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Biden Supports ‘Safe And Secure’ Gain-of-Function Research, White House Says

Biden Supports ‘Safe And Secure’ Gain-of-Function Research, White House Says

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClear Wire,

While the White House reported Monday that the U.S. intelligence community has not yet reached a “consensus” on the origins of the COVID-19 virus, the Biden administration voiced support for the practice of gain-of-function research, so long as it was done safely, securely, and with transparency.

As complicated as it is complex, such research generally refers to the intentional manipulation of viruses to make them more transmissible, and therefore more dangerous, in order to study them. Critics argue the risks outweigh any potential reward if this kind of research goes wrong.

Congressional Republicans, led by Sens. Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, and Rand Paul, say that the coronavirus likely leaked from a Chinese research facility in Wuhan that was engaging in that kind of research and have called for a moratorium on federal funding to any university or organizations conducting gain-of-function studies.

When RealClearPolitics asked Monday if President Biden thought gain of function was “prudent,” John Kirby, the president’s National Security Council spokesman replied that he did.

He believes that it’s important to help prevent future pandemics, which means he understands that there has to be legitimate scientific research into the sources or potential sources of pandemics so that we understand it so that we can prevent them and we prevent them from happening obviously,” Kirby said before adding that the president believed any such research “must be done in a safe and secure manner and as transparent as possible to the rest of the world.”

To sum up, Kirby then told RCP, “I think that’s a fancy way of saying ‘yes.’”

The Obama administration reached a different conclusion in 2014 and halted taxpayer funding for such research. Three years later, during the Trump administration, the National Institute of Health lifted that moratorium.

Republicans have accused the NIH of funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through an intermediary, the American biomedical company EcoHealth Alliance. Dr. Anthony Fauci, formerly the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress in May of 2021 that NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Critics have returned to that controversy in light of new reporting by the Wall Street Journal that the Energy Department has concluded the COVID-19 most likely arose from a laboratory leak. That theory was first posited during the Trump administration and widely dismissed at the time as a conspiracy theory. It increasingly seems plausible after a separate earlier analysis by the FBI concluded that the lab in Wuhan was the “likely” origin of the virus.

If we have learned anything from this pandemic, it’s that risky virus-enhancing research – like the type conducted in Wuhan that was funded by the U.S. government – needs more oversight and regulation,” Rand Paul told RCP.

A physician and a vocal critic of Fauci, Paul added that “worldwide approximately 15 million people died – the memory of their deaths demands that we have more scrutiny of this dangerous research.”

Congressional Republicans already promised more oversight and investigations into the issue, especially after the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General wrote in a report last month that “NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address” whether EcoHealth Alliance complied with reporting requirements. 

The White House did not confirm the WSJ report but reiterated that Biden had “doubled down” and ordered that considerable resources are put behind “getting to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19.” Republicans, meanwhile, continue to argue that Biden is going soft on Beijing.

The Biden White House won’t have credibility on safe scientific research so long as it continues to dismiss the growing evidence that COVID came from a gain-of-function lab accident in China,” Marco Rubio, the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told RCP.

Biden drew the ire of Republicans last summer when his administration declined to say whether the president personally urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to cooperate with international investigations of the pandemic’s origin. So far, Beijing has not done so, blocking the World Health Organization, for instance, from conducting additional on-the-ground probe.

Asked if the president has broached the issue, Kirby noted how the administration has regularly called on Beijing to be more transparent and told RCP that Biden called for additional cooperation “when he met with President Xi in Bali just a couple of months ago.” A White House readout of that meeting, as the New York Post reported at the time, did not include any mention of the origins of COVID.

Controversy continues on the gain-of-function front. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NASB) recommended sweeping new changes to how the government regulates gain-of-function experiments last month. As the New York Times reported, the decision now rests with the Biden administration as it seeks to balance the apparent need for research to prevent a pandemic with the possibility of that kind of research inadvertently jumpstarting a plague.

“If the government implements the spirit of what they’ve written,” Gregory Koblentz, a biodefense specialist at George Mason University, told the Times, “this would be a major overhaul of dual-use research oversight in the United States.

That kind of research remains “vital for ensuring the United States is prepared to rapidly detect, respond to, and recover from future infectious disease threats,” Acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak said last year. What is needed is balance, he explained in a February 2021 statement announcing the review by the NASB board. “Such research can be inherently high risk given the possibility of biosafety lapses or deliberate misuse,” Tabak said. “However, not doing this type of research could impair our ability to prepare for and/or respond to future consequential biological threats.”

As the New York Times noted, the White House will soon decide whether to adopt the new recommendations for how gain of function should be handled. Biden, as Kirby told RCP, believes that kind of research can be done prudently.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 20:45

How Politically Divided Are Social Media Networks?

How Politically Divided Are Social Media Networks?

Social media has the reputation of being a battlefield of political ideology, with the political left and right in constant conflict on networks like Twitter or Facebook.

But do people further on the left or on the right really prefer social media more than centrists?

And does political affiliation have an influence on someone’s preferred social media network?

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, some answers to these questions can be gleaned from the Statista Consumer Insights survey when cross-referencing preference for the use of social media with participants’ self-reported political orientation.

According to the results, there are no major gaps in preference for most social media platforms among Americans, but there are some interesting differences.

Infographic: How Politically Divided Are Social Media Networks? | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

Facebook is the platform where centrists feel most at home. The group tends to stay away more from other social media than those who see themselves as more distinctly on the right or on the left politically. While Facebook is somewhat underused by those on the left, if only by a small margin, TikTok and Instagram are the networks with the most equal left-right distribution.

On Twitter, partisanism is the most pronounced, with somewhat more use by those on the right.

Linkedin also shows slightly more use from this group, while the opposite is true on another less used network, Reddit. The results of this survey suggest that political stance has only very limited influence on social media use. There are differences, but they are only by a few percentage points and should therefore not be interpreted too strongly.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 20:25

Watchdog To Probe Buttigieg’s Use Of Government Aircraft

Watchdog To Probe Buttigieg’s Use Of Government Aircraft

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is facing an audit by its internal watchdog following reports about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s use of government aircraft.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg listens to a question during a press conference following a tour of a Southside transportation hub in Chicago, Ill., on July 16, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a memo on Monday that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), citing news reports, requested the audit to determine whether Buttigieg’s use of government aircraft “complied with all applicable federal regulations” and DOT policies and procedures.

According to the memo, the OIG will conduct its audit at DOT headquarters and other sites as needed, focusing on official trips taken since Jan. 31, 2017.

The watchdog said the audit also aims to minimize cost and improve the management and use of government aviation resources and that it will begin “shortly.”

Buttigieg, who has pushed for policies to end using the same fossil fuels used to power government jets, has faced criticism over his use of such aircraft, which, according to a 2021 report from the group Transport and Environment, are “10 times more carbon intensive than airliners on average, and 50 times more polluting than trains.”

The transportation secretary responded on Twitter, welcoming the review and emphasizing that his use of government aircraft was mostly for official purposes and to save taxpayer money.

“Glad this will be reviewed independently so misleading narratives can be put to rest. Bottom line: I mostly fly on commercial flights, in economy class. And when I do use our agency’s aircraft, it’s usually a situation where doing so saves taxpayer money,” Buttigieg wrote.

According to the memo, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) operates and maintains a fleet of aircraft on behalf of the DOT, which are used for various purposes, including transporting senior executives from both DOT and FAA.

The Office of Management and Budget’s guidance allows executive department heads to travel on government aircraft, but there are restrictions.

The guidance states that government aircraft can only be used for official travel or on a space-available basis, subject to certain policies and authorizations. According to the memo, this applies to all government-owned, leased, chartered, and rental aircraft and related services operated by executive agencies.

Rubio, Grassley Letters

On Dec. 16, 2022, Rubio called for the watchdog review after Fox News reported on Buttigieg’s use of taxpayer-funded private jets in the United States and internationally “at least 18 different times since taking office.”

The total cost of Buttigieg’s flights is unknown, but according to The Washington Post, the FAA charged federal agencies $5,000 per hour to use its aircraft.

“If these reports are confirmed, it would represent yet another troubling example of this administration’s continued willingness to skirt basic ethics rules,” Rubio wrote (pdf)

The Fox News report cited flight tracking data obtained by independent watchdog group Americans for Public Trust.

Read more here…

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 20:05

Pennsylvania Chick-fil-A Bans Diners 16 And Under Without Adult Supervision

Pennsylvania Chick-fil-A Bans Diners 16 And Under Without Adult Supervision

As an increasingly disturbing trend of outright chaos spreads through U.S. cities, with leftist politicians unable to grasp the elementary concept that crime should not be encouraged, one Chick-fil-A in Pennsylvania is starting to enforce their own rules to maintain order.

In a trend we are sure will likely spread, a Montgomery County, PA Chick-fil-A is now banning people under the age of 16 from dining on its premises without adult supervision. The decision came after a sequence of “unacceptable behaviors”, according to CBS News.

The company announced its decision on Facebook last week, stating: “We contemplated long and hard before posting this, but decided it was time. Often on Saturdays and days when schools are off, we have school-age children visiting the restaurant without their parents. Usually, these children and teens are dropped off for several hours at a local bounce park and groups of them then walk over to our restaurant.”

It continued: “While we love being a community restaurant and serving guests of all ages, some issues need to be addressed.” The restaurant said of the children and teens that they are “loud, and their conversation often contains a lot of explicit language. We are a family friendly restaurant where this is not tolerated.”

They also said that “Food and trash are often thrown around and left on the tables, chairs, and on the floor. Tables and restrooms are vandalized. Decorations are stolen.”

The restaurant also stood up to protect its employees, stating that they are “laughed at, made fun of and treated rudely. Employees are cursed at and ignored when they ask the children and teens to either change their behavior or leave.”

The restaurant concluded:

As you can imagine, this is not a pleasant experience. We want to provide a comfortable and safe environment for our guests and our staff, and also to protect our building. Therefore, we cannot allow this to continue. As a result, to dine in our restaurant, anyone under the age of 16 is required to be accompanied by an adult. If not accompanied by an adult, they may come in to purchase food, but must take it to go.

To those unaccompanied children and teens that have visited us and acted appropriately, we thank you. But we also apologize. Due to the numerous extreme behaviors of many of your peers, we must make a blanket rule covering anyone under the age of 16.

One father said: “It makes sense. When kids get together, it’s the herd mentality and I’ve seen it. I like the way they’ve handled it, saying it’s not parents’ fault, just kids getting together. I think they’re just loud. Common sense is not common, so they don’t know to keep down the tone of their language and the volume. I’m sure my kids are the same way.”

Customer Gary Walens told CBS: “If the kids are getting unruly and going into places like this, the owners have to do something. These are businesses that are trying to make a profit and if the kids are coming in and causing havoc in this restaurant and not allowing normal business, I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

While law abiding patrons and the owners/franchisees of the restaurant likely see this as a common sense solution to a growing problem across the nation, we’re sure it’s only a matter of time before some ACLU lawyer files a discrimination suit on behalf of unaccompanied children under the age of 16 as a class. Heck, maybe the carrot on a string of a possible settlement will actually get the parents involved in their childrens’ lives for a while and bring them closer.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 19:45

Transgender Athlete Wins Four Female Running Competitions In A Row

Transgender Athlete Wins Four Female Running Competitions In A Row

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A transgender athlete who now identifies as a woman has won four different female running competitions so far this year alone after smashing a women’s 5000 meter record last year.

50-year-old Canadian Tiffany Newell ‘transitioned’ into a woman in 2017 and began competing in women’s sport in 2020 after claiming to have met World Athletics guidelines on testosterone levels.

Newell scooped first place at the 3000 meter for women aged 45-49 event at the Winter Mini Meet on January 8 and then also ranked first in the women’s 5000 meter for women aged 45-49 event just days later.

On February 5, Newell repeated the achievement by winning the the 1500 meter for women aged 45-49 competition.

After he turned 50, the athlete then won first place at the 1500 meter for women aged 50-54 competition held from February 23 to February 26 in Toronto.

The International Consortium on Women’s Sport, a group demanding the protection of female competitions, reacted to the news by asserting it was a blatant example of “sex discrimination.”

Last year, Newell smashed the Canadian record in the 5000 meter indoor running competition for women aged 45-49 held at Toronto’s York University, beating it by six seconds, while also winning the 800 meter women’s race at the same event.

During a previous interview, the athlete argued against the creation of a category solely for transgender competitors.

“The policy makes sense for non-binary athletes, but I don’t feel comfortable racing against men. It categorizes me in the sex I am not identified as,” Newell said.

“I am a woman, and I feel most comfortable racing against women or other transgender women. I believe an open category can work if athletes can continue to race against athletes of the same gender.”

“Despite protests from trans activists, studies have consistently affirmed that trans-identified male athletes retain a significant edge over their female counterparts, even after starting hormone therapy,” reports Reduxx.

“In 2020, a study released in the British Journal of Sport Medicine noted that trans-identified males were able to complete 31% more push-ups and 15% more sit-ups in one minute on average than a female Air Force service member. They also ran 1.5 miles 21% faster.

“But even after two years on testosterone suppression treatment, the males were still 12% faster on average than biological females.”

Earlier this month, American surfing icon Bethany Hamilton vowed to boycott the professional tour over a rule change that allows biological males who identify as women to compete against female surfers.

As we highlighted last year, swimming’s world governing body slapped a total ban on transgender athletes that have gone through any form of male puberty from taking part in women’s competitions.

poll conducted last summer found that only 28 per cent of Americans support transgender athletes being allowed to compete in female sports tournaments.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 18:05

Elon Musk Allegedly Forming New AI Venture To Take On ‘Woke’ ChatGPT

Elon Musk Allegedly Forming New AI Venture To Take On ‘Woke’ ChatGPT

The first indication Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk might be taking on a new project to develop a ‘non-woke’ alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot was his recent reply to the chatbot’s founder Sam Altman. 

Another hint occurred last week. Musk commented on a video featuring long-time associate David Sachs who criticized ChatGPT’s woke “security layer.”

“There is mounting evidence OpenAI’s safety layer is very biased… If you thought trust and safety were bad under Vijaya or Yoel, wait until the AI does it,” said Sacks, regarding a content censoring program run by former Twitter General Counsel and Head of Legal Vijaya Gadde and former Twitter Head of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth.

Musk commented on Sacks’ video, calling it and the thread “very important.” 

The saying goes, ‘go woke, go broke,’ and perhaps that’s why Musk is allegedly assembling a team of AI experts to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, The Information reported. 

The world’s richest man approached Igor Babuschkin, an AI researcher who previously worked at Alphabet, about opening a research lab. 

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI as an early investor in 2015, left the company in 2019 — has voiced dissatisfaction with its direction.  

The Information noted Musk and Babuschkin’s discussions to launch an AI lab were in the early stages. Babuschkin told the publication that he hadn’t joined the project. 

Even with ChatGPT’s safety layer, the chatbot sometimes produces incredibly woke and racist responses. The news of a potentially ‘anti-woke’ chatbot is a welcoming sign for free speech. 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 17:45

WHO Was ‘Complicit’ In China’s Cover-Up Of COVID-19 Origins: Sen. Daines

WHO Was ‘Complicit’ In China’s Cover-Up Of COVID-19 Origins: Sen. Daines

Authored by Samantha Flom and Melina Wisecup via The Epoch Times,

The World Health Organization (WHO) was “complicit” in helping China’s communist regime cover up the origins of COVID-19, according to Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.).

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) questions U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as he testifies at a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 3, 2022. (Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)

Speaking with NTD News, The Epoch Times’ sister outlet, Daines on Feb. 27 suggested that the WHO could not be trusted due to its compliance with in China’s attempts to hide the truth of how the pandemic began.

“Based on what we are seeing in the latest intelligence reports about the origin of COVID—that there’s credible evidence now that it may indeed have been a leak out of the Wuhan lab, given the role that WHO played in many ways of being complicit with the Chinese and covering up what happened in Wuhan—I thinkyou’re going to see a lot of new questions as the evidence continues to come out of Wuhan as to what really happened to the origins of the COVID,” the senator said.

Daines’ remarks came amid calls from his fellow senators for the Biden administration to declassify a U.S. Energy Department report that concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated from a Wuhan laboratory leak.

According to a Feb. 26 Wall Street Journal report, the assessment was described in a document update by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. The report added that officials who had access to the classified report said the judgement was made with “low confidence,” given the lack of access to China. The FBI, in its own 2021 assessment, came to the same conclusion but with “moderate confidence,” the WSJ said.

As news of the report has spread, cries for transparency have erupted on Capitol Hill, including from Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), all of whom said they felt the information should be declassified.

The Biden administration has new ‘intel’ pointing to a lab leak,” Braun wrote in a Monday tweet. “The American people deserve to see it!”

The Senate Republicans’ concerns were also shared by their counterparts in the House, as House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) called on the Energy Department, State Department, and the FBI to provide documents and testimony on the matter.

“Since April 2, 2020, Committee on Oversight and Accountability Republicans have been investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s role in obscuring the truth regarding the initial outbreak, and whether any U.S. taxpayer dollars funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s (WIV) dangerous gain-of-function research,” the lawmakers wrote in letters to the three departments. “The Select Subcommittee is now the only Committee in Congress with explicit jurisdiction to conduct this wide-ranging and important investigation.”

Uncovering the truth, the congressmen added, “is vital to U.S. national security, critical to the prevention of future pandemics, and will bring some semblance of closure to the families of those who lost loved ones during the pandemic.”

At a White House press briefing on Monday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby addressed the subject, noting that the president agreed that determining the source of the pandemic was important, but added, “There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how COVID started.”

Braun, responding to that comment via Twitter, said: “Let the American people decide for themselves. Declassify all COVID origins intel.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the World Health Organization for comment.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 17:25

Previewing The Vote On ESG Investing, And A Debt Ceiling Update

Previewing The Vote On ESG Investing, And A Debt Ceiling Update

In his latest note, Stifel’s chief Washington Policy Strategist Brian Gardner, discusses the potential overturn of a DOL rule regarding ESG investing, and also shares an update on the debt ceiling.

According to Gartnet, the ESG resolution is likely to pass the House and could pass the Senate, but President Biden is expected to veto the legislation and the DOL rule is likely to remain in place. Regarding the debt ceiling, it appears that budget options are limited.  These fiscal constraints create political risk for Speaker McCarthy.  This note also explores how the lack of options for budget cuts could lead to a political standoff and create market volatility this

His full note is below:

Vote on ESG Investing and Debt Ceiling Update

The House will consider legislation to overturn a DOL rule regarding ESG investing.  The resolution is likely to pass the House and could pass the Senate, but President Biden is expected to veto the legislation and the DOL rule is likely to remain in place.

Regarding the debt ceiling, it appears that budget options are limited.  These fiscal constraints create political risk for Speaker McCarthy.  This note explores how the lack of options for budget cuts could lead to a political standoff and create market volatility this summer.

ESG Vote

House Republicans are scheduled to vote on legislation that would block a Department of Labor (DOL) rule that permits fiduciaries to consider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when making retirement investment decisions. The legislation in being considered under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a mechanism through which Congress can overturn regulatory actions by federal agencies.  The significance of the CRA is that it allows the Senate to pass the legislation by a simple majority vote rather than by the typical 60-vote, super-majority threshold. 

The ESG-related bill is likely to pass the House and while the outcome in the Senate is unclear, the CRA procedure makes Senate passage more plausible than it would be under regular order.  However, even if the ESG bill passes both chambers of Congress, President Biden is expected to veto the resolution and the chances of Congress over-riding the president’s veto are remote.  The DOL rule is likely to remain in place for now.

Debt Ceiling/Budget Options

A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimated that Treasury will exhaust its extraordinary measures to manage the debt ceiling (“X-date”) sometime between July and September.  Thus, Congress and the Biden administration are still months away from concluding a debt ceiling agreement.  However, the parameters of a potential deal are emerging, and it is becoming increasingly likely that a debt ceiling deal will be limited in scope. 

Key congressional Republicans have already acknowledged that Social Security and Medicare are off-the-table.  Those two programs combined with interest payments on the national debt account for approximately 71 percent of federal spending.  Congressional Republicans also seem committed to current levels of defense spending despite a loud minority within the party that seem to want defense cuts. Defense accounts for another 14 percent of federal spending which means that negotiations will focus on only 15 percent of federal spending.

Further underlining how difficult it will be to achieve large budget cuts, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Jody Arrington (R-TX) released a list of items to be considered during budget talks. Some of these cuts are one-time savings which others are spread over multiple years which further illustrates that limited amount of spending each party will be fighting over.

Chairman Arrington’s list includes:

  • Recapture unobligated COVID money ($100 billion)

  • Reinstating work requirements in welfare programs (“tens of billions”)

  • Reduce fraud in the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and SNAP (Food Stamp) Program ($70 billion).

  • Capping Obamacare subsidies at 400 percent of poverty and recovering overpayments ($65 billion).

  • Cancel some EPA programs from the Inflation Reduction Act ($27 billion for the EPA with no specific programmatic purpose and $60 billion for “environmental justice” programs).

  • End President Biden’s student loan initiatives – ($25 billion from ending loan repayment moratorium and $379 billion from prohibiting debt cancellation).

  • Rescind $3 billion for new USPS electric vehicles, $1 billion for “clean” garbage trucks, $3.4 billion for “regional greenways” and “tree planting,” and $5.6 billion for low emissions buses.

  • End approximately $281 billion in improper payments recently identified in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

  • “Stop Woke-Waste” – Eliminate a series of program all of which appear to cost less than $5 million and some less than $1 million which in a $6 trillion-plus budget are mere rounding errors.

Although it appears the differences between Democrats and Republicans will be narrow, passing a debt ceiling bill through Congress will not be a slam dunk.  Democrats are likely to dig in to protect their favorite programs.  At the same time, some Republicans could vote against any bill that they think fails to cut spending enough.  The situation puts House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in a tenuous position.  Speaker McCarthy has a narrow majority (currently five votes) and a group within his party that might oppose any debt ceiling bill.  This, in turn, could force McCarthy to make concessions with Democrats which could undercut McCarthy’s standing among conservative Republicans.  Disgruntled conservative Republicans could force a vote on McCarthy’s speakership and while most Republicans would vote for McCarthy again, it is unclear that there would be enough Democrats to save him. 

Most House Republicans seem open to voting for a modest debt ceiling deal but without a unanimous vote by Republicans, it could be difficult for McCarthy to reach a deal with the White House and Democrats which is why financial markets could be volatile this summer as the X-date approaches.  Investors could start to discount a negative outcome on debt ceiling negotiations when the X-date becomes more certain (rather than the current estimate of a three-month window) and if headlines start to suggest that Congress might fail to raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 17:05

Stockman: No More Ukraines

Stockman: No More Ukraines

Authored by David Stockman via LewRockwell.com,

Joe Biden must think that he’s the world’s Rich Uncle. In a meeting with the so-called Bucharest Nine today he promised these former Warsaw Pact nations—which should never have been admitted to NATO in the first place—unlimited economic and military support.

Nine more Ukraines if need be.

Biden conveyed reassurances that the United States is prepared to speed to their defense if they come under offensive action by Moscow. These nations include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

For want of doubt, here’s the just-in-case-you-missed-the-message amplification from NSC spokesman John Kirby. Said the Deep State’s favorite shill, who is apparently serving the national security complex in endless rotation, having moved from State to DOD and then to the National Security Council during the last decade, with a stop in between at CNN:

“These are largely the group of eastern flank NATO allies who are basically and, quite frankly, literally on the front lines of our collective defense right now,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had previewed. 

He said the president’s purpose in the meeting is to “reaffirm the United States’ unwavering support for the security of that alliance and trans-Atlantic unity.” It’s also meant to send a message to Putin that his country can’t intimidate these democracies, some of them relatively new and fragile.

Well, let’s see. Where is it documented that Putin has ever threatened Bulgaria or Hungary or  Slovakia or Lithuania or any of the others for that matter? As it transpired, Hungary’s leader even refused to attend this pointless Biden photo op.

After all, what in the world could Putin gain by attacking these nations and occupying what would be hostile populations and damaged economies? A tremendous fiscal drain on his already beleaguered finances would be the only certainty.

The fact is, Washington has become so crazed with anti-Putin war fever that it doesn’t even ask, let alone answer, these foundational questions. Instead, it has just lapsed into grade school reasoning by analogy. If Putin attacked the government of Ukraine, why then it’s a sure bet that the nine yellow dominoes highlighted in the map below are next on the list to fall.

No, not at all. Ukraine is sui generis. It’s a hodge-podge of variant histories, ethnicities and religious traditions that never belonged under the roof of a single state.

Moreover, its propinquity to things Russian is an unassailable matter of history. Prior to the arrival of communist rule after WWI, its various regions had marinated for centuries as vassals under the tutelage of Czarist Russia. Ukraine’s historically meandering boundaries, in fact, were only finally frozen in current form by the brutal dictates of Lenin, Stalin and  Khrushchev.

During the long amalgamated history of these neighboring, mainly Slavic populations the eastern and southern portions of the current Ukraine map became populated and economically developed by Russian speaking migrants. At length, they converted the largely empty, herder-dominated steppes into the flourishing bread basket, mining district and industrial work shop of old Russia.

This arrangement was essentially continued by the communist commissars after they consolidated control in 1922, save only for an arbitrary administrative re-arrangement which put the old “Novorossiya” (New Russia) of Catherine the Great’s time into a wholly unnatural state rechristened as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine.

These artificial borders and the ethnic hodge-podge within them were held together at the gun point of Ukraine’s local communist rulers until 1991, when the scourge of Soviet Communism perished from the earth. And almost immediately thereafter, the elections showed that the state confected by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev had never been built to last; and that the verdict of Ukraine’s nascent democracy was that partition would someday be the only answer.

As it happened, Viktor Yanukovych was the last democratically elected politician before Washington essentially took-over the country. Of course, by the writ of the Ukraine’s de facto rulers on the Potomac he was illegally deposed and driven out of the country via the coup d’ etat in February 2014.

Needless to say, Yanukovych had been the champion of the Russian speaking populations of the Donbas and southern rim of the Black Sea. He ran on what was called the “Regions” party platform in both 2004 and 2010, against vehemently pro-Ukrainian candidates, whose bases of support were in the central and west geographies.

As shown in the two maps below, both elections were a case of red state versus blue state electoral division on steroids. Except unlike the US where a GOP gubernatorial candidate actually got a 47% showing in the deep blue state of New York this past election, the vote split in the most hard core of the respective regions (dark red and dark blue) was upwards of 90/10 in many localities.

In the 2004 election, Yanukovych narrowly lost the overall count, even as he dominated overwhelmingly in the east and south.

2004 Election Results in Ukraine

By contrast, in 2010 Yanukovych retraced the same massive domination of his own Russian-speaking regions while striking out in the west. But this time with the help of Washington-based election consultants (i.e. the infamous Paul Manafort) he managed to accumulate enough incremental votes to come out on top in the nation-wide tally.

2010 Election Results in Ukraine

Needless to say, when the foolish neocons led by the detestable Victoria Nuland, who surrounded then Vice-President Joe Biden, fomented the coup against Yanukovych in February 2014 they had no clue as to the tenuous political balance they were upending.

But it didn’t take long to strike the match. In short order the followers of the WWII Hitler ally, Stephan Bandera, who dominated the unelected, Washington-installed government in Kiev, made two destructive moves that amounted to a signal to “let the partition begin”.

The first of these was to abolish Russian as an official language in the Donbass and elsewhere. And the second was the massacre by fire of pro-Russian trade unionists in a building in Odessa by supporters of the Kiev government.

It was only a matter of time, therefore, before most of the red-colored territories on the maps above declared their independence. It was also in short order that the people of what had been the Russian province of Crimea after Catherine the Great purchased it from the Ottoman’s in 1783 voted overwhelmingly to re-join the Russian Federation. That ended their brief sojourn in the Ukrainian state, which had been Khrushchev’s 1954  gift to the communist thugs in Kiev who had helped him seize power after Stalin’s death.

Also, in short order the new proto-Fascist government in Kiev moved to deeply antagonize its historic neighbor and former fealty overlord in Moscow by seeking to join NATO and launching a brutal, unrelenting war on the breakaway Republics of the Donbas. This onslaught ended up killing upwards of 15,000 civilians during the eight year run-up to Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Needless to say, Putin was no more interested in having nuclear missiles planted even closer to his own border than was President John Kennedy in October 1962. Nor was he about to countenance the continued slaughter of Russian speakers in the Donbass after Kiev launched a drastically stepped up shelling and bombing campaign on these beleaguered areas one week before the February 24th invasion.

Below, we will amplify further on the overwhelming reasons why the Ukraine situation is a one-off civil war situation and the unfinished and unstable residue of a state which was never built to last.

Accordingly, it is not a case at all of legitimate sovereign borders being violated. Nor does it involve an assault on the hypocritical notion of a “liberal international order” that has not actually ever existed and which, instead, has been a cover for Washington’s global hegemony all along.

But the lessons are nonetheless profound. History accumulates and eventually leads to destructive, but wholly unnecessary outcomes.

That is the case today with the utterly foolish action of Washington during the 1990s and 2000s to bring former Warsaw Pact Nations, and even breakaway Soviet Republics into a NATO alliance whose mission was over and done in 1991.

It should have been dismantled then and there. When the old Soviet monster with its 50,000 tanks and 7,000 nuclear warheads posed along-side the Bucharest Nine pictured above disappeared into the dustbin of history, there was no longer a threat to the east. There was no “front line” to defend.

At that point Washington should have and easily could have led the world to disarmament and to a revival of the lasting peace that had disappeared in the “Guns of August” in 1914.

But now the NATO section 5 mutual defense commitment to these nations is equivalent to a stupid charity that the nearly bankrupt Federal government cannot afford in any case.

There is absolutely nothing in it for the enhancement of America’s homeland security, and huge incentives for the politicians of these nations to caterwaul against Russia rather than seek peaceful accommodation.

But Sleepy Joe is a captive of the Dems “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and cannot think rationally for a moment about the Russian President.

Still, the latter most definitely did not cause the Dems to loose the 2016 election. They brought Trump’s freakish victory upon themselves by their choice of candidate and embrace of policies that much of Flyover America found deeply repugnant.

When Washington began its foolish campaign to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep in 1997, there was one American who actually possessed more knowledge, experience and analytical savvy about Russia and eastern Europe than the entire treaty-ratifying US Senate combined.

We are referring, of course, to Ambassador George F. Kennan. The latter was the intellectual father of the post-war containment policy against the Soviet Union and had spent decades in the US embassies of Europe and the Soviet Union, before going on to hold high rank in the State Department during the crucial years after WWII when the Cold War was born. Thereafter he joined academia at Princeton, where he produced a prodigious flow of scholarly work on national security policy, including a ringing dissent on the folly of LBJ’s war on Vietnam.

So by the time he penned a New York Times op ed upon the initial expansion of NATO in 1997, which he succinctly entitled “A Fateful Error”, the 93-year old Kennan had decades and decades of wisdom under his belt as a policy-maker and historian. And almost all of it was directly pertinent to the disorder left behind in the wake of the sudden collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991.

Kennan pulled no punches on the matter of NATO expansion:

The architect of the cold war policy of containment did not mince words in arguing that “expanding Nato would be the most fateful error in American policy in the entire post-cold war era”. He predicted that “it would inflame nationalistic, anti-western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion”, “have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy”, “restore the atmosphere of cold war to east-west relations”, and “impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking”.

A fair share of the script readers and stenographers who comprise today’s mainstream media, of course, have a faint knowledge of George Kennan and his unequivocal stance against NATO expansion, if any at all. Their blinders are simply the product of a quarter-century of accumulated recency bias—a process by which the once unthinkable becomes the unchallenged status quo.

The fact is, once the Soviet Union with its 50,000 tanks, 40,000 nuclear warheads, 5 million men under arms and frightfully militarized economy disappeared into the dustbin of history there was no purpose whatsoever for the perpetuation of NATO.

In that sense, Kennan’s “containment” policy had achieved 100% of its goal. The fearsome enemy on the eastern flank of Europe had literally vanished, meaning that what had been a one-time expedient of the Cold War could and should have been disbanded. In the rubble of the dismembered Soviet Union there was no threat left and nothing to defend or contain.

NATO’s warranted interment didn’t happen, however, and for the immensely trivial reason that the utterly unprincipled Bill Clinton determined to make hay one more time in the political posturing grounds of the “Captive Nations”. And with respect to this long forgotten matter your editor happened to have held a front row seat.

When we went to work on Capitol Hill for a GOP congressman at the peak of the Cold War in 1970 our first assignment was drafting a resolution during Captive Nations Week calling for the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania etc from yoke of Soviet tyranny. Such resolutions had nothing to do with actual policy, of course, which was to leave the Great Russian Bear undisturbed in his lair called the Warsaw Pact. But as a home-front politicking matter such resolutions were catnip to the eastern European constituencies.

After eastern Europe was peacefully liberated in 1991, however, this Captive Nations gambit became self-evidently obsolete, but the Clinton Administration soon had a handy PR substitute. Namely, NATO membership for the woebegone remnants of the Warsaw Pact—a seemingly harmless gesture that had no real purpose other than to express solidarity with back home constituencies of eastern European descent.

NATO expansion, in effect, was a way for Washington politicians to say: We are still with you!

Indeed, since there was no plausible reason for maintaining a war alliance against an enemy that didn’t exist, NATO became the equivalent of a diplomatic American Legion hall. It was a place for bureaucratic veterans of the Cold War to swap combat stories and to pretend they still had something worthwhile to do.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that harmless. The military-industrial complex soon realized that it needed a tangible enemy to justify current procurement and new weapons systems and also that the former Captive Nations comprised an expanded market for its wares.

So the 14 new NATO nations formed a ready-made shopping mall for additional weapons sales.

That all might have been harmless enough, save for two untoward developments. The first was the designation of Russia and Putin as enemy #1 by the neocons after their adventures against “terrorism” in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the middle east came a cropper a few years after the memory of 9/11 had dimmed.

The demonization of Putin became especially urgent in late 2013 when he deftly put the kibosh on the neocon’s plan for regime change in Syria. By convincing Assad to give up his chemical weapons under international supervision, the case for military removal of the Syrian president quickly evaporated.

In short order, however, these same neocons got their revenge by fomenting a coup d’ etat on Putin’s doorstep in Ukraine. And it was led by Washington’s hand-picked proto-fascists who detested all things Russian, including the considerable populations and regions of Ukraine which were Russian-speaking.

As it happened, you don’t need a tinfoil hat to recognize the near-conspiracy on the banks of the Potomac that sent the fragile politics of the artificial state of Ukraine into a tail-spin, and which at length paved the way to the catastrophe underway there at present.

The fact is, the detestable Kagan family comprises the high preisthood of the neocon synod that has infiltrated the foreign policy establishment of both parties. And it just so happens that the very high priest of that lamentable synod, Robert Kagan, is married to Victoria Nuland, a war-mongering national security apparatchik who has served every administration since Bush the Younger, and who was the archetict of the Maidan coup on the streets of Kiev in February 2014.

From that moment on, Putin was transformed from a mere bad guy into the incarnation of evil itself in the neocon narrative. And his rational actions after the coup to reclaim Moscow’s centuries old naval bases in Russian Crimea and to offer succor to the imperiled Russian-speaking populations of the Donbas only added fuel to the fire.

But then came the deluge. In a word, the freakish election of Donald Trump in 2016 was falsely laid at Putin’s doorstep, even as Washington’s bipartisan ruling elites and their henchman in the mainstream media went berserk against the Donald.

At length, it turned into a a full-fledged mania—a Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) that pales into insignificance prior outbreaks of American political irrationality, such as the McCarthyism of the 1950s and the Red Hunts of 1919.

In a word, the TDS has utterly destroyed Washington’s foreign policy compass. The demonization of Putin has become so extreme and un-moored from reality that Washington is literally possessed by a ghost of the old Soviet Union. That is, it imagines a ferocious and powerful enemy on the “eastern front” that simply does not exist.

For crying out loud, GDP is a measure of latent capacity to make war, but the GDP of NATO is 26 times larger than that of Russia. Likewise, defense budgets are a measure of actual current military capacity, of which NATO’s war spending is 15 times larger. And that’s in the here and now.

Moreover, from the point of view of Vlad Putin leaping over the Atlantic and Pacific ocean moats to invade the American shores, the question recurs: How many aircraft carriers does he have compared to America’s 20 aircraft and heliocraft carriers?

One!

And it’s 38 years old!

In a word, the absurdity of Washington’s proxy war against Russia and this week’s meeting of the so-called Bucharest Nine is the product of a foreign policy compass that has been shattered by two decades worth of myths and lies that served the short-term interests of Washington’s career politicians and their Deep State masters.

But go back to the fact that George Kennan was right 26 years ago and the truth that nothing has changed in the interim to alter his judgement.

In that context, what would a president not entombed in the false narrative of the past quarter century actually do?

Here are a few possible starters:

  1. Arrange exile for Zelensky in Costa Rica ( far better than he deserves);

  2. Agree to a settlement in Ukraine that partitions the country and allows the territories in the east and south previously known as Novorossiya (New Russia) to go their separate way or rejoin Mother Russia;

  3. Remove NATO’s missiles and other advanced warfare capability from the former Warsaw Pact countries, so as to eliminate the military threat on Russia’s doorstep;

  4. Arrange for the early dissolution of NATO after the Ukraine proxy war has been extinguished;

  5. Re-open and complete an updated version of the nuclear arms treaties enacted near the end of the Cold War, two of which were abrogated by Washington and one this week by Moscow;

  6. Cut the egregiously bloated $850 billion defense budget by 50% and lead the world into a new global treaty to drastically reduce the scale and cost of conventional arms;

  7. Begin the nearly insuperable challenge of sharply paring back the nation’s $2 trillion plus annual deficits, which extend as far as the eye can see.

That would be a start. It would put America back on the road toward rational homeland security, and enable a global future not imperiled by the threat of Nuclear Armageddon.

*  *  *

Originally posted at David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 16:45

Airpods Maker Races To Divest From China As Clients Push For India Expansion

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Airpods Maker Races To Divest From China As Clients Push For India Expansion

Rising geopolitical tensions and Covid uncertainty has forced Apple to reevaluate its manufacturing supply chain of iPhones, AirPods, HomePods, and MacBooks in China. Momentum has been building behind the scenes as Apple suppliers shift production capacity out of the country to friendlier shores in Southeast Asia. 

Apple suppliers rarely comment on supply chain shifts due to secrecy, but a new report via Bloomberg reveals AirPods maker GoerTek Inc.’s view of the shifting world and how it plans to diversify out of China. 

GoerTek is one of Apple’s many suppliers and is exploring new production facilities outside China. The company assembles AirPods and other consumer electronic products, such as drones, speakers, Bluetooth products, 3D electronic glasses, and LED series products.

GoerTek Deputy Chairman Kazuyoshi Yoshinaga told Bloomberg the company is investing $280 million in a new production facility in Vietnam and considering an India expansion. 

“Starting from last month, so many people from the client side are visiting us almost every day,” Yoshinaga said from his offices in Hanoi, Vietnam. He said the topic that dominates client discussions is “When can you move out” of China?

The uncertainty around China started around 2018 after President Trump launched a trade war. Then supply chain snarls at manufacturing facilities during Covid spooked many multinationals that had high exposure to the second largest economy in the world. And now, rising Sino-US tensions have fueled the fire to push companies to diversify out of China. 

Readers have been well aware of this trend over the last year:

From The Wall Street Journal to Bloomberg to other Western financial outlets, there have been countless stories about Apple exploring ways to shift production outside of China but never came from the company, instead from “sources” with direct knowledge. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has been very careful not to upset Beijing by announcing plans to divest from China because that could impact the company’s entire ecosystem centered in China, which employs millions. 

Bloomberg Intelligence estimated it would take Apple nearly a decade to shift 10% of its manufacturing capacity out of China. However, the GoerTek executive said it would happen much quicker. 

Yoshinaga said many Chinese tech manufacturers are experiencing the same discussions with clients as the need to divest from China. 

 “I would say currently 90% of them, they’re looking at that,” he added. “It’s the brand companies’ decisions.”

Yoshinaga said many clients had asked him to shift production to India:

“We get requests from our clients almost every month. ‘Do you have any plans to expand to India?'” he said. “If they decide to build up the production lines in India, we may have to think about it seriously. Currently we are focusing on developing our Vietnam production facilities.”

This interview is one of the first shared with the public that offers an insider point of view of the global economy fracturing and supply chains needing to be rejiggered

Michael Every, the global strategist at Rabobank, recently outlined in a note to clients which countries will benefit from friend-shoring… 

Every expects a lot of low-tech manufacturing jobs will go to India. 

France, Japan, Italy, and Canada could be the top beneficiaries of high-tech jobs. 

This decade could be one of the greatest global supply chain resets ever.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/28/2023 – 15:10