Authored by Sally Fallon Morell via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In the summer of 1983, an outbreak of listeriosis occurred in Massachusetts. Forty-nine people became sick and 14 of those—29 percent—died. Listeria is the bad actor among pathogens. Most pathogens make people sick but don’t kill them—listeria, on the other hand, often kills, especially the very young, the elderly, and the immune-compromised.

Listeria most commonly occurs in deli meats, seafood, raw vegetables, soft cheeses, and poultry. But the 1983 outbreak was different. It came from pasteurized milk. Health officials isolated listeria from the raw milk that came into the pasteurizing plant. “At the plant where the milk was processed, inspections revealed no evidence of improper pasteurization.” The officials were perplexed but noted that “L monocytogenes is quite resistant to heat. … The ability of L monocytogenes to exist as an intracellular parasite may have increased likelihood that some organisms survived pasteurization …”

They came to an interesting conclusion, “These results … raise questions about the ability of pasteurization to eradicate a large inoculum of L. monocytogenes from contaminated raw milk.”

A year later, a huge outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium occurred in Illinois, with a second wave in 1985. The pathogen was found resistant to most common forms of antibiotics. “Two surveys to determine the number of persons who were actually affected yielded estimates of 168,791 and 197,581 persons, making this the largest outbreak of salmonellosis ever identified in the United States.” At least five people died. The outbreak affected people in six states—Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Indiana. Health officials concluded that the milk was contaminated after pasteurization by salmonella, which persisted in the plant despite efforts to eradicate it.

The Arrival of Factory Farming

Something else was going on during those years—dairy farms were getting bigger. Consolidation began in the 1930s with pigs and in the 1950s with chickens. In the 1970s, agriculture secretary Earl Butz told farmers to “get big or get out,” and by the mid-1980s, this trend was in full force. “Get big or get out,” also meant, “Get inside.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture was advising dairy farmers to “become more efficient” by keeping their cows in barns and feeding them grain.

Large amounts of grain are not a natural diet for cows, nor is it natural for cows to live in close quarters with no way of distancing themselves from their fresh manure. To keep the cows alive in such conditions of filth, antibiotics became necessary. It was a recipe for antibiotic resistance and stronger, mutated pathogens.

With the outbreaks of the mid-1980s, the dairy industry realized that under these new conditions, pasteurization was not working. Unfortunately, their solution to the problem was not to go cleaner, but to go hotter. Enter UHT—ultra-high temperature processing.

Old-fashioned, “low-temperature” pasteurization takes milk to 150 F—hot enough to destroy most of the enzymes in milk, many of which protect against pathogens, while others attach to vitamins and minerals in order to make them easy to absorb. High-temperature pasteurization (also called flash pasteurization) takes milk to 161 F, hot enough to kill all the enzymes and denature some of the proteins.

Ultrapasteurization takes milk to 284 F—hotter, much hotter, than the boiling point—by rushing this most fragile, delicate food past superheated stainless steel plates. The process kills bacterial endospores—tough, dormant structures produced by many pathogens, which allows them to “hibernate” and come back to life when conditions are sufficiently favorable (such as the small intestine). The process also kills everything else, including nutrients, enzymes, and proteins.

UHT milk comes packaged in aseptic, sterile containers—it needs no refrigeration and has a shelf life of six to nine months—a boon to retailers. The process was developed in Europe—I remember seeing stacks of these aseptic containers in supermarkets in France when I lived there in the early 1980s and wondering why anyone would buy milk that didn’t spoil.

In the early 1990s, the Italian company Parmalat introduced its UHT milk to the United States. American consumers resisted purchasing unrefrigerated milk, so the industry packaged it in traditional containers and sold it from the refrigerator aisle.

According to Parmalat’s website, “UHT milk is the same as fresh milk but simply uses a different pasteurization process. It contains a lot of nutrients that are good for your body, just like fresh milk.” It adds, “With our special pasteurization process, our milk doesn’t need to be stored in the fridge until opened. This means you can store as many bottles as you want and never run out of milk.”

A 2019 study from China titled “Processing milk causes the formation of protein oxidation products which impair spatial learning and memory in rats,” indicates that UHT milk is not like fresh milk at all. The researchers subjected milk to four processing techniques: boiling, microwave heating, spray drying, and freeze-drying. (Boiling takes milk to 212 F—ultra-pasteurization is much hotter.)

All four techniques (even freeze-drying) caused “various degrees of redox state imbalance and oxidative damage in plasma, liver, and brain tissues.” Feeding damaged milk proteins to rats resulted in learning and memory impairment—why would any parent want to give UHT milk to their kids?

The researchers concluded that “… humans should control milk protein oxidation and improve the processing methods applied to food.”

Other researchers have noted that “The major protein modifications that occur during UHT treatment are denaturation and aggregation of the protein, and chemical modifications of its amino acids.” Damaged milk proteins are likely to cause allergies. Today, milk allergy is the number one allergy and according to statistics provided by the Asthma and Allergy Network, we can estimate that modern milk causes approximately twenty deaths from anaphylactic shock per year!

Most milk sold today in supermarkets is UHT milk—even organic milk is UHT. But it is not used in fermented products—check the labels for sour cream or cheese.  These products are made from pasteurized—not UHT milk—most likely because UHT milk is so dead that it will not ferment. That’s another way of saying that UHT milk is indigestible, as fermentation is a form of digestion.

A recent listeria outbreak causing two deaths and more than twenty hospitalizations initiated a Feb. 5 recall of pasteurized cheese, yogurt, and sour cream—an indication that pasteurization doesn’t ensure safety in fermented dairy foods.

UHT milk has served as a temporary fix for the dairy industry, but it will ultimately be its undoing. Milk consumption in the United States has declined by half since 1970, and the dairy industry has been unable to reverse the trend. It blames competition from sodas and plant-based “milk,” but won’t admit that UHT processing makes milk unpalatable, allergenic, and indigestible.

How to Find Good Old-Fashioned, Unprocessed Milk

The public is wising up to the problems of consuming ultra-processed food, and UHT milk is by any definition an ultra-processed food. This may be why sales of raw milk are booming. The website realmilk.com receives more than 320,000 visits per month, mostly to the Raw Milk Finder page. The site lists 3000 sources of raw milk in the United States and there are many more dairies that choose not to be listed—yet raw milk farmers are reporting that they can’t produce enough to meet the demand. Raw Farm in California provides raw milk products from a herd of 1,200 cows, and they sell it all.

My prediction: Within 20 years UHT milk will be a thing of the past, recognized as a misuse of technology, a rust belt solution that ruins the goodness of Nature’s perfect food. We have many elegant technologies today—stainless steel, on-site testing, a national cold chain, and moveable electric fencing that makes grazing feasible—which allow us to get clean raw milk safely to every person in America. “Get bigger, go hotter” is not the future. The future is small and medium grass-based farms selling raw milk directly to grateful customers.

Authored by Duggan Flanakin via RealClear Wire,

When auto (even EV driving) enthusiast Rowan Atkinson – Mr. Bean to his fans – last June wrote in The Guardian that there are “sound environmental reasons” why “keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV,” he was vilified as a eco-traitor.

Atkinson had added, “We’re realizing that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created.” These include, he said, hydrogen fuel cells and synthetic fuels that would extend the lives of older vehicles long after governments are demanding they be scrapped.

Atkinson, who has a bachelor’s in electrical and electronic engineering and a master’s in control systems, urged Britons to “look at a bigger picture” to include greenhouse gas emissions during the manufacture of electric vehicles and to evaluate the whole life cycle of motor vehicles.

Relying on a dash of common sense, Atkinson noted that pushing so heavily so soon for EVs that have major flaws will result in “millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries.” Technologic developments with hydrogen and synthetic fuels, which can power existing internal combustion engines, may prove a better long-term solution. For one reason, the owners of the world’s 1.5 billion ICE vehicles could continue enjoying them.

For sharing his insights, Atkinson was immediately smacked around by snarky reporters and EV “experts.” Simon Evans, deputy editor at Carbon Brief, slammed Atkinson for not adhering to Carbon Brief’s own “evidence” from years back stating that EVs cut “planet-warming emissions” by two-thirds on a life cycle basis and calling EVs “an essential part of tackling the climate emergency.”

How dare he?

Michael Coren, writing in the Washington Post, portrayed Atkinson as an iconoclast clinging to his petrol car, lampooned hydrogen and synthetic fuels as expensive and impractical, and compared ICE vehicles to hobby horses. Coren argued that “making every car burn [hydrogen] is not a good idea,” yet implied that forcing every driver to buy an EV is a very good idea.

Eight months later, though, the detractors who had hoped to make Atkinson an example of a troglodyte were singing a different tune, in the wake of a collapse in the British EV market.

Mr. Bean was condemned in the House of Lords by the Green Alliance as “partly at fault for ‘damaging’ public perceptions” of EVs and as a dangerous enemy of Britain’s drive to Net Zero. The Guardian, which published Atkinson’s tome, was accused indirectly of failing to adhere to “high editorial standards around the Net Zero transition.”

[Translation: ONLY glowing reports on EVs are acceptable public speech.]

It couldn’t have been the exorbitant cost of auto insurance for EVs, their tendency to catch fire and burn for days, or the high cost and long wait times for parts and repairs – or the long waits at charging stations to plug in and wait for enough charge at least to reach the next destination. Nor could it be that people are uncomfortable enriching China as their own auto companies face bankruptcy?  No – it was allowing someone to publicly question the rush to electrification.

Halfway around the world, Toyota, which “lagged behind” its major competitors in ditching their ICE vehicle fleets for all-EV production lines, “is riding a windfall of hybrid vehicle sales on its way to posting projected net profits of more than $30  billion.” While Ford lost $4.7 billion trying to create an EV market, dropping its net profit to just $4.2 billion, Toyota now appears to be in better financial shape than its American and European competitors.

Over a year ago, then-Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda had cautioned that the EV transition would “take longer than the media would like us to believe.” Ford, GM, Stellantis, and many other automakers worldwide played nice with the political and financial giants while Toyota’s management stepped away from the rhetoric, looked at the numbers, and chose a commonsense approach to the evolving world auto marketplace.

The company did sell 15,000 pure EVs in the U.S. in 2023, but they also sold 40,000 plug-in hybrids and more than 600,000 non-rechargeable hybrids out of total U.S. sales of 2,248,477 vehicles, a 6% increase from 2022 levels. Ford fell short of its goal to produce 300,000 EVs a year by 2023 and has revised its earlier forecast of 2 million EVs by 2026. Worse, Ford now expects to lose as much as $5.5 billion on EVs in 2024.

Over in Europe, Volvo just announced it is withdrawing support for its marquee electric vehicle Polestar and hopes to sell its 48% stake, possibly to a Chinese buyer. Just days earlier, Polestar had cut 450 jobs, about 15% of its workforce.

Elsewhere in Europe, EV sales are expected to decline in 2024 in Germany, Europe’s largest auto market, and Renault just scrapped plans to spin off its Ampere EVs, blaming a lack of interest from investors and a slowdown in sales.

EV sales in the United Kingdom also flatlined in 2023, prices for used EVs fell sharply, raising questions about their residual value. Even EV-friendly Switzerland admits it will take at least 20 years to fully electrify its fleet; while EVs and hybrids today comprise about 30% of Swiss new car sales, these vehicles amount to less than 4% of the total national fleet.

Oil and gas companies are getting the message, too. BP, which once billed itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” has been encouraged by an activist investor to reduce its investments in renewables and recommit to oil and gas. A major reason – oil and gas investments in recent years have boomed while investments in renewables have faltered. Bluebell Capital Partners asserted that BP’s commitment to renewable has left its stock price undervalued by 50% compared to ExxonMobil and Chevron.

President Biden’s demand that the U.S. comply with his EV mandates was dealt a major blow last month, when auto rental giant Hertz, heretofore the nation’s largest fleet operator of electric vehicles, announced it was selling all 20,000 of its EVs and not buying any more. The company cited high repair costs and weak demand for EV rentals. Karl Bauer of iSeeCars.com, noting that mainstream consumers were already hesitant to buy and EV, said “the larger impact of the Hertz EV fire sale is the perception hit to the technology.”

The fictional Mr. Bean is known (and revered) for his original and often absurd solutions to problems and his total disregard for others while solving them, and for his pettiness and occasional malevolence. Had the British press mocked Mr. Atkinson for a Bean-like performance, the climate emergency propagandists might have laughed him off successfully.

But they are not able to laugh without derision.

The real Mr. Atkinson, like the decision makers at Toyota, is espousing commonsense wisdom such as “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” Extending the lifespan of existing vehicles, even with currently high-cost hydrogen or synthetic fuels, is far better for the environment than junking them for electric vehicles that require diesel fuel to power charging stations.

If, as we are told, EV batteries will soon be smaller, cheaper, and stronger, that day has not yet come. Just as likely, the cost of hydrogen and synthetics will also drop significantly, and those fuels can power existing ICE vehicles. Most of all, if there truly was a “climate emergency,” diplomats would be quicker to end military conflicts and ending the rush by China and India to build more and more coal-fired power plants (needed, of course, to charge EV batteries).

What Mr. Bean and Toyota are truly saying to the world is that mandates – government deciding what can and cannot go to market – and the huge subsidies that go along with them (which would be unnecessary in a true emergency) are at war with the wisdom of the market, which relies on true public opinion as to what is best for the consumer.

Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues. 

Was the world more racist 28 years ago compared to today?  Or, are people today simply more inclined to see “cultural insensitivity” where none exists?  We all know the answer – Diversity and inclusion now infect every aspect of our society and every form of entertainment.  They are no longer a matter of academic discourse, but a matter of political imperative.

Why?  Because a tiny group of obsessed cultists demands it.  In the west we’re supposed to walk on eggshells whenever minority issues are at play.  In fact, we’re supposed to place minority issues above all else and beg for forgiveness for every imagined trespass, even when it comes to video games.

If you grew up in the 1990s the notion of “harmful stereotypes” was probably furthest from your mind.  You didn’t care if a movie or video game starred a female or minority character, you only cared if the product was fun, exciting and well made.  This was before the dark days of woke entitlement when race was usually meaningless, jokes were just jokes, words were just words and if you robbed an ancient tomb in a game that didn’t mean you would ever do something similar in real life.

Leftists have no grasp of this concept.  In the 2020s, words are violence, feelings are reality and playing the wrong game could conceivably get you canceled.   This seems to be the attitude of software developer Crystal Dynamics, the license holder of the beloved Tomb Raider video game franchise.  

The classic IP launched by Eidos Interactive in 1996 just after the premier of the Sony Playstation became an immediate hit.  The 3D graphics were cutting edge for the time, including cinematics, beautiful environments and an emotional musical score.  However, it was the character of Lara Croft that had gamers hooked:  A sexy female version of Indiana Jones who lusted after adventure and treasure.  

Crystal Dynamics abandoned and erased the old Lara Croft not long after they got their hands on the licensing, making new games featuring a dark and depressing anti-Croft.  She was a short, stumpy, grumpy and decidedly less flirtatious feminist desperate to make amends for her grave robbing past and white privilege.  The company made it clear with their story changes as early as 2013 that the original character was “problematic” to them.

Though feminists derided Tomb Raider as a fantasy for teenage boys rather than an empowering symbol for girls, the early games had a decidedly large female fanbase with 30% to 40% of players (depending on the poll) being women (a large number for the action/adventure genre).  Both men and women loved the old Tomb Raider, and this led to a call from consumers for a remaster of the first three classic games.

Fans asked for a remaster for years with almost no feedback from Crystal Dynamics.  People began to suspect that, perhaps, the company hated the old franchise so much due to their politics that they were refusing to acknowledge its existence and even willing to lose money.

This now appears to have been confirmed.  Crystal Dynamics was purchased by Embracer Group in 2022 and the new owners jumped immediately on the prospect of remastering the old games for a highly anticipated re-release.  While CD is owned by Embracer, they still retained some control over the development rights to Tomb Raider.  

Most likely, the re-release of the originals was not their idea nor something they agreed with, but they had no choice.  Instead, they decided to sabotage the remastered versions by including “trigger warnings” at the beginning of the games.

“The games in this collection contain offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices. These stereotypes are deeply harmful, inexcusable, and do not align with our values at Crystal Dynamics.  Rather than removing this content, we have chosen to present it here in its original form, unaltered, in the hopes that we may acknowledge its harmful impact and learn from it.”

The company does not specify what instances of racial prejudice or stereotypes they’re referring to.  They also don’t explain what harmful impact the old games could have possibly had.  One wonders if they ever played the original games, because their trigger warnings make little sense.  

The problem with leftists is, the violations of their social justice sensibilities never need to be specific, they can be vague or even imaginary.  When woke gatekeepers decide that a franchise is bad, for any reason, the collective follows without question.           

As we witnessed with the turbulent release of the Harry Potter themed ‘Hogwarts Legacy,’ leftists are rabidly insistent that all popular media and creators conform to their DEI ideology.  After Harry Potter writer J.K. Rowling spoke out openly against the insanity of the trans movement and men pretending to be women, Hogwarts Legacy was targeted for destruction. 

The planned boycott failed in hilarious fashion, with Legacy becoming one of the best selling titles in recent gaming history.  Leftists were livid, and for good reason; they had stuck their necks out too far too fast.  Their egomania made them vulnerable and their failure made the public realize that the reach of woke activists was far smaller than many people assumed.  The woke left was a paper tiger, an astroturf movement backed only by corporations but not by a large percentage of the population.

In the case of Tomb Raider, it feels as if Crystal Dynamics is asking gamers to boycott their own product.  Or, perhaps they’re afraid that the classics (under the oversight of new management) will outsell their newer feminist catalog and make them look foolish.  The woke movement is in many ways nothing more than a war on nostalgia and our love of the past.  They don’t have to have a logical reason to hate a particular pop icon.  It doesn’t matter if the vast majority of people love a thing, if it’s not modernized and DEI dominated then leftists want it gone.

Another day, another city, another collapse in the commercial real estate market.

This week the property in question is a 20 story building located at 1515 Market St. in Philadelphia, which Philadelphia Business Journal notes has “joined a growing list” of distressed office properties in the city. 

Almost $60 million in debt backed by the building was moved to special servicing in December, the report says. Owner Accesso Partners, based in Florida, has a $59.4 million balance on the building, which it acquired in 2014 for $85 million.

The loan is set to mature in January 2025, the report notes. It was originated by J.P. Morgan and has since been converted into a commercial mortgage backed security (CMBS) and sold.

It is one of several buildings within just blocks of Philadelphia City Hall, located in dead-center city, that have been transferred to special servicing over the last 9 months. 

Accesso told PBJ that it had asked for the loan to be transferred to special servicing so it could negotiate an extension. And if you believe that one, we have some real estate in Alaska we’d like to sell you…

The building houses Temple University’s Center City campus, which has been the building’s flagship tenant since 2001. It extended its lease in 2022 for 5 years, the report notes. It covers more than 130,000 sq. feet and two floors. 

However, no other tenants have more than 16,000 feet. 

The building generated about $6.6 million in net operating income when the loan was written in 2014, however that number has now fallen to under $4.4 million in 2022. Like many other places across the U.S. economy, revenue has fallen while interest expense has risen as a result of rate hikes. 

Fani Willis has been called to testify over her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade – and boy is she defensive…

Watch:

*  *  *

$hit has really hit the Fani in Fulton County.

On Thursday, special prosecutor Nathan Wade testified under oath that he charged several lavish vacations with DA Fani Willis to his corporate credit card while working on the Trump case, and was later reimbursed in cash by Fani.

BREAKING: Nathan Wade testifies that he paid for all the vacations he took with Fani Willis with his business credit card.

And that she then reimbursed him in CASH.

This what at a time he was getting paid by Willis’ office for the prosecution of Trump. pic.twitter.com/9DUq3hedOX

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 15, 2024

The relationship between Wade and Willis is the subject of an evidentiary hearing as part of Willis’ sprawling racketeering case brought against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants for their alleged efforts to overturn (or ‘correct’ – depending) the results of the 2020 US election in Georgia.

Wade also testified that his marriage was “irretrievably broken in 2015,” and that his wife agreed to a divorce – but they held off because their children were still in school. 

Oh…

2020. Fani Willis is asked why the people of Fulton County should support her for District Attorney.

“Because they deserve a DA that won’t have sex with his employees, because they deserve a DA that won’t put money in their own pocket.” pic.twitter.com/uo8wD1wnnR

— MAZE (@mazemoore) February 15, 2024

Fani fudged…

In a confirmation of what we reported last week from Wade’s divorce proceedings, a former “good friend” of Willis’ testified that her romantic relationship with Wade began after they met at the judicial conference in the fall of 2019, directly contradicting assertions made by Willis in court filings about the timing of their relationship. Willis claimed that she and Wade “have been professional associates and friends since 2019,” and that “there was no personal relationship” between her and Wade in Nov. 2021 when she hired Wade and paid him over $600,000 to help her prosecute Trump.

Appearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee via Zoom, Yeartie said Willis and Wade may have begun dating in October or November 2019, shortly after the two met at the conference that year.

During questioning from Sadow, who is representing Trump in the case, Yeartie testified that Willis told her she was engaged in a romantic relationship with Wade in 2020 and 2021, and said she witnessed “hugging, kissing,” and “just affection” between the two before November 2021, when Wade was hired by Willis. -CBS News

Fulton County DA’s office lawyer Anna Cross attempted to raise doubts about Yeartie’s credibility, asking her questions about her performance while working for Willis, and whether she was ever disciplined for poor performance. Yeartie admitted that she’d been written up once, referencing a “situation” in which she was told she would be terminated if she didn’t resign.

OMG.

The Atlanta DA gave her boyfriend a contract to help her prosecute Trump.

That prosecution is done and done.https://t.co/xgKdr8fe8N

— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) February 15, 2024

This adds to previous reporting suggesting that Willis paid Wade’s divorce attorney!

🚨🚨🚨 EXCLUSIVE🚨🚨🚨

In addition to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis paying her lover Nathan Wade nearly $700,000 of taxpayer funds, Fani also spread the money from the Fulton County coffers to Terrence Ahmed Bradley, who is Nathan Wade’s divorce attorney/tenant.… pic.twitter.com/7I1tKkWedn

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) January 20, 2024

According to former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg, “It might be appropriate for Ms. Willis to consider removing herself from this case now.”

“This is getting ugly and it’s getting messy.”

Former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg speaks at recess in the Fulton County D.A. misconduct hearing. Rosenberg adds, “It might be appropriate for Ms. Willis to consider removing herself from this case now.” pic.twitter.com/AHOqcxvv4D

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 15, 2024

You can watch a recap of Wade’s testimony below:

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com,

India’s industry expansion and rising oil refining to meet higher fuel demand are set to drive a tripling of the country’s natural gas consumption by 2050, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.

In 2022, India’s natural gas consumption amounted to 7.0 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), with over 70% of the demand coming from the industrial sector. By 2050, India’s natural gas consumption is set to more than triple to 23.2 Bcf/d, according to EIA’s estimates.  

Among India’s five consuming sectors, the industrial sector’s share of gas consumption will grow the most, rising to 80% of total consumption, followed by the transportation sector rising to 10%.  

India’s gas consumption in oil refining is expected to grow significantly to keep up with India’s domestic demand for oil products, the EIA notes. By 2050, gas consumption will surge by more than 250% for the production of basic chemicals and by more than 400% for refining, with the two industries together accounting for about 79% of India’s industrial natural gas demand in 2050.

India is boosting its refining capacity. The country should add 1.12 million bpd to its current total each year until 2028, a junior oil minister told India’s parliament at the end of 2023.

Total Indian refining capacity is expected to increase by 22% in five years from the current 254 million metric tons per year, which are equal to around 5.8 million bpd, Rameswar Teli said.

Per the EIA forecasts, India’s gas demand – buoyed by oil refining and other industrial production – is expected to grow at an annual rate of 4.4% by 2050, more than twice the 2.0% annual growth rate of gas consumption in China, the next-fastest-growing country.

India’s economy is growing faster than all other major economies, and so is its demand for energy.  

Yesterday all of the major news networks paused their coverage of literally everything else to turn their focus through the whole afternoon to the “major, imminent, grave, terrifying security threat” and ‘fire-alarm’ based on apparent US intelligence related to the Russians(!) and reports that they possess new space defense technology, which is possibly even nuke-related.

Ambiguous reports pointed to a weapon designed to be used to take out satellites. On Thursday the White House has finally revealed more about the nature of the ‘threat’, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby belatedly confirming it is related to “an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing,” but that “This is not an active capability that’s been deployed.”

Or in other words, compared to yesterday’s atmosphere of temporary panic and CNN pundits’ hurried breathing, less than 24 hours later it ends up being the big nothingburger which many predicted it would be. This trend of inflated and fear-mongering headlines is very likely to continue right up to the November election, as we’ve noted.

And just like that, Wednesday’s big ‘threat’ now simply becomes ‘troubling’…

“And though Russia’s pursuit of this particular capability is troubling there was no immediate threat to anyone’s safety,” Kirby continued.

“We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth,” Kirby added.

Initially, Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio set Capitol Hill media correspondents into a frenzy of speculation after he issued an ominous-sounding statement about “information concerning a serious national security threat.”

Amazing that some people still think the news is real 😂

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 14, 2024

Rep. Turner didn’t help matters in saying “there is no need for public alarm”—words typically taken by the public to mean now is precisely the time to worry and that the government is in fact sounding the alarm.

Kirby mentioned this in his Thursday press briefing, saying the administration was busy reviewing the new intel when Turner “regrettably” released his statement. “We have been very careful and deliberate about what we decide to declassify downgrade and share with the public,” Kirby said.

Oh, just kidding around like we always do! pic.twitter.com/9b9VAJ4urK

— Tim Shorrock (@TimothyS) February 15, 2024

Perhaps nothing really even too “new” as NATO has already been fearful of such a weapon for years following a 2021 Russian action in space…

Russia destroys its own satellite in orbital missile test. This happened back in 2021. It cleared scared the crap out of NATO. Russia must’ve really decided to place anti-satellite weapons in space now. pic.twitter.com/sgGOqSRMw1

— Irish Fella (@kulawesome) February 14, 2024

As for Biden and his team, this served as a nice ‘test case’ demonstrating the ease with which they can run something up the flagpole, instantly capturing a day’s news cycle and spotlight, though it is also true many more Americans are now seeing through this tactic.

Still more creative scare-mongering to come…

And that’s how we get Russian sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads https://t.co/jiAFgkqZck

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 15, 2024

Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,

“Can Selecting the Most Qualified Candidate Be Unfair?” asked researchers in a recent study published by the American Psychological Association.

And the short answer, according to this new ‘science’, is a resounding YES: hiring the most qualified people based purely on their merit and talent is unfair.

Naturally they don’t actually discuss WHY. They just take it as a well-known fact that merit-based hiring is bad, while diversity & inclusion hiring is good.

The actual experiments that the researchers discussed in their paper had to do with how easily they could brainwash and manipulate people into believing that “merit-based hiring and promotion processes [are] significantly less fair.”

Quite easily, it turns out. The results of their experiments show that they can easily “disrupt the perceived fairness of meritocracy”.

They’re also excited to take their research even further by “exploring whether the manipulations developed here can be effective” in other ways, like making “diversity policies” less “polarizing”.

By lifting its countenance upon this research and publishing it in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, this ideological drivel is now considered ‘science’.

So, the next time some Inspired Idiot wails about how wonderful diversity and inclusion is… and justify their position by saying things like “studies show” and “the science says”, we can thank the American Psychological Association.

Now, this is just one research paper written by a few fanatical academics pushing their agenda. It’s hardly anything to get bent out of shape about.

But it is a small example of the direction of the nation. And that direction can be summed up in a single word: WRONG.

I’ve written extensively how the problems facing the US aren’t even really political at this point. It’s a question of arithmetic.

The government’s own baseline forecast estimates an additional $20 trillion in new debt over the next decade, on top of the $34 trillion debt they already have.

Most likely this will result in a substantial amount of inflation, plus loss of reserve status for the US dollar, over the next 5-7 years.

I’ve also argued that the US has a very narrow window of opportunity to turn things around. And one of the key ways to do that is to increase productivity.

If there were a true economic bonanza in the US— a surge in production of goods and services— then that would largely solve the problem.

Massive economic growth would lead to a major increase in tax revenue… meaning that the government could solve its perennial deficit problem simply by generating more revenue, as opposed to cutting costs.

And by the way, I’m not talking about raising tax rates.

Just look at the history of taxation in the US: since the end of World War II, the top individual income tax rates in the US have varied tremendously— from as low as 28% in the 1980s, to as high as 91% in the 1960s. Yet despite these fluctuations, the government’s overall tax revenue (as a percentage of GDP) has been very consistent— around 17% of GDP.

In other words, it doesn’t matter how high they raise tax rates. Overall tax revenue, i.e. the government’s ‘slice’ of the economic pie, will remain the same.

The implication? The only real way to generate more tax revenue is to make the pie bigger.

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to do this: stop debilitating large and small businesses with mountains of rules and regulations.

Every day there seem to be calls for more anti-business, anti-capitalism, anti-productivity policies. New reports to file. Wealth taxes. Or my favorite, the Labor Department’s recent 800-page proposal to make sure your small business builds enough bathrooms to conform to everyone’s gender identity.

These sorts of things take economic productivity backward, not forward.

And this new ‘science’ by the American Psychology Association— demanding that businesses should NOT hire people based on merit— is just another small step backward.

It’s the wrong direction, plain and simple. And it’s why I’m not holding my breath that the Inspired Idiots in charge will suddenly start doing what’s necessary to turn the ship around.

Again, though, this should not be a cause for panic or dread.

I’ve also written extensively that rational, thinking people can mitigate the consequences of this Rule by Inspired Idiots.

Gold, for example, tends to perform extremely well in the chaotic, inflationary times that I anticipate. And one potential low-cost approach would be to buy options on long-term gold futures as a hedge against inflation down the road.

We’ll explain more about this, as well as the benefit of owning real assets, next week.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Buy Now Pay Later, BNPL, plans are increasingly popular. It’s another sign of consumer credit stress.

The office of the Comptroller of the Currency defines BNPL as “loans that are payable in four or fewer installments and carry no finance charges.” They are generally offered to online shoppers at checkout.

The New York Fed discusses How and Why Do Consumers Use “Buy Now, Pay Later”?

We differentiate between two types of respondents: 1) the financially fragile, whom we define as having a credit score below 620, having been declined for a credit application in the past year, or having fallen thirty or more days delinquent on a loan in the past year, and 2) all other respondents, whom we refer to as financially stable.

We find that the financially fragile are disproportionately likely to use BNPL at higher frequencies and appear to have embraced BNPL as a regular payment option. Among financially fragile BNPL users, about 60 percent have used the product five or more times in the past year, which translates to about 18 percent of all survey respondents deemed financially fragile (which includes those who have not used BNPL in the last year). This implies that financially fragile users are almost three times as likely as financially stable users to use BNPL five or more times and suggests that high-frequency use may grow if the product continues to be adopted by financially fragile households. 

While about 68 percent of financially stable BNPL users have taken advantage of the product at least twice in the past year, just 23 percent and 14 percent have used it five or more times and ten or more times, respectively. This reveals that use by the financially stable tends to drop off substantially after a few instances, but that there is a small group of financially stable individuals who use BNPL frequently.

Another distinguishing factor between the two groups is the size of the purchases they make. While both groups are skewed toward relatively smaller purchases, 62 percent of financially fragile users have a mean purchase price under $250, compared to about 44 percent of the financially stable Looking at the rest of the distribution, this gap is largely made up in the right tail, as financially stable households are significantly more likely to have a mean purchase price between $1,750 and $2,000.

 For the financially stable, BNPL use appears to be more centered on a few purchases and seems to be largely driven by a desire to avoid paying interest on high-priced items. Meanwhile, use among the financially fragile appears to be more akin to a credit card, as shoppers use the service to make medium-size, out-of-budget purchases frequently. 

Our results also have implications for future BNPL use. They suggest that the largest barrier to consumer take-up is their first use, and that after this initial use consumers tend use BNPL again. With about 80 percent of households not using BNPL in the past year, there may still be a great deal of room for increased adoption of the product. This will be particularly important to watch in the coming months, as many shoppers used BNPL for the first time this past holiday season.

The Trap

If you use BNPL and pay off the bill in the allotted time, you avoid financing. Plans vary, but if you miss a payment, interest likely accrues from the initial purchase.

It’s one thing to spread a major purchase over time, once or twice, and another to be spreading routine purchases over time.

Home Owners vs Renters

The study did not break things down by home owners vs renters, but I suspect most of the use is by renters.

For the 29th consecutive month rent was up at least 0.4 percent. Shelter, a broader category, rose 0.6 percent. Food rose 0.4 percent.

CPI data from the BLS, chart by Mish

Whereas home owners have a fixed payment, likely refinanced lower than their initial mortgage, renters faces huge increases, not every month, but once a year, big bang.

For discussion please see Another Hotter Than Expected CPI Led by Shelter, Up Another 0.6 Percent

For homeowners paying a fixed mortgage, wage increases have likely kept up with inflation. For renters, every rent lease renewal has mostly been a disaster.

Credit card debt at a record high is another sign of financial stress, So are delinquencies.

Credit Card and Auto Delinquencies Soar

Credit card debt surged to a record high in the fourth quarter. Even more troubling is a steep climb in 90 day or longer delinquencies.

On February 8, I noted Credit Card and Auto Delinquencies Soar, Especially Age Group 18 to 39

Those age 18-39 are most likely renters. This all ties together in a cascade of delinquencies.

Israel on Thursday announced that it killed a senior commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, identified as Ali al-Debs, along with at least two other fighters in his group. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the commander was taken out “in a precise air strike carried out by an IDF (Israeli army) aircraft on a Hezbollah military structure in Nabatiyeh,” in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.

By Wednesday’s end it became clear it was the single deadliest day for Lebanese civilians since the start of border fighting after Oct.7.

Al Jazeera reports that at least ten civilians and fighters were killed, and that five among the civilians were children. “Seven of the civilians were killed in Nabatieh late on Wednesday when a rare Israeli attack on the city hit a multistorey building, sources in Lebanon said.”

“The dead were from the same extended family, and included three children,” the report continues. “A boy initially reported missing was found alive under the rubble.”

Hezbollah on Thursday warned that Israel will soon “pay the price” for the deadly day of air raids as the situation continues to rapidly escalate, after months of daily tit-for-tat drone, rocket, and mortar fire. The Iran-linked group also confirmed that three of its fighters were killed.

Tragically, a whole Lebanese immediate family was wiped out in the strikes:

Lebanon’s official National News Agency had identified five of the dead civilians in Nabatiyeh as Hussein Barjawi, his two daughters, his sister and his grandson. His wife and niece were also killed, the security source said.

Additionally, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said “Israeli warplanes targeted a house in south Lebanon’s Sawwaneh, killing three members of the same family — a Syrian woman and her child, aged two, and stepchild, 13.”

As for Hezbollah’s expected response, on Thursday there are reports that Hezbollah has launched dozens of rockets on Galilee and elsewhere in north Israel.

Hezbollah missiles have meanwhile continued to rain down on Israeli military and civilian outposts in northern Israel. Some 80,000 residents had months ago been forced to evacuate, leaving their homes for other parts of Israel. Israel has said that after months of fighting in the north, ten soldiers and six Israeli civilians have been killed, with many more injured. Just yesterday, a female soldier was killed when a Hezbollah rocket slammed into a northern base.

#Watch: IDF has been continuously striking several Hezbollah positions in the last few hours, in south Lebanon’s Blida and Maroun al-Ras. pic.twitter.com/UXkjY9pJ3c

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) February 15, 2024

On the Lebanese side, at least 259 people have died. Most are Hezbollah fighters, but among the fatalities are 40 civilians. 

Israel has been bracing for fuller war on its northern front, with defense leaders signaling they are ‘ready’ – and in Lebanon Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is due to give a speech Friday, which will be his second this week.