The world’s largest maker of bulk chocolate is planning to cut about 19% of its workforce, totaling 2,500 jobs, as part of a cost-reduction strategy in response to a worsening cocoa shortage in West Africa, which has driven prices to record highs. 

“It’s about reducing complexity and eliminating duplication and inefficient structures,” Swiss chocolate maker Barry Callebaut CEO Peter Feld said in an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt on Monday. 

Feld continued: “It’s about reducing complexity and eliminating duplication and inefficient structures.” 

Handelsblatt said the job cuts will be implemented across Barry Callebaut’s operations worldwide over the coming 18 months. 

The move signifies Barry Callebaut is likely preparing for future demand woes as cocoa output in top grower Ivory Coast collapses, sending prices in London to record highs. 

According to trader Ecom Agroindustrial Corp., Ivory Coast’s cocoa output is expected to plunge by as much as 20% this growing season. 

In a report viewed by Bloomberg, Ecom Agroindustrial forecasts 1.75 million tons of cocoa from the region in the season that ends in September. Based on International Cocoa Organization data, that would be the lowest total in eight years. 

Cocoa’s price surge has been absolutely stunning to spectate over the last 15 months. Futures have soared to record highs, overtaking the highs last seen in 1977. Citigroup has warned prices could hit as high as $10,000 a ton. 

And the chocolate maker US Hershey Company warned in recent weeks: “Historic cocoa prices are expected to limit earnings growth this year.”

It’s only a matter of time before consumers are battered by candy inflation. Who will Biden’s PR team blame for soaring candy prices? 

Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Dr. Clarice Saba, an otorhinolaryngologist in Brazil, developed sudden hearing loss in her right ear a week after receiving her first dose of the COVID-19 adenovirus vaccine.

“I did all the exams and could not find any other reason other than because of the shots,” she told The Epoch Times.

Several studies have linked sudden hearing loss to the vaccine, with the most comprehensive study coming from France. Four hundred cases of post-vaccine sudden sensorineural hearing loss were evaluated, with 345 medical reports assessed by two audiology experts for potential causality.

“[Sudden sensorineural hearing loss] after COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are very rare adverse events,” the French authors concluded, adding that these rare adverse events “do not call into question the benefits of mRNA vaccines but deserve to be known given the potentially disabling impact of sudden deafness.”

Accumulated Damage

While the cause of hearing loss is unknown, it is usually assumed to be induced by damage to the cochlear, a fluid-filled, spiral cavity in the inner ear that helps process sounds into electrical signals in the brain.

This assumption is based on the fact that cochlear implants, which mimic the work of a natural cochlear, are highly successful in treating hearing loss.

The cochlear is a highly sensitive part of the ear and can accumulate damage from aging, loud sounds, viral infections, and certain chemicals and medications.

These exposures may restrict oxygen to the blood supply of the cochlear, reduce blood flow, increase oxidative damage, or form lesions in the cochlear tissue.

It is not known how COVID-19 and its vaccines may cause hearing loss. Some studies have proposed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may replicate in the ears and cause damage to the blood vessels and nerves there. Case studies evaluating hearing problems in COVID-19 patients found inflammation of the inner ears, inflamed cochlear and vestibular nerves, and bleeding of the ears.

The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines induce the body to make COVID-19 spike proteins. Research in animal cochlear cells has shown that the spike protein damages the cochlear. Spike proteins also share structural similarities with over 28 human proteins. Therefore, some studies on hearing loss speculate that proteins in the ears, including within the cochlea, may be structurally similar to spike proteins, leading to autoimmune damage when the body mounts its immune response.

The spike proteins in the COVID-19 vaccines are also prone to causing microclotting, where the blood becomes more viscous and “sludge-like,” according to internal medicine physician Dr. Jordan Vaughn. Viscous blood moves more slowly, reducing oxygen exchange in the blood and leading to stress on the nerves and cells in the ears.

Tinnitus and Hearing Loss

Since the pandemic, Dr. Saba has seen a rise in hearing loss and tinnitus.

Tinnitus is a much more common and acknowledged adverse effect of the COVID-19 vaccine than some. A well-known case of vaccine-related tinnitus was reported by vaccinologist Dr. Gregory Poland, who developed the condition after getting his second Pfizer dose.

Tinnitus is also strongly linked to hearing loss.

While most patients with tinnitus may not realize signs of hearing loss, around 80 percent to 90 percent have the issue.

Dr. Saba said that many patients with tinnitus may get a normal hearing result when they undergo an automatic hearing test. However, tests for hearing at high frequencies or audiometric hearing tests would reveal that the person has some degree of hearing loss. Studies have shown that the cochlear is also involved in chronic tinnitus.

Due to the link between tinnitus and hearing loss, she sometimes prescribes the same treatment for both conditions.

Treatments for Hearing Loss and Tinnitus

There is currently no known cure for hearing loss or tinnitus. Internal medicine physician Dr. Keith Berkowitz said that tinnitus arising post-vaccination has been challenging to treat. This observation has been echoed by other clinicians, including Dr. Pierre Kory and nurse practitioner Scott Marsland of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).

Still, some patients have reported benefits or hearing recovery in response to certain therapeutics.

“Sudden hearing loss is an emergency,” Dr. Saba said. Treatment must be deployed as early as possible to recover hearing.

Dr. Saba’s treatment for sudden hearing loss involves a combination of oral vasodilator drugs and injected steroids.

Vasodilators increase blood flow to the cochlear and are believed to help with its function, though studies have shown conflicting evidence on the benefits of vasodilators in hearing loss.

Steroids reduce inflammation and swelling of the inner ears and have been shown to be helpful if prescribed immediately following hearing loss or the onset of tinnitus.

Dr. Joseph Varon, a pulmonary critical care specialist and professor of medicine at the University of Houston, said that many of his patients found success with tinnitus by wearing red-light therapy earplugs.

Mr. Marsland said that he has been trialing transcranial brain stimulation. This treatment, however, is inaccessible for many patients with insurance, as the stimulation device is currently only approved for depression.

He became interested in the device when one of his patients, with both hearing loss and depression, saw an improvement in hearing while receiving mental health treatment.

Mr. Marsland has also seen mild tinnitus improvement in patients who have been dripping two drops of glutathione and one drop of caster oil in their ears.

Animal studies have shown glutathione to be protective against hearing loss.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21st century geopolitics forever…

Exactly two years ago this Saturday, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced the launching – and described the objectives – of a Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. That was the inevitable follow-up to what happened three days before, on February 21 – exactly 8 years after Maidan 2014 in Kiev – when Putin officially recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

During this – pregnant with meaning – short space of only three days, everyone expected that the Russian Armed Forces would intervene, militarily, to end the massive bombing and shelling that had been going on for three weeks across the frontline – which even forced the Kremlin to evacuate populations at risk to Russia. Russian intel had conclusive proof that the NATO-backed Kiev forces were ready to execute an ethnic cleansing of Russophone Donbass.

February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21st century geopolitics forever, in several complex ways. Above all, it marked the beginning of a vicious, all-out confrontation, “military-technical” as the Russians call it, between the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder, its easily pliable NATOstan vassals, and Russia – with Ukraine as the battleground.

There is hardly any question Putin had calculated, before and during these three fateful days, that his decisions would unleash the unbounded fury of the collective West – complete with a tsunami of sanctions.

Ay, there’s the rub; it’s all about Sovereignty. And a true sovereign power simply cannot live under permanent threats. It’s even feasible that Putin had wanted (italics mine) Russia to get sanctioned to death. After all, Russia is so naturally wealthy that without a serious challenge from abroad, the temptation is enormous to live off its rents while importing what it could easily produce.

Exceptionalists always gloated that Russia is “a gas station with nuclear weapons”. That’s ridiculous. Oil and gas, in Russia, account for roughly 15% of GDP, 30% of the government budget, and 45% of exports. Oil and gas add power to the Russian economy – not a drag. Putin shaking Russia’s complacency generated a gas station producing everything it needs, complete with unrivalled nuclear and hypersonic weapons. Beat that.

Ukraine has “never been less than a nation”

Xavier Moreau is a French politico-strategic analyst based in Russia for 24 years now. Graduated from the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy and with a Sorbonne diploma, he hosts two shows on RT France.

His latest book, Ukraine: Pourquoi La Russie a Gagné (“Ukraine: Why Russia has Won”), just out, is an essential manual for European audiences on the realities of the war, not those childish fantasies concocted across the NATOstan sphere by instant “experts” with less than zero combined arms military experience.

Moreau makes it very clear what every impartial, realist analyst was aware of from the beginning: the devastating Russian military superiority, which would condition the endgame. The problem, still, is how this endgame – “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, as established by Moscow – will be achieved.

What is already clear is that “demilitarization”, of Ukraine and NATO, is a howling success that no new wunderwaffen – like F-16s – will be able to change.

Moreau perfectly understands how Ukraine, nearly 10 years after Maidan, is not a nation; “and has never been less than a nation”. It’s a territory where populations that everything separates are jumbled up. Moreover, it has been a – “grotesque” – failed state ever since its independence. Moreau spends several highly entertaining pages going through the corruption grotesquerie in Ukraine, under a regime that “gets its ideological references simultaneously via admirers of Stepan Bandera and Lady Gaga.”

None of the above, of course, is reported by oligarch-controlled European mainstream media.

Watch out for Deng Xiao Putin

The book offers an extremely helpful analysis of those deranged Polish elites who bear “a heavy responsibility in the strategic catastrophe that awaits Washington and Brussels in Ukraine”. The Poles actually believed that Russia would crumble from the inside, complete with a color revolution against Putin. That barely qualifies as Brzezinski on crack.

Moreau shows how 2022 was the year when NATOstan, especially the Anglo-Saxons – historically racist Russophobes –   were self-convinced thar Russia would fold because it is a “poor power”. Obviously, none of these luminaries understood how Putin strengthened the Russian economy very much like Deng Xiaoping on the Chinese economy. This “self-intoxication”, as Moreau qualifies it, did wonders for the Kremlin.

By now it’s clear even for the deaf, dumb, and blind that the destruction of the European economy has been a massive tactic, historic victory for the Hegemon – as much as the blitzkrieg against the Russian economy has been an abysmal failure.

All of the above brings us to the meeting of G20 Foreign Ministers this week in Rio. That was not exactly a breakthrough. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it very clear that the collective West at the G20 tried by all means to “Ukrainize” the agenda – with less than zero success. They were outnumbered and counterpunched by BRICS and Global South members.

At his press conference, Lavrov could not be more stark on the prospects of the war of the collective West against Russia. These are the highlights:

• Western countries categorically do not want serious dialogue on Ukraine.

• There were no serious proposals from the United States to begin contacts with the Russian Federation on strategic stability; trust cannot be restored now while Russia is declared an enemy.

• There were no contacts on the sidelines of the G20 with either Blinken or the British Foreign Secretary.

• The Russian Federation will respond to new Western sanctions with practical actions that relate to the self-sufficient development of the Russian economy.

• If Europe tries to restore ties with the Russian Federation, making it dependent on their whims, then such contacts are not needed.

In a nutshell – diplomatically: you are irrelevant, and we don’t care.

That was complementing Lavrov’s intervention during the summit, which defined once again a clear, auspicious path towards multipolarity. Here are the highlights:

• The forming of a fair multipolar world order without a definite center and periphery has become much more intensive in the past few years. Asian, African and Latin American countries are becoming important parts of the global economy. Not infrequently, they are setting the tone and the dynamics.

• Many Western economies, especially in Europe, are actually stagnating against this background. These statistics are from Western-supervised institutions – the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD.

• These institutions are becoming relics from the past. Western domination is already affecting their ability to meet the requirements of the times. Meanwhile, it is perfectly obvious today that the current problems of humanity can only be resolved through a concerted effort and with due consideration for the interests of the Global South and, generally, all global economic realities.

• Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the EBRD, and the EIB are prioritizing Kiev’s military and other needs. The West allocated over $250 billion to tide over its underling thus creating funding shortages in other parts of the world. Ukraine is taking up the bulk of the funds, relegating Africa and other regions of the Global South to rationing.

• Countries that have discredited themselves by using unlawful acts ranging from unilateral sanctions and the seizure of sovereign assets and private property to blockades, embargoes, and discrimination against economic operators based on nationality to settle scores with their geopolitical opponents cannot be considered guarantors of financial stability.

• Without a doubt, new institutions that focus on consensus and mutual benefit are needed to democratize the global economic governance system. Today, we are seeing positive dynamics for strengthening various alliances, including BRICS, the SCO, ASEAN, the African Union, LAS, CELAC, and the EAEU.

• This year, Russia chairs BRICS, which saw several new members join it. We will do our best to reinforce the potential of this association and its ties with the G20.

• Considering that 6 out of 15 UN Security Council members represent the Western bloc, we will support the expansion of this body solely through the accession of countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Call it the real state of things, geopolitically, two years after the start of the SMO.

Authored by Robert Chernin via RealClear Wire,

The revelation that the U.S. intelligence community, under the Obama administration, sought the assistance of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Donald Trump’s associates before the 2016 election is a chilling reminder of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to protect its interests and challenge its adversaries. (The Five Eyes countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.) This bombshell, reported by a team of independent journalists, exposes a dark chapter in American political history, where foreign intelligence services were reportedly mobilized against a presidential candidate.

The alleged operation against Trump and his associates, which predates the official start of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, is a stark example of political weaponization of intelligence. The involvement of foreign allies in surveilling American citizens under the pretext of national security raises serious questions about the integrity of our democratic processes and the autonomy of our nation’s intelligence operations.

The narrative that has been pushed for years, that the investigation into Trump’s campaign began with an Australian tip about a boastful Trump aide, now appears to be a cover for a more extensive and coordinated effort to undermine Trump. If reports are accurate, British intelligence began targeting Trump on behalf of American intelligence agencies as early as 2015, long before the official narrative claims.

The implications of this are profound. It suggests an unprecedented level of collusion between U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts to influence the outcome of an American presidential election. The use of foreign intelligence to circumvent American laws and surveillance limitations represents a grave threat to our nation’s sovereignty and the principles of democracy.

The fact that this operation was reportedly initiated at the behest of high-ranking officials within the Obama administration, including CIA Director John Brennan, only adds to the severity of the situation. Brennan’s alleged identification of Trump associates for surveillance by the Five Eyes alliance, and the directive to “bump” or make contact with them, illustrates a deliberate strategy to entangle the Trump campaign in a web of suspicion and intrigue.

Moreover, the reported involvement of foreign intelligence in crafting the Russia collusion narrative not only delegitimizes the subsequent investigation but also highlights the willingness of certain elements within the U.S. government to exploit international partnerships for domestic political gain. This revelation demands a thorough and transparent examination to ensure that such abuses of power are brought to light and severely punished to discourage them from being repeated.

As more details emerge, it is imperative that the American public demand accountability from those who orchestrated and executed this operation. The sanctity of our electoral process and the trust in our intelligence agencies are at stake. We must not allow the politicization of intelligence to go unchecked, nor can we tolerate the involvement of foreign powers in our democratic processes.

Robert Chernin is chairman of the American Center for Education and Knowledge. He is a longtime entrepreneur, business leader, fundraiser, and political confidant, and has consulted on federal and statewide campaigns at the gubernatorial, congressional, senatorial, and presidential levels.

While it has gone largely underreported in western media, in the past week China launched a war against both quant funds and High Frequency Traders, claiming they were responsible for the market crash observed at the start of February. But maybe Beijing does have a point, after all long-term readers will recall that one of our first crusades was against none other than US HFT funds, which first we and then others (Michael Lewis) exposed for manipulating markets.

So what exactly happened, and what caused China’s quant quake?

As SocGen strategist Puneet Singh explains, China did indeed go through a quant quake but this hiccup was mostly concentrated in the small- and mid-cap space. Indeed, while the CSI 1000 the CSI 2000 were down ~30% and ~34% respectively, the large cap heavy CSI 300 only lost 7.3%. The chart below left below shows that small- and mid-caps exacerbated price movements in Chinese equities.

Looking at factor correlations (chart above right) clearly underscores the moves in Reversals and Risk factors (which includes vol and size). SocGen’s charts plot 5d moving average rank correlations between daily factor performance. As Singh explains, “stable correlations are inevitably required for quant strategies to work, but changes like what we saw destabilised quant models, and added to the underperformance.”

Factor performance for reversals and size in the small-mid and large cap spaces underscored the thesis: we saw small caps severely underperform large caps over the beginning of the year, with the reversal factor getting affected as well.

Just as was observed in the US during the August 2007 quant quake, moves of the magnitude discussed here inevitably result in spikes in volatility. Instead of using a close-to-close estimator, Socgen uses its preferred proprietary high frequency OHLC estimator (chart below left). This clearly shows how sudden the volatility pickup was in the small- and mid-cap space. This volatility spike becomes even more stark when compared to the large cap benchmarks.

Rising risks also lead to limits being triggered and risk-based unwinding of positions. In a market which is then working on a fear motive rather than profit, liquidity dries up leading to larger jumps in prices even from small trades. This is what the bank’s proxy illiquidity indicator captures (chart right below). Once again, the spike in illiquidity in the small- and mid-cap space, versus the relative calm in the large cap space potentially added to this quant quake.

As Singh concludes, even as this illiquidity measure remains elevated in the CSI1000, it appears to have ticked up over the last couple of days in the CSI2000, suggesting lingering risks and perhaps more pain to come.

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

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has described reports that he was confronted by congressional leaders during an “intense” meeting over government funding and aid to Ukraine at the White House on Feb. 27 as “pretty accurate.”

Speaking to Fox News on Feb. 28, Mr. Johnson was asked by anchor Sean Hannity if there was any truth to the reports. The Republican lawmaker explained that he was definitely at odds with congressional leaders over the crisis at the southern border, among other issues, during the meeting.

“Well, their reports are pretty accurate. They said that I was on an island by myself, and it was me versus everyone else in the room,” Mr. Johnson said.

“What the liberal media doesn’t understand Sean, is that if you’re here in Washington and you’re described as a leader that’s on an island by themselves, it probably means you’re standing with the American people,” he continued.

“And that’s what I did yesterday, I reminded the president, and all involved, that the number one issue in America is that open border. The catastrophe that we have, that President Biden himself designed, that he caused and created and I told him, just as I have many times before, he must address it with executive authority. We can’t wait any longer,” Mr. Johnson added.

Mr. Johnson was joined by congressional leaders including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) during the Feb. 27 meeting with President Biden and Vice President Harris at the White House, ahead of a looming government shut down.

Officials also discussed potential funding for Ukraine during the meeting, with the White House having repeatedly urged Congress in recent weeks to pass a $95 billion foreign aid package, which includes $60 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel, and around $9.2 billion for humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

While the package was approved by the Senate earlier this month, it has been stalled in the House by Republicans who are at odds over its lack of U.S. border security provisions and the additional funding for Ukraine.

Lawmakers who attended the White House meeting, including Mr. Jeffries, later described it as “intense” while Mr. Schumer told reporters that he and all other attendees, had repeatedly pressed Mr. Johnson on Ukraine aid.

“The meeting on Ukraine was one of the most intense I’ve ever encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office,” Mr. Schumer told reporters.

Ultimately, lawmakers were able to strike a deal in principle and avert a partial government shutdown set to take place at the end of this week, although another continuing resolution to fund the government at current levels will need to be passed under the deal announced on Feb. 28.

Parts of the government would be funded through March 8 while the remaining would be funded through March 22, according to congressional leaders. A final text is widely expected to be available by the weekend.

Congress Must ‘Break the Cycle’

Meanwhile, a deal on extra aid to Ukraine and other nations remains at a stalemate.

Mr. Johnson told Fox News it is essential that Congress “breaks the cycle” in the way Washington works and “reform budgeting and spending” going forward.

The House Speaker also stressed that Republicans will not give up the fight to ensure President Biden secures America’s borders.

“The president has the executive authority to fix it right now, I told him at the White House yesterday one-on-one and in the group, I told him ‘Mr President, if you just issue an executive order that reinstates the Remain in Mexico [policy] … the agents, your own border patrol agents, told us it would reduce the flow by 70 percent, almost overnight,’” Mr. Johnson said.

The House Speaker stressed the border crisis is a key issue for lawmakers, citing a rise in violent crime and murders, including the recent killing of university nursing student Laken Riley, allegedly at the hands of illegal immigrant Jose Antonio Ibarra.

“There’s no question about it, this is a very dangerous time … America can’t stand for this any longer,” Mr. Johnson said.

Jackson Richman contributed to this report.

This is the single most important, dangerous and highly revealing statement from a top defense official in the West in a long time… It also demonstrates the precarious urgency of the moment and the huge stakes going into the November US election. The world truly stands on the precipice of a nuclear nightmare with the following fresh assertion of Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said before Congress on Thursday: 

“If Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia,” Austin stated.

What’s more is that this came the very day that Russian President Vladimir Putin warned things could easily spiral toward nuclear war in the scenario that NATO sends troops to Ukraine. Watch:

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says if Ukraine falls he really believes NATO will be in a fight with Russia pic.twitter.com/lmOimGsSAH

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) February 29, 2024

According to the fuller context of the Pentagon chief’s statements, he emphasized that more Washington funding is crucial for Ukraine in order to prevent a situation where “one country can redraw its neighbors’ boundaries and illegitimately take over its sovereign territory.”

“We know that if Putin is successful here, he will not stop. He will continue to take more aggressive actions in the region. And other leaders around the world, other autocrats around the world will look at this and will be encouraged by the fact that this happened and we failed to support a democracy,” he added.

“If you are a Baltic state, you are really worried about whether you are next. They know Putin. They know what he is capable of. And, frankly, if Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia,” Austin said.

What is even more alarming about this statement is that everyone now knows that Ukraine forces are in retreat at this very moment, especially after the Russian capture of the city of Avdiivka, and surrounding villages.

Bloomberg on Thursday issued a report predicting total collapse of the Ukrainian front lines by summer, as the headline suggests (Ukraine Sees Risk of Russia Breaking Through Defenses by Summer): “Ukrainian officials are concerned that Russian advances could gain significant momentum by the summer unless their allies can increase the supply of ammunition, according to a person familiar with their analysis,” the report says. According to more from Bloomberg:

Internal assessments of the situation on the battlefield from Kyiv are growing increasingly bleak as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold off Russian attacks while rationing the number of shells they can fire.

Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Thursday that mistakes by frontline commanders had compounded the problems facing Ukraine’s defenses around Avdiivka, which was captured by Russian forces this month. Syrskyi said he’d sent in more troops and ammunition to bolster Ukrainian positions.

So the consensus narrative and belated mainstream media admission is that Ukraine’s military is a mere months away from clear defeat, and the top US defense chief just said NATO will go to war with Russia “if Ukraine falls”.

The conflict has reached a dire and perilously unpredictable moment indeed, and clearly the already slim chances of jump-starting serious peace negotiations to end the war are slipping away fast. 

Via Revolver News,

The fantastic fall of Fani Willis is one of the great comedies of recent American politics. It’s the flagrant corruption of Hunter Biden, mixed with the stupidity of Jussie Smollett, the courtroom farce of the George Zimmerman trial, and the sky-high political stakes of a U.S. presidential election. It’s the joyous, healthy humor of seeing a wicked, ridiculous person be exposed and get exactly what she deserves.

WATCH: Fani Willis thought the attorney called her a ‘Cash Whore’ 🤣

pic.twitter.com/uyUJlE3vJ5

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 16, 2024

Prosecutor: “So, to be clear, you don’t know where the money came from that you gave Mr. Wade for the cruise?”

Fani Willis: “NAH LADY, I KEEP FAT STACKS IN MY MATTRESS OK THE SOURCE OF THE MONEY IS THE WORK, SWEAT, AND TEARS OF ME!”

This is such a shit show. 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/SEPY55cYYZ

— Meara (@MillennialOther) February 15, 2024

Right now, it still isn’t certain whether Judge Scott McAfee will actually kick Fani Willis off her own case, but even if he doesn’t, the damage has substantially been done. The tenuous prosecution of President Trump in Georgia has already been badly delayed and discredited, increasing its odds of being tossed by a higher court and the odds of the public simply shrugging its shoulders even if this abortion of a case somehow lurches all the way to a felony conviction. Left-wing anti-Trump zealots are practically begging Fani to step aside of her own volition for the good of the anti-Trump cause.

But they are unlikely to get what they want, for the same reason that this scandal happened in the first place: America’s regime elevated a clown-show affirmative-action incompetent who only cares about herself, told her that she was a big hero simply for existing, and now we are all reaping the consequences.

But don’t laugh too hard at the left’s Fani Fiasco. Because lurking beneath the Fulton County farce is a dark look at an institutional decay in American life that has only just begun.

Compare Fani Willis with, say, another prosecutor, an older one who represents America’s past: Robert Mueller.

Robert Mueller’s investigation was born of deceit and dark political motivations, as befits a reliable government functionary. Yet for all Mueller’s faults, it was also a smooth and, in the end, relatively professional operation. When Mueller learned about the affair and improper text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, he removed them both from the case, months before the story leaked to the press. While there is much to attack about earlier cases in Mueller’s career (for one, he helped to cover up the Saudi role in 9/11), his own personal life appears extremely boring, with a 50-year marriage to a woman he met in high school.

Despite being the biggest story in the country with a vast whirlwind of rumors around it, Mueller’s own probe had minimal leaks. Despite enormous celebrity status thanks to a Trump-deranged left (remember these?), Mueller did very little to court publicity. His investigation rarely said anything, only briefly stepping forward to debunk a false anti-Trump report by Buzzfeed News. And, of course, when all was said and done, despite enormous hype and tens of millions of dollars spent, despite the entire American ruling class practically begging him to send the Bad Orange Man to prison, Mueller’s final report found no evidence of “Russian collusion” and brought no criminal charges against President Trump.

Now, take in all of that and go back to the adventures of Flim-Flam Fani.

Willis’s illicit relationship could have easily remained hidden, or at least inconsequential, if she had been even slightly less stupid. But she just could not help herself. It wasn’t enough to hire her lover. She had to make him special counsel on by far her most high-profile case, which would attract by a million miles the most press attention and the most expensive, diligent lawyers. It wasn’t enough to carry on a tryst with Willis. She had to go on one lavish vacation after another with him.

Willis’s excuses for her behavior are the sort that require a lobotomy to accept. Her relationship with Willis was entirely appropriate and aboveboard, yet Willis felt compelled to hide it because, well, *mumble mumble*. Was Willis using her highly-paid lover as a conduit to get those vacations? Not at all. By happenstance, Fani just keeps $15,000 (15 large) in cash in her home at all times for just this sort of thing. And by golly, it turns out Wade liked to do the same thing. How handy!

The Hill:

The special prosecutor described Willis as an “independent, proud woman” who insisted on paying her own way and used cash for “safety reasons,” not to obscure the transactions. He also said he did not deposit the cash Willis paid him for their trips together.

“You don’t have a single, solitary deposit slip to corroborate or support any of your allegations that you were paid by Mrs. Willis in cash, do you?” Shafer attorney Craig Gillen pressed.

“No sir,” Wade replied, adding he would either “spend it or put it in my pocket or put it in the hotel’s safe.”

“Safety reasons!” It’s the sort of lame lie that belongs alongside “Hunter Biden was a top anti-corruption expert.” Incompetent in a wholly stupid, almost lazy way, she covers her tracks with a tale that isn’t even meant to convince, just to make one sputter at seeing a person possibly get away with the thinnest excuse imaginable. The stupidity of such affirmative action cases so unfathomably defies conventional understanding that it extends beyond the merely ludicrous and would achieve an endearing, childlike quality were it not for the devastating consequences to the country.

The American regime is groaning both in public and behind closed doors at the trouble Fani Willis has stirred up for them. But just as Fani deserves her ongoing humiliation, so do all of her enablers. They have asked, loudly and proudly, for every part of this.

After all, Fani Willis is the avatar of DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) America – the combination of racial caste system and kakistocracy that the American regime is determined to erect in what was once the world’s proudest meritocratic society.

We have extensively chronicled the decay rotting out America as it pays for bad decisions made decades ago. We’ve covered the degradation of America’s power grid, its airports, and even its amusement parks. But just as glaring as any physical decay will be the decay in human capital—the disappearance of talented and morally upright people who are replaced by farcical parasites who bask in how useless and entitled they are.

Back in the mid-90s, when Willis attended law school, her alma mater at Emory averaged a U.S. News ranking in the mid-20s—in the top quarter but also well outside the Top 14 that has traditionally designated America’s best law schools. And that’s frightful, in fact. We can safely guess that Willis was not an above-average Emory student, or even the median one. All of us know the truth: America has for decades run a pervasive race-based affirmative action racket in which students from preferred races get a huge boost to their college admissions.

The odds that Willis scored below Emory’s median LSAT—and perhaps well below—are very high. The median black LSAT score is around 142 points, meaning that any score above 160 represents the top three percent of all test-takers. But if Willis was scoring in the top 3 percent, then frankly, she would have been able to punch a ticket to a top law school, like Harvard or Columbia, or, hell, at least Georgetown. Going to Emory, with the massive admissions boost she could count on based on skin color alone, indicates Willis’s LSAT score may have been frightful. There are, no exaggeration, hundreds of thousands of lawyers in America who are smarter and better-qualified to be prosecutors in a major American city.

But Fani is the one we have.

And you know what might be the funniest part? Fani is, in many ways, the cream of the crop.

Say what you will about Fani cavorting with her boyfriend—she does, at least, manage to prosecute some actual criminals. That puts her far ahead of recently-departed St. Louis, Missouri, circuit attorney Kim Gardner. During her six-year run as the top prosecutor in America’s deadliest city, Gardner:

• Let St. Louis’s murder rate balloon to 87 per 100,000, more than double the rate of Johannesburg and in the top 10 for all of planet Earth.

• Admitted to paying for her personal apartment using campaign funds.

• Criminally charged the McCloskeys for brandishing unloaded firearms at a BLM mob, then fundraised off said prosecution in such a glaring manner that a judge kicked her off the case.

• Falsely accused police of pulling her over for no reason as an intimidation tactic—when, in fact, camera footage showed she was driving without working headlights.

• Sued her own city under the Ku Klux Klan Act, alleging a vast racist conspiracy against her by the city government and police department.

• Illegally spent two years secretly pursuing a nursing degree while still serving as a circuit attorney.

• Repeatedly had to drop criminal charges against alleged murderers because her office just could not stop screwing up.

In Baltimore, former state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby hoped to use the Freddie Gray case to launch her national fame. Instead, her shoddy, politically motivated prosecution of local police sent the signal that Baltimore was a free-fire zone, and the city soon became one of the most violent in the world. Then, just as things were getting a bit better, Mosby used COVID as an excuse to get even more lenient on crime.

Mosby herself, meanwhile, became known for firing prosecutors she disliked and then threw in a dose of mortgage fraud for good measure. That should at least be enough to get her disbarred, sparing Marylanders from further Mosby shenanigans, but who knows? Maybe some lefty judge will rule that disbarring criminals is racist!

Yet even Mosby is a model of public service compared to someone like Dolton, Illinois mayor Tiffany Henyard, who has recently become a minor celebrity for her brazen corruption.

Tiffany Henyard

The New York Post:

Henyard was first elected in 2021 to lead the small town of 20,000 people about 20 miles south of downtown Chicago.

She has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for a laundry list of antics, including accusations of blowing thousands in public funds on luxury travel and dining, turning local police into both her personal bodyguards and backup dancers for music videos, and hiring DJs for town meetings — all while the village falls $5 million into debt. …

Dolton Trustee Kiana Belcher said former Dolton Chief of Police Robert Collins admitted the mayor forced him to target people.

“She’ll have the police follow you and give tickets,” Belcher said. “I went out of town and she had one of the officers … give me tickets … It was a manipulation tactic.”

When she confronted Collins, Belcher said, the chief didn’t hesitate to blame Henyard.

“He looked down at me and said, ‘She told me to write them,’” Belcher said.

Henyard was elected in February 2021, meaning she has now been trashing her city for three whole years. Yet, despite by all accounts being an obvious criminal, she’s still in office and still unindicted. Why would that be?

Well, because the DA to bring those charges would be Cook County DA Kim Foxx!

Kim Foxx

Yes, that Kim Foxx: the one who tried to let Jussie Smollett off the hook, requiring a special prosecutor to swoop in and save the day. When she wasn’t giving favorable treatment to black celebrities, Foxx ordered her minions to avoid cash bail and to only bring felony theft charges against criminals with at least ten prior felony convictions.

So, why would we expect Kim Foxx to hold a fellow soul sista accountable? For that matter, why would we expect anyone on the left to do it?

The modern left has almost wholly abandoned traditional religious faith, but it certainly still has its priests and saints. And the narcissistic message, repeated day in and day out, is that black women are America’s sacred beings. Joe Biden ran on a promise to consider black women, and only black women, for his first Supreme Court pick—93% of Americans need not apply. The result was Ketanji Brown Jackson, who can’t say what a woman is but nevertheless thinks the entire planet should hear every inane thought passing through her head.

As soon as Fani Willis’s own conduct threw the entire lawfare campaign against Donald Trump, years in the making, into doubt, the ethnonarcissist whining came tumbling out immediately: Criticizing a prosecutor for corruptly staffing her loser boyfriend onto a job he wasn’t qualified for was racist!

It is our job to revere them and to listen to them (just don’t ever touch their hair!).

We’re not even close to rock bottom, either. Remember, as we speak, Kamala Harris is a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Kamala Harris talks to Americans like we are all in kindergarten. Here she explains AI: pic.twitter.com/YHFgT5K3E4

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 12, 2023

Like the increasingly brazen thievery in America’s cities, the Democrats’ use of government resources to reinforce their hold on power is becoming more blatant by the day. 

The latest: On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced the federal government will start paying college students to register voters and serve as poll workers. College students and young people in general historically lean heavily Democratic: Biden received 65% of votes cast by 18- to 24-year-olds in the 2020 election, compared to 51% overall. 

“We have been doing work to promote voter participation for students,” said Harris as she met with activists representing more than 20 voting rights groups. “For example, we have under the Federal Work-Study program now allow students to get paid through Federal Work-Study to register people and to be non-partisan poll workers. As we know, this is important for a number of reasons. One, to engage our young leaders in this process and activate them in terms of their ability to strengthen our communities.”

Biden signed EO14019 ordering federal govt to use taxpayer $ to mobilize (his) voters. @StephenM has FOIAed details, and I’ve sought them in Congress, but Biden is hiding them. Sounds like the election-year plan is underway. https://t.co/fFIkVHZVpm

— Senator Bill Hagerty (@SenatorHagerty) February 28, 2024

“Curious how they chose college students and not veterans,” said New Hampshire state Rep. Ross Berry. “Almost like this is just a scheme to register Democrats and not actually increase participation of all voters. In most states, the areas they are targeting already have these programs under the National Voter Registration Act, so why the sudden interest in injecting college students? I think we know the answer.”

Further tipping the self-serving slant of its taxpayer-funded voter-registration machinery, the Biden administration chose the Juneteenth holiday — which commemorates the abolition of slavery — as one of three occasions on which it will have registration blitzes, Axios reports. Biden won the 2020 black vote by a 92% to 8% margin. Another push will come on the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.

It doesn’t stop there. Harris said the administration has also ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to send voter registration solicitations to Americans who’ve obtained health insurance via the Affordable Care Act marketplace. According to a 2017 Cal-Berkeley study, “Republicans are fully 12 percentage points less likely to purchase marketplace plans than Democrats.”

Federal employees, whose 2019 party identification skewed Democratic by a 50% to 26% margin, get free time off to vote — even if they choose to do so during early voting. 

The announcement that taxpayer funds will be used to pay a Democrat-leaning demographic to find new voters to register comes a week after Biden, defying the Supreme Court, cancelled another $1.2 billion in student debt — in a thinly-veiled scheme to use your money to buy votes.