are actively working, training, or in school. Before, those between the ages of 18 and 52 had to prove they are working at least 80 hours per month, in school, or involved in a training program to get the SNAP benefits.

  The age requirement was expanded as part of the debt ceiling deal that was passed in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden earlier this year. The age requirement will expand by another year in October 2024, while the new requirements will be in effect until Oct. 1, 2030.

  With the recent changes, the left-wing Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warned that more than 750,000 “older adults” are at risk of losing SNAP benefits due to the “expansion of the existing, failed SNAP work-reporting requirement.” The requirements initiated under the debt ceiling deal were the largest changes made to the SNAP, or food stamps, in decades.

  “The expansion of this requirement would take food assistance away from large numbers of people, including many who have serious barriers to employment as well as others who are working or should be exempt but are caught up in red tape,” it said.

  It was part of a deal between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) several months ago. At the time, Mr. McCarthy said that “what work requirements actually do [is to] help people get a job.”

  Republicans have tried for decades to expand work requirements for these government assistance programs, arguing they result in more people returning to the workforce. “We’re going to return these programs to being a life vest, not a lifestyle. A hand up, not a handout and that has always been the American way,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters in June.

  A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson told The Hill that there are some exceptions to the new requirements. They include veterans, homeless people, and people aged 18 to 24 who aged out of foster care situations, the spokesperson said.

  Those who have a mental or physical limitation, have a child aged 18 or younger living in their home, or pregnant women are also exempt, the spokesperson added.

  At the same time, individuals who already get SNAP and still qualify will see their benefits increase starting Oct. 1, said the USDA. Benefit changes for SNAP are based on the Consumer Price Index that measures inflation for June 2022.

  “The maximum allotments will increase for the 48 states and D.C., Alaska, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” the agency said.

  “The maximum allotment for a family of four in the 48 states and D.C., will be $973,” and allotments “for a family of four will range from $1,248 to $1,937 in Alaska,” while “maximum allotments for a family of four in Hawaii will decrease to $1,759.

  The minimum benefit for all 48 states and the District of Columbia will stay the same at $23, according to the USDA.

  The average family started receiving about $90 less per month in March, although some households dropped by up to $250, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

  Fraud?

  Last month, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) warned that the food stamp program is losing some $1 billion per month due to errors and fraud as she announced legislation designed to deal with the alleged monthly losses.

  “Families across the country are going hungry while bureaucrats are jumping the line to gobble up SNAP dollars, either as a meal ticket to beef up state budgets or a self-serve buffet of benefits for themselves or others who do not qualify,” the senator said.

  “I’m snapping back! It’s time for states at fault to pay the piper and eat the costs of their taxpayer waste. Instead of overserving bureaucrats, let’s end the waste and set a place at the table for hungry families,” Ms. Ernst added.

  Other Details

  Earlier this year, the federal government ended its public health emergency over COVID-19, which ended a booster program for all SNAP recipients. The duration of those extra payments was originally tied directly to the duration of the public health emergency, but that was changed in December 2022 and the final pandemic-boosted SNAP payments went out at the end of February.

  The emergency program was enacted by Congress at the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and expanded a year later. Originally, the extra benefits were intended to continue as long as the COVID-19 public health emergency was in force before it expired.

  SNAP benefits can rise and fall with inflation and other factors. Maximum benefits went up by 12 percent in October to reflect an annual cost-of-living adjustment boosted by higher prices for foods and other goods. But payments went down for those who also receive Social Security because of the 8.7 percent cost-of-living increase in that program on Jan 1.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 21:05

• "We're In The Middle Of A Revolution" – Victor Davis Hanson Warns Tucker: "The Next 12 Months Will Be The Most Explosive In History"
  “We’re In The Middle Of A Revolution” – Victor Davis Hanson Warns Tucker: “The Next 12 Months Will Be The Most Explosive In History”

  Historian Victor Davis Hanson sat down with Tucker Carlson to discuss his perspective on the current political climate in the US, asserting that American liberalism is characterized by dishonesty, and warning about what he sees as liberal efforts to introduce a highly intolerant age.

  “It’s hard for most Americans to comprehend the total dishonesty of American liberalism.”

  VDH says Trump represents a significant threat to the specific vision held by liberals, who are employing a “critical legal theory,” in which traditional moral values are abandoned in favor of whatever gains power.

  “Liberals are now telling us they plan to protect American democracy and that’s the clearest possible sign that they intend to end it.”

  Most specifically, Hanson told Carlson that:

  “I think they’ve come to the conclusion that Trump is an existential threat and by association, half the country is to their vision of what they want to transform us into, and so they feel that whatever means necessary are justified.”

  And this is an issue since Hanson pointed out that while some conservatives were speaking up, they are also fighting a culture in the Republican Party that preferred to “lose nobly” as opposed to winning elections in an “ugly” manner.

  

  Hanson emphasizes that the traditional boundaries and norms are being renegotiated, from the Senate filibuster and the Electoral College to societal understandings of gender and language, raising concerns that:

  “We’re in the middle of a cultural, economic, political revolution,” but “we think that we’re still playing within the same sidelines or parameters, and we’re not. Everything’s under negotiation.”

  Hanson argues that the legal actions against Trump are politically motivated and biased and designed to send a message to the half of America that will not simple ‘comply’:

  “The idea is now that we now have the power to do this, and because we have the power to do it, it’s moral and right, and if you don’t like it, what are you doing to do about it?”

  Finally, Hanson issues a call to action of sorts, noting that “There are legitimate efforts to rectify and stop this madness and let’s see what happens in 2024.”

  “You need leaders who will tell people we are in a Jacobin takeover of this country, and the old get along at any cost does not work,” Hanson said.

  “I hope everybody can keep their head because I think the next 12 to 18 months are going to be the most explosive in our history since the Great Depression.”

  Watch the full interview below:

  Ep. 27 Donald Trump appeared in court today, but it wasn’t a legal proceeding. It was a grotesque parody of the system our ancestors created. Victor Davis Hanson explains. pic.twitter.com/KhTHateWCZ

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 2, 2023

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

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 20:55

• Can RFK Jr Become President As An Independent?
  Can RFK Jr Become President As An Independent?

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

  As predicted two weeks ago, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., appears ready to declare as an independent for president. Already polling at 20 percent nationwide, he will announce that he is severing ties with the Democratic National Committee (DNC). This is because the DNC has set up impossible roadblocks to victory within the party apparatus and the primary process. The Biden administration is denying him Secret Service protection despite apparent attempts on his life.

  

  Of all figures in public life today, RFK has the strongest claim to the legacies of his father and uncle, ideologically and culturally. That would put him in the solid category of a real Democrat—half a century ago. Times have changed and dramatically so. He started off this campaign with the belief that he would help guide his family’s party back to a principled commitment to the common good. But he has discovered that this is not what the party is about anymore, at least not according to the masters at the top.

  This is a man who believes that America is not lost, not foundationally corrupt, not a complete goner. He looks around at the people in this nation and sees goodness, love of country, a desire for freedom, and a strong devotion to make things right. Conventional American politics, however, seems designed to block real solutions. Because he still wants to make a difference—one senses that he believes it is his destiny—he will continue his run for president as an independent.

  In normal times, there would be every reason to predict that he stands zero chance of winning. This is most likely due to Duveger’s law. In this model, voters don’t necessarily push the button for the person they want. Because only one candidate can win, they vote for the person most likely to beat the person they truly hate. That leaves us always with second-best choices, and third-party candidates, no matter how much they are loved, in the lurch.

  It’s because of this principle, this habit, this basic logic of voting, that third parties have never performed well in winner-take-all elections. They pop up every four years and usually get 1–5 percent or so and then go away. At best, such candidates have been spoilers: they don’t win, they only block victories for others.

  Who benefits from an RFK independent run? The conventional wisdom is that he pulls more from Trump than from Biden, in which case the Democrats benefit from his decision to go independent. But that’s just what the polls say. What happens at the voting booth is another matter. People who despise Trump might be reluctant to vote for RFK for fear that Trump could be made the winner, and people who despise Biden might feel exactly the same.

  Both major candidates have major issues, and yet, so far, there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping their nominations.

  Which is to say: it is very hard to predict in this environment.

  These are not normal times. It is not entirely impossible that RFK’s movement could overcome Durverger’s law simply through passion and excitement. If the polls start showing him as a possible winner, and if his rallies elicit more attendance, intelligence, and commitment than his competitors, that could cause a huge rush away from the two parties over to a genuine alternative.

  People might take the risk of “throwing away” their vote to push for the simply incredible, as a way of sending a much-needed message to the establishment of both parties.

  If any election year in my lifetime holds out the possibility of such a radical upset—something that would have been inconceivable in the past—it is this one. Vast numbers of people are overwhelmed with distrust of the entire system. And yet the same numbers have not and will not let go of the basic American idea: the people are in charge of their government and should be the determinative force concerning the laws under which we live.

  The hurdles are huge: essentially he is battling against the whole history of two-party dominance in the United States. In the 20th century, the history has shown us a number of fairly substantial runs:

  • 1912, Teddy Roosevelt, 28 percent

  • 1924, Robert LaFollette, 17 percent

  • 1948, Strom Thurmond, 3 percent

  • 1968, George Wallace, 14 percent

  • 1980, John Anderson, 7 percent

  • 1992, Ross Perot, 19 percent

  None came close to winning. And yet we have to admit that the system has never been as broken as it is today. Few people really want to see a Biden/Trump rematch, and those who do are motivated by a burning passion to reverse or reinforce the 2020 election, the results of which are widely disputed thanks to Trump’s aggressive protests against irregularities.

  Let’s just say that this constitutes about one-third of the electorate. What about everyone else who would like to see something like normalcy return to this country without the incredible corruption that has invaded our public lives? RFK makes a credible claim that he has the knowledge and ability to begin to clean up the system in Washington, precisely because he has been litigating against it for many years.

  What else does he have going for him? There is an authenticity to his language and approach that no other candidate can match. He is obviously not a professional politician. He speaks and sounds more like the best professor you ever had, with an incredible and ever-present command of facts and information about a huge range of subjects. His recall seems at times to be photographic concerning names, dates, data, and anecdotes. His speeches often seem more like teaching seminars.

  In a strange way, we need that now. Regardless of what you think about his views on this topic or that, everyone has to admit that he has an amazing command of all the issues, whether health policy, foreign policy, censorship, or environmental problems. In a startling way, when he doesn’t know something, he outright admits it and seeks out experts to help him.

  What’s especially beautiful about RFK is his absolute refusal to censor himself. He believes that the CIA was involved in the killing of his uncle and says that, bringing the receipts. He believes that the FDA and CDC are deeply corrupt, sacrificing American liberty and health in the pay of the legally privileged pharmaceutical industry, and he says that too. He looks around the country and sees a government/corporate cartel crushing the interests of small business, farmers, and the middle class generally, and he says that too.

  Most striking of all, none of these points are politically strategic, much less put together by consultants with focus groups. They come from his own mind and heart. He has ruminated on them for many years. Running for president is just his chance to reach a larger audience with a message that is his alone.

  There is not a single voter who agrees with all of his positions, and that’s ok. No single voter agrees fully with anyone else because we are human beings. In choosing a president, we are looking for truth telling, courage, sincerity, moral and practical clarity, and a ferocious opposition to government policies that pillage the public for ruling class interests. RFK certainly has a bead on that problem, and, for that reason, we are blessed to have him.

  He also benefits from niche interests that he has cultivated and only he represents: the vaccine-injured, the bitcoiners, the civil libertarians, the pro-peace contingent of both parties, the anti-corporatists, the partisans of old-fashioned environmentalism, the unjustly persecuted like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and the advocates of better health. Maybe together they make up only 25 percent but they are motivated and determined. They could bring others with them, in the interests of saving this country.

  A point I like about the quixotic run as an independent is that it breaks the model. It refuses to see the historical record as a given template of the future. He believes that these emergency times require heroic and unconventional measures. It’s a good bet that a majority of Americans agree with him on this point. Getting people to vote their conscience is the real challenge.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 20:25

• IRS Hits MyPillow With Five Audits: Mike Lindell
  IRS Hits MyPillow With Five Audits: Mike Lindell

  Last week we noted that MyPillow has been “crippled” by American Express, according to CEO Mike Lindell.

  

  On Saturday, Lindell said that his company is now facing five IRS audits related to employees who worked remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic.

  “It started in California. Now there’s three other states that are coming at MyPillow. And Steve, it’s disgusting,” Lindell told Bannon on the “War Room” podcast.

  “They just keep attacking. Now they’re going after our employees. They made it very personal,” he added.

  Lindell says the audits are punishment for supporting President Donald Trump and claims that the 2020 US election were stolen.

  “This is something that hasn’t happened in 15 years, and all of a sudden there’s 5 IRS audits against MyPillow in three different years,” said Lindell, who’s also facing a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems and anotehr from Smartmatic.

  In July, MyPillow auctioned off equipment from its Minnesota pillow factory after the company lost more than $100 million in retail sales, Lindell said at the time.

  “It was a massive, massive cancellation,” said Lindell. “We lost $100 million from attacks by the box stores, the shopping networks, the shopping channels, all of them did cancel culture on us.”

  The stores which dropped MyPillow products include;

  • Walmart
  • Bed Bath & Beyond
  • Slumberland Furniture

  In response, Lindell auctioned off more than 850 pieces of ‘surplus equipment’ online, including sewing machines, industrial fabric spreaders, conveyor belts, electric forklifts, and more.

  According to Lindell, the company is also subleasing some of its manufacturing space because the packaging for direct sales is different than what the company required when producing products for large retailers.

  “We kind of needed a building and a half, but now with these moves we’re making, we can get it down to our one building,” he said.

  “If the box stores ever came back we could have it if we needed it, but we don’t need that,” Lindell continued. “It affected a lot of things when you lose that big of a chunk [of revenue].“

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 20:05

• Trump Campaign Asks RNC To Cancel All Future Debates
  Trump Campaign Asks RNC To Cancel All Future Debates

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  President Trump’s campaign team has asked the Republican National Committee to cancel all upcoming debates.

  

  Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita issued a statement that reads “The Republican National Committee should immediately cancel the upcoming debate in Miami and end all future debates in order to refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats’ efforts to steal the 2024 election.”

  “Anything less, along with other reasons not to cancel, are an admission to the grassroots that their concerns about voter integrity are not taken seriously and national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden than ensuring a safe and secure election,” the statement adds.

  The call comes after the Fox News GOP debate last week which turned into a squabbling match between candidates who are almost all poll in the low single digits.

  Republicans, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have called for more debates to be scrapped, noting that it is clear Trump will be the nominee.

  “Trump will be the nominee and the question now for everybody is do you want to see Joe Biden reelected or do you want to help Donald Trump? There’s no middle ground here,” Gingrich urged.

  Trump has also dismissed the notion of having any of the other candidates as a number two.

  “They are all running for a job,” Trump told a crowd in Michigan, adding “They’re all job candidates… they will do anything, secretary of something. They even say VP. I don’t know. Anybody see any VP in the group? I don’t think so.”

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Summit Vitamins – super charge your health and well being.

  Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 19:45

• Mexico President Blasts US Billions To Ukraine As "Irrational" – Says Focus On Latin America
  Mexico President Blasts US Billions To Ukraine As “Irrational” – Says Focus On Latin America

  Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is no stranger to issuing pointed and scathing criticisms of Washington foreign policy.

  On Monday he did it again, but this time related to US military aid to Ukraine, at a sensitive moment that some Congressional Republican holdouts are trying to strip Ukraine funding from the defense budget. Lopez Obrador took the opportunity to question why more US foreign aid isn’t being invested in America’s own backyard. In this context, he blasted sinking billions into Ukraine as “irrational”. 

  “I was just looking at how now they’re not authorizing aid for the war in Ukraine,” he said during a daily press briefing. “But how much have they destined for the Ukraine war? 30 to 50 billion dollars for the war. Which is the most irrational thing you can have. And damaging.”

  

  “So they do have to modify their strategy and learn respect. It’s not the time for them to ignore Mexican authorities,” The Mexican president added.

  Reuters underscored that in the remarks he “urged Washington to devote more resources to helping Latin American countries.”

  The leftist Lopez Obrador has maintained a neutral stance regarding Ukraine, in line with other Global South countries, but has generally been supportive of a number of UN resolutions rebuking ‘Russian aggression’. 

  At the same time, he has still been more cooperative with Moscow than any of the big Western powers would ever be at this point, as Reuters also notes:

  Two weeks ago the president defended the presence of a Russian military unit in a weekend parade marking Mexico’s independence day, following sharp criticism that his country had given a platform to forces that invaded Ukraine.

  Lopez Obrador has also frequently taken aim at US sanctions, having just last week linked anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela sanction to a surge in migrant activity across the region and at the US border.

  “They (the U.S.) don’t do anything,” he said last Friday, according to the Associated Press. “It’s more, a lot more, what they authorize for the war in Ukraine than what they give to help with poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

  He called on US leaders “to remove blockades and stop harassing independent and free countries, an integrated plan for cooperation so the Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Ecuadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans wouldn’t be forced to emigrate.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 19:25

• McCarthy Won't Seek Speaker Position In Re-Vote; Trump Nominated By Nehls
  McCarthy Won’t Seek Speaker Position In Re-Vote; Trump Nominated By Nehls

  Update (1920T): Newly ousted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will not seek reelection to the post when the chamber convenes to select a new candidate.

  

  According to Just the News, “McCarthy was removing his name from consideration when the House convenes to select a new speaker.”

  Following McCarthy’s ouster, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) called the former Speaker a “feature of the swamp.”

  “Kevin McCarthy couldn’t keep his word. He made an agreement in January regarding the way Washington would work, and he violated that agreement. We are $33 trillion in debt. We are facing $2.2 trillion annual deficits,” said McCarthy, adding “We face a de-dollarization globally that will crush Americans working class Americans. Kevin McCarthy is a feature of the swamp. He has risen to power by collecting special interest money and redistributing that money in exchange for favors.”

  JUST IN: Matt Gaetz calls Kevin McCarthy a “feature of the swamp” after reporter tells Gaetz that people think he is a narcissist.

  “It’s the benefit of this country that we have a better Speaker of the House than Kevin McCarthy.”

  “Kevin McCarthy couldn’t keep his word. He made… pic.twitter.com/58I9DCFpjs

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 3, 2023

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

  Meanwhile, Congressman Troy Nehls has nominated former President Donald Trump for Speaker.

  Kevin McCarthy will NOT be running again as Speaker.

  I nominate Donald J. Trump for Speaker of the House.

  — Congressman Troy E. Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) October 3, 2023

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

  Here’s where Goldman’s Alec Phillips sees things:

  1. The House has voted to remove Rep. McCarthy as speaker. House Financial Services Chairman McHenry (R-NC) will temporarily serve as caretaker speaker (speaker pro tempore) until a new speaker is elected. Legislative activity in the House will temporarily cease as Republicans reorganize. Selecting a speaker in January took 5 days, and it is possible the next selection could take several days as well.

  2. Although possible, we think it is very unlikely that the House will remain without a leader until Nov. 17, when the recent extension of spending authority expires. In the unlikely event that the House remains without a speaker in mid-November, we believe the speaker pro tempore would have the power to bring another temporary funding extension up for a vote, though the rules are somewhat unclear on this point and would ultimately come down to a decision by the House Parliamentarian.

  3. All other things equal, the leadership change raises the odds of a government shutdown in November, though with several weeks left until the deadline, many outcomes are possible. With many policy disputes remaining and a $120bn difference between the parties on the preferred spending level for FY2024, it is difficult to see how Congress can pass the 12 necessary full-year spending bills before funding expires Nov. 17. The next speaker is likely to be under even more pressure to avoid passing another temporary extension—or additional funding for Ukraine—than former Speaker McCarthy had been.

  4. We continue to view a shutdown in Q4 as the base case, likely when funding expires Nov. 17. That said, while a leadership vacuum raises the odds of a government shutdown, we still view a prolonged shutdown (i.e., more than 2-3 weeks) as unlikely given the political consequences of certain aspects of a shutdown, particularly a failure to pay servicemembers, which occurs twice a month (the next pay date at risk is Dec. 1).

  *  *  *

  Update (1635ET): After eight tumultuous months of pandering and lies (according to Rep. Matt Gaetz), Kevin McCarthy has been removed as Speaker of the House for the first time in US history.

  The final vote was 216-210.

  🚨 “The office of Speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant”

  pic.twitter.com/K3S3HbjU9Y

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 3, 2023

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

  The last time the House tried to evict a speaker was 1910, which failed.

  Rep. Patrick McHenry is now the acting speaker, as announced by the House Clerk. The next step is for the chamber to begin rounds of voting to elect a new Speaker, as we saw eight months ago.

  He’s just recessed the House so that the parties can meet and confer on a “way forward.” It was quite the tantrum…

  The Rep. Patrick McHenry gavel slam …. pic.twitter.com/TV1VGbkT7Y

  — Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) October 3, 2023

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

  The speaker pro tempore is imbued with all the powers of an elected speaker of the House. McCarthy hand-picked McHenry (R-N.C.) for this role when he was elected speaker in January. The pro tempore is kept as a secret, held by the clerk of the House, until a speaker is removed or incapacitated, a process designed after Sept. 11, 2001, to ensure continuity of government. -Politico

  BREAKING: Kevin McCarthy removed as 🇺🇸 US House Speaker, making him the shortest-serving since 1876. pic.twitter.com/yM8nxnvvnx

  — The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) October 3, 2023

  OK — here’s what @bresreports and i expect

  everyone will be looking to see if McCarthy tries to run for speaker again.

  eight no votes may be too much to overcome — and even if he could, he may not want the job anymore. we’ll see.

  once mccarthy is out, the real jockeying…

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 3, 2023

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

  And other last requests? https://t.co/yCjZ6SoiI0

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 3, 2023

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

  Washington must change. We must put the House of Representatives on a better course.@SpeakerMcCarthy has failed to take a stand where it matters. So if he won’t, I will.#MotionToVacate pic.twitter.com/hTW2e6bxtW

  — Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) October 3, 2023

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

  A “Fuck Around, Find Out” award winner in the U.S. House: the smack talk last night on X between @MattGaetz & @SpeakerMcCarthy before the former successfully engineered the latter’s ouster as House Speaker pic.twitter.com/bBD4QmeSI7

  — Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) October 3, 2023

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

  Oh brother…

  

  *  *  *

  Update (1630ET): The House is now voting on the motion to remove McCarthy, and – unless Democrats intervene, Gaetz has enough votes to vacate him as Speaker after six Republicans voted ‘aye’ (Biggs, Buck, Burchett, Crane, Gaetz and Good).

  Watch Live:

   

  *  *  *

  Update (1435ET): The House is now voting on whether to move forward with the ouster vote, or to ‘table’ it – which would save McCarthy.

  Update: The ‘motion to table’ has failed, and the House will now move forward with debate ahead of a vote on Gaetz’s effort to remove McCarthy.

  *  *  *

  Update (1323ET): It appears that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy may actually be out of a job, just eight months after he bent over backwards (and forward?) to land it.

  

  In a ‘Dear Colleage’ letter, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries tells his ‘troops’ that “House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican motion to vacate the chair.“

  DEAR COLLEAGUE from Jeffries

  Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair. pic.twitter.com/Mp11qFPPaJ

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 3, 2023

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

  House Dems are falling in line.

  House Dems all falling in line behind Jeffries https://t.co/Vk6glRC7pe

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 3, 2023

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

  *  *  *

  Days after narrowly averting a government shutdown by striking a secret side-deal with Democrats over Ukraine funding, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) faces the biggest challenge to his Speakership by the same group of House conservatives who delayed his rise to power eight months ago.

  

  On Monday night, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filed a motion to formally remove McCarthy from his role as speaker – a vote for which McCarthy says he’ll get out of the way first thing today, while CNBC says the vote should begin at 2pm ET.

  🚨BREAKING … MCCARTHY SAID HE WILL BRING THE MOTION TO VACATE VOTE UP IN THE FIRST VOTE SERIES

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 3, 2023

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

  In short, only Democrats may be able to save McCarthy – who says he hasn’t made any deals with the Democrats who he says “haven’t asked for anything,” following a Monday night call with House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) – who will ultimately decide McCarthy’s fate.

  “They haven’t asked for anything. I’m not going to provide anything” — McCarthy on CNBC on what Dems want in order to help him stay speaker pic.twitter.com/P8oDhkZyAk

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 3, 2023

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

  McCarthy: “If 5 Republicans go with Democrats, then i’m out.”@rachelvscott: “That looks likely.”
  McCarthy: “Probably so.”

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 3, 2023

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

  While the minority party in the House typically doesn’t support the majority’s choice for speaker, motions to vacate are rare – and this situation hasn’t been seen in more than a century.

  According to the Guardian, Gaetz and his allies have the votes to remove McCarthy.

  In a notice to lawmakers, Democratic whip Katherine Clark’s office said votes on the motion to vacate Kevin McCarthy from his position as speaker of the House could take place “at any time after the House convenes at 12:00 p.m. today.”

  Before voting on the motion itself, McCarthy’s allies may move to table the proposal, which, if successful, would block the motion to vacate, and save McCarthy’s speakership. That would need a simply majority to pass, and, the way the numbers are looking now, can’t be achieved without Democratic help.

  “Members should keep their schedules flexible and be prepared to vote at the appropriate time,” reads the notice.

  Gaetz and his Freedom Caucus allies were livid on Sunday after it emerged that McCarthy had made a secret side-deal with Democrats for more Ukraine funding, in exchange for passage of a continuing resolution that will keep the government running through mid-November.

  Wow.@SpeakerMcCarthy made a side Ukraine deal with Democrats and didn’t tell House Republicans until after his Continuing Resolution passed.

  More deceit. https://t.co/LC91laLyTp

  — Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) October 1, 2023

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

  Developing…

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

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 19:21

• NY Judge Issues Gag Order After Trump Targets Clerk
  NY Judge Issues Gag Order After Trump Targets Clerk

  Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times,

  Former President Donald Trump attended day two of the civil fraud case against him that’s gone to trial in New York. After flip-flopping several times on his opinion of the presiding judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, he made a disparaging post on social media mid-day about Justice Engoron’s staffer.

  

  Justice Engoron is known to regularly confer with his clerk Allison Greenfield on cases. President Trump had made a post on Truth Social, linking to an Instagram account with a photo of Ms. Greenfield with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), attacking her and claiming she was “running” the case and making unsubstantiated claims about their relationship. The post was amplified by a campaign email blast on Tuesday, and millions had seen it.

  When the court broke for a lunch break, two closed-door meetings were held. After a delay, the trial resumed at 3 p.m. and the judge explained that he had ordered the post be taken down.

  The post was deleted by the time the trial resumed.

  “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable and inappropriate,” Justice Engoron said. He added that he had already warned both parties against such attacks on Monday.

  “Consider this a gag order on all parties with respect to posting or publicly speaking about any member of my staff,” he said, adding that violations of this order would not be tolerated and would result in sanctions.

  President Trump’s legal team has already been sanctioned by Justice Engoron multiple times, who ruled that the attorneys had made “frivolous” arguments repeatedly even after he had dismissed them.

  First Testimony

  Last September, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the former president claiming he defrauded the state by inflating his net worth to obtain more favorable deals from insurers and banks between 2011 and 2021. She is seeking $250 million in damages and to bar President Trump and his two adult sons from doing business in the state.

  The judge has already ruled President Trump liable for fraud and ordered the dissolution of the Trump Organization, and the trial will deal with several other claims Ms. James made in regard to falsifying financial statements, as well as the fate of President Trump’s businesses and properties.

  After repeated attempts from President Trump’s side to delay the case from going to trial, the case kicked off Monday with an unprecedented appearance from the former president. He entered the courthouse last minute, gave multiple remarks to the press, and closely scrutinized the evidence presented in court from the front row.

  President Trump, who is also polling as the frontrunner in the 2024 presidential elections, told reporters he would much rather be campaigning, but was attending the trial to “expose” the “fraud” and the “scam” that had been committed against him by what he described as a “rigged” prosecutor, case, and judge.

  Donald Bender, former partner at tax investigation firm Mazars USA, was the first to take to the witness stand. He was questioned by Kevin Wallace, attorney for the prosecution, on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, and was to be cross-examined by the defense Tuesday afternoon.

  Mr. Bender worked closely with the Trump Organization from 2011 to 2021, and prepared President Trump’s personal tax returns from 2009 to 2018. He said he spent about half his time working on the Trump Organization and frequently went to the Trump Tower offices.

  Mr. Bender was shown document after document from 2011 to 2020, and asked repeatedly whether he would have submitted the financial statements if he knew that the Trump Organization had withheld information.

  The prosecution sought to establish that it was the Trump Organization’s responsibility to provide accurate accounting, not Mazars.

  Mr. Bender testified to a letter from the Trump Organization that contained language stating it was responsible for the accurate accounting, noting that documents contained a red “prepared by the client” notation and that figures were copied and pasted from what he was provided by the Trump Organizations in some documents. He also testified regarding a letter from the Trump Organization stating that it had not knowingly withheld any relevant financial data.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 19:05

• Fatal NYC Stabbing Of Social-Justice Activist Caught On CCTV
  Fatal NYC Stabbing Of Social-Justice Activist Caught On CCTV

  For the second time in a week, a left-wing activist has been murdered in a major US city, where soft-on-crime Democrat policies have resulted in record crime.

  On Monday, social justice advocate Ryan Carson was stabbed in the Crown Heights neighborhood of New York City.

  

  According to police, Carson was walking with his girlfriend after a wedding when a suspect approached and asked “What are you looking at?” before stabbing Carson in the chest several times. The victim, 32, was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital.

  Footage of the incident was obtained by the NY Post.

  GRAPHIC WARNING: NY Post obtains and releases video showing fatal stabbing of Leftist activist Ryan Carson in front of girlfriend on NYC street late-night after wedding

  1. Always carry a gun

  2. Always keep distance between yourself and a potential threat

  Such a senseless… pic.twitter.com/tpNyaJk2Ke

  — DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) October 3, 2023

  Police released a picture of the youth who senselessly claimed the life of Ryan Carson. He will be fiercely defended by people just like Ryan Carson. Make it make sense. pic.twitter.com/75qeeh7U2e

  — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 3, 2023

  According to CBS News, Carson was a campaign manager with the NY Public Interest Research Group.

  Reactions to the stabbing were as expected:

  Was he not able to get a social worker there to help him?

  — Brenden Dilley (@WarlordDilley) October 3, 2023

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

  The guy was half his size, he didn’t fight back, and he died. Big lessons to be learnt from this. You cannot have situational awareness if you are in denial of reality. An awfully sad thing to have happened and I’m sorry for his family.

  — Evelyn Rae (@_EvelynRae) October 3, 2023

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

  I carry everywhere I go. Even the gas station.
  You never know.

  — Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) October 3, 2023

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

  Liberals and anti-gun people will learn absolutely no lesson from this.

  — Work Hard Nap Hard (@workhardnaphard) October 3, 2023

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

  Hey bro just like chill out bro I’m on your side bro go attack the magats bro bro bro noooooo

  pic.twitter.com/YYykHNNugl

  — Cernovich (@Cernovich) October 3, 2023

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

  This is the second incident of a social justice warrior murdered in a major Democrat-run city in the last week.

  On Saturday, a left-wing Philadelphia journalist who mocked concern over rising crime in Democrat-run cities was shot to death in his home.

  

  Josh Kruger was shot seven times after someone entered his home, shot him at the base of his stairs, and then fled. Kruger ran outside seeking help from his neighbors and collapsed, where police found them after responding to call just before 1:30 a.m. on the 2300 block of Watkins Street.

  Kruger, 39, was rushed to the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died just before 2:15 a.m.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/03/2023 – 18:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest