Sep 04

Today’s News 4th September 2024

  • Globalism Is Economic Slavery
    Globalism Is Economic Slavery

    Authored by J.B.Shurk via AmericanThinker.com,

    Imagine life in the near future. ..

    A man resides alone in a tiny apartment.  He would prefer to be married, but the State considers that antiquated institution “patriarchal” and “white supremacist.”  He would prefer to have children, but he can’t afford them.  Besides, his yearly carbon allowance is insufficient to cover another resource-wasting human being.  

    He has never owned anything.  He rents his bedroom, his furnishings, and his meager entertainments.  Each month, a digital account associated with his digital ID receives a number of central bank digital currency units.  How much he receives depends upon the number of hours he works at his government job, how much the government values his work, how much the government taxes him for the privilege of using public infrastructure, and how much of his income the government decides should be redistributed to other citizens in need.  After taxes, rents, utilities, and other assorted municipal, state, federal, and international fees are deducted from his earnings, he has little — if any — discretionary income.  

    If he chooses to save that income to invest in his future, the government informs him that his central bank digital currency units disappear within ninety days.  If he tries to purchase something that the government has banned, he forfeits what he currently has.  If he does something that the government deems contrary to his well-being, his social credit score decreases, and a fraction of his discretionary income disappears.  Every few weeks, a digital doctor (running on artificial intelligence) appears on the video screen in his apartment with a detailed list of all the “unhealthy” things he has done since their last interaction.  He is informed that a portion of his temporary savings will be redistributed to citizens with healthier habits.  His A.I. health monitor tells him that he must immediately report to the closest pharmaceutical distribution center so that he can be injected with the latest “vaccines.”  Failure to do so will result in the deactivation of all electronic entertainment devices and a permanent mark on his social credit record.

    He is unhappy, and because the State’s A.I. supervisor has detected his unhappiness, the display monitor in his apartment encourages him to find personal meaning by “joining the fight against global warming.”  For a while, he does just that.  He attends community meetings in his apartment building where government officials talk about the importance of “saving the planet” by “owning nothing.”  He chats with anonymous strangers (bots?) on the State’s social media platform, and they all agree that the sacrifices they’re making to save the world are definitely worth it.  He wakes up one morning to discover that his social credit score has risen and that he has been rewarded with a few extra central bank digital currency units.  Still, our future man remains unhappy.

    Then one day sirens blare, and his apartment monitor flashes with breaking news: the country is at war.  He listens intently but can’t figure out which foreign nations are attacking.  The trusted news anchors tell him that peace, prosperity, and freedom are all at risk.  He steps outside his tiny apartment to find other solitary renters fired up and talking excitedly about the battles to come.  He walks back inside to find his A.I. supervisor informing him that he has been personally selected to protect the homeland from its enemies.  For the first time in many years, our future man feels alive.  

    He soon finds himself in boot camp, where he enjoys regular exercise, discipline, and camaraderie.  Six months later, he and his new friends are shipped overseas.  Strangely, in all this time, nobody has explained whom they will actually be fighting.  All he knows is that they’re at war with “the authoritarians” who wish to “take our democracy.”  There is anticipation in his camp and endless talk of adventure.  Then, when everyone least expects it, a thunderous swarm of drones attacks from overhead.  Nobody has time to react.  Explosions seem to come from out of nowhere.  He sees the bodies of his friends torn to pieces.  Then everything goes dark.

    He awakes in a hospital severely injured, is called a hero, and is later sent home.  When he arrives, he notices breadlines outside the government’s genetically engineered food distribution centers.  He hears a beggar on the street joke that they should call them “insect-lines,” since that’s all there is to eat.  He learns that someone else has moved into his old apartment, but he is offered a new one because of his military service.  It is smaller and has even fewer furnishings than the one he lost.  He realizes that most of his former neighbors never returned from war and that many of the newcomers now living in their apartments look and sound like those people he was told to fight overseas.  Nothing makes sense.  His injuries torment him.  He feels even more lost and lonely than before he went to war.  His A.I. supervisor informs him that he has been added to a list of people considered “potential domestic terrorists.”  Remaining on this list will make it hard for him to work and live.

    Then, one day, his digital doctor asks if he would like some assistance in ending his life peacefully.  “You can save others,” he is told, “by permanently reducing your carbon footprint.”  In agony, he wonders, “How did we get here?”

    The shortest answer to our future friend is this: governments abandoned sound money.  They replaced gold coins with paper currencies.  They made it illegal for ordinary citizens to conduct business freely and demanded that government-issued bills be used in economic transactions.  Then they gave private central banks the authority to print these paper bills whenever they determined that doing so would be good for the economy.  

    Whose economy do wealthy central bankers protect — Wall Street’s or that of the working class?  Although putatively charged with financial duties to maximize employment and minimize inflation, central banks function as market manipulators and money printers for overspending governments.  By increasing the supply of paper currency, the price of consumer goods rises.  However, the numerical price of stock market shares also goes up.  These capital assets do not gain any real value, but their rising prices give the illusion of economic growth.  Many bad companies that would never survive in a free market become lucrative investment opportunities in fake markets.  Easy money sustains companies that produce no market value.  Who loses most in this artificial arrangement?  The poorest people who have no stocks and only limited cash savings.  They have watched the hundred-dollar bill hidden under their mattresses lose most of its value over the last fifty years.

    Neither fiat currencies nor central banks have any functional place in free societies.  Governments that manipulate the value of money rig markets and steal from the working poor.  The wealthiest end up owning everything, while everyone else tries to balance life precariously on a tightrope of consumer debts, mortgages, long-term loans, and the growing prospect of insolvency.  This world that financial and political elites have built is unsustainable.  It is also a kind of economic slavery.

    Because it is unsustainable, those who have benefited most from its creation will do anything they must to survive its collapse.  A crashing dollar does not matter if those who control the financial system today control the central bank digital currencies of tomorrow.  Gross inequality and rampant poverty do not matter if governments can convince unhappy citizens that climate change, disease, and war require them to own less and sacrifice more.  Growing public anger does not matter if those with armies can censor speech, throttle food supplies, foment wars, and imprison dissidents.  

    Ponder this: how much of the story above seems foreign, and how much of it seems painfully familiar?  Your answer tells us just how much time we have left.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 23:25

  • Putin In Mongolia: West Dismisses All Inconvenient Facts As 'Kremlin Propaganda'
    Putin In Mongolia: West Dismisses All Inconvenient Facts As ‘Kremlin Propaganda’

    Just days ago, the Russian government moved to ban over 90 journalists and media entities from the country. This came in the wake of the Kremlin opening investigations against American and Italian TV crews, including CNN, for being embedded with the Ukrainian army as it moved into Kursk Oblast.

    Last week’s published list of blacklisted Americans included Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Emma Tucker along with eleven current and former WSJ staff members. NY Times journalists were impacted too, with Kyiv Bureau Chief Andrew Kramer showing up on the list, also along with four reporters from The Washington Post.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked about matters of press freedoms, and the state of Western media, on his first day in Mongolia where he’s attending official events surrounding the anniversary commemoration of the 1939 Soviet-Mongolian victory over Japan in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. In the backdrop is the The Hague’s International Criminal Court (ICC) requesting its member state Mongolia to arrest the Russian leader, but it is refusing. Moscow says this was all worked out ahead of time and won’t be a problem.

    Putin was interviewed by the Mongolian newspaper Onoodor just before he touched down in the country, and Putin’s main message was that the West hides every inconvenient fact while brushing it aside as “propaganda”.

    TASS/Zuma Press

    He described that the Kremlin’s latest moves against major American news outlets are but a justified response to the West previously punishing Russian outlets first.

    “Almost all Western countries where our journalists try to work are creating obstacles for them, banning Russian television channels and directly censoring our media and online resources,” Putin said, according to translation featured in RT. This obviously “runs counter to the democratic principles of freedom of speech and the free flow of information,” he emphasized.

    “The West, which claims to be a model of freedom, has opted to hide from inconvenient facts and the truth by launching a blatant bullying campaign against Russian journalists and indiscriminately labeling them as ‘Kremlin propagandists,’” he continued.

    Back in March 2022, after pressure from the US government which included Washington slapping the channel with a foreign agent label, a slew of major platforms including DirecTV and Roku dropped the channel, resulting in RT America laying off all of its mostly American staff and closing up its four main offices in the US. The European Union also moved against RT as well as Sputnik, and RT was further booted from YouTube.

    But the reality was that with the forced retreat of these Russian state media English-language channels, people in the West – whether an academic, a journalist, politician, or individual citizen – could no longer be presented with the Russian perspective. It also became harder to more immediately access Russian statements on any given world event. This was all of course by design. It was yet more of a government enforced narrowing of ‘alternative views’.

    But Putin claimed that his government keeps a proper balance between press freedoms and issues of national security:

    “Our authorities cooperate constructively with television channels, news agencies, newspapers, online media, and other media outlets, regardless of their editorial policy,” he said. “The only thing they are required to do is comply with Russian laws. This should be understood by foreign journalists accredited in Russia.”

    Through those means, Moscow has managed to strike a balance between the freedom of the press and national security, the Russian leader argued.

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

    Putin’s reference here is to the CNN crew (and others) who ‘illegally’ crossed Russian borders in order to film the Ukrainian army’s incursion in to Kursk in late August.

    The Kremlin at the time said it summoned the US ambassador in “connection to the provocative actions of American reporters who illegally entered the Kursk region to produce propaganda for covering up the crimes of the Kyiv regime.”

    Red carpet treatment and full military and ceremonial honors despite the ICC’s demand that Mongolia arrest Putin…

    Image source: TASS

    So Putin seems to be saying that the United States would never tolerate if Russian journalists illegally snuck onto American soil, and neither will Russia tolerate the opposite scenario – which is something that actually played out recently.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 23:00

  • The Surprising History Of The President's 'Resolute' Desk
    The Surprising History Of The President’s ‘Resolute’ Desk

    Authored by Walker Larson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The president’s desk bears a remarkable pedigree. Its story ties together several disparate historical threads, including a ghost ship, polar exploration, and relations between the United States and the UK. The tale begins with a certain British Admiral, Sir Edward Belch.

    President Ronald Reagan sits at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office in the White House. Public Domain

    A mapmaker in the British Royal Navy described Sir Edward Belcher as “a tyrannical martinet who made every ship he commanded a floating hell.” In 1854, that hell was a cold one, since Belcher and his small flotilla were sailing the frigid seas of the Arctic.

    Tyrannical or not, one thing is sure: Belcher was a talented seaman, explorer, and hydrographer (someone who maps bodies of water). In 1852, he’d been assigned an important task. Belcher and his men ventured into the austere, alien waters of the Arctic on a rescue mission, searching for any trace of the lost Franklin Expedition.

    An 1852 print of the HMS Resolute and HMS Intrepid in winter harbor, based on a drawing by George Frederick McDougall. Public Domain

    The Franklin Expedition, headed by Sir John Franklin, was an 1845 British exploration operation that aimed to find the Northwest Passage through Canada to the Pacific. Franklin’s crew was ordered to record magnetic data as a potential aid to navigation practices. But the treacherous northern sea closed its icy fingers around the men of the expedition and never let them go. The mission proved to be one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration.

    The two ships of the Franklin expedition—the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—sailed from Britain in May of 1845, took on supplies in Greenland in July, were spotted in Baffin Bay, Canada, and crossed the Lancaster Sound. They were never heard from again, vanishing into the vast white void.

    In the years of searching conducted by the British government after their disappearance, no trace of the ships was found. Only a few artifacts and human remains were recovered. Most of the 129 crew members and officers had simply disappeared. Forensic investigations were conducted on the recovered bodies, revealing that the men suffered from starvation, scurvy, lead poisoning, and, possibly, cannibalism, a narrative supported by the oral accounts of the expedition provided by the Inuit people. It was only in the 2010s that the Erebus and the Terror were at last discovered, wrecked off King William Island.

    It was this polar tragedy that brought Sir Edward Belcher and his small fleet of ships, including the HMS Resolute, to the Arctic in 1854. Belcher’s voyage was almost as ill-fated as Franklin’s. Though the Resolute was heavily constructed to withstand the harsh Arctic environment, it became locked in the ice in 1854, along with four more of Belcher’s ships. Belcher made the difficult decision to abandon the ships and begin an overland trek to rendezvous with other vessels that could bring them back to England.

    The men left behind their floating piece of home, their security and warmth, and entered the unending whiteness. They marched over the vast expanses of ice, eventually meeting up with their comrades’ ships and returning safely to England. There, Belcher was court-martialed (not for the first time) for abandoning his vessels but acquitted because his orders gave him full discretion. He never received another command.

    So there, in the emptiness of the frozen North Sea, where the slowly clenching jaws of ice groaned and echoed through frigid air, the pale winds pined, and the strange lights flickered and played about the sky like ghosts, the abandoned Resolute waited. Belcher and his men had left it in good order, though they knew it would likely be broken up by the ice, in the end. But that was not to be its fate.

    Months passed. Summer came, kissing even the hard northern waters with warmth. The ice thawed. Somehow, Resolute broke free. It drifted some 1,200 miles until James Buddington, captain of an American whaling ship, the George Henry, sighted it in 1855, near Baffin Island. An 1856 New York Journal article describes the moment the Americans boarded the ghost ship.

    “Finally, stealing over the side, they found everything stowed away in proper order. … Everything wore the silence of the tomb. Finally reaching the cabin door they broke in and found their way in the darkness to the table … [a candle] was lit and before the astonished gaze of these men exposed a scene that appeared to be rather one of enchantment than reality. Upon a massive table was a metal teapot, glistening as if new, also a large volume of Scott’s family Bible, together with glasses and decanters filled with choice liquors. Nearby was Captain Kellett’s chair, a piece of massive furniture, over which had been thrown, as if to protect this seat from vulgar occupation, the royal flag of Great Britain.”

    Buddington assigned a portion of his crew to the ghost ship, and they sailed it back to the United States. According to maritime law, the ship belonged to those who had found her (Buddington and his crew), and the British government accepted this fact when they were notified of the find. But the U.S. government had a different idea.

    At this time, U.S. relations with Great Britain were strained. The War of 1812 was still alive to memory, including the moment when the British burned the U.S. capitol. The two countries continued to dispute the Canadian border. In the discovery of the Resolute, the U.S. government saw an opportunity to make a gesture of goodwill toward their adversaries across the pond. Congress authorized $40,000 to purchase the ship from Buddington and repair it.

    The Americans took great care in refurbishing the sturdy old juggernaut, as described in an 1856 New York Times article:

    “With such completeness and attention to detail has this work been performed, that not only has everything found on board been preserved, even to the books in the captain’s library, the pictures in his cabin, and a musical-box and organ belonging to other officers, but new British flags have been manufactured in the Navy Yard to take the place of those which had rotted during the long time she was without a living soul on board.”

    With great fanfare, the Resolute was sailed back to England and presented as a gift to Queen Victoria, who visited the ship in person. The Brits took the gift to heart, and the queen remembered this gesture from the Americans for many years.

    The Resolute desk in the Taft study. Public Domain

    Returning the Favor

    When the Resolute was removed from service and broken down in 1879, Queen Victoria ordered some of its timbers to be preserved. The heavy oak lumber, which had weathered so many storms and seen both tragedy and reconciliation, was constructed into a massive, ornate desk, weighing 1,300 pounds. Victoria sent it as a surprise gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, returning the favor and expressing gratitude for returning Her Majesty’s Ship, the Resolute, all those years before. Most importantly, the desk became an emblem of the mutual goodwill and alliance between the United States and Great Britain, which has never wavered since.

    Most U.S. Presidents used the desk since it was gifted at the end of the 19th century. Between 1951 and 1962, it was used to hold a projector in the broadcast room at the White House until it was rediscovered by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. She had it moved back to the Oval Office, where it has formed part of the backdrop for many landmark moments in American presidential history. There are photos of President Kennedy sitting at the desk with John Kennedy Jr. peeking out from beneath it.

    John Kennedy Jr. peeks out through the kneehole panel of the Resolute desk while his father, President John F. Kennedy, works. Public Domain

    The Resolute desk, as it has come to be known, bears within it the marks of struggle, abandonment, miraculous discovery, restoration, and reconciliation. It’s a fitting symbol for the resolute American spirit.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 22:35

  • 'Over Ruled': Who Guards The Guardians?
    ‘Over Ruled’: Who Guards The Guardians?

    Authored by John Maxwell Hamilton via RealClearPolitics,

    “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – Who guards the guardians? – is an old question that began as amusing repartee and has bedeviled democratic government from the beginning of its formation.

    The phrase originated with the Roman satirical poet Juvenal, who was presented with the idea that wives should be chained to keep them faithful. Fine, the poet replied, but who will guard husbands?

    The question for democracy lies at the heart of a new book by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law.” Too many laws and regulations administered by unaccountable government officials, he writes, have “swallowed up ordinary people.”

    Gorsuch, with help from his former law clerk Janie Nitze, makes his case in a series of parables. They feature individual Americans who have been victimized by government laws that they did not know existed and that should not have been written in the first place. The courts in many stories are too aggressive in adjudicating cases that should have been considered minor infractions, at best.

    In one such story, an agent from the U.S. Department of Agriculture informed a young magician, Marty Hahne, that he needed a license for using his rabbit in the act he had just performed at a local library. Hahne subsequently learned he also needed an evacuation plan for the animal in case of a hurricane or some other disaster. This requirement originated in a federal statute, the Animal Welfare Act, which regulates the treatment of dogs, cats, rabbits, and other animals for research, teaching, testing, and exhibition. Congressional lawmakers called on the USDA to apply the law to such venues as “carnivals, circuses, and zoos.” USDA regulators interpreted those exhibitions to include magic shows.

    In other stories of misplaced rules and courts run amuck, people’s lives are more than inconvenienced. They are ruined. Gorsuch believes these stories show that a surfeit of laws is sucking the life out of democracy.

    “Over Ruled” will be catnip for readers who fear the so-called deep state is out to subvert democracy. It also is convenient for Donald Trump, who, if elected, promises to “drain the swamp” by firing career civil servants and installing his own unelected supporters in their place.

    But Gorsuch’s book should be taken seriously, both for its strengths and weaknesses. He certainly makes a valid point that the number of laws and regulations has exploded in recent years. The first federal criminal statute, written when the Republic was established, contained fewer than fifty crimes. Now the total number is, by some counts, 5,000. In the process, Congress has delegated powers to executive department agencies to write administrative laws and rules as well as apprehend suspects and judge them.

    Having made the case for the problem, however, Gorsuch does not dig into the complexity of implementing workable solutions. He acknowledges that our society is much more complicated than it was at the nation’s founding, and therefore we need more measures to protect citizens. He does not tell us how we sort the good from the bad or how we regulate the regulators.

    Perhaps most damaging to his argument, “Over Ruled” does not provide readers with the context needed to understand the longstanding tension between government by the people and the need for expert mediation on social, economic, and political problems.

    Gorsuch, who believes judging involves close adherence to the original intent of the Constitution, takes us back to an earlier era that he characterizes as local people solving local problems. He considers this a good time for “ordinary Americans.” What he fails to say, however, is the Founding Fathers were elitists who doubted that ordinary white, male citizens, not to mention minorities and women, were up to the task of making good government decisions.

    Gorsuch liberally quotes James Madison about the evils of too much law. But equally important, Madison and others hoped that elections would put the “best” in office. Only members of the House of Representatives were directly elected. Under the original Constitution, senators were elected by state legislatures. The Electoral College can “elect” a presidential candidate who did not win the popular vote – something that has happened already twice this century.

    Thomas Jefferson, among many others, promoted national education schemes to create “a natural aristocracy” – what we would today call civil servants – to manage government. What Jefferson vaguely foresaw has come to pass, whether it is experts monitoring environmental degradation and food purity or ferreting out unfair trade practices.

    This reliance on experts – people who have the training to determine facts – has not gone uncontested. It fueled populism in the United States in the late 19th century as well as today. Disaffected citizens feel government is not taking them into account and that the bureaucracy is an untethered fourth branch of government, a phrase Gorsuch used frequently. This mentality has given resonance to Donald Trump’s message that his intuitive common-sense ideas about interest rates are more sound than Federal Reserve System economists who have studied monetary policy all their lives.

    Readers who want a fuller exploration of the longstanding social and political tension that arises from depending on experts can turn to “Democracy and Truth” by historian Sophia Rosenfeld. Or readers may choose a new volume by Stephen Breyer. The recently retired justice is an expert on administrative law and helped Sen. Ted Kennedy deregulate the airline industry. His “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism” thoughtfully weighs the difficulty of balancing fealty to the Constitution with the needs of modern society.

    The willingness to rely on common sense over expertise is not infinitely elastic. Most people prefer to go to trained doctors when they are ill rather than consult someone they pass on the street. Most people like some aspects of government expertise and intervention. They may, for instance, place a high value on fighting animal abuse, which is the motivation behind the well-intentioned (if misused) Animal Welfare Act. Various professions require training and education in order to acquire a license to practice; in addition to adding to their credibility, this restriction reduces competition. One of Gorsuch’s examples of overreaching administrative law concerns an African American woman who was “apprehended” for braiding hair in her salon without having attended cosmetology school.

    In regard to preferences, it is worth noting that Justice Gorsuch has some of his own, namely enlarging the power of presidents beyond anything the Founders conceived. Insofar as administrative power is concerned, he and other conservatives believe that the president should have more control over quasi-independent agencies.

    A recent Supreme Court decision raises concerns about maintaining the protections that administrative law provides. The court found that it was unconstitutional for the Securities Exchange Commission to levy fines against a financier whom they deemed to have violated antifraud and pro-transparency rules. The court said the SEC had to pursue its case in federal court. This dramatic switch in thinking by the Supreme Court could make it difficult – and in some cases impossible – for agencies to police offenders. As law professor David Cole has noted, “some agencies’ statutes do not authorize them to sue in federal court.” It is worth asking, do we want our already flooded courts to deal with all these issues, when more efficient ways exist to get the job done?

    Gorsuch has not written a legal analysis so much as a stump speech. His examples are akin to those used by political leaders to give a human dimension to policies they are promoting. Many of the stories are trivial to the point of being frivolous.

    Is it really worthwhile to dwell on a law, long ago passed by Virginia legislators, to outlaw hunting bears with dogs on Sundays? A few reform-minded states have wiped laws like these from the books. At the federal level, Gorsuch notes, President Obama directed agencies to “eliminate rules that don’t make sense.”

    These steps are relatively easy. The difficult part Gorsuch leaves untouched. His cases are largely cartoons. They do not demonstrate how to balance the injustice growing out of a law with the legitimate concerns it is trying to address.

    The solutions he offers sound like Fourth of July speeches. His call for more civic education, as valuable as that would be (see my RCP column on the subject), emphasizes school-age children spending more time reading the Constitution.

    Gorsuch argues that the expansion of laws and regulations undermines the credibility of our legal institutions. “Everyone feels like a criminal,” he told the C-SPAN audience.

    The growth in law-making is a problem, but it is questionable that most Americans feel like criminals. How can they feel like criminals if they don’t know about all the laws that exist, as Gorsuch insists is the case?

    If the justice is worried that we are moving “from a world in which law is revered into one in which it generates disaffection and feeds distrust,” he could profitably focus on the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to police itself. Feeble ethical standards govern justices’ behavior, which is well known and heavily criticized.

    The Supreme Court has enormous power. Justices are appointed, not elected, and may serve until they die. They are given their jobs because of their expertise in nuanced application of the law. For Gorsuch, who belongs to this powerful elite, one might expect a deeper exploration of the trade-offs between too much law and too few protections.

    “Who guards the guardians” is a much more profound subject than Justice Gorsuch lets on.

    John Maxwell Hamilton is an RCP columnist, a professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University, and an award-winning author of eight books, including “Manipulating the Masses: The Origins of Government Propaganda,” which won the Goldsmith Prize.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 21:45

  • The Big Lie Of "Skilled" Migrant Workers Saving Western Economies
    The Big Lie Of “Skilled” Migrant Workers Saving Western Economies

    There are a great many tall tales circulating these days in association with illegal immigration.  Possibly one of the most prevalent claims from the political left is that western economies “need illegals” in order to support the dragging economy and fill a hungry labor market. An extension of this idea is that many of these migrants are “skilled workers” that the west desperately needs for vital roles. 

    But how much do the US and Europe really need illegal immigrants in order to keep western economies going?  And how many of them actually bring important skills to western labor markets?  Would they be sunk without these people?  Or, would they be much better off?

    First and foremost it should be noted that in the US there is ample evidence to show that the Biden Administration has been engaging in statistical manipulation for the last four years, and this includes labor statistics.  While there was indeed a clear shortage of workers in the service sector during covid lockdowns (and the helicopter money supplied by covid stimulus and PPP loans), recent revisions to BLS numbers have cut at least 819,000 jobs from the books that Biden originally took credit for.  In other words, those jobs never existed.

    It was these same jobs numbers that were used by the Democrats to argue in favor of open borders; asserting that without illegals this explosion in labor demand would turn into a worker shortage crisis.  While specific job sector stats (job categories) don’t usually distinguish between legal and illegal migrants, there is little evidence to indicate they fill an important role in our society.

    In America, migrants flood into the low-skill service sector and health services sector.  In many cases this involves entry level nursing home care and similar employment.  The other category in which they usually work is construction.  They offer cheap labor for home building, but this has certainly not translated to lower housing costs. 

    In the meantime, tens-of-millions illegal migrants drive up housing demand, in turn driving up prices on new homes and rentals.  Migrants are given access to government subsidies as long as they are under review for asylum or refugee status, in many cases they are offered more access to government aid than natural born citizens.  Both California and Oregon are currently instituting housing loan programs available to immigrants only.  

    Census SIPP data from 2022 indicates that around 59% of non-citizen households in the US use one or more welfare programs, compared to 39% of US-born households.  The establishment media and Democrats will often try to dilute welfare stats by citing legal migrant numbers instead of illegal migrant numbers.

    Around 47% of illegal migrants to the US never completed high school (as opposed to 8% of US-born citizens).

    It is estimated that illegals cost US taxpayers at least $150 billion in public services (officially) each year while paying only $25 billion in taxes.  While some economists cite a potential $324 billion in GDP gain from migrant workers, this almost all comes from wages which illegals send to their families outside the US.  

    In the UK, migrant data is rarely tracked by the government, ostensibly because they want to keep the indigenous public in the dark as much as possible.  However it is clear that, just like in the US, migrants (specifically from third-world nations) do not bring skilled labor to the table.  UK migrants overwhelmingly work in the service and health sectors, once again in low-level nursing jobs, elderly facilities, some work in tech and the rest do not work at all.  

    The UK estimates that at least 1.7 million migrants are unemployed while on the dole, and they are costing taxpayers upwards of £8.5 Billion ($11 billion) annually.

    In Germany, welfare costs skyrocketed in 2024 and reports show 47% of recipients for government handouts are migrants.  The total cost of $49 billion is 14.8 percent higher than in 2023, 18.4 percent higher compared to 2020, and 23 percent higher compared to 2015.   In the EU migrants from Africa and Asia are once again greatly overrepresented in health services. 

    The point is, the notion of “skilled migrant workers” saving western economies with their vital labors is a complete fabrication.  Illegal migrants in particular are a net negative and a dangerous strain on the welfare system.  They also drive up housing costs by creating mass demand with not enough supply, and this same demand drives up inflation in almost every other area of the economy.  The roles they do fill can be easily adapted without them by offering minor subsidies or tax benefits for American citizens.   

    Like most countries in the world today, the US and European nations should be vetting migrants and only accepting those that bring value to the table along with a willingness to assimilate.  Otherwise, they serve no useful purpose.       

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 21:20

  • Reagan The Movie: How The Mainstream Media Can't Help Itself
    Reagan The Movie: How The Mainstream Media Can’t Help Itself

    Authored by Richard Truesdell via American Greatness,

    On Friday, I did something I hadn’t done since before COVID-19, I went and saw a movie premiere on the day it opened in an actual movie theater. With my childhood friend Susan, whom I’ve known for more than five decades—a dyed-in-the-wool conservative just like me—we went and saw Reagan. And unlike most critics on Rotten Tomatoes who rated it at 18% and elsewhere, we loved it along with a virtually unprecedented 98% of Rotten Tomato viewers.

    Right up front, I can say that Reagan is not without flaws. The cinematography in much of the movie is quite dark, especially in the flashback scenes at the start of the film. Also, at 2 hours and 15 minutes, the film is long. While a lot of footage was likely left on the cutting room floor, getting Reagan down to two hours would likely help. When Reagan comes to streaming, I’ll watch it again.

    With that out of the way, I will say that Dennis Quaid’s performance as Ronald Reagan is simply outstanding. It’s easily his best work since The Big Easy, one of my all-time favorite movies, a movie I like to say is a guilty pleasure (with equally great chemistry with co-star Ellen Barkin). When Susan and I entered the 530 PM showing, people exiting from the earlier 3 PM showing had tears in their eyes, saying to us that Reagan would pull on our emotions, which it did. Again, and to not spoil it for you, if I were writing the screenplay, the ending is exactly how I would have written it. It generated applause from everyone in the theater.

    I could not find fault with any of the performances. Jon Voight as the ex-KGB operative who followed Reagan for decades and narrates the story, and especially Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan, were perfect. We both thought there was great on-screen chemistry between Quaid and Miller.

    Remember that during Reagan’s presidency, Nancy was often vilified. Even four decades ago, the mainstream media showed their bias as they have done with every Republican First Lady since then, save for Laura Bush. This while idolizing narcissists like Michelle Obama and especially, until a month ago, “Dr.” Jill Biden. As I like to say, “It is what it is.”

    This is what I call a small, big movie. Small in that it’s not told epically. In some ways, the Ron-Nancy love story is intimate. But it’s a big movie in that it tells the story with an all-star (Quaid, Miller, Voight, and many others) cast. The production was interrupted by the COVID lockdowns, so it took about five years from when Quaid was first cast as Ronald Reagan (he also portrayed Bill Clinton earlier in his career) to its debut last Friday.

    But as I mentioned earlier, Reagan has been savaged by the critics, and the reviews fall along ideological lines. Most egregious, of course, was at the New York Times. There, Glenn Kenny couldn’t help himself. Amazingly, the bias at the New York Times permeates everything it touches, going beyond its news coverage to its best-selling books list to even its movie reviews. Kenny closed his review by saying, “It all makes for a plodding film, more curious than compelling.”

    Tell that to the viewers who loved it, you jackass. You simply can’t help yourself.

    (I would like to contrast how the critics loved Oppenheimer. Of course, the New York Times fell all over itself in praising Oppenheimer, a far less satisfying film, saying “Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s staggering film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb.”

    Staggering film? Again, when the story fits its agenda, it gets a gushing review.

    As I said earlier, the New York Times simply can’t help itself.

    As biopics, both films have their flaws, especially in length. All films do. But as entertainment as well as telling a historic story, Oppenheimer is much more flawed than Reagan.)

    As I sorted through other reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, especially the less-than-positive ones, one word kept appearing: hagiographic. Even though I have a better-than-average command of the English language and volcabulary, I had never used or even seen that word. So I went online and looked it up. The definition is “excessively flattering.” It’s as if reviewers got their reviewers’ talking points directly from the DNC. The reviews of Reagan are just like any other political commentary, like anything connected in the mainstream media to “Orange Man Bad.” Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery on the third anniversary of Abbey Gate at the invitation of the next-of-kin of the fallen 13 is a perfect example.

    This hagiography nonsense starts with Ty Burr at the Washington Post. “The faithful for whom ‘Reagan’ was made aren’t likely to see that it’s a hagiography as rosy and shallow as anything in a Kremlin May Day parade. As pop-culture propaganda—popaganda, if you will—the movie’s strictly for true believers. As history, it’s worthless.”

    It’s as if Burr is channeling his inner Hillary Clinton, viewing anyone who enjoyed Reagan as deplorable.

    It continues with Joshua Peinado at In Review Online, who said, “It’s one thing to go the route of hagiography and never mention the notable failures of Reagan and his presidency…but Reagan makes the stranger choice to give voice to the issues of his conservatism and then, promptly, forget all about them.”

    Christopher Lloyd writing for The Film Yap, giving the film two out of five stars says, “The Gipper gets a goober of a biopic—schmaltzy, hagiographic, and ham-handed—though Dennis Quaid nails the portrait of his self-effacing charm hiding a steely resolve.”

    I could go on and on, but what’s the point?

    But the bottom line is that a couple that will spend $40 and up (the cost of the tickets plus a bucket of popcorn and two overpriced sodas) for a date night out will love Reagan.

    Overall, I’m torn between giving it four or five stars out of five, so I’ll give it a 4.5. It’s an emotional film in many ways. For those of us who came of age during the Cold War and watched the Soviet Union disintegrate in the early 1990s, you will find Reagan an enjoyable way to spend 2 hours and 15 minutes. It’s a satisfying, emotional film. To me, it’s a far superior film (as entertainment) to the Oscar-honored but plodding Oppenheimer. Being a history person, I really wanted to like Oppenheimer but felt the earlier Fat Man and Little Boy with Paul Newman told the development of the atom bomb story far better.

    To get the flavor of Reagan, here’s a link to the trailer.

    So if you are looking for something to fill your time on the last day of the long Labor Day weekend, I can recommend Reagan without reservation.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 20:55

  • Officials Can't Reject Mail-In Ballots With Incorrect Dates: Pennsylvania Court
    Officials Can’t Reject Mail-In Ballots With Incorrect Dates: Pennsylvania Court

    A Pennsylvania court has ruled that election officials cannot reject mail-in ballots with incorrect dates or no dates as long as they were submitted before the filing deadline.

    A man photographs himself depositing his ballot in an official ballot drop box at Philadelphia City Hall, Pa., on Oct. 27, 2020. Mark Makela/Getty Images

    A panel of the Commonwealth State Appeals Court ruled on Aug. 30 that the state’s legal requirement for mail-in ballot envelopes to have dates written violates the state constitution.

    “Simply put, the refusal to count undated or incorrectly dated but timely received mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors violates the fundamental right to vote recognized in and guaranteed by the free and equal elections clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution,” wrote Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler for the 4-1 majority.

    The ruling applies to both Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, and strikes down a 2019 law – Act 77 – which included a provision requiring voters to date the envelope in which the mail-in ballots are enclosed.

    As the Epoch Times notes further, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged that and other provisions, arguing that they are unconstitutional as they sued Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, the Philadelphia County Board of Elections, and the Allegheny County Board of Elections.

    The Pennsylvania Republican Party and the Republican National Committee intervened in the case and said the provisions do not violate the state Constitution.

    The majority declined to rule against other provisions but said the date requirement is unconstitutional.

    Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a social media statement that the court “got it right: an eligible voter’s minor error of forgetting to date or misdating a ballot envelope cannot be cause for disenfranchisement.”

    The appeals court said in the ruling that officials still have the authority to make sure mail-in ballots comply with other requirements, including deadlines for submission.

    Pennsylvania’s Department of State said that “multiple court cases have now confirmed that the dating of a mail-in ballot envelope, when election officials can already confirm it was sent and received within the legal voting window, provides no purpose to election administration.”

    The office has not said how the decision might alter its guidance to counties that run elections. In July, the Department of State told counties that return envelopes should be printed to include the full year, “2024,” leaving voters to add the accurate month and day.

    Mike Lee, executive director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, said the ruling “preserves the votes of thousands of voters who make this mistake in every election, without undemocratic, punitive enforcement by the counties.”

    According to data presented to the court, more than 10,000 mail-in ballots were not counted in the 2022 midterm election and 4,000 were rejected in the primary elections earlier this year because the ballots did not comply with the ballot date requirement.

    Tom King, who represents the state and national Republican Party groups in the case, said he was disappointed in the decision and “absolutely will appeal.”

    Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough said in a dissent that the date requirement was “perhaps the least burdensome of all ballot-casting requirements” and that the groups that challenged the provision had not met the burden of showing that the requirement was so difficult as to deny voters their right to vote.

    “It seems to me that the majority was swayed by the raw numbers and avoided applying the true test for evaluating a Free and Equal Elections Clause claim,” she wrote.

    “Today the majority says that requiring the date on the voter declaration on a mail-in or absentee ballot envelope is subject to strict judicial scrutiny and cannot be enforced because doing so unconstitutionally denies the voting franchise altogether. I must wonder whether walking into a polling place, signing your name, licking an envelope, or going to the mailbox can now withstand the majority’s newly minted standard.”

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 20:30

  • Semis Slaughtered As September Starts Off With Carnage Everywhere
    Semis Slaughtered As September Starts Off With Carnage Everywhere

    Yesterday, when we observed that the Labor Day holiday had spared US markets from a selloff that spread across the rest of the world on the first trading day of September, we said that we had a bad feeling about today.

    And boy were we right: traditionally the worst month for stocks, bonds, gold and bitcoin, September started off with a bang – not a whimper – which saw the S&P plunge 2.4%, its biggest drop since the August 5 meltdown and the worst start to a month since May 2020, when the S&P plunged 2.8%.

    Or in the immortal words of Ron Burgundy…

    And while the move in the VIX was not nearly as stunning as the Aug 5 Volmageddon 2.0 event, the 7 vol spike from 15 to a session high of 21.99 – also the highest since August 5 – has left quite a few volatility sellers suffering another round of huge margin calls less than a month since the last one.

    It wasn’t just the S&P: the Dow (which has become a meaningless index) also tumbled back under 41,000, but the biggest loser by far was the increasingly fragile Nasdaq, which crashed more than 3%, its biggest drop also since the August 5 collapse, and the 3rd biggest one-day drop in the past year…

    … thanks to a sudden liquidation of the momentum leaders of 2024, the Mag7 which was most apparent in today’s performance of semiconductor stocks, which suffered their biggest drop since March 2020.

    And while it is unclear what exactly sparked today’s rout (see “What’s Behind Today’s Tech Carnage: Goldman’s Trading Desk Explains“) that won’t cheer NVDA longs who are watching their favorite stock plunge a massive 10% and a whopping 18% in just the past week…

    … wiping out more than $280 billion in value, which makes it the biggest one-day market cap loss in history, surpassing Meta’s previous record of $251BN in market cap lost after its February 2022 earnings report.

    And while the tech sector was crushed, there was no rotation out of it today, with small caps plunging 3%, their biggest drop also since August 5…

    … and while it’s not a small cap just yet, the 8% plunge in Boeing – on merely a downgrade (from Wells Fargo of all banks) – shows just how truly jittery the market has become.

    While normally on days like today – when favorite names are getting blown out – the most shorted names rise, not even that worked today, and in a repeat of the Aug 5 plunge, the Goldman most shorted basket tumbled 4% erasing almost half the gains from the past month.

    Notably, today’s carnage wasn’t confined to stocks: commodities were also hammered, with Brent tumbling almost 5%, back under $74, and wiping out all 2024 gains, as WTI flirted with $70/barrel…

    … on fears China’s economy will pass recession and proceed straight to depression just as Libya restarts its own oil supply firehose, while seemingly nobody cares at all about potential geopolitical risk factors around the world.

    Even gold, that stalwart outperformer in 2024 and the best performing asset of the year, wasn’t immune from today’s selloff, and after trading above $2500 for much of of the past 2 weeks, the yellow metal dipped back under.

    Amid this carnage, which was at least in part sparked by the a stagflationary ISM print, which saw employment and new orders tumble…

    … while prices paid jumped, and hinted at a rebound in the CPI…

    … coupled with absolutely devastating commentary from the US PMI report, which hinted not so much at a recession as a manufacturing depression…

    “A further downward lurch in the PMI points to the manufacturing sector acting as an increased drag on the economy midway through the third quarter. Forward looking indicators suggest this drag could intensify in the coming months.

    “Slower than expected sales are causing warehouses to fill with unsold stock, and a dearth of new orders has prompted factories to cut production for the first time since January. Producers are also reducing payroll numbers for the first time this year and buying fewer inputs amid concerns about excess capacity.

    “The combination of falling orders and rising inventory sends the gloomiest forward-indication of production trends seen for one and a half years, and one of the most worrying signals witnessed since the global financial crisis.

    “Although falling demand for raw materials has taken pressure off supply chains, rising wages and high shipping rates continue to be widely reported as factors pushing up input costs, which are now rising at the fastest pace since April of last year.”

    … the one thing that actually did work was treasuries, with 10Y yields sliding almost 10bps and back to where they were just after the Aug 5 crash.

    Yet while stocks – and bonds – have fully priced in more than 200bps of Fed rate cuts over the next 12 months, a pace of easing that is unheard of outside recessions, the risk or rather reality, is that on Friday the Kamala BLS will report a much stronger jobs number than most expect… and why not: the BLS already kitchen-sinked just how ugly the jobs market was with its 818K downward revision, so it can once again start making up numbers.

    Putting it all together: today was brutal for most, but with the Nasdaq wiping out 3.1% or about 75% of its average September loss from the past decade in one trading day, it is likely that much of the pain is already in the history books. And we are confident that the BTFD crew will be up early tomorrow ready to start buying it all right back up…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 20:10

  • FDA Authorizes New COVID-19 Vaccine Without Clinical Data
    FDA Authorizes New COVID-19 Vaccine Without Clinical Data

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

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized a new COVID-19 vaccine from Novavax, giving Americans an alternative to shots from Moderna and Pfizer.

    A dose of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine is prepared, in this file image. Joroen Jumelet/ANP/AFP via Getty Images

    Novavax’s protein-based vaccine will be available soon after regulators granted emergency authorization to the Maryland-based company for the product.

    FDA officials said that animal testing data supported the decision.

    “Today’s authorization provides an additional COVID-19 vaccine option that meets the FDA’s standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization,” Dr. Peter Marks, who directs the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an Aug. 30 statement.

    The FDA cleared vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer that are built on messenger ribonucleic acid technology (mRNA) earlier in the month.

    Critics say that the agency should not be making an assertion about safety and effectiveness in the absence of clinical trial data.

    “The assertion rings hollow when FDA has not required manufacturers of the mRNA biological [products] to provide scientific evidence to the public that safety and effectiveness has been demonstrated,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times previously via email.

    Novavax President and CEO John C. Jacobs said in a statement that the company’s vaccine showed “robust cross-reactivity against JN.1 lineage viruses” in animals.

    JN.1 was displaced in the spring by KP.3 and other variants, according to sequencing performed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The CDC estimates that KP.3 and the closely related KP.3.1.1 caused about four in 10 cases in the two weeks ending Aug. 3. The agency estimated that KP.3.1.1 became the dominant strain by the end of August.

    The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines target KP.3.

    FDA officials initially advised manufacturers to target JN.1 but later recommended they target KP.3.

    Because Novavax’s vaccine is built on different technology, it takes longer to manufacture than the mRNA shots. Company officials told FDA advisers over the summer that they were planning to continue manufacturing a JN.1-based vaccine and believed it would perform well against KP.3 and other strains from the JN.1 lineage.

    The authorization is for people aged 12 and older. People who have never received a vaccine can get two doses of Novavax’s vaccine about three weeks apart. People who have received a vaccine before can get a single dose.

    The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are available for individuals who are at least 6 months old.

    The CDC is recommending vaccination for all people aged 6 months and older.

    The United States ended the COVID-19 public health emergency in 2023 but extended the emergency declaration under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act until the end of 2024. The FDA issued the emergency authorization under that authority.

    COVID-19 levels have plummeted since early 2022, although data from wastewater and other sources have indicated a recent uptick.

    Twenty-eight states are reporting high levels of COVID-19 and two states are reporting very high levels, based on wastewater, according to the CDC. Hospitalizations and deaths attributed to COVID-19 have also been climbing, although the numbers are far lower than the highs recorded in 2021 and 2022.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 20:05

  • Turley: Robert Reich's Call To Arrest Musk Is "Siren's Call Of Every Authoritarian"
    Turley: Robert Reich’s Call To Arrest Musk Is “Siren’s Call Of Every Authoritarian”

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    We have previously discussed the anti-free speech views of Clinton’s former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, who has tried to sell citizens on the perfectly Orwellian view that more freedom means tyranny when it comes to the freedom of expression. He also demanded that former president Donald Trump be banned from ballots as a “traitor” — all in the name of protecting democracy from itself. Last week, Reich wrote a column declaring Elon Musk “out of control” in his refusal to censor citizens and appeared to call for his arrest.

    Reich has long been a prominent voice in the anti-free speech movement discussed in my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. Indeed, he has given a voice to the rage in calling for others to be silenced or arrested.

    Elon Musk has long been the primary target of Reich and his allies after dismantling the censorship system at Twitter, now X. Reich called Musk’s purchase of Twitter with a pledge to reduce censorship to be “dangerous nonsense.”

    Notably, Reich’s friend, Hillary Clinton, was one of the first to call for a crackdown on Musk after his purchase of Twitter.  Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures turned to Europe and called upon them to use their Digital Services Act to force censorship against Americans.

    Reich has always shown a chilling fluidity in how free speech is protected and argued that public interest should be able to trump the right of any citizens in espousing views that he believes are dangerous.

    In denouncing Musk, Reich encouraged a campaign to counter his efforts to resist censorship. He wrote that Musk “may be the richest man in the world. He may own one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to stop him.”

    Like Hillary Clinton, Reich is calling on foreign governments and censors to silence American citizens including Musk: “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.”

    He even appears willing to undermine national security programs to stop unfettered free speech. He called for the U.S. government to cut off contracts with his companies despite their critical role in various national security efforts, including the possible rescue of the stranded two astronauts currently in space.

    None of that matters to Reich who appears to view free speech as a greater threat to our nation: “Why is the US government allowing Musk’s satellites and rocket launchers to become crucial to the nation’s security when he’s shown utter disregard for the public interest? Why give Musk more economic power when he repeatedly abuses it and demonstrates contempt for the public good?”

    Reich’s call to regulate speech in the public interest is the Siren’s Call of every authoritarian regime in history. He will presumably tell us what speech is no longer tolerable for public policy reasons.

    Our “Indispensable Right” will, according to Reich, be safely in the hands of the European censors who can protect us from errant and dangerous thoughts.

    As he explained earlier, “the kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.” In this way, speech regulations can keep us “moving towards how we recommend content and … how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.”

    The “healthy public conversation” with Robert Reich increasingly appears to be his talking and the rest of us listening.

    *  *  *

    Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 19:25

  • Armed Venezuelan Prison Gang In Denver Highlights Map Of US Sanctuary Zones To Avoid Amid Migrant Crisis
    Armed Venezuelan Prison Gang In Denver Highlights Map Of US Sanctuary Zones To Avoid Amid Migrant Crisis

    Law-abiding Americans should be made well aware of the cities, counties, and states that have laws, ordinances, and policies that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield illegal alien criminals from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is because the Biden-Harris administration has imported the third world into the first world, and with that comes elevated risks of violent crime and chaos.

    Footage of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua members raiding an apartment building with at least one AR-style rifle and pistols in the northern Denver suburb of Aurora shocked the nation last week about how quickly sanctuary cities run by far-left Democrats can spiral out of control after rolling out the red carpet to illegals. 

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    And now spillover risks?

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    Let’s not forget sanctuary city NYC…

    The big picture understanding is that sanctuary cities have imported millions of illegal aliens, some of which are prison gang members and have zero respect for first-world laws. Defunding the police has also been pushed nationwide by Democrat lawmakers, and with that comes the risk that local municipalities could become quickly overwhelmed. 

    Independent think tank Center for Immigration Studies has done the easy work for readers, outlining the cities, counties, and states with laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE.

    In other words, these areas have a possibility of high risk for violent crime. And in our view, these areas should be avoided for safety reasons. 

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    Sigh… 

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    Here’s the full list:

    States

    California

    Colorado

    Connecticut

    Illinois

    Massachusetts

    New Jersey

    New York

    North Dakota

    Oregon

    Rhode Island

    Utah

    Vermont

    Washington

    Cities and Counties

    District of Columbia

    Washington

    Georgia

    Athens-Clarke County

    Atlanta

    Columbia County

    DeKalb County

    Douglas County

    Idaho

    Bonneville County

    Power County

    Indiana

    Lake County

    Monroe County

    St. Joseph County

    Wayne County

    Kansas

    Douglas County

    Kentucky

    Campbell County

    Franklin County

    Jefferson County

    Louisville

    Scott County

    Louisiana

    New Orleans

    Maine

    Cumberland County

    Hancock County

    Maryland

    Baltimore

    Baltimore County

    Charles County

    Howard County

    Hyattsville

    Montgomery County

    Prince George’s County

    Queen Anne’s County

    Rockville

    St. Mary’s County

    Michigan

    Kalamazoo County

    Kent County

    Lansing

    Leelanau County

    Luce County

    Muskegon County

    Oakland County

    Washtenaw County

    Wayne County

    Wexford County

    Minnesota

    Anoka County

    Cottonwood County

    Dakota County

    Hennepin County

    Jackson County

    Kandiyohi County

    Lincoln County

    Lyon County

    Nobles County

    Pipestone County

    Ramsey County

    Todd County

    Watonwan County

    Nebraska

    Arthur County

    Banner County

    Blaine County

    Douglas County

    Gosper County

    Grant County

    Greeley County

    Hayes County

    Hooker County

    Howard County

    Johnson County

    Lincoln County

    Logan County

    Loup County

    McPherson County

    Nance County

    Perkins County

    Platte County

    Sioux County

    Thomas County

    Wheeler County

    New Hampshire

    Hillsborough County

    New Mexico

    Bernalillo County

    Chaves County

    Colfax County

    De Baca County

    Dona Ana County

    Eddy County

    Farmington

    Grant County

    Hidalgo County

    Las Cruces

    Lincoln County

    Los Alamos County

    Luna County

    McKinley County

    Otero County

    Quay County

    Rio Arriba County

    Roosevelt County

    San Juan County

    San Miguel County

    Sandoval County

    Santa Fe

    Santa Fe County

    Sierra County

    Socorro County

    Taos County

    New York

    Albany

    Albany County

    Dutchess County

    Monroe County

    Nassau County

    New York City

    Orange County

    Putnam County

    Rockland County

    Saratoga County

    Suffolk County

    Sullivan County

    Tompkins County

    Ulster County

    Warren County

    Wayne County

    Westchester County

    Yates County

    North Carolina

    Buncombe County

    Chatham County

    Durham County

    Forsyth County

    Guilford County

    Mecklenburg County

    Orange County

    Wake County

    Watauga County

    Ohio

    Franklin County

    Hamilton County

    Lorain County

    Mahoning County

    Pennsylvania

    Allegheny County

    Berks County

    Bucks County

    Chester County

    Delaware County

    Lancaster

    Lehigh County

    Mifflin County

    Montgomery County

    Montour County

    Northampton County

    Philadelphia

    Washington County

    South Carolina

    Charleston County

    Tennessee

    Shelby County

    Virginia

    * Denotes the jurisdiction is part of a regional jail system. Please click on map point for further information.

     

    Albemarle County *

    Alexandria

    Alleghany County *

    Amherst County *

    Appomattox County *

    Ashland *

    Arlington County

    Augusta County *

    Bath County *

    Bedford *

    Bedford County *

    Botetourt County

    Brunswick County *

    Buchanan County *

    Campbell County *

    Caroline County

    Charles City County *

    Charlotte County

    Charlottesville *

    Chesapeake *

    Chesterfield County *

    Colonial Heights *

    Covington *

    Dickenson County *

    Dinwiddie County *

    Dumfries *

    Emporia *

    Essex County *

    Fairfax County

    Franklin *

    Gloucester County

    Greensville County *

    Halifax County *

    Hampton *

    Hanover County *

    Harrisonburg *

    Haymarket *

    Hopewell *

    Isle of Wight County *

    James City County *

    King and Queen County *

    King William County *

    Lee County *

    Loudoun County

    Lynchburg *

    Manassas *

    Manassas Park *

    Martinsville

    Mathews County *

    Mecklenburg County *

    Middlesex County *

    Nelson County *

    Newport News

    Norfolk *

    Northumberland County *

    Norton *

    Occoquan *

    Petersburg *

    Poquoson *

    Portsmouth City *

    Prince George County *

    Prince William County *

    Quantico *

    Rappahannock County *

    Richmond

    Richmond County *

    Rockingham County *

    Russell County *

    Scott County *

    Shenandoah County *

    Smyth County *

    Southampton County

    Staunton *

    Suffolk *

    Surry County *

    Tazewell County *

    Virginia Beach *

    Warren County *

    Warsaw *

    Washington County *

    Waynesborough *

    Westmoreland County *

    Williamsburg *

    Wise County *

    York County *

    Wisconsin

    Dane County

    Milwaukee County

    Winnebago Correctional Center (state facility)

    Wyoming

    Teton County

    The chaos erupting in a Denver suburb, driven by a Venezuelan prison gang, is a wake-up call for Americans. It highlights how the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous open southern border policies could cause other sanctuary cities and areas to descend into turmoil. 

    If the police are overwhelmed…

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    Who will come to help you? 

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    This is insanity! 

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 18:50

  • So Much For Sanctions: Russia Surpasses US For Gas Exports To EU
    So Much For Sanctions: Russia Surpasses US For Gas Exports To EU

    By Liz Heflin of Rmxnews.com

    From April to June, the European Union bought more than 12.7 billion cubic meters from Russia and 12.3 billion cubic meters from the United States.

    Director of the Russian Department of Economic Cooperation of the Foreign Ministry, Dmitri Birichevski, says Russia now supplies 15 percent of the total volume of natural gas imported by the European Union. This despite the EU’s REPowerEU instituted back in May 2022 to shift away from Russia and cut it off from its flow of energy profits.

    Birichevski noted, in particular, the fact that France imported 4.4 billion cubic meters of liquid natural gas (LNG) in the first quarter of 2024, more than double the circa 2 billion it imported in 2023.

    Norway is still in first place, having supplied the EU with 23.9 billion cubic meters in Q2. Prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia held the top spot.

    The German government maintains it no longer imports any gas from Moscow. However, many member states clearly do.

    In the face of renewed demands to end Russian imports and defund Putin’s war chest, the energy policy spokesman for the Free Democratic Party (FDP) suggested that the EU “pay a fixed amount of aid and arms supplies to Ukraine for every cubic meter of imported Russian gas.“

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    The matter of Russian gas imports has been an ongoing saga, with reports of shipments from Russia being essentially laundered through other countries and pipelines to avoid being stamped as “Russian.”

    This new data comes in the face of no less than 14 sanctions packages, including the latest one adopted in June, which specifically prohibits the transit of Russian LNG.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 18:25

  • Brazil's $9,000 Fine For Accessing X Puts "Wall Of Censorship" Between Citizens And Unregulated Information
    Brazil’s $9,000 Fine For Accessing X Puts “Wall Of Censorship” Between Citizens And Unregulated Information

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Brazil has not just banned X (formerly Twitter) from the entire country, but citizens will now be fined $9000 a day (more than the average salary in the country) for using VPNs to access the platform. X is the main source of news for Brazilians, who will now be left with government-approved sources or face financial ruin in seeking unfettered information.

    The Guardian is reporting that the confiscatory fines are part of a comprehensive crackdown on efforts to get news through X, including ordering all Apple stores to remove X from new phones.

    The move puts Brazil with China in the effort to create a wall of censorship between citizens and unregulated information.

    For the anti-free speech movement, Brazil is a key testing ground for where the movement is heading next. European censors are arresting CEOs like Pavel Durov while threatening Elon Musk.

    However, it is Brazil that foreshadows the brave new world of censorship where entire nations will block access to sites committed to free speech values or unfettered news. If successful, the Brazilian model is likely to be replicated by other countries.

    The reason is that censorship is not working. As discussed in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” we have never seen the current alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media interest against free speech. Yet, citizens are not buying it.

    Despite unrelenting attacks and demonizing media coverage, citizens are still using X and resisting censorship. That was certainly the case in Brazil where citizens preferred X to regulated news sources. The solution is now to threaten citizens with utter ruin if they seek unfettered news.

    The question is whether Brazil’s leftist government can get away with this. The conflict began with demands to censor supporters of the conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro. When X refused the sweeping demands for censorship, including the demand to name of a legal representative who could be arrested for refusing to censor users, the courts moved toward this national ban.

    The man behind the effort is Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has aggressively used censorship to combat anything that he or the government deems “fake news” or disinformation. With socialist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, they are the dream team of the anti-free speech movement.

    Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison responded to the ban with a posting declaring “Obrigado Brasil!” or “Thanks, Brazil!” Ironically, he did so on X.

    Ellison previously praised the virulently anti-free speech group Antifa and promised that it would “strike fear in the heart” of Donald Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the “bible” of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

    Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’” Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists…  From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

    The question is whether Brazil will become a nightmare for free speech around the world as other nations seek to force citizens to read and hear news from approved, state-monitored sites.

    *  *  *

    Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 18:15

  • Harris' So-Called 'Surge' Is Thanks To Oversampling: Pollsters
    Harris’ So-Called ‘Surge’ Is Thanks To Oversampling: Pollsters

    As we’ve been highlighting since 2016, polls are not to be trusted thanks to various ‘tricks of the trade’ – most commonly, oversampling.

    Last month we noted how the founder of the main outside spending group backing Kamala Harris for president says their own internal opinion polling is “much less rosy” than public polls.

    “Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public,” said Future Forward super PAC president Chauncey McLean said during a Monday event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

    Now, the Washington Times reports that some pollsters are even sounding the alarm over Vice President Kamala Harris’ so-called ‘surge’ in the polls – which Harris pulled ahead in after replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee on July 21.

    Since the switch, Harris is leading Trump nationally by nearly 2 percentage points and is either leading or tied with him in all seven battleground states. However, Republican analysts argue that these polling numbers may not accurately reflect voter sentiment due to biased polling methodology.

    If you want to see examples of polling bias, click into this thread on X…

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    Critics point out that many polls have been sampling a disproportionately smaller share of Republican voters compared to exit poll data from the 2020 presidential election. The result, they say, is a misleading “phantom advantage” for Ms. Harris. According to them, this skewed sampling could be a strategic move to boost enthusiasm and fundraising for Ms. Harris’ campaign.

    Trump campaign strategist Jim McLaughlin echoed this sentiment, stating, “They undersample Republicans” intentionally “to tamp down support and donations for Trump.” He added that the polls are part of a larger effort to create a narrative that favors Harris.

    Trump has openly criticized the poll results. “It’s fake news,” Trump declared during a rally in Michigan. “They can make those polls sing.”

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    Harris’ recent poll numbers have indeed helped fuel excitement among her supporters, as evidenced by her campaign’s announcement of a $540 million fundraising haul in July, more than four times what Mr. Trump raised in the same period. Still, the growing skepticism over the legitimacy of the polls has prompted some to question whether the surge in support is as real as it appears.

    Recent polls that show a Harris lead, such as the Suffolk University/USA Today poll, included more respondents identifying as Democrats (37.1%) than Republicans (33.8%). The poll found Ms. Harris leading Trump by 5 percentage points, a significant turnaround from earlier in the year when Trump was ahead by 4 points vs. Biden. Similarly, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released on August 27 found Ms. Harris ahead of Mr. Trump by 1 percentage point, with Democrats making up 33% of respondents compared to only 29% for Republicans.

    The discrepancy in party sampling is causing concern among poll watchers. Data from the 2020 exit polls showed a nearly equal split, with 36% identifying as Republican and 37% as Democrat. Yet, recent polls seem to favor Democrats disproportionately, leading to claims of deliberate skewing.

    Mr. Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, has argued that these polls are designed to suppress support for Mr. Trump. In a memo, he stated, “Once again, we see a series of public surveys released with the clear intent and purpose of depressing support for President Trump.”

    Pollsters like Don Levy of the New York Times/Siena Poll counter that these claims lack substance. They argue that any gaps between recalled 2020 vote and actual 2020 results are not evidence of intentional bias but may reflect the complexity of polling dynamics, including response bias where Democrats are more likely to participate in polls.

    Despite these excuses, the controversy surrounding these polls has left many wondering about the true state of the race. Polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight shows Ms. Harris’ approval rating ticking up to 42.3%, up from 37.1% in early July. Yet, doubts persist over how she has managed to rise in the polls without significantly improving her historically low job approval ratings.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 18:00

  • Adding Insult To Margin Calls, Nvidia Receives DOJ Subpoena Making Record Price Drop Even Worse
    Adding Insult To Margin Calls, Nvidia Receives DOJ Subpoena Making Record Price Drop Even Worse

    In what may be described as an attempt to sabotage her own election odds, moments after the close Bloomberg reported that Kamala Harris’ Justice Department – because let’s be honest, Joe Biden is officially a vegetable – sent subpoenas to Nvidia and other companies as it seeks evidence that the chipmaker violated antitrust laws, an escalation of its investigation into the dominant provider of AI processors, in the process sending the stock prices sliding even more.

    The DOJ, which had previously delivered questionnaires to companies, is now sending legally binding requests that oblige recipients to provide information, Bloomberg reported citing sources. That takes the government a step closer to launching a formal complaint against a company, which may well have its flaws but monopolizing the industry, when its competitors such as Intel are simply criminally incompetent, is not one of them.

    According to antitrust officials, Nvidia is making it harder to switch to other suppliers and penalizes buyers that don’t exclusively use its artificial intelligence chips. Which is idiocy: if anything, it is the capabilities of Nvidia chips that are forcing every tom, dick and harry to order one even if the chatGPT idiocy is nowhere near the paradigm shifting discovery idiots on TV make it seem to be. Meanwhile, all Nvidia is doing is sitting back and capitalizing by selling the “picks and shovels” to those same idiots who in about a year will realize that they spent millions on chips to power chatbots that generate zero returns.

    Nvidia shares, which already suffered a record-setting rout on Tuesday when they lost a historic $280 billion in market cap, fell further in late trading after Bloomberg reported on the subpoenas, bringing its total drop today to $340 billion!

    Some speculated if the idiots that are runnings Kamala’s campaign are now intentionally looking to sabotage her election odds by crashing the market-leading generals ahead of the November elections.

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    As part of the probe, investigators have been contacting other technology companies to gather information. The DOJ’s San Francisco office – where one Kamala Harris was Attorney General not that long ago – is taking the lead running the inquiry.

    As Bloomberg reports, in the DOJ probe, regulators have been investigating Nvidia’s acquisition of RunAI, a deal announced in April. That company makes software for managing AI computing, and there are concerns that the tie-up will make it more difficult for customers to switch away from Nvidia chips. Regulators also are inquiring whether Nvidia gives preferential supply and pricing to customers who use its technology exclusively or buy its complete systems.

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said he prioritizes customers who can make use of his products in ready-to-go data centers as soon as he provides them, a policy designed to prevent stockpiling and speed up the broader adoption of AI.

    While the stated reason for the DOJ probe is laughable, what is far more likely is that in typical Democrat fashion, the administration is making it clear it will get its pound of flesh in bribes, kickbacks and penalties, from what is at the moment, the world’s most important company.  Analysts project that Nvidia will generate over $120 billion of revenue in calendar 2024, up from $16 billion in 2020, with most of that money coming from its data center unit. In fact, Nvidia is set to bring in more profit this year than the total sales of its nearest rival, Advanced Micro Devices. As for one-time chip giant icon Intel, well… rest in peace.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 17:25

  • Yale Divinity Students Forced To Read From Witch's "Spell" At Orientation
    Yale Divinity Students Forced To Read From Witch’s “Spell” At Orientation

    By Raleigh Adams of The College Fix

    Yale’s Divinity School coerced students to read from a “spell” written by a “witch” as part of its Before the Fall Orientation.

    The three-day orientation between Aug. 21 to 23 saw a series of talks and activities preparing incoming students for the year ahead, interspersed with small group discussions.

    One of these small group periods was the first activity of orientation. Participating as an incoming student in one of these circles, I saw how the discussion opened with a set of “Restorative Circle Rules.” These rules boiled down to a warning to be open minded: all viewpoints were expected to be heard, that you only have to take what you want from the circle and participate as wanted – at least nominally.

    Adrienne Brown, a “mixed-race Black queer American writer, community organizer, facilitator, witch and- may I say- goddess.“

     

    After this show of inclusion, we as students were led to read aloud, line by line and one by one, from Adrienne Brown’s “Radical Gratitude Spell.”

    Brown (pictured) has been described by Meeting of Minds as a “mixed-race Black queer American writer, community organizer, facilitator, witch and- may I say- goddess.”

    Brown herself ascribes to witchcraft, and it informs her public work. Her website describes her as someone who “grows healing ideas in public” through “her writing, which includes short- and long-form fiction, nonfiction, spells, tarot” and “her music, which includes songwriting, singing and immersive musical rituals.”

    This context of Brown, her work, and her particular spiritual inclinations was not given to students before participating in the reading. As such, the group reading of the spell took on an undeniable coven-like feeling, with students unable to fully consent to the pseudo-ritual knowingly, despite the Circle Rules.

    A second-year student, who requested to remain anonymous, expressed to me a deep concern over this act by the orientation staff. The student called the provided spell “bizarre,” and “gross,” especially for students to not be told of the author or intentions behind the spell before being led to participate.

    Other recent Yale College graduates and members of the campus Catholic community commented to me in conversation, in a simultaneously tongue in cheek, yet serious manner, that “the very campus of the Divinity School needed prayer.”

    They were unsurprised at the inclusion of the spell into orientation. Apparently, it is a popularly known fact amongst more conservative and religious circles in the Yale community that there is little still “divine” about the Divinity School.

    As a student who experienced the “Radical Gratitude Spell” first hand, it was a deeply concerning experience for the state of higher education.

    Under the name of inclusion, acts of pagan spirituality are being blindly normalized in educational spaces, Yale Divinity School being a prime example of such.

    Conversely, the preference for diversity comes at the expense of the sanctity of other students’ faith. While it was proclaimed that “you only have to take what you want from this circle,” personally I did not feel safe to opt out of the spell, being all too aware of the power imbalance and the risk of social stigma against me in this completely new environment. I cannot imagine myself being the only one to feel this way.

    Diversity and nominal comfort come at a cost. Its inclusion in orientation raises deep concerns over the boundary that exists between said diversity and the religious rights of individual students.

    This worry is especially poignant in the nearly blind way which the spell was integrated into our first moments as students at Yale.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 17:00

  • Media Giant CMG Bragged About Eavesdropping On Phone, Laptop Or 'Smart Home' Microphones
    Media Giant CMG Bragged About Eavesdropping On Phone, Laptop Or ‘Smart Home’ Microphones

    For years people have suspected that their smartphones, laptops, and home assistants were secretly eavesdropping on their private conversations. Now, a leaked pitch deck seems to confirm that our devices are, in fact, listening—and the implications are far-reaching.

    Leaked slide via 404 Media

    A leaked pitch deck presentation from Cox Media Group (CMG) – major player in the digital advertising space, appears to detail how its “Active-Listening” software uses artificial intelligence to capture and analyze “real-time intent data” from users’ conversations. The presentation, obtained by 404 Media, lays out how CMG’s software could listen to everything spoken near a microphone-equipped device—whether it’s a phone, laptop, or home assistant like Amazon’s Alexa, the Daily Mail reports.

    Active-Listening: A Six-Step Process to Harvest Voice Data

    The pitch deck outlines a six-step process for CMG’s Active-Listening software, which turns seemingly benign conversations into targeted advertising gold. The first slide describes how the software listens to your conversations and extracts real-time intent data, which advertisers can then pair with behavioral data to target “in-market consumers.” In simple terms, it means that if you mention a product or service in a conversation, advertisers can target you with ads for that very item.

    For instance, if you’re talking about Toyota cars with a friend, you might soon find yourself inundated with ads for Toyota’s latest models. This alleged use of private conversations for ad targeting represents a significant breach of what most people consider to be their personal privacy.

    The slideshow goes further, showcasing tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon as clients of CMG, suggesting they may use this controversial technology. These companies have long denied listening to user conversations through device microphones, but this leaked document raises new questions.

    Tech Giants in Hot Water: Denials, Uncertainties, and Potential Backpedaling

    Following the leak, Google swiftly removed Cox Media Group from its “Partners Program” website, a move that suggests a distancing from the controversial practice. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, responded by stating it is reviewing CMG for any potential violations of its terms of service. Meanwhile, Amazon declared that its advertising division “has never worked with CMG on this program and has no plans to do so.” However, their spokesperson left the door slightly ajar, stating that if a marketing partner violates their rules, action will be taken.

    The mixed responses leave the status of these relationships somewhat murky. Are these denials simply a strategy to buy time while the companies reassess their partnerships with CMG, or are they genuinely unaware of these practices?

    Is Active Listening Legal?

    Although the notion of listening to conversations may seem like an egregious violation of privacy, CMG claims it is entirely legal. In a now-deleted blog post from November 2023, CMG wrote, “We know what you’re thinking. Is this even legal? The short answer is: yes. It is legal for phones and devices to listen to you.”

    The legality, CMG argues, comes from the lengthy and often-overlooked “terms of use” agreements that consumers must accept when downloading new apps or updates. Buried in the fine print of these agreements, the software’s Active Listening feature is sometimes included, making the practice legally permissible—if ethically questionable.

    This might explain how CMG operates in states like California, where wiretapping laws typically prohibit recording someone without their knowledge. If users unknowingly consented to these practices when they accepted an app’s terms of service, then companies like CMG can claim they are within their rights.

    A Long-Running Speculation, Now Potentially Validated

    For years, users have speculated that their phones or tablets were eavesdropping on their private conversations, only to serve up eerily targeted ads shortly after. Tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have consistently denied these claims. Meta’s online privacy center even states, “We understand that sometimes ads can be so specific, it seems like we must be listening to your conversations through your microphone, but we’re not.”

    However, the leaked pitch deck paints a different picture. It appears to confirm what millions have long suspected: tech giants and their marketing partners could be cashing in on what users say in the privacy of their homes.

    New Revelations Spark Further Concerns

    This revelation follows a series of similar findings that have ignited debates over privacy in the digital age. Just a day after the CMG leak, 404 Media exposed another AI marketing company, MindSift, which boasted on a podcast about using smart device speakers to target ads.

    As more details emerge, the extent of privacy violations continues to grow. The question now is, what steps will regulators, companies, and consumers take in response to these revelations? Will there be a move toward more stringent privacy protections, or will these practices become more ingrained in the digital advertising landscape?

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 16:40

  • Biden-Harris DOJ Threatens To Sue Two Small Wisconsin Towns Over Refusal To Use Electronic Voting Machines
    Biden-Harris DOJ Threatens To Sue Two Small Wisconsin Towns Over Refusal To Use Electronic Voting Machines

    Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

    The Biden-Harris Department of Justice has threatened to sue two small towns in Wisconsin over their refusal to use electronic voting machines to cast and tabulate votes, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.

    In July, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke threatened to file a lawsuit against the State of Wisconsin, the state Elections Commission and Administrator Meagan Wolfe, and the towns of Thornapple and Lawrence, as well as the towns’ clerks and boards of supervisors, because the towns allegedly did not offer voting equipment at their polling places in the April presidential primary election.

    Clarke warned the potential plaintiffs in a letter that by not offering voting equipment for people with disabilities, they were in violation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

    Among the federal requirements is that each voting system must be “accessible for individuals with disabilities, including nonvisual accessibility for the blind and visually impaired, in a manner that provides the same opportunity for access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other voters,” the letter states.

    Voting systems used for federal elections therefore have to have “at least one direct recording electronic voting system or other voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities at each polling place,” the letter said.

    The letter went on to state that federal investigators had determined that the towns had failed to make “at least one direct recording electronic voting system or other voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities available at each polling place, including during the April 2, 2024, federal primary election.”

    Clark said to avoid litigation, town officials needed to negotiate a “consent decree” with the federal government.

    “We hope to resolve this matter amicably and to avoid protracted litigation. Accordingly, we are prepared to delay filing the complaint briefly to permit us time to negotiate a consent decree to be filed with the complaint,” she wrote.

    Despite this warning, Thornapple, population 8,297, allegedly conducted the August primary election using only hand-counted, paper ballots. The Thornapple township board reportedly voted to eliminate electronic voting machines last Spring. In Wisconsin, most voters use paper ballots that are tabulated by electronic counting machines.

    Suzanne Pinnow, Thornapple’s Treasurer, has disputed that voters with disabilities were unable to use an accessible voting machine during the April election. “No one’s been turned away,” she told the Journal- Sentinel in May.

    Pinnow also told Votebeat that nobody in the town had been unable to vote because of the decision not to have accessible voting machines.

    “I wish I could talk. I wish I could,” Pinnow said. “I wish I could because I think more people need to hear and understand and know why. But at this time, I can’t … because if it for some reason would go to litigation, I don’t want anything out there that I’m spewing this or that or saying something that I didn’t say.”

    The Wisconsin Elections Commission issued a guidance in June mandating that accessible voting equipment must be provided for all elections administered by a municipality, in addition to federal elections.

    A Complaint filed this week with the commission alleged that Thornapple is breaking the law by refusing to make voting machines available to voters with disabilities during the April and August primaries.

    “By ceasing to use electronic voting equipment and, instead, exclusively using paper ballots completed and tabulated by hand, Respondents are no longer using voting systems that are accessible for individuals with disabilities in a manner that provides the same opportunity for access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other voters,” the complainant, Disability Rights Wisconsin (DRW) argued.

    The left-wing disability rights group asked the Wisconsin Elections Commission to order Thornapple to make accessible voting machines available.

    DRW Director of Legal and Advocacy Services Kit Kerschensteiner told Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) that “the goal is to ensure all town residents are able to cast private ballots in the November presidential election.”

    “This is not the situation of a machine that just isn’t functioning that day at the polling place,” Kerschensteiner said. “This is a place that has chosen specifically, knowing that they were disenfranchising individuals with disabilities, and choosing to go ahead and do that, which we find to be unacceptable.”

    Thornapple Town Board Supervisor Tom Zelm told the Journal-Sentinel in May that the decision to pull voting machines was made in June 2023.

    Town voter and Rusk County Democratic Party chair Erin Webster told the paper she believed the decision was tied to former President and current GOP nominee Donald Trump’s claims about the rigged 2020 presidential election.

    Webster posted on YouTube a recording of her phone call with town Supervisor Jack Zupan, in which he said the board believes that “there was a stolen election and the computers have to go because they are full of error.”

    “There are court cases right now that show that anybody can hack into and manipulate that machine within a matter of just a couple of minutes,” Zupan added.

    “Oh, so you’re also a conspiracy believer!” Webster retorted.

    But it’s true that there are court cases have been examining these claims. In the Colorado Vs. Tina Peters case, for instance, “nationally recognized computer cybersecurity experts” who examined forensic images from the hard drives of Dominion voting systems computers independently concluded:

    Dominion voting systems (1) are not auditable, as required by federal and state law (2) they can connect to the internet during elections, which violates federal and state law; and (3) they are capable of manipulating ballots and vote tabulations, which violates federal and state law; (4) the software overwrites Windows Operating System log files that are recorded during elections, which are required by federal and state law to be preserved. All these deficiencies make Dominion voting systems illegal to use in Colorado elections.

    In fact, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a report in 2020 on the security and vulnerabilities of “Election Infrastructure” throughout the country ahead of the  election that year. Election infrastructure includes voter registration databases and IT systems, voting machines and systems, and software used for casting votes.

    According to CISA:

    • 76% of EI entities for which CISA performed a Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA) had spearphishing weaknesses, which provide an entry point for adversaries to launch
    attacks;
    • 48% of entities had a critical or high severity vulnerability on at least one internetaccessible host,4 providing potential attack vectors to adversaries;
    • 39% of entities ran at least one risky service on an internet-accessible host, providing the opportunity for threat actors to attack otherwise legitimate services; and
    • 34% of entities ran unsupported operating systems (OSs) on at least one internet accessible host, which exposes entities to compromise.

    CISA said election entities could “significantly reduce their cybersecurity risk by performing additional investigation and analysis of the findings described in this report. CISA encourages entities to implement
    standard cyber hygiene practices and applicable mitigations identified in this report to reduce their exposure.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 16:20

  • Is Kamala Very, Very Afraid?
    Is Kamala Very, Very Afraid?

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    “On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it.”

    – Jeffrey Tucker

    You might wonder, as I do, whether Kamala Harris can even stay in the race until November 5. Based on her grim appearance in last week’s “interview” with Dana Bash, slumped at the table of a crummy Georgia café under poor lighting, her trademark cackle suppressed, she looked psychologically wilted. Don’t be surprised if late this week she “catches Covid” and asks to “postpone” the September 10 debate with Mr. Trump.

    Consider the depressing reality of her situation, lately cloaked by the farcical “joy” motif put out by her party’s campaign spin doctors: First, the cabal running the White House bum-rushed “Joe Biden” out of the campaign, just hooked him offstage like a broke-down vaudevillian annoying the audience with his tired antics. Then, the same gang buffaloed Kamala onto center stage by some mystical process that disregarded her lack of preparation, her proven unpopularity in the 2020 primaries, and her near-invisibility in 3.5 years as veep.

    For a couple of weeks her head must have been spinning with sheer intoxication at the amazing turn of events. Who wouldn’t be amazed to find him or herself unexpectedly selected to run for president? But now, post the artificial hoopla of the convention, the dread steals in. If she was previously used to self-medicating with chardonnay during the irksome veep years, imagine the pressure now on those campaign bus trips.

    She has a lot to be afraid of. She’s not nimble of mind in the spotlight, and she knows it. When she tries to riff on anything off-the-cuff, all that comes out are laughable tautologies. She really doesn’t know much about the world, even about simple geography, certainly not the complex interplay of national interests. Her economic notions are a kind of Frappuccino® of processed Marxian sludge from the Berkeley cafés. If exposed regularly to even friendly reporters, she’d ignite howling embarrassment for herself (and the party). And, after all, there’s her record, including hundreds of videos on the Internet showing plainly the crazy policies she supports and now has to pretend to dissociate from.

    Lurking behind her is not only the American intel blob of dark forces and sinister figures, but an international blob made up of malevolent groups within and throughout Western Civ, clearly working to bring it down — the Eurocrats wrecking their own countries’ agriculture and their industrial economies while jailing their opponents for thought crimes; the WEFers pushing the demented climate change agenda and ruinous migrant invasions; the bankers looking to seize the “collateral” (property, chattels, investment portfolios) of a billion everyday citizens when the bond Ponzi scheme blows up, as it must; the WHO steered by Bill Gates seeking to inject unsafe vaccines into everybody in order to greatly and quickly reduce the population; the Soros NGO legions working to subvert the public interest here, there, and everywhere; the NATO warmongers trying like hell to start World War Three. . . . Kamala Harris surely understands — if she understands anything — that she has become their chosen pawn, and is at their mercy (they have none).

    She should be afraid especially of the American blob. That combine of higher-ups in the CIA, the DOD, the FBI, the DHS, the State Department, and Gawd knows how many lesser-known agencies and “black op” back offices, knows that it is in great danger if Mr. Trump happens to get elected (despite their best efforts to rig things). After all the trips laid on him, all the way up to attempted assassination, you can be sure that Mr. Trump will be coming after the cabal for committing real and serious crimes. They are running scared now. Despite all the power seemingly at their command, nothing has availed so far — not lawfare, not bullets — to stop Mr. Trump’s implacable march back into the Oval Office, where he could possibly succeed in turning the USA back into a functioning republic

    Poor Kamala Harris is the blob’s wholly inadequate instrument to fend off this fate. If she continues to perform badly, the blob might not hesitate to try getting rid of her. That may be the blob’s last chance of stopping the election from happening altogether. The nation has never been in the predicament of having the head of a ticket resign or die in the homestretch of an election campaign. There is no provision in the Constitution for it because there are no provisions in the Constitution for political parties per se. It would all be a kind of improv.

    And then, of course, America would be stuck with the unfit and incapable “Joe Biden,” heading the government, at least until something else can be worked out. Maybe that working out would just be the final stage of the coup that has been in motion, really, since 2016 when John Brennan, Barack Obama, and James Comey attempted to oust Mr. Trump with RussiaGate. Some kind of “interim commission” might be formed to “solve” the problem of the cancelled election. They’ll look for someone with “proven ability” to serve as provisional president — maybe, someone who has already been president. . . say, Mr. Obama. Voila and fait accompli! If he finds himself appointed rather than elected, he would not be in defiance of the 22ndAmendment. Okay, now try re-thinking how scared Kamala Harris must be.

    *  *  *

    Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/03/2024 – 15:45

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