Today’s News 5th September 2022

• Biden Puts The 'Total' In Totalitarianism
  Biden Puts The ‘Total’ In Totalitarianism

  Authored by Roger Kimball via AmGreatness.com,

  America has come perilously close to the edge of the point of no return…

  

  Joe Biden certainly set the punditocracy abuzz with his neo-totalitarian performance piece at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thursday. The significance of that speech can be broken down into three parts, two of which have already received abundant commentary. 

  The first has to do with the theater of the piece, its optics or stagecraft. As many commentators (myself included) noted, the feel of the event was distinctly, and distinctively, bombastic. The melodramatic red lighting, the presence of armed Marines flanking the president, and Biden’s hectoring, gesticulating delivery made the event seem eerily reminiscent of a speech by Stalin, Mao, or—the closest parallel—that diminutive former house painter who, for a few short years, mesmerized the world with his elaborately staged rallies before pushing ahead with more kinetic activities. 

  To those who object that I am flirting with Godwin’s Law by invoking old AH, I reply that the flirtation was not mine but the doing of Biden’s producers and puppeteers. The visual similarity between Joe Biden’s event and some nighttime events at Nuremberg are just too striking to be coincidental. Leni Riefenstahl, as someone noted, would have been proud. Those who point out that Biden’s speech took place on September 1, a fraught day on the Polish border anno domini 1939, may be too ingenious for this historically illiterate age, but who knows? Often these things are, as our Marxists friends like to say, no accident. There are wheels within wheels. 

  Which brings me to the question of the intent behind the theatrics. Was this exercise in garish, totalitarian kitsch a “gaffe,” as some are saying—an aesthetic miscalculation for which that blinking inarticulate muppet who is Biden’s press secretary will have to apologize? Apparently not, since she just said that the speech was “not political.” 

  The entertainment committee never sleeps. 

  A year or so back, I might have thought that the theatrics were inadvertent. I have changed my mind. Having watched Biden’s Justice Department morph into an American Stasi with the FBI conducting predawn raids against various Trump supporters, arresting former aides and confiscating the mobile phones and other property of his lawyers, I now think that the tactics of intimidation are part of a larger strategy. The FBI’s raid last month on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach residence, belongs in this category, as of course do the hundreds of indictments and incarcerations of January 6 protestors. Almost all of those unfortunate souls wind up being charged with minor torts like “parading” in or around the Capitol, yet are nonetheless thrown in a special D.C. gulag for months before being found guilty by biased juries and subject to enhanced sentences handed down by Trump-hating judges.

  None of this is adventitious. Like the intimidating and slightly unhinged theatrics of Biden’s speech, they are all deliberate scare tactics, warnings to us all of what can happen to those who dissent. The spectacle of 87,000 newly minted IRS agents waiting in the wings is another part of that “shock-and-awe” campaign. 

  Beyond Theatrics

  So much for the theatrics of the speech. What about its substance? It was a tooth-and-claw attack on Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda. How sharp were those teeth and claws? Trump and his supporters, said Biden, shaking his fists, represent “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” “The very foundations of our republic,” forsooth! A week earlier, he noted that the problem was “not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the . . . semi-fascism” of the MAGA agenda. 

  The response to this unprecedented attack by a sitting president against his predecessor—as well as against the tens of millions (more than 74 million we are told) of his predecessor’s supporters—has been so robust that Biden felt it necessary to walk back his remarks, sort of. “I don’t consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country,” he said Friday, after saying just that on prime-time television to the entire nation the night before. 

  But wait, what is the MAGA (or, to quote the results of the lucubrations of Biden’s focus group, “ultra-MAGA”) agenda that is supposedly so dangerous? It’s worth keeping the meanings of these epithets in mind. When Donald Trump first proposed his “Make America Great Again” formula, he specified several things that it encompassed.  At the top of the list were efforts to restore American prosperity, in part by exploiting our enormous energy resources, in part by abolishing mischievous and burdensome regulation, in part by cutting taxes and providing incentives for American business to hire Americans and produce their goods in America. 

  Also at the top of the list was the integrity of our southern border, stanching the flow of illegal immigration, and rebuilding a military that had been woefully neglected during the Obama years. Elsewhere on the domestic front, Trump battled against political correctness and what has come to be called “identity politics.” He largely remade the federal judiciary, seeing three Supreme Court justices and hundreds of lower court federal judges confirmed, all of whom were nominated because they subscribed to a Antonin Scalia-like judicial philosophy that limited the role of judges to interpreting the law in the light of the Constitution, not making law under the inspiration of their personal policy preferences. 

  In the sphere of foreign policy, the MAGA agenda meant “putting America first.” He insisted that our NATO allies begin to shoulder their stipulated financial burden, challenged China on trade and military adventurism, and scuttled the disastrous Obama-era nuclear deal (since renewed) with Iran. Trump also stood firmly against the democracy-exporting (or, more accurately, “democracy”-exporting) policies of the Bush era. America would go to war not to promulgate democracy but only to defend its own interests. His Abraham Accords brought peace to the Middle East, a world historical achievement for which Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. 

  And how did all that work out? Pretty well, I’d say. By the time Trump left office, America was a net exporter of energy; illegal immigration had slowed to a trickle; before the onslaught of COVID, his policies had resulted in the lowest unemployment in decades, the lowest minority unemployment ever. Wages were rising, especially at the lower rungs, and the stock market was booming. All-in-all, MAGA meant American prosperity and success. 

  It did not, however, bode well for the elite globalist agenda which rested upon endless foreign wars, the neglect of American workers, and a disdain for traditional bourgeois values like hard work, family solidarity, and local initiatives. 

  Biden’s handlers have attempted to co-opt or usurp the epithet “MAGA” and transform it into something ominous. But what it means is not some existential threat to “the very foundations of our republic.” On the contrary, it is an affirmation of the principles of limited government and individual liberty that undergird the foundations of the American republic. 

  The Goal Is Control

  Which brings me to the third current of significance in Biden’s performance. There was a theatrical aspect, a substantive aspect—the attack on Trump, his supporters, and all things MAGA—and there is the long strategic game implied not just in Biden’s speech but in the extraordinary, overweening activity of his administration.

  In “Joe Biden and the Sovietization of America,” a column that will be published in the October edition of Spectator World (available online mid-September), I mention in passing the practice of Gleichschaltung, the attempt to bring all aspects of life into alignment with the governing philosophy of the state. The term was popularized in Germany in the late 1930s, but it describes a process that is common to all totalitarian societies (indeed, it describes the effort that puts the “total” in “totalitarian”). Among other things, it involves the politicization of all aspects of life, the surrender of individuality to ideology. George Orwell sketched the process in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Lenin and Stalin brought that fiction to real life in their iron-fisted control of life in the Soviet Union. Xi Jinping continues that legacy today in China. What we call “political correctness” hints at the program, for really to be politically correct is to suffuse every element of one’s life with the dogmas that the ruling consensus has defined as the correct orthodoxy. The fascistic formula “the personal is the political” gives one expression to this idea, since, taken seriously, it denies the legitimacy of the personal altogether. 

  The Biden regime is making great strides in this direction. As Josh Hammer observes in a penetrating column, Biden apparatchiks are moving on multiple fronts to abolish the distinction between the public sector and the private sector. Late last month, the world was treated to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg confessing on Joe Rogan’s podcast that, yes, the FBI did in fact put pressure on the social media giant to bury news about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell”—news that very likely would have changed the results of the 2020 election had it been allowed to circulate. Entities like Facebook and Twitter, Hammer points out, “no longer qualify as meaningfully ‘private’ and have instead simply become appendages of the state.” They are simply part of the propaganda machine of the ruling party. Citing Missouri Attorney General (and U.S. Senate candidate) Eric Schmitt, Hammer describes the “vast censorship enterprise” promulgated by the state. Former U.S. Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) described aspects of this enterprise in his book Countdown to Socialism. 

  But the goal of total control involves more than censorship. It also involves the insinuation of the state into the most intimate areas of our private lives. One example is the Biden regime’s new weaponization of Title IX legislation. This brief statute, which, in just a couple of lines, says that institutions that receive federal funds may not discriminate on the basis of sex, has been enlisted in the campaign to abolish natural sexual identity and replace it with a polymorphous, “gender fluid” model. Among other things, this radical new interpretation of Title IX gives teachers priority over parents on matters of sex and gender, requiring, for example, that “K-12 schools support socially transitioning children to a different gender without requiring notice to parents, the involvement of medical professionals, or legal documentation.” 

  The late Andrew Breitbart liked to point out that politics is downstream from culture. Indeed it is. It saddens me to report, though, that the Left seems to have a livelier appreciation of this fact than the Right. Barack Obama came to office promising to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” Obama laid the groundwork for that transformation. Now his bumbling, senescent protégé, aided by an army of Obama-era lieutenants, a compliant media, and a corrupt deep-state bureaucracy, is completing the job. 

  There is, I know, a point of no return, a point beyond which a society beset by totalitarian impulses must either rebel or succumb utterly. Are we there yet? I do not know. I do sense, however, that we have come perilously close to the edge. I pray that it is not too late. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 23:30

• New Mexico Town Has Only 20 Days Of Fresh Water Left
  New Mexico Town Has Only 20 Days Of Fresh Water Left

  The city of Las Vegas, New Mexico, has 20 days of fresh water left, and officials are searching for alternative sources to prevent contaminated water from flowing to households and businesses, according to CNN. 

  Not to be confused with Las Vegas, Nevada, the 13,000-person city in San Miguel County relies solely on the now contaminated Gallinas River, which is full of ash and debris after the Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak Fire. 

  

  Las Vegas’ water treatment facility typically uses chlorine to clean the water, but it becomes carcinogenic when mixed with carbon-infused water because of all the ash. 

  “We need to get the carbon out of the water before we add disinfection,” Las Vegas Utilities Director Maria Gilvarry recently told residents at a public meeting. 

  We noted in late July (T-minus 50 days to no fresh water) that there was no immediate solution to fix the town’s water woes. Time is running out to find new water sources. 

  City officials are testing water in a nearby lake that could be their saving grace and buy the water-stricken town a few months. The tests take several days, and the hope is the water has less ash that would allow it to be run through the treatment facility. 

  “Our fingers are crossed on that,” Las Vegas Mayor Louie Trujillo said, adding the tests “will determine the quality of water we’re going to be sending to one of our reservoirs.”

  Gilvarry said if the water source is good enough, the city would have about two months of added water capacity, enough time to install upgraded treatment systems capable of processing the sediment-heavy water. 

  If the water tests are inadequate, city and state officials would implement a boil-water order and possibly increase rationings.

  Las Vegas has entered the final countdown until it exhausts all fresh water. Residents have been learning to live with less. They might have to live with a lot less if an immediate solution isn’t found. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 23:00

• 5 Psychological Experiments That Explain The Modern World
  5 Psychological Experiments That Explain The Modern World

  Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

  The world is a confusing place. People do things that don’t make any sense, think things that aren’t supported by facts, endure things they do not need to endure, and viciously attack those who try to bring these things to their attention.

  

  If you’ve ever wondered why, you’ve come to the right place.

  Any casual reader of the alternate media landscape will eventually come up with a reference to Stanley Milgram, or Philip Zimbardo, the “Asch Experiment” or maybe all three.

  “Cognitive Dissonance”, “Diffusion of Responsibility”, and “learned helplessness” are phrases that regularly do the rounds, but where do they come from and what they mean?

  Well, here are the important psycho-social experiments that teach us about the way people think, but more than that they actually explain how our modern world works, and just how we got into this mess.

  1. THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT

  The Experiment: Let’s start with the most famous. Beginning in 1963, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments now referred to as the Milgram Obedience Experiments.

  The setting is simple, Subject A is told to conduct a memory test on Subject B, and administer electric shocks when he makes mistakes. Of course, Subject B does not exist, and the electric shocks are not real. Instead, actors would cry, ask for help or pretend to be unconscious, all the while Subject A would be encouraged to carry on administering the shocks.

  The vast majority of subjects carried on with the test and gave the shocks, despite the distress of “Subject B”.

  The Conclusion: In his paper on this experiment Stanley Milgram coined the term “diffusion of responsibility”, describing the psychological process by which a person can excuse or justify doing harm to someone if they believe it’s not really their fault, they won’t be held accountable, or they do not have a choice.

  The Application: Almost literally endless. All institutions can use this phenomenon to pressure people into acting against their own moral code. The army, the police, hospital staff – wherever there is a hierarchy or perceived authority, people will fall victim to the diffusion of their own responsibility.

  NOTE: They made a decent film about Milgram, and the backlash his experiments caused called Experimenter. In recent years there has been a major pushback on this experiment, with articles in the MSM attacking the findings and methodology and new “researchers” claiming “it does not prove what you think it does.”

  *

  2. THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

  The Experiment: Only slightly less famous than Milgram’s work is Philip Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment, carried out at Stanford University in 1971. The experiment set up a mock-prison for a week, with one group of subjects designated “guards” and the other “prisoners”.

  Both sides were provided uniforms, and prisoners were given a number. The guards were ordered to only ever address prisoners by their number, not their name.

  There were a number of other rules and procedures, detailed here.

  In brief, over the course of the week, guards became increasingly sadistic, dealing out punishments to disobedient prisoners and rewarding “good prisoners” in order to try and divide them. Many of the prisoners simply took the abuse, and in-fighting began between “trouble makers” and “good prisoners”.

  Though technically not an “experiment” in the purest sense (there was no hypothesis to test, and no control group), and perhaps impacted by “demand characteristics”, the study does reveal interesting patterns of behaviour in its subjects.

  The Conclusion: Prison guards became sadistic. Prisoners became obedient. All this despite no real laws being broken, no real legal authority, and no real requirement to stay. If you give people power and dehumanise those below them, they will become sadistic. If you put people in prison they will act like they are in prison.

  In short, people will act the way they are treated.

  The Application: Again, endless. We’ve seen it all through Covid, if you start treating people a certain way, the majority will go along with it and blame the minority who refuse to cooperate. Meanwhile, police forces around the world were suddenly granted new powers, and promptly abused them because the maskless and unvaxxed had been dehumanised in their eyes. Those reactions were engineered, not accidental.

  *

  3. THE ASCH EXPERIMENT

  The Experiment: Another experiment in conformity, not as brutal as Milgram or Zimbardo, but perhaps more unsettling in its findings.

  First conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s, the setup is a simple one. You put together a panel of subjects, one real subject and a handful of fake subjects.

  One by one the subjects are asked a series of multiple-choice questions to which the answer is always obvious, and all the fake subjects will get every answer wrong. The question is whether or not the real subject will maintain his own correct answer, or begin to conform with the group.

  The Conclusion: While most people maintained their right answers, the “error rate” in the experiment group was 37% versus less than 1% in the control group. Meaning 36% of subjects eventually began to change their answers to align with the consensus, even though they knew they were wrong.

  Around one-third of people will either pretend to change their minds for the sake of conformity or, more alarmingly, will actually alter their beliefs if they find themselves in the minority.

  The Application: Staged or invented polls, falsified vote counts in elections, bot accounts on social media, astroturfing campaigns. Media headlines proclaiming “everyone knows X” or “only 1% of people think Y”.

  There are a great many tools you can use in order to create the impression of a fake “consensus”, a manufactured “majority”.

  NOTE: The experiment has been done a million times in dozens of variations, but perhaps the most interesting finding is that putting just one other person in the panel who agrees with the test subject seemed to reduce conformity by 87%. Essentially, people hate being a lone voice but will tolerate being in the minority if they have some support. Good to know.

  *

  4. FESTINGER’S COGNITIVE DISSONANCE EXPERIMENT

  The Experiment: The least well-known experiment on the list, but in some ways the most fascinating. In 1954 Leon Festinger created an experiment to evaluate the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, his setup was again quite simple.

  A subject is given a repetitive and dull physical task to do (originally turning wooden pegs, but other variations use other tasks).

  After the task is complete, the subject is instruced to go and prepare the next subject (actually a lab assistant) for the task, by lying and telling him/her how interesting the task was.

  It’s at this point the subjects are divided into two groups, one group is offered $20 to lie, the other only $1.

  This is the real experiment.

  The Conclusion: After lying to the fake subjects, and being paid their money, the real subjects take part in a post-experiment interview and record their genuine thoughts on the task.

  Interestingly, the 20-dollar generally told the truth, that they found the task dull and repetitive. While the one-dollar group, more often than not, claimed to have genuinely enjoyed the task.

  This is cognitive dissonance in action.

  Essentially, for the $20 group, the money was a good reason to lie to their fellow test subject, and they could justify their own behaviour in their head. But, for the $1 group, the meagreness of the reward made their dishonesty internally unjustifiable, so they had to unconsciously create their own justification by convincing themselves they weren’t lying at all.

  In summary, if you offer people a small reward for doing something, they will pretend to enjoy it, or be otherwise invested, to justify only making a small profit.

  The Application: Casinos, computer games and other interactive media use this principle all the time, offering players very little pay off knowing they will convince themselves they are enjoying playing. Big corporations and employers can likewise rely on this phenomenon to keep wages down, knowing that low paid workers have a psychological mechanism that may convince them they enjoy their jobs.

  NOTE: A variation on this experiment introduces a third group, who are paid nothing to lie. This group is not affected by cognitive dissonance, and will honestly appraise the task just as the well-paid group do.

  *

  5. THE MONKEY LADDER

  The Experiment: Now this is a somewhat controversial addition to the list, but we’ll get to that later. It’s a very famous experiment you’ve probably heard cited dozens of times.

  In the 1960s scientists at Harvard put five monkeys in a cage with a stepladder in the middle. Atop the stepladder is a bunch of bananas, however each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder they are all sprayed with ice-cold water. Eventually, the monkeys learn to avoid the ladder.

  Then one monkey is removed and a new monkey is introduced. He naturally goes straight for the ladder and is set upon by the other four monkeys.

  Then a second monkey is removed, and another new monkey is introduced. He naturally goes straight for the ladder and is set upon by the other four monkeys…including the one who was never sprayed.

  They continue to replace each monkey in turn, until no monkeys are present who were ever sprayed with water, and yet they all refuse to go near the stairs and prevent all the new monkeys from doing so.

  Now, the obvious conclusion here is that people can be conditioned to mindlessly follow rules they do not understand.

  The only problem with that is that none of this ever happened.

  Yes, that’s the controversy I mentioned earlier. Despite being easily found on every corner of the internet, despite magazine articles explaining it and animations recounting it…it never happened. The experiment appears to be entirely apocryphal.

  No ladder, no monkeys, no cold water.

  So while this supposed experiment doesn’t actually teach us about herd mentality, it does explain the modern world, because it shows us how easily a myth can be worked into a reality through sheer dint of repetition.

  BONUS: MONKEY LADDER REDUX

  That’s right, it doesn’t stop there, there’s another twist.

  National Geographic did actually recreate the fictional monkey ladder experiment using people:

  One subject walks into a doctor’s waiting room filled with fake patients. When a bell sounds, all the fake patients stand up for a second and then retake their seats.

  After this process repeats a few times, the fake patients are slowly removed one-by-one until only the subject of the experiment remains. Then secondary real subjects are introduced one at a time.

  The experiment seeks to answer the following questions:

  a) Will the original subject stand up at the bell without knowing why?

  b) Will they will continue to stand up when they are alone in the room?

  c) Will they then teach this behaviour to the new subjects?

  The answer to all three appears to be “yes”.

  Now, while far less scientific than the other four experiments, I include this here for a very specific reason. The above video of the experiment doesn’t just record the conforming behaviour but describes it as possibly beneficial. Adding that herd behaviour saves lives in the wild and is “how we learn to socialise”.

  A very interesting take, don’t you think?

  So, while the fake monkey experiment that never happened was used to teach us about the perils of herd mentality, its nonexistence actually teaches us about the perils of non-primary sources and the group consciousness’s ability to confabulate.

  Meanwhile, the real monkey experiment is used to sell us the idea that herd mentality does exist but is potentially a good thing. Raising the possibility the whole thing could have been staged, simply to promote conformity.

  …Isn’t the world a strange and confusing place?

  *

  So, there they are. Five of the most critical pieces of psychological research ever done, hopefully going forward nobody will be left in the dark when these concepts or experiments are referenced.

  But the point of this article is not to just make you, the reader, understand these experiments…it is also meant to remind you that they do.

  The people in charge, the elite, the 1%, “The Party”. The powers that be – or shouldn’t be – whatever you want to call them.

  They know these experiments. They have studied them. They’ve probably replicated them countless times on grand scales and in unethical ways we can barely imagine. Who knows exactly what takes place in the dank dark dungeons of the deep state?

  Just remember, they know how the human mind works.

  • They know they can make people do anything if they reassure them they won’t be held responsible.

  • They know that they can rely on people to abuse any power they’re given, OR believe they are powerless if they’re treated that way.

  • They know that peer pressure will change a lot of people’s minds even in the face of undeniable reality, especially if you make them feel completely alone.

  • They know that if you offer people only a small reward for completing a task, they will make up their own psychological justification for taking it.

  • They know that people will mindlessly do whatever everyone else is doing without ever asking for a reason.

  • And they know that people will happily believe something that never happened if it is repeated often enough.

  They know all of this. And they use that knowledge all the time – All. The. Time.

  Every commercial you see, every article you read, every movie they release, every item on the news, every “viral” social media post, every trending hashtag.

  Every war. Every pandemic. Every headline.

  All of them are constructed with these principles in mind to elicit specific emotional reactions that steer your behaviour and beliefs. That’s how the media works, not to inform you, not to entertain you…but to control you.

  And they have it down to a science. Always remember that.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 22:30

• Judge Tosses Lawsuit By Hitler-Praising, TDS-Stricken Fired Yale Psychiatrist
  Judge Tosses Lawsuit By Hitler-Praising, TDS-Stricken Fired Yale Psychiatrist

  A far-left psychiatry professor who sued Yale for firing her over unhinged comments she made against then-President Donald Trump, just had her lawsuit tossed by a federal judge, according to the Hartford Courant.

  

  Lee argued that Yale fired her in response to a January 2020 tweet that characterized “just about all” Trump supporters as suffering from “shared psychosis,” and that Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz had “wholly taken on Trump’s symptoms by contagion.”

  She also tweeted that Trump was “worse than Hitler,” and then when challenged, stuck her other foot in her mouth – tweeting “Donald Trump is not an Adolf Hitler. At least Hitler improved the daily life of his followers, had discipline, and required more than himself to gain the respect of his followers.“

  Just incredible stuff here…my god. pic.twitter.com/Hq2QcMiuzN

  — Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 2, 2020

  Lee, herself clearly suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), used her Yale credentials to author a book, conduct interviews, and form a group – the “Independent Expert Panel for Presidential Fitness” – all aimed at taking down Trump over what they said was a lack of mental fitness.

  

  Crickets over Biden’s obvious dementia, by the way.

  Lee came under scrutiny from colleagues and leaders at Yale, as The Western Journal‘s Jared Harris notes.

  Dr. John Krystal, chair of the university’s psychiatry department, blasted the political activity happening under the guise of professional conduct.

  “I want to emphasize that you did not make these statements as a layperson offering a political judgment,” Krystal wrote in a 2020 letter to Lee. “You made them explicitly in your professional capacity as a psychiatrist and on the basis of your psychiatric knowledge and judgment.”

  “For that reason,” he continued, “the committee decided it was appropriate to consider how these statements reflected your ability to teach trainees.”

  One major factor in Krystal’s reaction to Lee’s political action is likely the “Goldwater Rule,” a professional standard from the American Psychiatric Association that warns against diagnosing someone without an evaluation.

  While it seems like an obvious step in diagnosis, Lee, who is not a member of the APA, argued that the danger from Trump outweighed the need for clinical evidence.

  Citing a supposed “duty to warn” the public about Trump’s mental state, Lee filed a lawsuit arguing that her own unhinged assault against the president wasn’t partisan slander but a professional obligation.

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 22:00

• Semper Sigh: Biden's Use Of The Marines Violated Long-Standing Federal Policies And Regulations
  Semper Sigh: Biden’s Use Of The Marines Violated Long-Standing Federal Policies And Regulations

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Below is my column in the New York Post on the controversial speech of President Joe Biden in Philadelphia. The speech has received sharply different reviews from “disgusting” and “hateful” to a historic declaration of war against the enemies of the state. Some like Elie Mystal insisted that the speech did not go far enough because all Republicans are white supremacists, not just MAGA Republicans. I thought the speech was divisive and inflammatory. However, it was not the content but the optics of the speech that was particularly unsettling.  Framing Biden were two Marines standing like nutcracker props in a highly political speech. His use of the Marines (and the Marine band) violated long-standing rules for shielding the services from such political events.

  

  Here is the column:

  President Joe Biden’s speech in Philadelphia has produced sharply different responses from the media. On CNN, it was praised as a rallying cry for patriots. On conservatives sites, it was denounced as hateful and divisive.  For many of us, however, the optics was a glaring distraction with the intense red background and prominently placed Marines framing the President. The use of the Marines and the Marine band raised concerns given the clearly political purpose of the speech. Indeed, the networks did not view the speech as an address to the nation and refused to give the White House primetime slots.

  While White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured the media that “it’s not a political speech,” it was unabashedly political from calls to get the vote out to direct attacks on “MAGA Republicans” and Donald Trump. That again raised the legal questions over the use of the Marines in such a speech. Even CNN flagged the concern over the use of the Marines and CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins stated the obvious that “it was a very political speech.”

  The optics of the speech instantly became a source of Internet chatter with the weird red background that made the President look like he was giving a stump speech from Dante’s Inferno. Indeed, it almost had that High Chancellor Adam Sutler look from V for Vendetta. (The comparison ultimately did not end with just the optics. Sutler warned his inner circle that “every day…brings us closer to November” and “I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want every man, woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos…to remember why they need us!”).

  

  However, it was the use of the Marine guards that most stood out — framing the President as he declared Trump supporters to be a threat to democracy . Biden denounced “MAGA Republicans” thirteen times as well as repeated references to his past and possible future political opponent, Donald Trump.

  The speech was obviously political, as noted by CNN’s Collins, as a “full frontal attack” on his political opponents.

  The United States has long drawn a line between the work of federal employees in public service and the use of such employees for political purposes. The Hatch Act was passed in 1939 to curtail the political activities of civilian federal employees.

  The Marine Corps expressly forbids personnel from being used or participating in such political events.

  “Active duty members will not engage in partisan political activities, and all military personnel will avoid the inference that their political activities imply or appear to imply DoD sponsorship, approval, or endorsement of a political candidate, campaign, or cause.”

  The other services have also drawn a bright line against such appearances. Army officials, for example, stress that their rules bar such involvement because “actual or perceived partisanship could undermine the legitimacy of the military profession and department.”

  In Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 the long list of prohibited involvement in political events include:

  “Attend partisan political events as an official representative of the Armed Forces, except as a member of a joint Armed Forces color guard at the opening ceremonies of the national conventions of the Republican, Democratic, or other political parties recognized by the Federal Elections Committee or as otherwise authorized by the Secretary concerned.”

  These rules also expressly bar the wearing of uniforms at such political speeches: “The wearing of the uniform by Service members … is prohibited … during or in connection with furthering political activities, private employment, or commercial interests, when an inference of official sponsorship … for the activity or interest may be drawn.”

  There are obviously gray areas for a president who is necessarily accompanied by members of the military. Moreover, drawing the line between what is a presidential address and what is a political speech is often difficult. Presidents are politicians and often use official statements to slam their critics or opponents. Such events often have color guards and military bands.

  The enforcement of such rules are also rather anemic. Even violation of the Hatch Act are routinely brushed aside by presidents and both the Biden and Trump administrations have violated the Act in the past.

  Yet, what is interesting is the relative silence of many in the media on the use of these Marines as virtual nutcracker props for a political speech. The media overwhelmingly condemned President Trump for his picture in front of St. John’s Church after the clearing of Lafayette Park in 2020. While the media falsely claimed that the park was cleared for the photo ed, many criticized the photo with military and law enforcement officials as inappropriate. Later, Gen. Mark A. Milley, apologized for being in the photo, declaring “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

  Yet, Milley has said nothing about supplying not just the Marine Band but Marines to stand directly behind Biden at a political speech as he denounced his political opponents as threats to democracy and part of what he was called a “semi-fascist” movement. Those Marines stood at attention as the President declared “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” (Apparently, nothing says that you are against fascism as much as labeling your political opponents enemies of the state with Marines on either side of you).

  The use of the Marines would certainly seem to “create a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” Moreover, the message sent to other military personnel, particularly other Marines, is that support for the President’s opponents is considered a threat to the constitutional Republic.

  The Washington Post previously objected to the use of the Marine band at the White House when President Trump was viewed as giving a political speech. During the Trump Administration, others joined such criticism including Members of Congress and public interest groups.

  Alice Hunt Friend, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Post that the use of the band was a “big violation” since “Americans who see uniformed military personnel at partisan political functions may assume the military has a partisan identity. Presidents running for reelection always have to take extra care to keep their military aides out of their campaign activities.”

  Those voices are, thus far, silent in President Biden’s use of these Marines for a highly partisan and divisive speech.

  Winston Churchill once said that it is “always dangerous” for military to find themselves mixing with politics because “they enter a sphere in which the values are quite different from those to which they have hitherto been accustomed.” That was never more evident as two young Marines stood at attention as their president accused millions of their fellow citizens of being enemies of the constitutional Republic. They deserved better from the President.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 21:30

• China Warns Of 'Counter-Measures' After Biden Approves $1.1bn Arms Sales To Taiwan
  China Warns Of ‘Counter-Measures’ After Biden Approves $1.1bn Arms Sales To Taiwan

  China is “firmly opposed” to the Biden administration’s approval of more than $1.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, and says to expect “counter-measures” in response.

  

  Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said on Saturday that the sales “severely jeopardize China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” and has called on Washington to “immediately revoke” them.

  Full statement (via Twitter):

  #Taiwan is an inalienable part of the #Chinese territory. The United States interferes in #China’s internal affairs and undermines China’s sovereignty and security interests by selling arms to the Taiwan region. It runs counter to international law and basic principles in international relations, and violates the one-China principle and provisions of the three China-US joint communiques, especially the August 17 Communique.

  It sends wrong signals to “Taiwan independence” separatist forces, and severely jeopardizes China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. China is firmly opposed to this.China urges the US side to honor its commitment, earnestly abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques,stop arms sales to and military interactions with Taiwan, and immediately revoke relevant arms sales to Taiwan, lest it should cause more damages to China-US relations and peace and stability across the #TaiwanStrait.

  China will resolutely take legitimate and necessary counter-measures in light of the development of the situation.

  Paging John Cena…

  

  Tensions between Washington and Beijing have intensified since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last month, which China had warned against – and responded to by ordering military drills around the island nation after she had left.

  On Saturday, Taiwan said it “highly welcomes” the arms, and thanked the Biden administration for “continuing to implement its security commitments to Taiwan.”

  “In response to China’s recent continuous military provocations and unilateral changes in the status quo and creating crises, Taiwan’s determination to defend itself is extremely firm,” Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, adding “This batch of arms sales includes a large number of various types of missiles that are needed to strengthen Taiwan’s self-defense, which fully demonstrates that the great importance the US government attaches to Taiwan’s defense needs, assisting our country to obtain the equipment needed for defense in a timely manner and to enhance our national defense capabilities.”

  On Thursday, Taiwan’s military shot down a drone near one of its island outposts near the Chinese coast, which happened just one day after Taiwan was able to repel drones hovering over three of the islands it occupies near the Chinese port city of Xiamen.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 21:00

• Will OPEC Cut Oil Output On Labor Day?
  Will OPEC Cut Oil Output On Labor Day?

  Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

  • OPEC is meeting on September 5 to discuss the state of the oil market.

  • The cartel is considering slashing oil production.

  • Reports of where oil demand is heading remain mixed.

  Saudi Arabia’s signal from two weeks ago that OPEC+ could decide to cut production at any time, in any form, managed to lift Brent oil prices to above $100 per barrel for around a week.   

  But this week, fresh lockdowns in China, intensified fears of recession, and guidance that the Fed will continue with the large key rate hikes sent oil prices tumbling to the low $90s.    

  

  While OPEC insists that oil demand is robust and will be so through the end of the year, data suggests that demand in the world’s top oil importer, China, has been weak this summer amid COVID lockdowns and slowing factory activity. 

  Overall Asian crude imports are estimated to have slowed in August from July, with imports in India, the world’s third-largest crude importer, also down month on month, according to Refinitiv Oil Research data cited by Reuters’ Asia Commodities and Energy Columnist Clyde Russell. 

  OPEC+ is meeting on September 5 for its regular monthly gathering to assess market conditions and decide how to proceed with the pact which currently expires in December this year. The group, in theory, rolled back by the end of August all the massive cuts from May 2020, but it’s estimated to be 2.9 million barrels per day (bpd) below the collective target. 

  Now the million-dollar question is: Will there be new cuts? And will cuts help support what looks like a softening physical crude market? 

  Per a Bloomberg survey of 19 industry analysts, OPEC+ is expected to keep the oil output target for October at the same level as in September when they meet next week. 

  Moreover, refiners in Asia expect Saudi Arabia to slash the price of its flagship grade to Asia for October amid lackluster fuel demand and increased competition from crude from other regions. If next week Saudi Aramco indeed slashes its prices, it would be an admission of a weakening demand for Middle Eastern crude in the key oil importing region, Asia. 

  OPEC insists that oil demand is strong. Global oil demand is still robust and will be such through the end of this year, OPEC Secretary General Haitham al-Ghais told Reuters last month, noting that the recent sell-offs didn’t reflect fundamentals and were driven by fear. 

  But the latest data compiled by Refinitiv paints a different picture.

  Chinese imports in August are expected to be only slightly above the July arrivals, and the June-August overall imports are estimated at around 1.5 million bpd below the 2021 average rate of purchases, Reuters’ Russell notes. 

  In July, crude throughput at Chinese refineries slumped to the lowest level since the height of the pandemic in March 2020, amid unplanned facility outages and lower processing rates at independent refiners due to declining refining margins. A new round of tax probes on private refiners, the so-called teapots, could slow down further the crude processing rates at the world’s top crude oil importer, while this week’s new lockdowns in several large cities are not helping demand, either. 

  Fears of demand destruction with slowing industrial activity not only in China, but also in Europe and the U.S., sent this week oil prices down to the levels from before August 21 when Saudi Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said that OPEC+ was ready to cut production at any time in any form if it believes it would bring stability to the “schizophrenic” oil market.  

  If OPEC+ surprises most market observers and does announce cuts on September 5, it could support oil prices for some time. However, the more likely outcome of Monday’s meeting could be a wait-and-see approach and a vague statement of readiness to do whatever it takes to “stabilize” oil prices, which in OPEC+’s parlance typically means “lift” oil prices. 

  Two large uncertainties are hanging over the market apart from where demand will go from here, and they could prompt OPEC+ to wait for more clarity ahead of announcing possible production cuts. These are the so-called Iranian nuclear deal and the oil supply from key OPEC+ member Russia, which could dip from very resilient current levels once the EU embargo on seaborne Russian crude and fuel imports comes into full force in early 2023 and countries announce a price cap on Russian oil.    

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 20:30

• Buffett's BYD Sales Add To Chinese Stock "Pain Trades"
  Buffett’s BYD Sales Add To Chinese Stock “Pain Trades”

  By George Lei and Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets live commentators and reporters

  Three things we learned last week:

  1. There have been strong inflows into China’s stock market, despite the nation’s economic challenges. Chinese equity funds, led by ETFs, received $3 billion in the week through Aug. 31, in contrast to an outflow of $9 billion from global equity funds, according to EPFR Global and Citigroup. Foreign investors appear to be unfazed by the weak market performance, as renewed Covid outbreaks sent Chinese stocks to a three-month low.

  

  In August, long-only managers added bets on consumer-service names as part of the “reopening trade” as well as electric- vehicle makers, such as BYD Co., to gain exposure to the growth factor, according to Morgan Stanley. But their timing wasn’t particularly good. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway started trimming its massive stake in BYD, putting the shares under pressure.

  Meanwhile, restaurant and traveling names such as Yum China, H World and Trip.com aren’t performing well amid the spreading Covid cases. “The recent lockdown in some China major cities and investors’ transactions on BYD imply a prolonged wait for these trades to add values,” Morgan Stanley’s analysts led by Gilbert Wong wrote in a note.

  

  2. The number of Chinese cities grappling with virus outbreaks is now almost as high as it was at the peak of the Omicron wave earlier this year. The southwestern metropolis of Chengdu locked down its 21 million residents, and Shenzhen’s 17.5 million inhabitants now fear a second city-wide shutdown this year.

  Since May, China has adopted a mass-testing strategy, setting up tens of thousands of testing booths across major cities. Authorities hoped frequent testing would help them avoid lockdowns and enable most business activities to carry on. The highly- transmissible BA.5 variant, however, has left the strategy increasingly ineffective and economic pains are mounting.

  

  3. Policy divergence is putting the yuan under pressure, but the People’s Bank of China has resisted the currency’s depreciation. Friday’s US jobs report is unlikely to prompt the Federal Reserve to change its hawkish message. It’s a coin toss between a 75-bp or a 50-bp rate hike at the Fed meeting later this month. This week, the European Central Bank is likely to raise rates by 75 bps. Facing depreciation pressure, the PBOC has set the yuan fixing stronger than expected. It has slowed the yuan’s decline, at least for now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 20:12

• As Europe Implodes, It Plans "Radical Intervention" Including Price-Setting, Suspending Derivatives Markets And Europe-Wide Margin Call Bailouts
  As Europe Implodes, It Plans “Radical Intervention” Including Price-Setting, Suspending Derivatives Markets And Europe-Wide Margin Call Bailouts

  Just when you thought the narrative couldn’t get any more idiotic, Europe shocks just about everyone.

  A few days after the EU threatened commodity traders it would stage an “emergency intervention” to crush energy prices which were rising at a pace of about 20% per day (perhaps Europe can now print nat gas and electricity in addition to monetizing all deficits while injecting trillions in the process)…

  EU emergency intervention pic.twitter.com/bN0fYl9uEW

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 29, 2022

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

  … a move which actually worked for a few days until Putin reminded Europe who’s boss late on Friday when Gazprom suddenly decided it would “completely halt” all Nord Stream 1 transit altogether due to an “oil leak“, with the news sending global stock markets plunging and threatening to push European gas and power prices back to all time highs when markets reopen on Monday as well as forcing Sweden to follow Austria and Germany in bailing out energy companies as Nordic authorities warned of a “Lehman” moment risk, late on Sunday Bloomberg reported that European ministers will discuss “special measures to rein in soaring energy costs – from gas-price caps to a suspension of power derivatives trading – as the bloc scrambles to respond to latest developments in the deepening crisis.” A draft document seen by Bloomberg News notes that the Czech Republic, which holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, is set to include those tools on a list of emergency intervention options to be discussed at a meeting of energy ministers on Friday.

  While anything it does is doomed to fail, Europe has been scrambling to stave off an energy catastrophe that’s threatening to become an economic, social, and even financial crisis too.

  European leaders have been working for months to try to offset the impact of Russia’s squeeze on gas — a move they describe as the weaponization of energy. But the decision late Friday by Gazprom PJSC to keep the crucial Nord Stream pipeline shut brought on a new sense of panic.

  In response to soaring energy prices and rationing of firewood, over the weekend, Germany – the country most affected by the Nord Stream cutoff – unveiled a $65 billion package meant to boost demand and to protect consumers, with a levy on windfall profits, in effect completely undoing the ECB’s efforts to squash demand by hiking interest rates and ending QE, similar to what the Biden admin is doing to the Fed in the US.

  Powell: pain is coming; we are going to crush demand.

  Biden: midterms are coming, we are going to boost demand, discharge debt and come up with stimmies and new definitions

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 26, 2022

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

  At the same time, thousands of Czechs protesting in the streets this weekend served as a reminder of the social and political risks.

  “It is clear that the upcoming heating season will test the resilience of the EU energy market,” the Czech presidency plans to tell member states, according to the draft document for the emergency meeting. “It is critical to take stock of market developments and identify possible measures to address high electricity prices driven by high gas prices.”

  So what can Europe do? Nothing really, but it will pretend to be in control until the bitter end. The options the Czech presidency is set to suggest – according to Bloomberg – would complement measures floated by the European Commission in a policy note seen by Bloomberg last week. They included a power-demand reduction and price caps on renewables, nuclear and coal, all of which are of course dead-ends. The presidency is poised to propose similar “solutions” in the power sector and float the following additional tools:

  To limit the impact of gas prices on power prices:

  • temporarily capping the price of gas used for electricity generation
  • putting a price ceiling on gas imported from Russia
  • temporary exclusion of power production from gas from merit order and price setting on the electricity market could also be an option

  Uhm, someone should tell Europe that since Russia is already barely exporting any “weaponized” gas to Europe to destroy the continental economy, setting a price cap on whatever molecules of gas are left won’t really do anything at all. But this is what happens when Europe is run by absolute idiots.

  It gets better: to increase liquidity in the energy market, where virtually nobody trades any more since there is simply no physical with which to hedge financial positions, Europe will propose:

  • an urgent Europe-wide credit line support for market participants faced with very high margin calls
  • capping the limits for margining or automatic price ceiling adjustment
  • temporary suspensions of European power derivatives markets.

  In short, Pierre Andurand was not only absolutely spot on when he said the “oil market is completely broken” but now every other commodity market is about to be “regulated” to death. Which means paper prices may soon hit 0 as physical prices approach asymptote (i.e +∞).

  The Czech presidency is also set to suggest an even more humiliating and laughable assessment of how the EU could use its “carbon market” to address high electricity prices and ensure a quick deal on a commission proposal earlier this year to sell some permits withdrawn from the market and kept in a special reserve. Such sales – Bloomberg reports – “would boost supply of emission permits, helping lower their prices.” Spoiler alert: they won’t do jack shit.

  And in typical European word goulash style, the most hilarious idiocy was as usual saved for last: here it is from Bloomberg.

  The planned intervention should be designed in a way to avoid an increase in gas consumption or jeopardize the efforts to cut gas demand. It should be simple to implement and coordinate across the bloc and be consistent with the bloc’s climate goals, the presidency said in the draft document.

  Yup “simple to implement”, and this is where laughter breaks out. Why? Because as even Goldman said on Friday, nothing Europe does will lead to lower prices and if anything will send prices much higher. First, we excerpt from Goldman’s Damien Couravlin who explains – once again – why Europe’s “brilliant” plans always works in theory and collapse in practice (full note available to pro subs):

  

  And while Europe’s increasingly cartoonish leaders live in a Never Never land where they sacrifice their populations to freeze so they can continue their pro-Ukraine virtue signaling, here is Goldman explaining why Putin’s response will lead to a “significant rally” in nat gas prices (full note here for pro subs).

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 19:43

• Buying Or Renting? The Old Question Is Back
  Buying Or Renting? The Old Question Is Back

  Op-ed by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Every young person moving into adulthood faces the great question of whether to buy or rent their primary residence. That question just became much more complicated.

  

  The ratio between the two just expanded to the greatest gap since 2008, and it does not favor buying. Mortgage rates have made buying completely unaffordable even for those who can get a mortgage. That’s why housing demand has suddenly fallen off a cliff.

  The Mortgage Bankers Association reports that before lockdowns, median mortgage payments and asking rents were equal at $1,200. The choice was really about making the best choice to fit with career plans and duration of residency. Since lockdowns, rents have risen 10 percent to $1,314 while mortgage payments have risen 58 percent to $1,893. Now it is a different matter. It is about figuring out how to avoid being pillaged.

  Maybe the answer seems to favor renting. But not so fast: rental vacancies are now lower as a percentage of overall units on the market than they have been since 1983. That means it’s not so easy to get a place to live. The sheer number of applications means that renters can be extremely fussy about whom they accept or reject. A sketchy job history, an uncertain living situation, a ding on your credit report can all lead to a turndown. Plus the terms can be egregious: long leases, huge upfront payments, and strict terms for breaking them.

  Meanwhile, we’ve not seen this much upward price pressure on rents in nearly 40 years.

  

  But put yourself out there in the home-buyer’s market and prepare yourself for sticker shock. The median home price has doubled since 2007. And it’s not just the price of homes. It’s the stringent credit conditions plus stunning mortgage rates that mean paying far more for far less. Once you add in the homeowners association fees, plus property taxes, it starts to feel utterly crazy, to say nothing of maintenance.

  Just since January, the number of homes sold in the United States has fallen 26 percent. One might suppose that this would lead to dramatic downward price pressure. But that’s not what happened in an economy with unrelenting currency devaluation. Prices have softened, to be sure, but we won’t see a crash like 2008. That’s because the purchasing power of money in general is falling.

  The inflation virus strikes in ways that are impossible to predict. Housing has cooled and so has jet fuel. There are no bargains in housing but you can fly coast to coast now for about $150. September flights from New York to Miami are at rock-bottom prices not seen in decades. This is because airlines have so tightly managed bookings that even small changes in consumer demand reflect very quickly in wonderful bargains.

  So while the flights are cheap, the hotels, food, and entertainment once you get to your destination are not. And this is why so many consumers today are rethinking travel plans.

  But staying home is no great shakes either because electricity and other utility bills are right now absorbing the highest levels of inflationary energy. Real-time year-over-year increases are running 14.6 percent. Those prices hit renters and buyers equally.

  So much for the old saw that buying a home is an investment while renting is just throwing money away. In today’s market, the opposite seems true. The more you save by renting instead of buying is money that you can invest.

  Of course it would be nice to have a good investment at hand. Nearly half of American households have nothing left after paying the bills for investment. Saving rates keep falling and have hit 5 percent. And credit card debt is rising. Among those who can afford to invest, getting a return above inflation is nearly impossible.

  The Fed seems determined to deliver unrelenting bad news to the stock market, even regarding bear markets as a sign of success. This is because current Fed policy isn’t really about sponging up the liquidity it dumped by the many trillions during 2020 and 2021.

  Instead it is about cooling off economic output, which these aging Keynesians believe bears the main responsibility for inflation. That means orchestrating something approximating a recession. The White House is on notice that this is happening and is preparing every manner of messaging to get people not to notice that they are getting poorer by the day.

  Meanwhile, the latest employment report offers only more confusion. More jobs, yes, but labor force participation is still stuck far below pre-lockdown levels. Worker to population levels are the same. The unemployment rate is ticking up, nowhere near alarming levels but the trend is only going to get worse over the months as we all settle into the reality that the recession is real.

  Indeed, as I’ve argued, the recession never really went away!

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 19:30

• Trump Says November Election's A "Referendum" On "Enemy Of The State" Biden
  Trump Says November Election’s A “Referendum” On “Enemy Of The State” Biden

  At his first rally since the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, former President Trump took aim at President Biden and the Democrat’s recent warnings about “MAGA Republicans”, calling the current president an “enemy of the state.”

  Trump calls Biden an “enemy of the state” at his rally. pic.twitter.com/oE5gcbMuZZ

  — Radio Duindorp (@radioduindorp) September 4, 2022

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

  Speaking to supporters in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on Saturday, the former president addressed Biden’s primetime speech by deeming it the “most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by a [U.S.] president.”

  Trump claimed Biden was “vilifying 75 million citizens, plus another probably 75 to 150 [million], if we want to be accurate about it, as threats to democracy and as enemies of the state.”

  “You’re all enemies of the state,” he told the crowd to boos against Biden.

  “He’s an enemy of the state if you want to know the truth. The enemy of the state is him and the group that control him, which is circling around him. ‘Do this, do that, Joe.’”

  At another point during the Save America rally, Trump addressed the Mar-a-Lago raid, calling the investigation into whether he mishandled classified documents “one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history.”

  “Another one of our highest priorities under a Republican Congress will be to stop left-wing censorship and to restore free speech in America,” Trump continued.

  “We don’t have free speech. Go out and sign up now, by the way, for Truth Social. Anybody on Truth Social? It’s hot. And it’s much better than Twitter.”

  

  Finally, Trump urged Americans to vote for Republican candidates in November, saying the midterm election results will serve as a referendum on the Biden administration.

  “This election is a referendum on skyrocketing inflation, rampant crime, soaring murders, crushing gas prices, millions and millions of illegal aliens pouring across our border, race and gender indoctrination, converting our schools,” Trump said on Sept. 3.

  “And above all, this election is a referendum on the corruption and extremism of [President] Joe Biden and the radical Democrat Party.”

  “If you want to stop this destruction of America, you must vote Republican, you must go out and vote,” Trump added.

  “We are just two months away from the most important midterm election in American history,” Trump continued, “We need a landslide so big that the radical left just cannot rig it.”

  A “historic victory” for the Republican Party in November would pave the way for GOP lawmakers to tackle issues currently plaguing the nation, according to Trump.

  “Among our highest priorities must be to end the nightmare Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have created on our southern border,” he said.

  According to a recent USA TODAY/Ipsos poll (pdf), 59% of Republican voters said Trump should be the GOP nominee in 2024 and he “deserves reelection.” What’s more, 82 percent of Republican voters believe Trump can win the 2024 election. In contrast, only 44 percent said Biden should be the Democratic nominee in 2024 and deserves reelection. Only 60 percent of Democratic voters believe Biden could win in 2024.

  Trump Rally v Biden Rally
  It’s crystal clear who the majority of American people would rather have as their president. pic.twitter.com/fE85ztq9FE

  — Let’s Go Brandon 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇺🇸 (@DeplorableLozz) September 4, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 19:00

• Déjà Vu: Argentines Are Once Again Voting For More Inflation While Remaining In Denial
  Déjà Vu: Argentines Are Once Again Voting For More Inflation While Remaining In Denial

  Authored by Marcos Falcone via The Mises Institute,

  On July 2, Martín Guzmán, Argentina’s Minister of Economy, finally resigned. Guzmán, who holds a PhD in economics from Brown University and studied under Joseph Stiglitz, had originally been introduced as the “rational” element of the left-wing coalition that came to office three years ago. But there is only so much time that can pass until inconsistent policies produce undesirable outcomes, something about the United States needs to learn in order to avoid Argentina’s mistakes. Indeed, it is probably a good idea to avoid 7.4 percent monthly inflation figures, like the one Argentina just released.

  

  Argentina’s Guzmán had been appointed by President Alberto Fernández in December 2019 with the impossible task of expanding the size of government and simultaneously bringing down poverty and inflation. This recipe is the same that former presidents Néstor and Cristina Kirchner tried between 2003 and 2015, which in the end caused annual deficits of about 8 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and inflation to soar to 40 percent. From 2015 to 2019, former president Mauricio Macri reduced the deficit but failed to achieve a fiscal surplus. Even so, the unpopular effects of fiscal adjustment, plus a combination of clumsiness and bad timing during his entire tenure cost him reelection.

  The pandemic, which caught the new government by surprise only three months after it took office, seemed like an opportunity for Kirchnerists to engage in modern monetary theory–style policies and mock those who warned about their consequences. Though Guzmán raised taxes, most government spending was financed through an increase in the money supply, the effects of which were bound to be delayed because of lockdowns.

  But in 2020, economists who were close to the administration were writing op-eds in which they suggested explanations as to why increasing the monetary supply not only did not cause inflation, but actually decreased it. The country was once again running high deficits, but Guzmán did not seem to care about them and contended that these were temporary measures.

  After the pandemic was over, instead of returning toward a path of fiscal balance and debt reduction, Guzmán accelerated the path toward high deficits, which can only be sustained by money printing, since markets did not trust Argentina’s government bonds. As a result, public spending currently is increasing more rapidly than revenue, and it is uncertain whether the country will meet the deficit target that was agreed with the IMF only last year in order to avoid defaulting on its debt. Meanwhile, annual inflation has risen to 70 percent and since Guzmán’s resignation, the peso fell more than 20 percent against the dollar.

  In this context, it may be surprising that markets interpreted Guzmán’s exit as bad news. Yet the fall of Guzmán and the arrival of new minister Silvina Batakis, who only lasted a few weeks and has already been replaced by “superminister” Sergio Massa, symbolized the victory of the “irrational” wing of the government led by Vice President (and former president) Cristina Kirchner, who is actually the one who selected President Fernández as her running mate back in 2019. In the past, Kirchner has argued that economic theories do not work in Argentina, and she is known for advocating permanent economic stimulus even if this means excessive money printing.

  If we are to believe insiders, Guzmán and Batakis both tried to correct the course of the economy and Massa will continue to pursue that goal, with the vice president as the main source of opposition. But if Massa fails and government policies on public spending stay the same, they will drive Argentina’s economy toward hyperinflation, which is the only possible outcome for a country with perpetually high deficits and no access to debt markets.

  This is not the first time that Argentina’s economy has been on the verge of collapse. In the minds of the public, the hyperinflations of 1975 and 1989–90 are still remembered. But the very policies that underlie these crises, which are related to extravagant levels of public spending, high deficits, and ultimately an excessive increase in the monetary supply, are yet to be repudiated by a majority of voters, as exemplified by Fernández and Kirchner’s win in 2019. History seems to have a way of repeating itself.

  Argentina’s example should serve as a warning to other countries of what can happen if the populist fantasy of creating money out of thin air clings onto the minds of key public officials and voters for too long. In the United States, for example, the Biden administration is showing signs of adhering to delusional theories about the economy that resemble those of Argentine Kirchnerism.

  Indeed, President Biden believes that one of his tweets can bring down gas prices, Senator Warren keeps blaming corporate greed for inflation, Democratic legislators praise acts to reduce inflation as though if monetary policy was just wishful thinking. But ignoring the fact that excessive money printing has an effect on price levels, or arguing that companies charge more because they are evil, are excuses that we have seen in Argentina at the beginning of inflationary processes, and we know what comes next. We do not want to end in that path.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 18:30

• BLM Chapters Accuse Parent Organization's Leader Of Millions In Fraud: Lawsuit
  BLM Chapters Accuse Parent Organization’s Leader Of Millions In Fraud: Lawsuit

  A lawsuit filed on Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court accuses Black Lives Matter (BLM) and its leader, Shalomyah Bowers, of using foundation funds as his “personal piggy bank” and acting as a “rogue administrator” and a “middle man turned usurper.”

  

  Bowers, who became head of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation in April, and is accused of paying millions to his own Bowers Consulting Firm, as well as diverting funds from a new group called Black Lives Matter Grassroots, Inc. – a coalition of BLM chapters.

  In total, over $10 million of donors’ money was siphoned by Bowers, including $2,167,894 paid to Bower’s firm in 2021, the lawsuit alleges.

  The lawsuit seeks damages and restitution, as well as a temporary restraining order to block the foundation from using BLM accounts, or its website.

  

  Bowers told the NY Post that the lawsuit is nothing more than a power grab by disgruntled activists who want to wrest control of the movement, including California State University Pan-African Studies professor Melina Abdullah.

  

  “The assets that we built, the financial resources, the social media platforms and the name ‘Black Lives Matter’ have been taken from us and are under the control of consultants,” said Abdullah, BLM Grassroots director and a co-founder of the BLM Los Angeles chapter.

  BLM Grassroots was launched three months ago, records show. It claims to represent BLM chapters across the country.

  The new group was founded in California in May by Walter Mosley, the lawyer who also drafted the lawsuit against Bowers, according to court papers. Mosley formerly represented Black Chyna in a law suit against Kim Kardashian in 2018. -NY Post

  In court papers, Abdullah is described as having been “engaged in intuitive protest simultaneous to the online activism of the three co-founders,” whatever that means.

  “It’s the most insane thing I’ve read in a court pleading, and it’s signed under penalty of perjury when they know it’s a lie,” said Bowers, who told the Post that the Foundation has recently undergone audits which don’t show $10 million going to him or his firm.

  “We are in the process of correcting things, of fixing things and dealing with disgruntled people who want to take over the group,” he continued.

  The lawsuit comes months after BLM founder Patrice Cullors stepped down amid reports of extensive real estate purchases, as well as internal criticism over the foundation’s operations. She named two organizers as interim executives – however months later both individuals said they never actually acted in those roles due to an inability to reach an agreement over the scope of their positions.

  What is Black Lives Matter doing with all the money they’re accumulating if not helping their local chapters and Black-owned businesses to advance?

  They seem to be fundraising for the sake of fundraising.

  All talk, all woke. https://t.co/8KSKvJHoq3

  — JD Rucker (@JDRucker) March 4, 2021

  According to the BLM Grassroots lawsuit, Bowers – who had been handling the administration under Cullors, took control of the operation, shutting out the grassroots chapters.

  “We’re asking for accountability,” said BLM Grassroots director of operations, Angela Austin, who added that the local chapter was locked out of its social media accounts after the killing of Patrick Lyoya in Grand Rapids, and that they had been given no commitment from BLM for continuing funding.

  “We’re fighting for the soul of Black Lives Matter,” said Abdullah. “Black Lives Matter belongs to the people who birthed and built it.”

  As American Thinker‘s Rajan Laad notes:

  While Bowers is claiming innocence, it would not be surprising if he did indeed profit from BLM. Despite their claims, BLM seems to me founded for solely pecuniary gains.

  BLM is a perfect instance of how modern liberalism functions as an extremely lucrative business model.  BLM merely expanded on the extortion business model of veteran race hustler Al Sharpton, which is ‘give us your money else we’ll brand you racist,’ but did it on a much larger scale.  Al Sharpton must feel like a worn-out pair of shoes in the bottom drawer of a shoe case.

  “Black Lives Matter” began as a trend on social media, in 2013 following Trayvon Martin’s death. Soon it evolved into a slogan used by ‘protestors’ across the US.

  In the death of George Floyd in 2020, BLM saw their biggest opportunity to take the ‘movement’ to the next level and become the sole arbiters in matters of race.  In parallel, BLM carried out ‘protests’, which were actually riots all over America.

  Dozens of people were killed and numerous others injured and thousands of businesses and properties, many minority-owned, were looted, torched, or otherwise vandalized. 

  Axios revealed that the total insured property losses incurred during the riots are between $1 to $2 billion dollars. The actual number including losses of uninsured property must be considerably higher.

  That must not have mattered to BLM.  For BLM, the riots were a promotional event that caused their coffers to be overflowing.

  BLM was supported by the Democrats and their propagandists in the media because they could blame the riots on Trump and benefit from it politically. The Democrats, too, saw this as an opportunity to raise funds.

  The noise created such a frenzy that anybody who was anybody began donating to BLM

  Hollywood stars such as Angelina Jolie, Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Kate Beckinsale, Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Reynolds, etc. donated to BLM.

  Some stars even bailed out BLM rioters who were taken into custody.

  Big tech firms such as Google committed $12 million. Facebook and Amazon donated $10 million. Apple pledged $100 million, and so did Walmart. Target pledged $10 million while Home Depot announced  $1 million.

  BLM didn’t make any verifiable promises; their goal was unstated, esoteric, and symbolic which ensured they could keep collecting without any oversight.

  Rich donors didn’t verify how their donations were spent. Their sole purpose of donating was to be regarded as among ‘the good ones’. It was also like protection money to prevent BLM thugs from banging at their doors.

  In the end, BLM managed to make $90m in just one year over the death of George Floyd.

  Read the filing below:

  Black Lives Matter Grassroo… by samtlevin

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 18:00

• Where's The Outrage? America's Leaders Are Fiddling While The Country Burns
  Where’s The Outrage? America’s Leaders Are Fiddling While The Country Burns

  Authored by J.Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

  Where’s the outrage? Bob Dole asked in the middle of the scandal-plagued presidency of Bill Clinton scandals. Voters, it turned out, cared more about prosperity.

  

  But as U.S. politics has descended into tribal warfare, that blinding emotion has become the default position of both major political parties. Each sees the other side as more than outrageous – as threats to self-government itself. Democrats are trumpeting the upcoming midterms as a battle for democracy against their “semi-fascist” enemies; Republicans are largely running on the promise to investigate and punish the Biden administration.

  Lost in this Revenge Play politics is thoughtful discussion about how to address our nation’s pressing problems. Yes, politicians issue policy statements and even pass legislation, but where are their specific plans to reduce the national debt, tame brewing foreign threats, tackle crime, and whip inflation? We now know the Biden administration cynically used the name, “Inflation Reduction Act,” to drum up support for climate and health care initiatives it had failed to pass before and that had nothing to do with corralling price increases. At a time when about 70% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, does anyone believe either party knows how to set things right?

  The GOP still pretends to be the party of small government and fiscal responsibility, but it has not only failed by any measure to achieve either, it no longer even tries. It’s just words, words, words.  

  Democrats have long claimed that they know how to fix things through government action, but six decades of failed social policies have thoroughly undermined that notion. Joe Biden’s recent declaration that he will erase a massive tranche of student debt is remarkable for many reasons. His unilateral, probably unconstitutional, move is a sure sign of our broken government drift towards authoritarianism. The wildly different estimates of its costs, which range from $300 billion to nearly $1 trillion, are yet more evidence that nobody knows what they’re doing. Can you imagine running a business like that? The truly astonishing thing is that no one is claiming it addresses the immense and urgent problem of the high cost of college, which is strongly tied to wrongheaded federal loan policies. Democrats don’t even pretend to have the answer. They are raising the red flag, finally admitting they only know how to throw money at the issue (using taxpayer money to buy votes in the midterms).

  Republicans are pointing this out, but where’s their plan?

  Then, of course, there is the abject failure by both parties to deal with the COVID-19 crisis that has already taken more than 1 million American lives.

  Recent studies show that the lockdowns that kneecapped our economy were not an effective deterrent against the spread of the disease. The closure of schools set back, perhaps irreparably, the education of millions of children. The trillions of dollars the federal government rushed out the door to mask the problems their policies created are now a case study of waste, fraud, and abuse. In the Aug. 16 article, “Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud,” which detailed how “those dollars came with few strings and minimal oversight,” the New York Times reported:

  In the midst of the pandemic, the government gave unemployment benefits to the incarcerated, the imaginary and the dead. It sent money to “farms” that turned out to be front yards. It paid people who were on the government’s “Do Not Pay List.” It gave loans to 342 people who said their name was “N/A.”

  Those COVID failures, and myriad others, underscore the incompetence of our leaders. At bottom, the Democrats have mostly bad answers for our problems and Republicans have almost no answers at all.

  In this context, the furious outrage that drives our politics is revealed as a cynical act of bipartisanship: It is the intentional effort by leaders from both parties to protect themselves. They have weaponized anger, keeping we the people’s eyes fixed on each other’s throats so that we don’t hold them to account for their failures. Don’t blame us, it’s your neighbor that’s the problem. Why worry about policy when we are battling existential threats to the nation’s soul?

  The culture war is real and it is important. But our high-dudgeon focus on woke leftists and extreme elements on the right is also a top-down strategy aimed at drawing attention away from Washington’s ineptitude. Our leaders are fiddling while the country burns: When will we stop dancing to their outrageous tune?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 17:30

• American Library Association Removes Webpage Promoting 'Secret' LGBT Messaging In Libraries
  American Library Association Removes Webpage Promoting ‘Secret’ LGBT Messaging In Libraries

  Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times,

  The American Library Association (ALA) destroyed a webpage that taught librarians how to secretly promote pro-LGBT messaging.

  

  The original page, written by Maryland librarian Tess Goldwasser, told librarians how to sneak pro-LGBT books into towns that don’t want them.

  “Do you work for a library in a small, rural, conservative community? Are you a frontline staff member there, with no managerial or administrative authority? Do you wish you could do more to make your library more inclusive to the LGBTQIA++ community, but meet with resistance?” the post about LGBT book month read. “I hope it’s not just me!”

  Now, the link to the page leads to an error message. A search of ALA’s website doesn’t show the original page, although it does show the page’s old entry on search results.

  

  The error message on the American Library Association’s website at the page that once displayed advice on how to secretly promote pro-LGBT programming. Screenshot taken Sept. 3, 2022. (The Epoch Times)

  The Epoch Times contacted the ALA but has yet to hear back.

  Articles Removed

  According to Dan Kleinman, the leader of the library watchdog group Safe Libraries, the ALA has a long history of actions like these.

  “This is an established pattern by the American Library Association of hiding things from the public,” he said.

  “When the public sees what they’re doing and becomes aware of it and they realize how embarrassing it looks, they take it down.”

  Kleinman added that on numerous occasions, he has seen the ALA remove articles from its site.

  

  Safe Library leader Dan Kleinman visiting New York City, New York. (Photo courtesy of Dan Kleinman)

  In one instance, Kleinman publicized an ALA page that insisted that librarians can’t determine whether something is child pornography because they aren’t judges.

  Then the ALA changed the page, he said. After the controversial claim was gone, the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom director Jamie LaRue mocked him for saying it was there without proof, Kleinman said.

  The ALA’s dabbling in drag queen story hour started with San Francisco librarian Michelle Tea, Kleinman said. From there, it became a global phenomenon.

  In its rush to popularize radical gender activism, the ALA put safety on the back foot, Kleinman said. In one case, child sex offender drag queens were allowed to read to children at a Houston, Texas library.

  “The reason why they didn’t follow their policy to vet people before they let them go see children is because the librarians felt that it would have been a microaggression to assume the drag queen had a criminal record,” said Kleinman.

  Far-Left Ideology on Gender

  The ALA originally began promoting far-left gender ideology five decades ago under the leadership of Judith Krug, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, Kleinman said.

  Krug shifted libraries to oppose censoring information to children, he said.

  “No longer would they keep them from inappropriate material. Now, they would make sure that they got that inappropriate material. And they would leave it up to the parents to decide to stop it,” Kleinman said.

  “And at the same time, they would mislead parents so the parents couldn’t stop or weren’t aware that they should be.”

  To oppose this spread of radical sexual material to young children, parents need to get informed and run for office on school and library boards, Kleinman said.

  “So many people are just simply not aware of this issue. That’s why it goes on. That’s why these librarians get to screw people over,” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 17:30

• Argentine Health Officials Link "Aggressive" Pneumonia Deaths To Legionnaires' Disease
  Argentine Health Officials Link “Aggressive” Pneumonia Deaths To Legionnaires’ Disease

  Argentine health officials announced on Saturday that a pneumonia of previously unknown origin has been linked to Legionnaires’ disease – a rare bacterial infection of the lungs, after four people in a clinic in northwestern Tucuman province died. Seven others are currently infected.

  

  The cases have been linked to a single private clinic in the northwestern city of San Miguel de Tucumán, according to the WHO’s regional office, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

  Health Minister Carla Vizzotti told reporters in a Saturday statement that Legionnaires’ had been identified as the cause of double pneumonia in the four who died after the rare bacterial infection was initially ruled out, according to a Friday report by Reuters.

  

  On Tuesday, five health care workers and a patient who required intensive care were reported with pneumonia of unknown origin. Their symptoms emerged between Aug. 18 – 22.

  Then on Thursday, three more cases were reported by local health officials, bringing the total number to nine, and on Friday and Saturday Argentina reported the 10th and 11th cases.

  The most recent death was that of a 48-year-old man with underlying health problems, which followed a 70-year-old woman who had undergone surgery in the clinic.

  In total, 11 cases have been identified – nearly all involving clinic staff according to provincial officials. Of the seven under care, “four remain hospitalized, three of them under respiratory assistance, and three are under home surveillance, with less complicated clinical symptoms,” said provincial health minister Luis Medina Ruiz on Saturday, who added that “toxic and environmental causes” could not be ruled out – and that the clinic’s climate control systems were being checked.

  

  Reported symptoms include fever, muscle and abdominal pain and shortness of breath, with several patients experiencing pneumonia in both lungs.

  The disease first appeared in 1976 at a meeting of the American Legion veterans group in Philadelphia, PA, and was linked to contaminated water or unclean air conditioning systems.

  When the outbreak first appeared in Tucumán, officials first tested for Covied-19, flu and hantavirus, ruling them all out. Samples were then analyzed by the Malbran Institute in Buenos Aires, which pointed to Legionnaires’.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 17:00

• Latest Revelations About Mar-a-Lago Raid Unlikely To Sway Midterm Voters, Strategists Say
  Latest Revelations About Mar-a-Lago Raid Unlikely To Sway Midterm Voters, Strategists Say

  Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The fresh controversy stoked by ongoing revelations about the FBI’s raid of the Mar-a-Lago home of former President Donald Trump, including the release on Sept. 2 of a detailed inventory of documents and items retrieved in the raid, is unlikely to have a significant effect on the outcome of the November midterm elections, political strategists have told The Epoch Times.

  

  The issues of concern to voters still struggling with massive inflation, and a bloated national debt exacerbated by President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive some $500 billion worth of federal student loans, will be much more decisive factors in the minds of voters heading to the polls, the strategists say.

  Reports on Friday that a small number of the thousands of documents seized by federal agents contained information labeled secret, confidential, or top secret, might appear to some observers to spell bad news for the former president and his anticipated 2024 reelection bid. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has made public an inventory of the items of property taken in the raid, the vast majority of which—11,179—were not classified as in any way secret or confidential. But, according to a tally compiled by the New York Post, 54 documents were labeled “Secret,” 31 were “Confidential,” and 18 were officially “Top Secret.”

  The secret and top-secret documents were found in Trump’s office and in a storage room on the property, the Post reported.

  Muted Impact

  In spite of these revelations, the investigation into documents transferred from the White House at the time of Trump’s departure in January 2021 is still at an early stage, is prone to missteps and possible backfiring, and none of the findings are likely to dissuade voters from supporting Republican candidates or drive them to cross the political aisle and vote for the incumbent party, experts say. In part, this is simply a function of the timing of the investigation and of the November elections.

  “I think there will be more activity by the Department of Justice, but they will be careful. If they make a misstep, it will benefit Trump. I don’t think raid will affect the midterms much unless there is an indictment of Trump, which I think is very unlikely before November,” Keith Naughton, the principal of Silent Majority Strategies, a political consultancy based in Germantown, Maryland, told The Epoch Times.

  Naughton acknowledged that the raid, and recent statements by Trump, such as his call for a redo of the 2020 election, may motivate voters already inclined to support Democrat candidates. But while Democrats may hope that the raid and subsequent revelations prove highly embarrassing to Trump and the GOP, the truth is that most of the electorate will still vote on the basis of the larger economic issues affecting their day-to-day lives, Naughton believes.

  “The student loan giveaway by Biden is backfiring badly and the economy is not really improving, even if inflation is moderating a bit. Republicans and independents will turn out to vote against Biden’s flailing policies,” Naughton said.

  Naughton alluded to a debt forgiveness plan that has left even former Democrat officials and left-leaning economists expressing concerns about the feasibility of the measure and its long-term impact on the economy, what with a federal deficit of $1 trillion and some $30 trillion of overall government debt.

  The fallout from this measure is likely to be severe for Democrat candidates as the public comes to perceive more and more that a purportedly altruistic measure works to the disadvantage of poorer citizens in the long term while pushing government debt to ever more unsustainable levels, some economists believe.

  “I suspect this supposed to be a first step to making taxpayers liable for all student loans, and eventually to the federal government making college ‘free.’ College education would then be a transfer from the less well-off to the wealthier, who have much higher rates of college preparation and attendance. It would also put the federal government on an even faster track to a debt crisis,” Charles Steele, Chair of the Department of Economics, Business, and Accounting at Hillsdale College in Michigan, told The Epoch Times.

  The question of whether Trump may or may not have violated the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which established a highly specific protocol regarding the handling of documents by outgoing presidents, is a partisan-driven distraction from the issues on people’s minds, he continued.

  “The New York-Washington media axis is obsessed with Trump, the raid, and the January 6 hearings, and is very much out of touch. The rest of the country is much more concerned with the cost of living and issues affecting their livelihoods,” Naughton said.

  The Greater Mobilizer?

  Some commentators believe that, regardless of public concerns about the raid or what legal consequences the FBI’s actions and the ongoing investigation may have, challenges loom for Republican candidates in an environment where significant backlash against the Supreme Court’s recent divisive ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which reversed Roe v. Wade, is all but inevitable.

  “Democrats are motivated by the Dobbs decision in a far greater way than the raid motivates Republicans,” David Carlucci, a former New York State senator who now works as a political consultant, told The Epoch Times.

  In the past, the issue of legal access to abortions was not quite the dealbreaker that it has become in the months since the Dobbs ruling, Carlucci argued. The decision has changed the game, and Republicans ignore this at their peril.

  “Republican politicians have for years been able to be pro-life and still get pro-choice voter support. Pro-choice voters have felt secure [in the belief] that access to a safe abortion would be protected. Moderate Republicans now have to carry water for their most conservative Republican counterparts because strict abortion bans are very much a concern for moderate voters,” Carlucci said.

  But other observers reject this analysis and argue that federal law enforcement has already committed such severe missteps in the execution of the raid and attempts to justify it that the fallout will give Trump-endorsed candidates an edge in the midterms.

  Rick Wiley, a political consultant who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, told The Epoch Times that the raid and its aftermath have “fired up” the GOP base.

  “The raid at Mar-a-Lago is one of those moments in history, where you remember where you were when you heard they raised the President’s private residence. And overwhelmingly, people are saying, ‘Was all this necessary?’ That’s a problem for the FBI and DOJ. They left everyone in the dark for days before they gave a half-hearted, at best, explanation for what happened, and most people were left scratching their heads,” Wiley said.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 16:30

• Amazon Blocks Negative Reviews Of Its Woke Lord Of The Rings Series
  Amazon Blocks Negative Reviews Of Its Woke Lord Of The Rings Series

  Not long ago, if a company or corporation faced intense backlash from millions of their intended customers, they would try to fix the problem and appease the people that put money in their pockets.  In the past few years, though, things have changed.  Now, if millions of people don’t like a product they are attacked and shamed by companies as “bigots, racists, misogynists, etc.”  The idea is a rather authoritarian one – The consumer is now beholden to the establishment and its business partners.  If the establishment approves of a product you are not allowed to dislike or criticize that product.   If you do, you are a bad person with malicious intent.

  The business/buyer relationship has become a landowner/peasant relationship.  In their minds they have cast pearls of propaganda and because you are swine you just see it as garbage.  

  In the case of popular media and streaming entertainment when the public or a fandom criticizes a product the corporate response is to call it “review bombing.”  There is, of course, no such thing.  As a production company you must acknowledge that a large number of people don’t like your film or TV show and you are losing customers – You don’t own them, they own you.  

  For Amazon, the intention was to take yet another beloved property (Lord Of The Rings) and twist it into a vehicle for more woke propaganda, including intersectional feminist messaging and forced diversity casting for a story that was written as an ancient historical record of England.  Imagine if a company decided to make a movie about a fantastical African mythology and half the casting was white?  It would not go over very well…

  

  Is ‘The Rings Of Power’ the worst case of leftist propaganda ever created?  No, but it is the straw that broke the camel’s back.  This time the fandom is in heavy opposition and is not afraid to speak out.  The American consumer has grown weary and frustrated with the endless injection of social justice politics into our entertainment culture and now they are fighting back and speaking out.  

  Amazon and leftists in general are not happy about this.  Amazon is particularly worried because they have spent billions in production costs already for a show that now has a 37% audience ratings score on Rotten Tomatoes.  It appears they have decided that they won’t allow the same thing to happen on their own website.  

  Amazon is currently blocking reviews for 72 hours in order to “weed out the trolls.”  Meaning, they will most likely remove numerous negative reviews and keep all positive reviews in order to artificially boost the show’s audience rating.  There has been suspicion of this kind of behavior by Amazon and other websites in the past when it comes to woke productions, but this is the first time they have blatantly declared censorship of negative reviews.  At the very least, it is a sign of panic among the Hollywood establishment as they face widespread exposure of their propaganda.        

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 16:00

• Michigan Investigates Missing Voting Equipment That Ended Up On eBay
  Michigan Investigates Missing Voting Equipment That Ended Up On eBay

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Police in Michigan are working with the state government to investigate how a piece of voting equipment ended up for sale online, according to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

  “We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate allegations of an illegal attempt to sell a voter assist terminal acquired in Michigan,” Benson said in a statement.

  “Voter assist terminals are not used to tabulate ballots, but are typically used by voters with disabilities who need assistance marking their ballot privately at polling places,” she said.

  “While our elections remain secure and safe, we take seriously all violations of election law and will be working with relevant authorities to ensure there are consequences for those who break the law.”

  The machine had disappeared from the Colfax Township in Wexford County.

  

  Colfax Township Clerk Becky Stoddard confirmed to the Cadillac News that the equipment taken was a voter assist terminal machine or tablet from her township. Wexford County Clerk Alaina Nyman told the outlet that the voter assist terminal was noticed as missing some time before the August primary.

  “The equipment that went missing was not anything that could change a vote. It was a touchscreen [Voter Assist Terminal] machine,” Nyman said. “No election data was on it and you can’t get into the machine without the program cards and those were all accounted for.”

  Under Michigan election law, it is a felony to “conceal, withhold, or destroy a ballot box or voting machine,” as well as to “obtain undue possession of that ballot box or voting machine.”

  Connecticut Man Obtained Device From eBay: Reports

  Harri Hursti, a cybersecurity expert in Connecticut, said he had purchased a Michigan voting device on eBay for $1,200. He told WJBK that he then reached out to state officials after the purchase went through.

  On Twitter, Hursti wrote: “I contacted MI authorities even before the machine arrived – and before I even knew for certain if the machine had been used in Michigan.

  “I still do not know that as a fact, because the machine is still in an [unopened] box,” he added.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/04/2022 – 15:30

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