Tesla, Inc. plans to report fourth-quarter results after the market close on Wednesday. Investors seek updates on the 2023 demand outlook after the EV company slashed prices on its cars worldwide. 

The automaker realized it’s not only EV game in the ‘carbon-free’ town, as US, Europe, and Japanese car companies are ramping up EV production. Tesla slashed Model 3 and Model Y prices by up 20% in hopes of stoking demand as the entire EV market becomes saturated but also slows.

WSJ spoke with Stanly Tran, a 32yo California psychotherapist, who was on the waiting list to purchase a Ford Mustang Mach-E electric SUV but quickly canceled his reservation and bought a Model Y after hearing about the price cut. 

“‘There’s no way,'” Tran said when he heard about the price cut, adding the Model Y offered more range and a competitive price to the Mach-E. 

Tesla’s move to squeeze competitors by sacrificing some of its strong operating-profit margins is a desperate attempt to increase sales but also roiled the secondary market for used Teslas. 

Meanwhile, dealers who sell Teslas from their used-car inventory say valuations on some models fell by several thousand dollars following this month’s price cut. In the first 17 days of January, prices of 2020 model year or newer used Teslas were down about 25% from their peak in June of last year, about double the rate of the industrywide drop during that same period, according to Edmunds. –WSJ

One example of the price cut was the Model Y, now priced at $53,000, down from about $66,000. And if buyers qualify for the federal tax credit, they can loop off another $7,500. 

Bank of America analyst John Murphy said, unlike Tesla, traditional automakers have very thin profit margins or lose money on their EV lineups. He said such a move to reduce prices could spark a price war.  

“These price cuts are likely to make the business even more difficult, just as they are attempting to ramp production of EV offerings,” Murphy said.

The lingering question is if the Elon Musk-led carmaker stoked demand. WSJ has some data on that:

The number of car shoppers researching Tesla surged following the early January price cut, research site Edmunds said. The Model Y was the second-most-researched vehicle on Edmunds’ website for the week ended Jan. 15, up from 70th the week prior. The Model 3 moved up 36 spots.

Soon after the price cut, applications for financing of Tesla vehicles tripled at Tenet, a New York startup firm that provides financing to EV buyers. The influx of customers has remained elevated, Tenet Chief Executive Alex Liegl said.

One consequence of the price cut is that it might spark an EV price war with Detroit. Then there’s the issue of angry car dealers and owners who saw their Teslas drop in price overnight. Such a move is a sign of desperation by Tesla. 

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

U.S. health officials who spread inflated COVID-19 child death data in public meetings apologized to the source of the false data but not to the public, newly obtained emails show.

Drs. Katherine Fleming-Dutra and Sara Oliver, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), offered the false data in 2022 while U.S. officials weighed granting emergency authorization to COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months.

The study they cited for the data was published ahead of peer review by a group comprised primarily of British authors. The study was corrected after the public meetings.

Emails obtained by The Epoch Times showed that Fleming-Dutra and Oliver were alerted that they had spread misinformation. Neither the officials nor the CDC have informed the public of the false information. Newly obtained emails showed the officials apologized to Seth Flaxman, one of the study’s authors, and even offered to see whether the study could be published in the CDC’s quasi-journal.

“I feel … that we owe you an apology,” Oliver wrote to Flaxman on June 27, about 10 days after she and Fleming-Dutra falsely said there had been at least 1,433 deaths primarily attributed to COVID-19 in America among those 19 and younger. “We draw the attention of a variety of individuals with the ACIP meetings, and apologize that you got caught in it this time.”

“I am also sorry that you got pulled into the attention around the VRBPAC and ACIP meetings,” Fleming-Dutra added. She had presented the data to the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which advises the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the CDC.

Fleming-Dutra, Oliver, and Flaxman did not respond to requests for comment.

Inflated Death Toll

Using data from the CDC, Flaxman and his co-authors claimed that there were at least 1,433 deaths primarily attributed to COVID-19 among those aged 0 to 19 in the United States. The actual number was 1,088, the authors acknowledged in the corrected version of the study.

Fleming-Dutra presented the false data as rankings to VRBPAC on June 14, 2022 and ACIP three days later. It’s not clear why the CDC didn’t examine its own database rather than relying on a preprint study.

Oliver also cited the study while speaking during the ACIP meeting.

The data had an impact. It showed “that this is not a minor illness in children,” Dr. Katherine Poehling, one of the ACIP members, said at the time.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, later appeared to cite the inflated death toll and ACIP still cites the preprint, though it was later updated with the correct data.

Flaxman updated the study after receiving an email from Kelley Krohnert, a Georgia resident who has become a fact-checker of suspect COVID-19-related claims.

Krohnert’s concerns also made their way to Fleming-Dutra and Oliver, but the CDC officials have never publicly acknowledged promoting misinformation.

‘We Had an Error’

Flaxman acknowledged in emails to Krohnert, and in a June 27 message to Fleming-Dutra and Oliver, that he did not fully understand how the CDC’s death database works.

“Thanks for your work, and your great presentations to VRBPAC and ACIP. You cited our preprint. We’ve just updated it (see attached; it should appear on medrxiv in the next day). While none of the substantive conclusions change, we had an error which you may have seen was picked up very prominently by a blogger,” Flaxman wrote. “I am writing first to say sorry–I really regret that this happened. It was my mistake in misunderstanding the [death certificate] data, and not realizing about CDC Wonder’s provisional database.”

Flaxman also asked for feedback on the updated study and whether the officials could help with submitting the paper to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), a quasi-journal the CDC publishes that only includes articles (pdf) vetted and shaped by top CDC officials to align with the agency’s policies.

“We’ve never tried to publish there, so I don’t know the process or how often they consider manuscripts from non-CDC authors,” Flaxman said. “If you do think this would be a possible route, perhaps one or both of you would want to help us revise the manuscript and join as an author?”

Oliver wrote back first, saying that she wanted to apologize to Flaxman and that “we will absolutely review and provide feedback,” as well as context.

“We are more than happy to do that without formally being co-authors. That way you can avoid formal CDC clearance,” Oliver wrote.

Fleming-Dutra then chimed in with her apology, adding, “I am glad to hear that you and your team are continuing to do this important work.” She recommended Flaxman and his team review studies published in the MMWR to get a sense of the format of the digest. A large portion of her email was redacted under an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act for “inter-agency or intra-agency records.” The Epoch Times has appealed that and other redactions.

Flaxman then notified the CDC officials that the corrected study had been made public. Fleming-Dutra replied, but the email was redacted.

“Thanks, very useful feedback. Small update: we’re hoping to submit to JAMA Pediatrics in the next week or so, and [redacted],” Flaxman answered. He indicated that the CDC had provided feedback and questioned on how to cite it in the submission.

Read more here…

A new study released this week by the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has concluded that America’s defense industry is “not adequately prepared” for “a protracted conventional war” with an enemy with a large military like China.

The findings were the result of a war games simulation which also relied heavily on observations and statistics being gained from the Ukraine-Russia war, and Washington’s ongoing military support role to Kiev.

Information from the Ukraine war led CSIS to find that the US would rapidly deplete its munitions, particularly long-range, precision-guided ones – in merely less than a week of a hot war with China in the Taiwan Strait.

“The main problem is that the U.S. defense industrial base — including the munitions industrial base — is not currently equipped to support a protracted conventional war,” the study emphasized.

“The bottom line is the defense industrial base, in my judgment, is not prepared for the security environment that now exists,” CSIS’s Seth Jones concluded in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

As the study’s main author, Jones posed the question: “How do you effectively deter if you don’t have sufficient stockpiles of the kinds of munitions you’re going to need for a China-Taiwan Strait kind of scenario?” According to more from the study:

“As the war in Ukraine illustrates, a war between major powers is likely to be a protracted, industrial-style conflict that needs a robust defense industry able to produce enough munitions and other weapons systems for a protracted war if deterrence fails…”

“Given the lead time for industrial production, it would likely be too late for the defense industry to ramp up production if a war were to occur without major changes.”

The report additionally pointed out that the slow-moving nature of US bureaucracy and oversight is also a fundamental aspect to the problem:

The study also said that the U.S.’s foreign military sales (FMS) take too long because they need to be initiated by the Department of State and then executed by the Department of Defense and ultimately approved by Congress. Foreign sales have benefits, including supporting the U.S. defense industry, strengthening ally relations and preventing the sale of adversary systems to other countries, the study said.

“The U.S. FMS system is not optimal for today’s competitive environment — an environment where such countries as China are building significant military capabilities and increasingly looking to sell them overseas,” the study stated.

It does seem the Pentagon is taking note, and is aware that events in Ukraine have exposed US defense shortcomings, as the Biden administration chooses to get more and more involved. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the US plans to boost production of artillery ammunition by 500% over the next two years.

Whereas the US Army previously produced 14,400 155mm shells a month, the new plans could see those numbers hit over 90,000 each month.

Authored by Julie Kelly via AmGreatness.com,

A New Jersey man will be sentenced on Friday for his participation in the events of January 6, 2021. Julian Khater, 33, faces up to eight years in prison for allegedly using pepper spray against three police officers, including the late Brian Sicknick, that afternoon.

Khater and his friend, George Tanios, were arrested in March 2021 in connection with the alleged assault. After spending more than 18 months in a fetid D.C. jail under pretrial detention orders – Judge Thomas Hogan repeatedly denied attempts by his family to post bail – Khater pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon.

(Tanios rejected numerous plea offers on the same charges; prosecutors finally dropped the assault counts, and he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors.)

The Justice Department’s case was flimsy from the start, which I explained shortly after the pair’s arrest. Khater and Tanios are nothing more than human props to sustain arguably the biggest falsehood related to January 6—that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed in the line of duty. Even though a coroner concluded Sicknick died of two strokes caused by a blood clot near his brain, his death is still shamefully exploited by everyone from Joe Biden to congressional Democrats and even Sicknick’s own loved ones.

Capitol police announced Sicknick’s passing on January 7, 2021, with claims he was “injured while physically engaging with protesters.” Donald Trump and his supporters were immediately branded as cop killers.

The story, however, kept changing. First, the New York Times reported Sicknick had been bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher. After the paper retracted that story in February 2021, the media, no doubt prompted by the Justice Department, suggested Sicknick died of an allergic reaction to chemical spray.

In an attempt to salvage the credibility of its first bogus account, the Times published another lengthy report in March 2021 with cherry-picked clips and screenshots designed to reenact the assault.

“New videos obtained by The New York Times show publicly for the first time how the U.S. Capitol Police officer who died after facing off with rioters on Jan. 6 was attacked with chemical spray.” 

But body camera footage from a D.C. Metropolitan police officer on duty that day raises serious doubts about the government’s claims and the Times’ face-saving story about what happened to Sicknick.

In fact, the video shows how police, not protesters, gassed their fellow officers with chemical spray. Stricken officers, including Sicknick, appear to seek aid and shelter from the toxic gas, causing the collapse of a security line on the west side of the building.

This six-minute clip from Officer Daniel Thau’s body camera shows the accidental discharge of a 40-millimeter canister of a chemical irritant around 2:25 p.m. on January 6. Thau ordered Officer Richard Khoury to aim a launcher with the canister at protesters assembled on scaffolding erected for Biden’s inauguration.

“Fire it up in the air,” Thau instructed Khoury. “Just fucking shoot.”

But Khoury misfired. “What the fuck?” he asked.

A large cloud of chemical powder fell short of the scaffolding and instead enveloped a crowd of officers standing on the northern end of the west side of the Capitol. Officers coughed and gasped for air; some were bent over in pain. 

The gas cloud quickly traveled southward to where Sicknick was stationed, propelled by a brisk 18-mile-per-hour wind out of the north in Washington on January 6.

Prosecutors claim Khater sprayed Sicknick at around 2:23 p.m., but the evidence, just like everything in the January 6 saga, is dubious at best. Darren Beattie at Revolver News carefully disassembled both the Times’ reporting and the government’s evidence.

“[From] the moment Khater raises a spray canister onward, there is not a single moment in which Khater appears in the same video frame as Officer Sicknick,” Beattie wrote in March 2021. 

That’s because, according to a separate choppy video released by the government in April 2021, Sicknick left that area and headed north—presumably walking straight into the drifting chemical cloud produced by Khoury’s launcher.

Sicknick is then photographed bent over near inaugural scaffolding, the same area where officers quickly advanced up a set of stairs to seek fresh air on the upper west terrace after Khoury’s misfire.

It just happened to be the exact location where Sicknick is also seen on surveillance video recovering from the effects of chemical spray and rinsing his eyes with bottled water about two minutes after Khoury’s misfire.

The Times’ March 2021 also suggested Khater’s “attack” on law enforcement caused many officers to abandon the secure perimeter.

“The attack on Officer Sicknick and his colleagues comes at a key moment. Within five minutes, the police line collapses, officers retreat into the Capitol and rioters gain control over the west side of the building.”

Except that’s not accurate.

Testimony by a top Capitol Police official this month confirmed it was the misfire by Officer Khoury that led to the collapse of the police line, which at the time was successfully keeping the crowd away from the building:

Defense Attorney Bradford Geyer: As we play this, if you can try to pay attention to the smoke, whether it’s just smoke or whether it’s [tear] gas, and the reactions of the officers. Okay?

Mendoza: OK.

(Video played.)

Geyer: Does it seem to you there’s some kind of retreat by the officers along the line in this video?

Report Ad

Mendoza: Yes.

Geyer: So could this be a reason why right around this time you had to confront protestors coming into the crypt and coming into that first floor, because there was a strategic retreat, the lines gave way, and the crowd just walked forward with provocateurs.

Mendoza: I can’t say why that specific crowd was where they were at the time they were there.

Mendoza also confirmed that police used “a lot of munitions that day.” Thau’s full video shows his arrival at the west side of the Capitol shortly after 1:00 p.m., more than an hour before the building was breached on the other side. Officers are seen coughing and rubbing their eyes after being hit with tear gas deployed by law enforcement.

At around 1:50 p.m., Thau ordered another officer to “drop one in there” against the nonviolent crowd.

He then warned his colleagues to protect themselves.

“Wind, wind!” he shouted, referring to high wind conditions.

As Thau tended to the injured, one officer screamed at him: “Stop doing the goddamn pepper spray!”

Even giving the government the benefit of the doubt—that Khater attacked Sicknick a minute or so before Khoury’s misfire—it’s clear the individuals responsible for discharging copious amounts of dangerous chemicals into the air on January 6 were police officers. (Khater is seen on open source video at 2:14 p.m. complaining that “they just sprayed me,” referring to police. And body camera footage from the D.C. Metro police officers who recorded the alleged attack remains under protective seal.)

The notion that a palm-sized container of pepper spray could disable three officers standing several feet away is simply not believable. Officer Caroline Edwards, one of the three officers Khater is accused of attacking, told the January 6 select committee that the spray she encountered was much stronger than what she endured during training. “I remember it hurting a lot more, which is saying something because the academy’s—our pepper spray is—well, it’s actually Sabre Red. It’s no joke. It literally feels like someone punched—just punched like two holes in your eye sockets. This felt like—it was just pain unimaginable.”

That wasn’t produced by anything allegedly sprayed by Trump supporters. Potent gas that caused dozens of officers to struggle to breathe, see, or stand—some reportedly vomited—was used needlessly by law enforcement itself against a crowd obeying police commands and respecting barriers at the time.

How many of the 140 or so officers reportedly injured on January 6 were hurt by the actions of their own colleagues?

Of course, these facts have surfaced too late to save Julian Khater, who will face the vengeful wrath of federal prosecutors and an octogenarian judge, all of whom consider January 6 an act of domestic terror. The New York Times will again escape accountability for publishing another flawed story about what happened to Brian Sicknick.

And the false narrative about Sicknick’s death will remain intact and leveraged for political purposes, evidence be damned—a recurring theme when it comes to anything about the events of January 6.

*  *  *

Your support helps protect our independence so that American Greatness can keep delivering top-quality, independent journalism that’s free to everyone. Every contribution, however big or small, helps secure our future. If you can, please consider a recurring monthly donation.

Two weeks after the state of Texas filed a lawsuit to stop the Biden administration from ignoring a federal immigration law that prevents illegal immigrants from residing in the US if they’re likely to rely on taxpayer-funded programs, a group of 20 Republican-led states, spearheaded once again by Texas AG Ken Paxton – have sued the administration again.

This time, the 20 states and America First Legal, have claimed in the suit that the Department of Homeland Security effectively created a visa program without congressional approval by “announcing that it will permit up to 360,000 aliens annually from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to be ‘paroled’ into the United States for two years or longer and with eligibility for employment authorization.”

The lawsuit claims that DHS exceeded congressional limits on parole authority – and that the agency can only issue parole on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, the agency did not have the authority to authorize the program, and ignored the mandatory notice-and-comment rulemaking requirement detailed in the Administrative Procedure Act, Just the News reports.

Since President Joe Biden took office, more than 4 million illegal migrants have entered the United States, with a record 2.4 million doing so in fiscal year 2022 alone. The crisis shows no sign of abating, with roughly 216,000 migrants crossing the border in December 2022, an 11% increase over the November totals.

That surge was largely driven by an influx of Cuban and Nicaraguan migrants, which the Biden administration took to indicate that its parole program for Venezuelans was succeeding, given the decline of migrants from that country. Migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti would benefit from the expanded parole process. -JTN

When the program was originally announced, President Biden claimed that the aim was to limit the number of uninvited arrivals on the southern border because migrants would be encouraged to obtain pre-approval for entry while still in their home country.

“We anticipate this action is going to substantially reduce the number of people attempting to cross our southwest border without going through a legal process,” said Biden.

Read the complaint below:

GOP state lawsuit on humani… by Adam Shaw

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former socialite and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell told Britain’s Talk TV in a jailhouse interview that she believes her former associate and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was murdered.

Epstein, who was facing multiple charges of sex trafficking of minors, was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City in August 2019.

His death was officially ruled as a suicide by hanging, but there has been widespread speculation about the cause. For instance, a forensic pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother said multiple fractures found in his neck were “very unusual in suicidal hangings” and more consistent with strangulation.

Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a Florida prison for helping Epstein sexually abuse girls, told Talk TV that she believes Epstein’s death was no suicide.

“I believe that he was murdered,” Maxwell said in the Talk TV interview. “I was shocked. Then I wondered how it had happened because as far as I was concerned, he was going to … I was sure he was going to appeal.”

Many people have united in skepticism that Epstein could have taken his own life a mere month after being arrested on sex trafficking charges.

In particular, a number of people have pointed to Epstein’s connections to powerful individuals, some of whom may have been implicated in illicit activities with him and would have wanted to keep him quiet.

Maxwell said earlier that one of her fellow inmates was offered money to murder her and schemed to “strangle her in her sleep,” according to court papers filed last year by her lawyers ahead of her sentencing.

“This incident reflects the brutal reality that there are numerous prison inmates who would not hesitate to kill Ms. Maxwell—whether for money, fame, or simple ‘street cred,’” the lawyers wrote in the filing, suggesting someone may have wanted Maxwell dead badly enough to pay for it.

Maxwell was sentenced on June 28, 2022, to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.

She is serving time at Florida’s low-security FCI Tallahassee prison.

Questions Unanswered

Questions have swirled about the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death since he was found dead on Aug. 10, 2019, in his cell with a bedsheet around his neck.

Epstein’s death sparked outrage that such a high-profile prisoner could have gone unmonitored at a facility where such infamous inmates like Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Wall Street swindler Bernie Madoff came and went without incident.

Epstein had been placed on suicide watch about a month before his death after he was found on his cell floor on July 23 with bruises on his neck. He was later taken off suicide watch and placed in a high-security housing unit where he was less closely monitored but still supposed to be checked on every half hour.

Two jail guards who were supposed to monitor Epstein were accused by prosecutors of falling asleep and surfing the internet that night rather than checking on him every 30 minutes.

The pair, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, would later admit they “willfully and knowingly” falsified records to make it seem they were following the correct check-in protocols with regard to Epstein.

In January 2022, the criminal case against Noel and Thomas was dropped after they complied with the six-month deferred prosecution agreements they agreed to earlier, which included 100 hours of community service and cooperating with a Justice Department (DOJ) probe into Epstein’s death.

Medical Examiner: ‘The Cause Is Hanging’

Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson ruled Epstein’s death a suicide by hanging. She said she made the determination “after careful review of all investigative information, including complete autopsy findings.”

Not long after Sampson ruled Epstein’s death a suicide, Epstein’s brother hired forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who was in the room for Epstein’s autopsy, to review the evidence.

Baden, who was New York City’s chief medical examiner in the 1970s, said at the time that the evidence suggested Epstein may have been murdered. He said that Epstein’s injuries were more consistent with those found in homicide victims and that he hadn’t seen the type of neck bone injuries that Epstein had in any suicides that he had investigated. Baden added, however, that his observations were not conclusive.

Some experts have said that, while uncommon, injuries to the hyoid bone that Epstein had do sometimes occur in suicidal hangings, more so in older people. Epstein was 66 at the time of his death.

After Baden issued his opinion, Sampson responded by saying that no conclusions should be drawn from a single piece of evidence or unusual injury.

“I stand firmly behind our determination of the cause and manner of death for Mr. Epstein,” she said in October 2019. “The cause is hanging, the manner is suicide.”

‘Serious Irregularities’

Then-Attorney General William Barr said at the time that there were “serious irregularities” at the Manhattan jail where Epstein died, vowing that the DOJ’s inspector general would “get to the bottom of what happened” and that there “will be accountability.” That investigation continues and no report has been released yet.

Following Barr’s remarks, then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and then-ranking member Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) sent a letter to the Bureau of Prisons asking 23 questions about Epstein’s death. In the letter, they cited deficiencies in inmate protocol and requested information about the Bureau of Prisons’ suicide prevention policies, resources, and staffing.

A subsequent report (pdf) prepared by the Bureau of Prisons National Suicide Prevention Coordinator, Psychology Services Branch, Central Office, put forward a timeline of events and circumstances leading up to Epstein’s death.

The report stated that a facilities assistant described Epstein as “distraught, sad, and a little confused” when he arrived at the correctional facility on July 6, 2019.

The assistant was cited in the report as saying that, even though Epstein said he felt fine, she wasn’t convinced and wrote that he seemed “dazed and withdrawn” and advised in an email that someone from Psychology should talk to him to “just be on the safe side and prevent any suicidal thoughts.”

Following a court proceeding on July 8, Epstein denied having any suicidal thoughts but due to risk factors was put on psychological observation, a protocol that is less restrictive than suicide watch. The report says he was taken off psychological observation several days later.

Read more here…

The Kremlin has weighed in on The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moving the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. As we reported earlier, the body of scientists and intellectuals which have maintained the clock since 1947 on Tuesday moved it to 90 seconds till midnight, which is the closest it’s been in history. It seeks to gauge how close the world stands to nuclear war and total annihilation. 

The Bulletin explained that the clock moving closer is mostly due to escalation among world powers in Ukraine. The Russian government on Wednesday called it “really alarming” – with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirming that de-escalation does not at all seem to be on the horizon, and that the question of ceasefire talks is a thing of the past.

“On the whole, the situation is really alarming,” Peskov said, explaining that at this point nations must be “particularly attentive, vigilant and responsive” – and willing to take appropriate measures to reduce risk of nuclear war.

The Tuesday change put the clock closer by 10 seconds compared to the year before.  As The Hill reviews: “The previous record of 100 seconds to midnight was set in 2020. In the clock’s history, midnight has been as far as 17 minutes away, which happened in 1991 at the end of the Cold War.”

“Midnight has typically been close to 10 or more minutes away throughout much of the clock’s history, even during the Cold War, but it has been no more than a few minutes away in modern times.”

The bipartisan DC consensus in favor of Biden’s war escalation in Ukraine blissfully marches on, as usual, despite graver warnings of escalation. The more escalation there is, the less debate.

The key question remains: how are the lives of Americans improved from this war?👇 https://t.co/Ll27tIsogh

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 25, 2023

With the US and Germany on Wednesday confirming that they are sending heavy battle tanks in a fresh major escalation which a mere months ago had not been a realistic consideration, journalist Glenn Greenwald has pointed out that we are in a situation of “more escalation” and “less debate”.

He poses the question of the US public broadly – “The key question remains: how are the lives of Americans improved from this war?”

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

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) is calling for an investigation into the “historic theft of taxpayer dollars from COVID-era unemployment programs” after a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that as much as $60 billion may have been spent on fraudulent claims for unemployment insurance during the pandemic.

The report, released on Jan. 23, said that the Department of Labor (DOL) stated that about $878 billion in total unemployment benefits were paid from April 2020 through September 2022.

GAO said that at least $4.3 billion in unemployment insurance (UI) fraud has been formally confirmed by state workforce agencies, while at least $45 billion in payments have been flagged for potential fraud by the DOL’s Office of Inspector General.

The federal government started an unemployment aid program in March 2020. GAO added that it’s difficult to know for sure the extent of fraud in unemployment insurance programs across the system during the pandemic.

For example, it noted that the Labor Department, based on states’ reviews of samples of claims, estimates that as much as $8.5 billion was spent on fraudulent UI claims in 2021.

According to GAO, if that level were to be extrapolated to total spending across all UI programs during the wider pandemic period, it would suggest more than $60 billion in fraudulent payments were made.

‘Hard-Earned Tax Dollars Lost to Criminal Activity, Fraud’

The report notes, however, that the figure is an estimate, subject to limitations regarding its validity and accuracy, and should be “interpreted with caution” while the actual amount is unclear.

In a statement on Monday, Smith said that the GAO report “only scratches the surface of what is publicly known about the unprecedented scope, size, and severity of the fraud.”

“This report proves what Republicans have already been saying. American families, whose wages have eroded under President [Joe] Biden’s inflation crisis, have watched as hundreds of billions of their hard-earned tax dollars were lost to criminal activity and fraud because Democrats refused to acknowledge the problem and repeatedly rejected Republican efforts to put basic safeguards in place to protect against this activity,” Smith said.

“Congressional Democrats walked away from their oversight responsibilities of getting to the bottom of how this happened, what they could do to prevent it, and even how much has fully been lost, leaving criminals to profit off the backs of taxpayers. Republicans are committed to investigating fraud and conducting rigorous oversight on behalf of working families,” he added.

The Missouri lawmaker also pointed to testimony (pdf) by DOL Inspector General Larry D. Turner in March last year stating that at least $163 billion in pandemic UI benefits could have been “paid improperly, with a significant portion attributable to fraud.”

According to The Washington Post, the government has so far recovered just over $4 billion of that, which amounts to just 2.4 percent of the wrongful payments.

Actual Unemployment Fraud Figure Could Be Much Higher

Smith also pointed to estimates by experts including Blake Hall, CEO of ID.me, who told Axios in 2021 that as much as $400 billion went on fraudulent unemployment claims. Half of all unemployment spending may have been stolen, Hall told the publication.

A statement issued in September 2022 by the DOL inspector general said that more than 190,000 investigations relating to UI fraud have been opened since the start of the pandemic, but so far just over 1,000 individuals have been charged.

While GAO noted in its report that the DOL has taken steps to address fraudulent jobless benefits, such as issuing guidance, providing funding to states, and deploying teams to recommend improvements to state unemployment insurance programs, the watchdog noted that as of December 2022, the department has “not yet developed an antifraud strategy based on leading practices in GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework.”

Read more here…

A little more than a week after the Trump campaign urged Facebook parent Meta to lift the ban on the former president, the social media giant has agreed to reinstate him on both Facebook and Instagram after a two-year ban, according to Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs.

“We’ve always believed that Americans should be able to hear from the people who want to lead the country,” Clegg said.

“We don’t want to stand in the way of that.”

As Meta wrote in a lengthy blog post:

“Social media is rooted in the belief that open debate and the free flow of ideas are important values, especially at a time when they are under threat in many places around the world. As a general rule, we don’t want to get in the way of open, public and democratic debate on Meta’s platforms — especially in the context of elections in democratic societies like the United States.

The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box. But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real world harm — a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse — we act.

…

We know that any decision we make on this issue will be fiercely criticized. Reasonable people will disagree over whether it is the right decision. But a decision had to be made, so we have tried to make it as best we can in a way that is consistent with our values and the process we established in response to the Oversight Board’s guidance.”

Interestingly, Meta’s Oversight Board wrote its own blog post distancing itself from the decision: 

Today’s decision by Meta is a pivotal moment in the debate over the best way to handle harmful content posted by politicians on social media.

Today’s decision to reinstate Mr. Trump on Meta’s platforms sat with Meta alone — the Board did not have a role in the decision.

As Nick Clegg noted, “I am the the ultimate decision maker on these kinds of issues in the company.”

Cue the outrage mob explaining how this will end democracy as we know it…

Trump incited an insurrection. And tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

He’s shown no remorse. No contrition.

Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous.@facebook caved, giving him a platform to do more harm.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) January 25, 2023

Despite all the fearmongering, Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, says “this is the right call”…

“…not because the former president has any right to be on the platform but because the public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office. There are narrow circumstances in which social media platforms really have no choice but to take down political leaders’ posts – which is why we endorsed Meta’s decision to suspend Trump’s account when he used it to encourage violence. In most circumstances, though, it’s better if the major social media platforms err on the side of leaving speech up, even if the speech is offensive or false, so that it can be addressed by other users and other institutions.”

Additionally, Katie Fallow, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, points out that “big tech platforms already exercise a huge amount of power over public discourse online. In general, we don’t want them also deciding which political leaders we hear from and which ones we don’t.”

Former President Trump has responded in his usual under-stated manner:

Trump was banned from the platform shortly after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The reinstatement of Trump’s accounts will allow him to run ads via his Facebook and Instagram pages, which have 34 million and 23 million followers, respectively.

• Trump relied heavily on Facebook ads in previous election cycles for fundraising and list-building.

• Under Elon Musk, Twitter has also reinstated Trump’s account, but he has not posted yet, continuing to rely on his account at Truth Social instead. -Axios

That said, Clegg warned that “We just do not want — if he is to return to our services — for him to do what he did on January 6, which is to use our services to delegitimize the 2024 election, much as he sought to discredit the 2020 election.”

Trump’s accounts will not be reinstated immediately, as Meta engineers will need time to build in nanny capabilities to restrict certain posts or ad capabilities in the future, if needed.

The former president will be subject to new policies governing accounts by public figures during periods of civil unrest – under which Meta can restrict the account for between one month and two years.

• More serious violations will merit either a six or 12-month restriction from creating content or a full account restriction for two years, if severe.

• Trump will also be subject to a crisis policy protocol, introduced by Meta in August, that will consider both on and off-platform risks of imminent harm to evaluating whether the actions or speech of any public figures requires sanctioning.

• “If he now posts further violating content, that content will be removed, of course, and he could be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg said. -Axios

Interestingly, Trump has an exclusivity deal with his social media company, Truth Social – which requires him to “first channel any and all social media communications” to Truth for at least six hours before cross-posting the content to other platforms, according to SEC filings. That agreement expires in June, according to Rolling Stone, which notes that it would be right around when Republican primary season begins to heat up.

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

In Part 1 of this article, I laid out the mass formation psychosis theory postulated by Mattias Desmet in his book The Psychology of Totalitarianism and how totalitarian minded politicians and bureaucrats manipulated the masses by creating the covid crisis. Now I will focus on how this will impact the Fourth Turning we are currently trying to survive.

Decades of social indoctrination and degraded ability to think critically has left most people hopelessly unable to resist the vitriolic opinions of those under the spell of coronavirus mass formation. Even though they didn’t necessarily believe the covid narrative, especially when it became clear only the very old (especially when tyrant governors inserted infected patients into nursing homes) and the very obese actually died with covid, these people still went along. Even the CDC admitted only 6% of deaths were attributable to covid alone.

Based upon research like the Milgram Experiment, we know average people will obey authority without question, even when they know their actions are causing pain. The conformity research done by Solomon Asch explains why a huge percentage of the global population just conformed to what appeared to be a majority opinion. Asch’s experiment had 8 test subjects, but 7 of them worked for Asch. They asked them which line was the same length as Exhibit 1. The 7 Asch employees answered C. Only 25% of the case subjects consistently answered A. They were cowed into giving a patently absurd answer due to peer pressure and lack of faith in their own judgement.

When you have 30% of the population as true believers of the covidian religion, with their savior Fauci, prophets Walensky, Birx, Gottlieb, Biden, the pope, a slew of Big Pharma paid priests for hire, Hollywood elites, low IQ athletes, and a highly compensated mass media campaign of fear and loathing, the 40% in the middle really had no chance to not be pulled into the vortex of pandemia. From the outset they were inundated with data like Neal Ferguson’s Imperial College model of death. Putting up a scary chart, even though it was based on absurd assumptions, is considered fact by the lazy, non-thinking masses.

Shutting down the world was based on this worthless fraudulent model. Add some fake videos of dead people piling up in the streets in China, with media talking heads declaring hospitals being overrun (even though nurses had time to do coordinated dance routines on Tik Tok), and graphics on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox showing cases rising (based on a faulty PCR test set too high), and Fauci knowingly lying about the effectiveness of masks and the ineffectiveness of ivermectin and hydroxychloquine, and you’ve got panic.

Cases were not sicknesses. Covid deaths were deaths from something else, while testing positive for covid. The average age of “covid” deaths was 83. The overall survival rate was 99.7%. If you were under 70 it was 99.9%. If you were under 40 it was 99.999%. It was nothing more than the annual flu, with a multi-billion-dollar marketing budget, paid for by the same taxpayers who were locked down and out of work.

Anyone with the gall to dispute the narrative with factual data, sound reasoning, and pointing out the cure was worse than the disease, became an enemy of the state and subject to intolerant attacks, cancellation from society, and censorship on par with the worst totalitarian regimes in history. The physicians’ principle of Do No Harm was discarded for the almighty buck. The measures taken to “defeat” a relatively benign virus wreaked havoc upon the world economically, socially, and psychologically.

The damage they caused and the unintended consequences they unleashed will have a profound negative impact on the world forever. The animosity, mistrust, fear, and suffering created by those running this shitshow will fuel the coming chaos, havoc and war which always arrives during the waning years of a Fourth Turning. The 30% still firmly under the sway of their mass formation psychosis will never hold Fauci, Biden and the myriad of covid cronies responsible for their crimes against humanity. As Desmet explains, everything can be rationalized by the covidian cult.

“Another consequence, that is very typical for totalitarian states, is that people become radically intolerant for dissonant voices. Because if someone tells another story, if someone claims that the official story is wrong, then this person threatens to wake the people up and they will get angry because they’re confronted with the initial anxiety and the initial psychological discontent. So, they direct all that aggression at these dissonant voices, at the other voices. And at the same time, they are radically tolerant for their leaders, for the people who pronounce the mainstream narrative. These people can actually cheat and lie and manipulate and do everything they want, but they will always be forgiven by the crowd because the crowd seems to think that they do it for their own sake. That’s also part of the mechanism of mass formation.” 

– Mattias Desmet – The Psychology of Totalitarianism

Being wrong means nothing to those who have latched onto a narrative that gives their lives meaning. This is what explains how seemingly intelligent people could believe an utterly absurd narrative, built upon falsified data, inaccurate statistics, and irrational hype. Subjective conclusions pronounced by those who benefited from those conclusions are not objective facts. The last two years have been a far greater psychological calamity than biological catastrophe. The mental illness which has infected the masses has opened the Pandora’s box of totalitarianism and a surveillance state never envisioned by Orwell in his worst dreams.

The lockdowns and vaccines have caused more death than they prevented. Suicides, overdose deaths, deaths due to preventative healthcare not accessed, deaths by ventilators and Remdesivir, deaths due to not allowing doctors to prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, and now sudden deaths from the Pfizer and Moderna jabs are all verifiable and factual, but no empathy from the covidian cult is forthcoming for these victims. As Desmet points out, once the mass formation began it encouraged various factions to keep it going for their own self-interest. The cult never wants it to end.

“But this is also being constructed by politicians who are under pressure from public opinion and feel compelled to act decisively, by leaders who have lost control of society and are now able to regain control because of the virus, by experts who have to hide their ignorance and choose the flight ahead, by academics who see an opportunity to assert themselves, by the inherent tendency in man for hysteria and drama, by pharmaceutical companies that sense a golden opportunity, by media that thrive on sensational stories, through testimonials of unique cases in which the course of the disease was exceptionally difficult.” 

– Mattias Desmet

So here we are in early 2023, with the mass formation psychosis still thoroughly intact, authoritarian measures still in place, anger building among all three factions, as the 30% dissenters have been proven right without being given credit, the hypnotized 30% who were wrong want more restrictions and punishments, and the go along to get along 40% are slowly realizing they were duped and experiencing massive regret. We face a multi-pronged situation which is likely to result in a tragedy of untold proportions over the next few years.

Having a major segment of your population proud of their willful ignorance and believing their opinions based on emotions and what they are told by mass media, is as valid as someone who basis their judgement on critical well researched thought and factual data, sets the stage for tragic denouement to this Fourth Turning. The superficiality of the citizenry, celebration of deviancy, financial illiteracy, unserious culture, technology obsession, and devastating level of governmental, academic, media and corporate corruption, are a perfect recipe for the fall of the American empire.

The mass formation needs an object of fear to keep its intensity at a hypnotic level. First it was masks and lockdowns. Next it was the vaccines and destroying the lives of anti-vaxxers. Next it was Putin and Russia as the evil antagonist. Then it was climate change and banning gas stoves. Everything these people believe is based on absurdities and purposeful ignorance of facts. The societal woes which allowed this to blossom have not dissipated and until our culture undergoes a wrenching reset forced upon it by an inevitable financial collapse and likely global conflict, our chances to survive as a nation are slim.

This is what must happen during a Fourth Turning. The existing social order is swept away and replaced by something better or worse. We will either continue down this path towards global totalitarianism, where you own nothing, are under government surveillance 24/7, ask permission to travel more than 15 minutes from your home, accept your regular booster shots, and are tagged like cattle through social credit scores tied to your use of their central bank digital currencies, or the minority of resisters and critical thinkers recapture control and steer this ship back towards liberty, freedom, sustainable local communities, and lives which regain meaning and purpose.

Where I disagree with Desmet is regarding his opinion the leaders (Fauci, Gates, Soros, Schwab, Biden) being followed during this mass formation psychosis event were also under a self-hypnosis driven by their ideological beliefs. He doesn’t give much credence to the “conspiracy theorists” who believe this was an engineered event to promote the Great Reset and introduce authoritarian measures upon the masses. As one of those “conspiracy theorists” I no longer believe in coincidences.

Fauci stated in early 2017 Trump would face a deadly pandemic during his term, when we hadn’t experienced a real pandemic in decades. Fauci illegally funded the gain of function research at the Wuhan bio-weapon lab. Gates, Soros, and Fauci ran the Event 201 pandemic simulation in October 2019, a few months before covid. Pfizer and Moderna already had their gene therapies (which had failed miserably in previous trials) waiting for the green light from those running the show. The Build Back Better campaign was orchestrated across the world in every western country. I could go on, but it is plainly evident this plandemic was not organic but coordinated by the global elite.

Our best hope is for the vocal 10%, who refused the jabs, have defied the overlords at every turn, and understand the dystopian path we are being herded towards, can slowly but surely convince their fellow 20% of unjabbed and the middle 40% on the fence to join them in a mass resistance to the Great Reset/New World Order being jammed down our throats by the Davos elite, shadowy billionaire globalists/satanists, the captured pliant corporate media, bought off Soros installed politicians and bureaucrats, and thousands of feckless apparatchiks around the globe, saying anything they are told for a buck.

Unless we can break this mass formation psychosis, this Fourth Turning will surely end in our enslavement to a totalitarian global state and the horrific consequences for humanity if we let it happen. Desmet’s advice for humanity reminds me of Andy Dufresne’s quote from the movie Shawshank Redemption, “It comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.”

“Don’t let freedom – especially the right to speak freely – be subordinated to the fear of any virus. Generations and generations have fought and given their lives to realize a certain freedom. Show that you are worthy of that freedom. If you want a life worth living, you have to be able to accept a certain amount of risk. Don’t give up everything for a sense of security that may eventually turn out to be false.”

–  Mattias Desmet

The core elements of this Fourth Turning (debt, civic decay, global disorder) are still driving this crisis, as they juxtapose and feed on each other, creating the environment and atmosphere for the coming storm, in which the hundreds of millions still entrapped in this mass formation are perfect fodder for those seeking to capitalize on their inability to comprehend facts and reality. This is how the totalitarians hope to succeed in creating a centralized global techno-gulag, where they control 8 billion people (while culling billions to make their prison more manageable), and are arrogantly sure their “science” based pronouncements from on high will be implemented flawlessly, leading to a utopian world – for them.

It is this hubris that will lead to their downfall. Everything they do and propose makes the world a worse place. Their ludicrous ideas, assumptions, postulations, and beliefs cannot and will not succeed, either through utter failure when implemented or by armed resistance from those unwilling to bend the knee.

I find a distinct relationship between mass formation, totalitarianism, and Fourth Turnings. Evidence of mass formation and support for totalitarians among populations during the Civil War Fourth Turning and Depression/World War II Fourth Turning is obvious to me. A major percentage of the Northern population was convinced their abolition of slavery cause was just, and therefore allowed Lincoln to ignore Constitutional civil liberties and ultimately override state’s rights, while consolidating more power at the Federal level.

A majority elected FDR four times, supported his socialist New Deal programs, and patriotically died on his behalf in a war he helped provoke. Simultaneously, the German people became enthralled and mesmerized by the rhetoric of Hitler and his promise to undo the treachery inflicted upon the German people at Versailles. Stalin convinced a major percentage of Russians to kill and imprison tens of millions of their fellow citizens, and then fought Germans to the death on Stalin’s behalf.

It appears 2023 could be a tipping point year in this Fourth Turning, much like the 15th year of the last Fourth Turning (1943-1944) when the tide turned during WWII with the Battle of Stalingrad and Normandy Invasion. Biden’s corrupt administration appears to be imploding. Inflation, rising interest rates, a $31 trillion national debt, $200 trillion of unpayable obligations, a USD that has lost 97% of its purchasing power, out of control surveillance state agencies running amok, broken education system, rampant worship and promotion of deviancy, ghetto crime rampaging in every major urban city, transferring $120 billion to the Ukraine (actually US arms dealers) to instigate WWIII, provoking China over Taiwan, and allowing unelected officials at non-governmental organizations (WEF, WHO, UN, NATO, World Bank) to impose their rules, regulations and mandates on our lives, has set the table for the disintegration of our financial, political, social, and cultural institutions. The downward spiral, decades in the making, is irreversible at this point.

Will all of these lit fuses ignite their powder kegs simultaneously in 2023? Probably not, but a few will explode, producing unintended consequences and start a process of falling dominoes and chaos for the average human on this earth. Having already ruined the livelihoods of tens of millions across the globe, destroying thousands of small businesses, igniting inflation not seen in forty years, causing food shortages, and making our lives far worse, the sudden deaths of children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and friends from their mandated gene altering, spike protein inducing therapy should be the last straw and provoke a violent response from the awakening masses.

After the collapse of our warped, dehumanizing, immoral, irresponsible, greed based system, building back better is not going to mean what the Davos elite think it means. All the trappings of modernity will fall away and we will be left with the task of daily survival, based upon our hard work, strong supportive families, like minded neighbors, intelligence, wisdom, local community collaboration, and the promise of a more meaningful and useful life. Building personal relationships with people you trust, preparing for crisis now, growing food or befriending farmers, improving your health, making sure you are armed and trained in using those arms, and readying yourself for when courage, honesty, fortitude, and guile will be required to insure a better future for your children and their children, is essential.

I’m just an average guy, like most people reading this article, trying to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what will happen next. We are three-quarters through this Fourth Turning Crisis, with the nastiest, bloodiest episode lying ahead. I’m more prepared than most, not as prepared as many, and wondering whether it will even matter if the madmen and psychopaths controlling the levers in this world decide to destroy it. All I can do at this point is to proudly count myself among the 10% vocal resisters to those attempting to destroy our society and hope my efforts and the efforts of others make a small contribution towards breaking this mass formation psychosis.

“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.” 

– Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

Here’s to an uneventful 2023, but I’m not counting on it. Good luck and Godspeed. Our choices will matter.

*  *  *

It is Jim’s sincere desire to provide readers of The Burning Platform with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit Jim’s site, he asks that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. He needs your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions.