Following a week in which special counsel Robert Hur soberly reported that President Biden is a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties” — a man who couldn’t remember when his term as vice president began or ended, or even “within several years” when his son Beau died — scrutiny of Biden’s fitness for office has reached a fever pitch across major media, with some earnestly examining off-ramps for Biden’s shaky re-election bid. 

The special counsel report was bad enough by itself, but Biden himself poured gasoline on the fire last week:

• He twice mistakenly referred to the dead male German chancellor Helmut Kohl when he was describing a discussion with living female Angela Merkel

• He cited a conversation he had with François Mitterand — the French president who died 27 years ago — when that conversation was actually with President Emmanuel Macron

• At a press conference meant to bolster confidence in his mental health, Biden referred to Egyptian President Sissi as the president of Mexico

WATCH: Joe Biden says he recently met with “Mitterand from Germany.”

Mitterand was the FRENCH President between 1981 and 1995.

He also died in 1996. pic.twitter.com/W0YPBDp69n

— Raheem. (@RaheemKassam) February 5, 2024

The week also brought a damning NBC News poll, which found 62% of registered voters have “major concerns” about whether Biden has the requisite mental and physical strength for a second term. Only 34% had major concerns about Trump’s capacity, though he’s just four years younger than the 81-year-old Biden.  

On Monday, Politico examined avenues by which the Democratic Party might navigate toward a different candidate. First, note that the expiration of most ballot-filing deadlines means it’s too late for a heavyweight to enter the Democratic primary, and the obscure Rep. Dean Phillips challenge campaign — which has emphasized Biden’s weakness as a candidate — hasn’t gained any traction. 

Politico‘s Charlie Mahtesian and Steven Shepard also think it’s unlikely we’ll see a floor revolt by Biden delegates at the Democratic Convention. Rather, they focus on a scenario in which Biden sees the primary process all the way through, and then — under mounting public, media and political pressure — announces he will not seek re-election after all and is releasing his delegates to vote for someone else at the national convention, which will be held in Chicago Aug. 19 to 22. Biden might well endorse a candidate, but his delegates wouldn’t be obliged to vote for his pick.

Helmut Kohl, Mitterand, now Sisi as “the President of Mexico”.

Biden has now thoroughly left the building.pic.twitter.com/Hv5BYoUUpA

— Julian Sayarer (@JulianSayarer) February 9, 2024

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been running an odd non-campaign of his own — to include debating then-GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis — would be among the top contenders, along with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. It could all make for great entertainment, writes Politico: 

The Democrats’ convention, typically a staid affair, would be filled with drama. While Democrats stripped their so-called “superdelegates” of most of their power after 2016, those current and former party leaders and elected officials would get a vote on a potential second ballot at the convention.

That would give them significant sway in picking a nominee in a floor fight, but perhaps at the expense of reopening the 2016-era controversy about the role played by party elites in stifling Bernie Sanders’ chances at the nomination

One thing Politico didn’t note is that the convention is already likely to feature high drama, in the form of protests by Democrats and others infuriated by the Biden administration’s blank-check backing of Israel’s unbridled destruction of Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel. A floor-fight for the nomination could mean there’s chaos both inside and outside Chicago’s United Center.  

🚨#BREAKING: Pro-Palestine Protesters are Clashing with Metro DC Police Outside Democratic National Committee Headquarters
⁰📌#Washington | #DC⁰
Currently Hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters have gathered outside the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington,… pic.twitter.com/sNEzM2wRIC

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) November 16, 2023

While a Biden pre-convention withdrawal would make for quite a spectacle, things would really get wild if Biden were to be nominated at the convention only to subsequently die, resign or be disabled. In that scenario, party rules direct the party chair to “confer with the Democratic leadership of the … Congress and the Democratic Governors Association” and then report to the approximately 450-member Democratic National Committee, which would then choose a new nominee.  

The chaos wouldn’t be confined to the Democratic Party: States would be forced to scramble to produce new ballots. Ballots for overseas military service members are shipped just a couple weeks after the late-August Democratic convention, and in-person voting kicks off on Sept. 20 in Minnesota and South Dakota.     

None of this is to say that Biden won’t keep mumbling, shuffling, blank-staring and gaffing his way all the way to the Nov 5 general election finish line. However, after last week, fewer people are willing to wager that Biden will be the Democratic nominee:

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Wire,

Conservative Republicans have managed to defeat the fake border security bill wrapped in a political ploy inside of a Ukraine bailout bill. Of course, no Republican should have ever imagined that giving open-border Democrats everything they asked for was a smart strategic position, but that’s what they very nearly did.

Republicans had already passed a real border security bill within a few months of taking control of the House of Representatives following the 2022 midterm elections. HR-2 actually secured the border – by demanding that the Biden administration finish the border wall, ending Biden’s power to process aliens who don’t enter at ports of entry, and shutting off the federal spigot that funds NGOs who aid and abet illegal aliens (“inadmissible non-U.S. citizens”) by providing lodging and other resources.

Moreover, HR-2 shut down the ability of the Biden administration to grant asylum to the millions of migrants who don’t meet the legal criteria for asylum. But those are just a few of the vital components of HR-2, which is indeed a border security bill.

If Democrats really wanted border security, they would have passed HR-2 in the Senate last year. But even if they didn’t want to give Republicans a win with HR-2, Democrats still could have incorporated the language of HR-2 in their grand compromise to prove that they really meant it when they said they wanted to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States.

Instead, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell teamed up with his buddy Chuck Schumer to use their fake border security bill as a fig leaf to cover up their real goal – freeing billions of dollars to go to Ukraine and Israel.

McConnell sent his sacrificial lamb, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, into the lions’ den of lean and hungry Democrats as his chief negotiator to craft a “compromise” border bill, but he was apparently instructed not to involve House Speaker Mike Johnson or any other border hawks in his negotiations. Moreover, the contents of the bill were kept secret until three days before Schumer intended to bring it to a vote in the Senate.

By that time, it was obvious what the game was. Democrats and their media allies created a narrative that Trump had ordered Republicans to vote against the bill in order to give him a political issue in November. This is just the latest instance where Democrats have gotten the cart before the horse. Trump does not give anyone orders; he just listens to the people and provides them a voice. It is the people who spoke out against this fake border bill, and any Republicans foolish enough to vote against the people are at risk of following former Speaker Kevin McCarthy out the door.

The people’s voice was mocked throughout the process. When details of the border bill were leaked to the media, Lankford characterized them as Internet rumors and dismissed them. “Wait for the text of the bill to be released,” he repeatedly said.

But when the text was released, it was just as the people had feared. Most importantly, the centerpiece of the bill was a provision that ordered the president to shut down the border if illegal entries exceeded 5,000 a day on average for seven days. Our masters in the media tell us that doesn’t mean up to 5,000 illegal entries per day would be allowed, but let’s be realistic.

First of all, the U.S.-Mexican border is not controlled by the Border Patrol; it is controlled by the Mexican cartels. If the human traffickers need to keep border crossings under 5,000 a day in order to keep doing business, then they will do just that.

But there is one question that completely destroys the Democrat and globalist Republican talking point that the “5,000 a day” number is somehow being misunderstood by Harvard Law School graduates like Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton.

Here’s how NBC described the provision:

“DHS could close the border if Border Patrol encountered 4,000 or more migrants on average over seven days. The border would have to be shut down if those encounters reached a seven-day average of 5,000 or if they exceeded 8,500 in a single day.”

Now, here’s the question that Democrats have no answer to: If the border can be shut down when more than 5,000 illegal immigrants cross per day, then why can’t it be shut down immediately, right now?

The answer is obvious – because Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to shut down the border. Instead, they have sanctioned the invasion of our country by millions of non-citizens. With this bill, they attempted to codify that invasion and they thought they could get Republicans to just look the other way. Maybe a few years ago, that would have worked. But this is the new Republican Party, tired of playing Charlie Brown and being humiliated time and again by Democratic Party Lucys.

If you need more evidence that the Senate bill is the opposite of what Sen. Lankford claims, get this:

According to NBC, “The border couldn’t be shut down … for more than 270 days in the first year. And the bill would give the president the power to suspend a border closure ‘on an emergency basis for up to 45 days if it is in the national interest.’”

Under what possible justification would these supposed proponents of border security allow the border to remain open to invaders for the other 95 days a year? Under the typical scenario of 10,000 border crossers per day under Biden, that would allow nearly 1 million illegal crossings per year. Add that to 4,000 crossers a day allowed for 270 days per year under Lankford’s bill, and you are authorizing at least 2 million migrants to enter the country and stay indefinitely, and that’s just between ports of entry. Remember, the bill doesn’t account for the people who show up at airports and border crossings and demand asylum.

Perhaps the craziest admission that the border bill is a con job is that Orwellian provision that Biden could open the border on an emergency basis “if it is in the national interest.”

It is never in the national interest to replace the border with a sign proclaiming, “Welcome Stranger. Mi Casa Es Su Casa.” But apparently, it is in the interests of the Democratic Party. Think about that, and stop blaming Republicans for refusing to be duped one more time.

Authored by Santiago Varela via Bitcoin Magazine,

The subtle shift in social media conversations. The mentions in the mainstream media: “Bitcoin will now be available for Wall Street investors!”. All the text messages arriving with questions about bitcoin from your no-coiner friends. Bitcoiners know that this is the signal. The bull market is officially here before the 2024 halving. This is a letter and a brief guide with nice tools for all those people who have been asking questions about bitcoin in the last couple days.

“Bitcoin… Should I buy it?”

“What is the best way to buy some?”

“When should I buy it?”

“How much do I buy?”

“What strategy do I use to accumulate?”

“Do I keep it? How long?”

Gradually and then suddenly. That weird magic internet money you spend your free time researching is all anyone wants to talk about now. Your coworker, usually oblivious to anything outside his immediate domain, starts peppering you with questions about exchanges and wallets. Your high school and college friends text you asking for advice.

The no-coiner texts are more than just a social phenomenon. They’re a barometer of market sentiment, a bellwether signaling the rise of a new wave of interest. When the questions shift from “What is Bitcoin?” to “How do I buy it?” you know something fundamental has shifted.

This isn’t just FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s recognition. People are starting to see what we’ve seen all along: a monetary revolution unfolding before our eyes. The limitations of the old system, the fragility of fiat currencies, are becoming painfully obvious. And Bitcoin, that beacon of sound money and individual sovereignty, shines ever brighter in the growing darkness.

The questions, of course, are varied. “Should I buy now?” asks the cautious one, still scarred by past price swings. “What exchange should I use?” queries the practical one, seeking a secure path to entry. And the adventurous one, eyes gleaming with gold rush fever, wants to know about leverage and trading strategies.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, of course. Each journey into Bitcoin is unique, shaped by individual circumstances and risk tolerance. But for those drawn to the flight to quality, let’s go step by step.

“SHOULD I BUY BITCOIN?”

This is not investment advice. Before investing any money, I would suggest that you invest time doing your own research about how to use the Bitcoin network appropriately. That said, the world’s largest asset manager is very bullish on Bitcoin. According to a BlackRock paper from 2022, they believe that an 84.9% bitcoin allocation is the optimal strategy.

Additionally, Fidelity published a paper titled Introduction to Digital Assets For Institutional Investors and they mention Bitcoin 73 times. After that, they published a paper titled Bitcoin First: Why investors need to consider Bitcoin separately from other digital assets.

Again, that doesn’t mean you should trust them with your eyes closed. I encourage everyone to do their own research. This is simply a little bit of context about what giants in the asset management industry are saying lately. There are open source tools that can help you make your own conclusions. Any person can access and understand how to use these tools for their personal wealth management. In fact, you can play with the models and adjust anything if you know some programming in Python. Finally, the Bitcoin network has so many unique characteristics that make it like no other asset we’ve seen before. Bitcoin rocks!

“WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO BUY SOME?”

It depends on individual needs, priorities and trade offs. On one side, you need to choose the level of responsibility that you’re comfortable with. On another side, you need to decide on the level of ownership that you want to have over your wealth.

For example, there will be individuals that prefer to give up absolute ownership because they’d rather have a third-party as the custodian of the bitcoin. Long time bitcoiners value absolute ownership and therefore they prefer to be the custodians of their own bitcoins even if that implies more responsibility for them. Holding your own keys is the only way to really own any bitcoin. That’s why they say: “Not your keys, not your bitcoin”. If you really want to be your own bank, you can’t delegate the responsibility of holding your keys to anyone else.

There is no doubt that not everyone prefers the big responsibility of holding their bitcoin. The same thing happened with other assets like gold. Not everyone feels comfortable storing gold in their homes and they send their gold to third-party custodians that have big gold vaults. In cyberspace there are also technicalities that will make some individuals feel unable to keep up with the big responsibility of holding value without the help of a third-party.

Ask yourself the following questions: Do you value absolute ownerships? Do you value privacy? Are you comfortable with the responsibility of holding your keys safely? How much trust do you have in a third-party to custody your wealth? Are you an individual or institutional investor? If you are an institutional investor, are there regulations preventing you from owning real bitcoin? The following diagram from River can help you decide which is the best way for you to buy and hold bitcoin.

In conclusion, there are three different alternatives depending on individual needs. First, owning real bitcoin with a hardware wallet that you own the keys to. Second, buying paper bitcoin and having a third-party do the custody for you. Third, buying a Bitcoin ETF and having your broker keep it for you. After all, you can use a mix of different strategies either to diversify your exposure or invest from different platforms.

“WHEN SHOULD I BUY IT?”

Approximately every four years there is an event called the Halving. A halving implies that the amount of bitcoins put into circulation is cut into half. This is known as the Block Reward or Block Subsidy. In 2023, the Block Reward was equivalent to 6.25 Bitcoin coins. The Block Reward refers to the number of coins issued every 10 minutes. This means that 900 bitcoins were created each day.

In 2010, the Block Reward was 50 coins. During a Halving, the Block Reward is halved, marking significant epochs in the life of the Bitcoin network. We are currently in the 4th epoch (Epoch IV), which began in 2020 and will end in 2024.

Therefore, with the Halving in 2024, the monetary issuance will decrease to 3.125 coins every 10 minutes. This halving is expected to occur around April and in other words, a halving causes an anticipated decrease in the growth rate of the monetary base. The halving and the Epoch are crucial considerations for those interested in investing in Bitcoin. In the following graph you can visualize this:

*Graph created by the author with data from a Nasdaq library in R Studio. The data is from December 2010 to December 2023.

The following charts contain Bitcoin price data for each epoch separately (from Epoch I to Epoch IV, respectively). What’s intriguing about these four charts is that they help us visualize a clear pattern that repeats in each epoch. These charts can be valuable to anyone interested in investing in Bitcoin, as they assist us in visualizing a very distinct cycle that repeats every four years.

*Graph created by the author with data from a Nasdaq library in R Studio. .

It is important to mention that we do not know if the four year cycle will continue forever. In the last few years there have been new conversations that suggest that the four year cycle will not always be like that. A popular argument is that the halving will be priced in with anticipation for future epochs when people become more aware of this phenomenon.

There are currently 19.7 billion bitcoins in circulation out of the 21 million that there will ever exist. This means that 93% of the total bitcoins already exist and there is less than 7% of them to be mined. However, the last bitcoins will be mined around the year 2140 and miners will live off of transaction fees after that.

*Source: https://medium.com/swlh/the-mathematics-of-bitcoin-89e7ab59edc

“HOW MUCH DO I BUY?”

Once you have decided to buy bitcoin, the next step is to ask yourself how much you want to invest. Remember the advice from that Blackrock publication? You don’t have to be that aggressive and invest 84% of your portfolio in bitcoins. You can begin little by little. In this section, I will use a wonderful open-source tool created by Raphael Zagury (Chief Investment Officer of Swan Bitcoin) and I would suggest everyone to play with the models in the platform by yourself. You can find this dashboard at https://nakamotoportfolio.com/.

In the Nakamoto Portfolio website, you can personalize a portfolio to meet your needs or you can check out default portfolios templates that are already there for you to analyze. Let’s check out a very simple and traditional portfolio:

This portfolio has 60% of its wealth invested in the S&P 500 Index (SPY), 20% in a regular gold trust (GLD), and the other 20% in a Vanguard Bond Market ETF (BND). The time frame used to analyze this portfolio is between January 2018 and January 2024. The green line shows us the actual results that this portfolio would`ve had during that time span. The results tell us that this portfolio would have had an annual return of 8.73%. The total return for the six year period is 65%. The daily volatility of this portfolio is 0.67% and the annualized volatility is 12.85%.

Now let’s focus on the three lines below the green line that represents the original portfolio. These lines give us the results of the original portfolio if they would have had 1%, 5% and 10% of the portfolio in Bitcoin for those six years. Just by having 1% in Bitcoin, the total returns of the portfolio would go from 65% to 71%. The annualized volatility would only increase to 12.91%. A position of 5% in Bitcoin would increase the returns all the way to 94% with the volatility at 13.55%. Finally, a position of 10% in Bitcoin would take the returns all the way to 123% and the volatility would only increase to 15.12%. This exercise illustrates perfectly why exposure to Bitcoin (even minimum exposure) is ideal for any portfolio.

Ray Dalio, the famous investor from Bridgewater Associates, created a portfolio designed to perform well across different economic conditions. This investment strategy is known as the All Weather Portfolio. This portfolio template is available on the Nakamoto Portfolio website to analyze the results of Bitcoin exposure. The following image demonstrates the benefits of adding Bitcoin to a portfolio like this one.

Another interesting portfolio to check out is the Diversified Bond Portfolio. This is a conservative investment strategy for risk-averse individuals. This portfolio includes a mix of Treasury with High Yield ETFs. According to Mr. Zagury, “a Bitcoin allocation is the perfect implementation of a bond portfolio. Even at small amounts, it has the potential to increase risk-adjusted returns.” The following image contains a brief summary of the impact that Bitcoin exposure can have on the Diversified Bond Portfolio. I suggest for everyone to try out the Nakamoto Portfolio by themselves to play with different numbers, portfolios, strategies, etc. There are YouTube tutorials and Twitter Threads to help anyone that is interested in using this wonderful tool.

“WHAT STRATEGY DO I USE TO ACCUMULATE?”

Once you have decided that you want to buy some bitcoin and you have decided on the amount of exposure that you want, the next step is to decide how you want to approach this accumulation phase. What strategy do you want to buy bitcoin? On one hand, you can buy it all at once. On the other hand, you can buy little by little.

There are two main strategies for bitcoin accumulation: Lump-sum Investing and Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA). A lump-sum strategy implies investing all available funds at once. The DCA strategy allocates funds over regular intervals. For example, someone that decides to buy $100 worth of bitcoin each week (no matter the price) is following a DCA strategy. This is a popular strategy among bitcoiners that want to stack sats consistently. Each strategy has its own pros and cons. However, the best strategy depends on the particular needs and preferences of each individual.

The Nakamoto Portfolio website also has a tool where anyone can run the numbers and compare which strategy works better for their particular situation. Check out the BTC Cost Averaging Simulator. According to Swan´s Nakamoto Portfolio, “lump-sum investing has historically outperformed DCA strategies. This is primarily due to Bitcoin’s explosive upward price movements. But DCA can lead to significant outperformance during bear markets. For instance, investors who bought at all-time highs but employed DCA afterward were able to break even significantly quicker. While DCA has potential drawbacks, such as reduced returns in consistently rising markets, it remains a popular method for managing risk and promoting disciplined investing.” After all, most people use a mix of both of these strategies and that might be the best way to go.

“DO I KEEP TT? FOR HOW LONG?”

Again, that comes down to individual needs, priorities, information, etc. However, this asset should be considered a long-term investment strategy. That means holding your bitcoin for a very long time, regardless of price fluctuations. Many Bitcoin enthusiasts believe that bitcoin will eventually become a global reserve currency, and therefore, they are willing to hold it through the ups and downs of the market. There is a popular saying amongst bitcoiners that changes “hold” into “HODL” (Hold On For Dear Life!). Take a look at awesome bitcoin comics that might also give you some advice…

Other investors prefer trading their bitcoin on a frequent basis. This strategy involves buying bitcoin during the dips and selling during the highs. It sounds too cool but in reality this decentralized market is very difficult to predict. Very rarely do traders get to outsmart the market. Time in the market is more important than timing the market.

I encourage readers to take the next step, whether it’s researching Bitcoin on their own, starting a Bitcoin investment plan, or joining the Bitcoin community. Start your Bitcoin journey today! Dive into the resources, explore the Nakamoto Portfolio, and don’t hesitate to ask questions. Bitcoin awaits those who dare to step into the future. As Bitcoin continues its ascent, how will the world adapt to this new paradigm of sound money and individual sovereignty? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain: the future is orange.

China has continued showing its disapproval of Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, which has also been consistent with Russian denunciations, and of course Iran’s position too.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Tuesday issued a scathing condemnation of the Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and urged Tel Aviv to immediately halt all operations. It comes a day after an elite Israeli counterterror team was able to free two Israeli hostages during high-risk operations there.

“China is closely watching the developments in Rafah,” a foreign ministry spokesperson stated. “We oppose and condemn acts against civilians and international law. We call on Israel to stop military operations as soon as possible, do everything possible to avoid casualties among innocent civilians, and prevent a more devastating humanitarian disaster in Rafah.”

Regional reports say that Monday alone saw over 40 airstrikes on Rafah, which reportedly killed more than a hundred people. There are common estimates that over one million refugees have surged into the city bordering Egypt during the last months of intense fighting elsewhere in the Strip.

A Hamas statement had described the “The Nazi occupation army’s attack on the city of Rafah tonight … which [has] claimed the lives of more than a hundred martyrs so far, is considered a continuation of the genocidal war and the attempts at forced displacement it is waging against our Palestinian people.”

A bigger full ground invasion is still expected, with humanitarian groups also warning of a looming humanitarian catastrophe, already as the Palestinian death toll since Oct.7 is close to 30,000 – according to Gaza health ministry figures.

Israel, following recent days of pressure from Washington and other allies, has sought to assure that it will seek to evacuate those civilians willing to leave Rafah before the full assault begins. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in a Tuesday press briefing said, “We know that it is more difficult for us to fight in an environment where there are over a million people and another 10,000 Hamas operatives.”

“In previous parts of the war, we sought to isolate the population. We have the capabilities to do it. We did it in Gaza City. We did it in Khan Younis. We did it in the central camps [of Gaza],” Halevi said.

Meanwhile an interesting new gaffe out of President Biden…

Biden refers to “our military operation in Rafah.” He corrects himself to say “the major military operation in Rafah”, but this is yet another occasion where his flubs reveal the truth. Every Israeli massacre in Gaza is a joint Genocide Joe production. pic.twitter.com/PI2hPS95m8

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 12, 2024

“I am saying here that the residents of Rafah will be allowed to evacuate the area. It is not right for the citizens, for the residents, for the families, to be in the area of ​​fighting. When will it happen? How will it happen? We will decide when the time comes,” he added.

But some have accused Israeli officials of simply floating false hopes and rhetoric in order to calm Western allies, particularly the US. In Europe there’s a move to prevent more arms from reaching Israel amid accusations of mass human rights violations, also as the Netherlands has been forced by a court to temporarily halt transfers of F-35 parts.

Authored by ‘Sundance’ via The Last Refuge,

I made the notation during the Tucker Carlson interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin knows everything below in this article about Russian Sanctions and the formation around a dollar-based U.S. CBDC. Unfortunately, Tucker Carlson does not know the specifics of how it is being constructed.

As I continue deep meetings and very granular discussions about the lessons within the EU that can be applied to the USA, it is worth revisiting this previously password protected post.

I went to the EU, because deep inside all of my research on Russia, things did not make sense.  I was very prepared and organized to expect everything sketchy, and what I found surprised me.  Putting boots on the ground, I now have a completely clear and different view.

Let me start by saying everything we have read about the Western sanctions against Russia is false.  What sanctions might exist do not have any impact, and Eastern Europe has no intention to anger Putin.  When Brussels threatens to kick Hungary out of the EU/NATO, I can almost hear Viktor Orban saying, “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”  Hungary doesn’t even use or rely on the €uro for domestic financial transactions; they still retain their own national currency, the Hungarian forint or HUF.

First things first with the Western financial sanctions- specifically the SWIFT exchange.  It is true you cannot use VISA, Mastercard or any mainstream Western financial tools to conduct business in Russia; however, the number of workarounds for this issue are numerous.  One of those tools is the use of a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin; and within that reality, you find something very ominous about the USA motive.

Crypto users are likely familiar with stories like Binance and the US regulatory control therein.  Factually, outside the USA Binance is being used to purchase and trade crypto without issue, but inside the USA it is regulated.  That brings me to the MEXC crypto exchange, a Mexican version, again available globally but not allowed in the USA.  The same applies to Metamask, used all over Europe but not permitted in the USA.  Start to ask yourself, why all these crypto exchanges are available to the rest of the world but not the USA, and you start to suspect the Russian sanctions, just like the Patriot Act, are something else entirely.

Then there’s app wallets.  You might be familiar with Apple Pay as a process to handle transactions from your iPhone.  Apple Pay is linked to your bank account.  Well, the “wallet feature” exists on other apps also, like Telegram; however, you can find the wallet feature, but if you try to use it from a USA cell phone… “This feature is not allowed in your region.”  Why are digital wallets available for the rest of the world but blocked by the U.S. government?

This brings me to several crypto conversations in the EU at various cafes with people who have a deep understanding. 

The commonly accepted bottom line, the Western sanctions, organized by the Biden administration and US Treasury, were not intended to put financial walls around Russia; they were designed to put control walls around the USA. 

Russia was the useful justification.

Here’s how it really looks from the outside looking at the USA.  The same way the Patriot Act was not designed to stop terrorism but rather to create a domestic surveillance system. So too were the “Russian Sanctions” not designed to sanction Russia, but rather to create the financial control system that will lead to a USA digital currency.

Now, does the exploding debt and seeming govt ambivalence take on a new perspective?  It should, because that unspoken motive explains everything.  This is not accidental folks.

Again, the western sanctions against Russia are not having an impact against Russia; they are having a quiet impact in the USA that no one is permitted to talk about.

LOGISTICS

Despite popular opinion to the contrary, it is entirely possible to travel all over Europe without being tracked.  If you pick an entry point into the EU (Schengen Area), once inside, you can travel without any national checkpoints or passport checks.  It is also entirely possible to fly all over the EU without ever giving a passport number when you book the flight.  The trick is to know which airline.  You are a name on a passenger manifest, nothing more.

Bottom line, travel around the EU is less controlled, tracked and monitored, than travel inside the USA. 

Yes, let me emphasize; freedom of travel is greater in the EU than it is in the USA.  This was completely unexpected.

GROUND REPORT

You might ask how I know the Russian sanctions are ineffective – here’s an example. 

After doing advanced research, I went to three separate banks as a random and innocuous customer.  I put my reason in the kiosk at each bank, got my ticket number and sat down to listen to the conversations. When my ticket number came up on the digital board, I just ignored it and sat for hours listening to conversations.  No one ever noticed or questioned me – not once.

At every one of the banks, the majority of the customers, at the “new account” desk, were foreign nationals asking about setting up business accounts to trade with Russia. In every bank the conversations were friendly and helpful, with the bank staff telling the customers exactly how to set up their account to accomplish the transactions.  No one was saying no; instead they were explaining how to do it in very helpful detail.

Within Russia, there are now 3rd party brokers with international accounts, an entirely new industry, which creates a layer of transactional capability for the outside company to sell goods into Russia.  A Samsung TV travels from South Korea to the destination in the RU with the financial transaction between manufacturer and retailer now passing through the new ‘broker’ intermediary. Essentially, that process is what was happening in the banks for small to medium sized companies.

Back to the crypto and digital wallet angle.  In addition to financial/transactional brokers for durable goods into Russia, there is now an entire industry of selling telephone id’s with EU phone numbers to process the transactions that are blocked by the USA sanction regime.

Meaning, a person could buy a phone and register a phone number from within the EU, and then go back to the USA and access all the blocked/restricted financial processes [Binance (non-US), Metamask, MexC, Telegram digital wallet etc].  This would permit them to do untracked financial transactions into and out of Russia from the USA without the USG knowing about them (sanction workaround).

[DISCLAIMER: in the interest of my own legal risk, I did not do this; I’m just explaining.]

I am not smarter than the U.S. intelligence community, so what does this mean?

This means the U.S. government knows exactly why the Russian economy is thriving, the Ruble is stronger against the dollar, and there is nothing -not one thing- visible or different on the ground in Russia that an ordinary Russian citizen would notice.  In fact, the Russian economy is doing fine, better than before the Ukraine conflict initiated, albeit with new financial industries created by the sanctions.

If the US government knows this, then why the sanctions?

Asked and answered. 

The Western sanctions created a financial wall around the USA, not to keep Russia out, but to keep us in. 

The Western sanction regime, the financial mechanisms they created and authorized, creates the control gate that leads to a U.S. digital currency.

In essence, the Ukraine war response justified a system that creates a digital dollar.

I will have more, but for now just think about this aspect.

As migrants from Central America surge north in hopes of reaching the US southern border, there’s a dangerous stretch of border between North and South America that legacy media outlets refuse to cover horror stories. 

Let’s begin with data from an independent, non-profit newsroom, The New Humanitarian that shows a record number of migrants crossed the treacherous jungle corridor connecting Colombia and Panamá – known as the Darién Gap – in 2023. These figures also show that Darién Gap migrant crossings have exponentially surged under President Biden’s first term. 

“2023 has broken all records. It has been a huge, terrible maelstrom,” Elías Cornejo, who runs Fe y Alegría, an NGO promoting education and social advancement for migrants in Panamá, told The New Humanitarian. 

Cornejo continued: “And we expect a new increase [in 2024].”

Meanwhile, NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, recently reported a sevenfold increase in sexual attacks across the Darién Gap. 

Given all the chaos, Real America’s Voice correspondent Ben Bergquam and his team are reporting from the Darién Gap this past weekend. They encountered cartel thieves and robbers terrorizing migrants.  

“There you go, Democrats. This is your open borders right there,” said Bergquam, referring to the chaos unfolding in the jungle, including rapes, robberies, and shootouts. 

Bergquam and his team, accompanied by armed guards, tracked and intercepted cartel thieves. They came across countless migrants who warned about cartel members leaving a trail of destruction, including raping and robbing. 

The reporters then found themselves in a firefight as armed guards assaulted the thieves, leaving one of them dead while two others were arrested. The men were preying on migrants, armed with pistols and condoms. 

“It’s never-ending … You can say all you want Biden administration that the borders aren’t open. But this video tells the truth,” Bergquam said. 

In an X post, Bergquam wrote: 

*This is all by design by the open borders globalists/Democrats who have realized they can cash in on the “refugee game” through the Office of Refugee Resettlement – training illegals who don’t qualify for asylum how to say the right words to get in, aka “immigration fraud.” This is not a natural migration. This is a coordinated for profit invasion organized by international NGOs (Catholic Charities, etc) at the expense of American citizens and every country the invasion passes through.

Darien Gap, Panama Recap Part 3: RAPES, ROBBERIES AND SHOOTOUT IN THE JUNGLE!

Law & Border only on Real America’s Voice News @RealAmVoice. Sponsored by https://t.co/hZR7SAvMa6 promo code: RAV

*Stay tuned! Later this month we will be back with footage you won’t see anywhere… pic.twitter.com/PnXJfNdsX3

— Ben Bergquam – Real America’s Voice (RAV-TV) News (@BenBergquam) February 11, 2024

Those who survive the two-week trek through the jungles end up on the southern US border in weeks, if not months later.

Authored by Lee Harding via The Epoch Times,

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training is divisive and counter-productive and can even serve to increase prejudice among participants, a new study by a Canadian professor says.

David Haskell released his study for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy on Feb. 12. The social scientist and associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University says DEI training does more harm than good and calls his findings a “reality check.”

“A growing number of high-profile cases suggest that diversity workshops and their supporting materials regularly promote questionable claims—particularly about the overarching, malicious character of the majority population. Similarly, hostility toward those who challenge DEI claims is part of the pattern,” Mr. Haskell wrote.

“The national and international research shows there is often a disconnect between the evidence and the claims of DEI advocates.”

In an extreme example, Richard Bilkszto, a 60-year-old Toronto District School Board principal who had challenged DEI claims, took his own life on July 13, 2023. His lawyer, Lisa Bildy, suggested that harassment he received following DEI training in 2021 directly contributed to his death. A Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) ruling confirmed that he had been the subject of “workplace harassment and bullying.”

Claims that Canada and other Western countries are “systemically racist” are not borne out by a statistical analysis of “differences in outcomes,” Mr. Haskell’s paper states. It cites foundation colleague Matthew Lau, who wrote: “The data on disparities in income, educational attainment, occupational outcomes, and public school test scores show that, on average, Asians are doing better than the white population.”

The paper also argues that the purported positive results of DEI training are as questionable as its premise and that a focus on “implicit bias, white privilege, and micro-aggressions” do not foster harmony.

“To ‘prove’ the effectiveness of DEI instruction, proponents often point to surveys conducted before and after workshops that show, following training, participants are much more likely to articulate answers that align with the pro-DEI ideas,” Mr. Haskell wrote.

“This type of methodology has drawn criticism and has proven to be unreliable.”

In an annual review of psychology published in 2022, U.S. research psychologists Patricia Devine and Tory Ash criticized DEI proponents’ “proxy measures for success that are far removed from the types of consequential outcomes that reflect the purported goals of such trainings.”

The authors concluded, “Implementation of DT [diversity training] has clearly outpaced the available evidence that such programs are effective in achieving their goals.”

Positive Results Negligible

Numerous systemic reviews and meta-analyses reviewed by Mr. Haskell similarly found that positive results from DEI training are “undetectable or negligible.”

In their annual review of psychology published in 2009, then-Harvard professor Elizabeth Paluck and then-Yale professor Donald Green examined 985 studies and found, “Due to weaknesses in the internal and external validity of existing research, the literature does not reveal whether, when, and why interventions reduce prejudice in the world.”

A subsequent meta-analysis by Ms. Paluck, Mr. Green, and two other researchers, published in 2021, reviewed 418 experiments reported in over 300 manuscripts from 2007 to 2019 and found support for DEI as dubious as before. “Although these studies report optimistic conclusions, we identify troubling indications of publication bias that may exaggerate effects,” the co-authors wrote.

Mr. Haskell said the harms of DEI are more clear than its benefits.

“DEI instruction has been shown to increase prejudice and activate bigotry among participants by bringing existing stereotypes to the top of their minds or by implanting new biases they had not previously held,” he wrote.

In 2018, Harvard sociologist Frank Dobbin and colleague Alexandra Kalev published “Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work? The Challenge for Industry and Academia” in the journal Anthropology Now.

“Hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that anti-bias training doesn’t reduce bias, alter behaviour or change the workplace,” the authors wrote. “Field and laboratory studies find that asking people to suppress stereotypes tends to reinforce them–making them more cognitively accessible to people.”

As far back as 1994, Neil Macrae at UK-based University of Aberdeen and fellow researchers wrote in a paper for a social psychology journal that the strategy of repressing stereotypic thoughts can have a “rebound effect.”

“When people attempt to suppress unwanted thoughts, these thoughts are likely to subsequently reappear with even greater insistence than if they had never been suppressed,” they wrote.

‘Isolation and Demoralization’

Mr. Haskell said DEI training can create a sense of “isolation and demoralization” in people belonging to the “dominant culture” because they are depicted as “fundamentally depraved (racist, sexist, sadistic, etc.)” while other groups are depicted “as important and worthwhile.”

In a 2020 study, Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist and assistant professor at New York-based Stony Brook University, found that this “clear double-standard” leads many from the dominant group to “walk away from the training believing that themselves, their culture, their perspectives and interest are not valued at the institution.”

“The training also leads many to believe that they have to ‘walk on eggshells’ when engaging with members of minority populations,” he wrote. “As a result, members of the dominant group become less likely to try to build relationships or collaborate with people from minority populations.”

Erin Cooley, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at New York-based Colgate University, found in a 2019 paper that among social liberals, learning about white privilege “reduces sympathy, increases blame, and decreases external attributions for White people struggling with poverty.”

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Mr. Haskell explained the logic behind this outcome.

“They were even more hostile toward poor whites, because those people must be categorically lazy … [or] dysfunctional because they have privilege. Why are they not successful?” he said.

“Of course, white privilege completely ignores the thousands of other variables that go into every person, white or black or indigenous. There are so many things that can cause social and economic distress.”

Mr. Haskell said those of Asian descent often succeed in the West due to their high rates of two-parent families and emphasis on hard work, higher education, and personal responsibility. Yet, because this success challenges DEI doctrines of white dominance, Asians get reclassified as whites.

“School boards in the United States, under the influence of DEI ideology and training, they began to deny the existence of Asians and simply call them white. They put them all into one category,” he said.

“White was the catch-all term for oppressor. And so the better you do, the more oppressive you are.”

Asians Reclassified

In a 2023 submission to the U.S. Supreme Court, students of Asian descent were shown to need entrance exam scores 450 points higher than black people to have the same chance of admission at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The combined highest score of math and verbal skills was 1,600, so Asians needed to be nearly perfect.

In the summer of 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the racial quotas as unconstitutional and in violation of federal civil rights law. Mr. Haskell argues in his paper that Canada is different.

“Canada has no such legislation; in fact, our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and our human rights laws allow for discrimination against the majority population. This constitutional allowance has now resulted in employment postings that, in the name of DEI, explicitly promote reverse or ‘recycled racism.’”

In the interview, Haskell said the riots following the death of George Floyd “opened the spigot larger than ever before on DEI spending.” He hopes his analysis will empower business, government, post-secondary institutions, and public schools to reverse course.

Haskell said DEI trainers are well-paid to do what they do and may sincerely believe they are doing good work despite the findings he outlines. However, he believes proponents at the highest level use DEI instruction “to destroy the existing society.”

“They just want to be able to place blame in the absence of evidence, and that’s what they’re doing,” Haskell said.

“We have a real history in the West of snake oil being passed off as scholarship. And this is just another example of that in a long, long line of con games.”

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Public media culture has been mostly something to dread for several years at least. So we watched the Super Bowl only with trepidation. What woke nonsense was going to be dumped on our heads? How will the ads manipulate us? How will the official program preach values to us that are contrary to how we want to raise our kids?

To my great relief and surprise, I did not detect any of this. It seemed like men and women gathering to enjoy a nice competitive game and having fun, like the old days. That’s it. Nothing more. I asked several others if they had seen anything weird going on and everyone said no.

Well, there were two exceptions.

• First, the idea of two national anthems is highly dangerous and divisive, even evil. That must end immediately.

• Second, some creepy pro-devil stuff seemed to be going on in the Taylor Swift box, about which we could have seen much less.

Other than that, it was largely a woke-free event.

What’s happening here? How did we go from several years ago when the halftime show featured China-style hazmat suits and other creepy “Great Reset” outfits to what seemed now like a normal and old-fashioned show? How come the entire event seemed to lack the preachy and leftist quality we’ve come to associate with public culture?

My suspicion is that it comes down to the slogan “Go woke, go broke.” These companies now realize there is a major revolt taking place in the United States and around the world against extremist ideology and everything associated with lockdown evil. Instead, they have replaced all that with a fascinating nostalgia for the old ways of America.

Look at the ads, for example. They were so thrown back. The music was from the 1970s and 1980s, including Neil Diamond and Queen. The aesthetic was generally old-fashioned too, in the best possible way. Companies that advertised, Volkswagen for example, emphasized their deep roots in U.S. history, even showing images of Herbie. The old stars were back, including Christopher Walken. Even Disney was trying to remind people of its better days.

The only political ad in the entire show was sponsored by a PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

This one was enormously fascinating. It took a jingle and ad from his uncle’s campaign of 1960 and superimposed RFK’s face. It was a huge hit and very effective. It carried forward a major theme of the campaign, which is the desperate need to restore the greatness in this country we once knew before it Obamanated and Faucied to pieces.

RFK is counting on this nostalgic idealism to carry his campaign, a deep memory of times when the public controlled the government, media was trusted, the American household could live well on one income, houses were affordable, school meant something, cities were clean and safe, and so on.

Without this memory—and it is fading fast—we do not know what it is we are trying to rebuild.

Then there was the Pfizer ad, which was brilliantly done and celebrated the greatest scientists since the ancient world. It was a great ad. No one had any idea it was a Pfizer ad until the very end, when a tiny logo appeared. That they had to bury this is revealing.

I can imagine that many people let out a big: booo!!

Pay special attention to the wildly desperate moves by Anheuser-Busch to revive its failing brand Bud Light. A year ago, the company sent a customized can to the fake woman Dylan Mulvaney to push on his Instagram account, which he did. This sparked a massive backlash that caused a huge decline in sales. It is a major test of who would be in control: corporate elites or consumers.

Without ever acknowledging error, the company embarked on a massive campaign to revive the brand and reroot in mainstream American culture. The ad executive—educated by the top schools and graduating from the Ivy League—was summarily fired. Now the ads feature cowboys, dogs, and Clydesdale horses, along with deep Western accents and real men doing manly things.

It seemed like a crazy bet that they could overcome what happened but maybe it will work. Who knows?

Maybe Bud Light will not be forever tarnished by its preposterous and failed foray into woke culture. The answer is really up to consumers, and therein lies an important point. What the government has ruined, the forces of the market economy are working to repair.

If you think about it, it is rather remarkable that four years ago, most governments in the world slammed shut most of society, including small businesses, church services, and sporting events, all because of a pathogen that our elites assured us was there but no one could see without a microscope and petri dish. All data we had up to that point indicated that this was not dangerous for anyone but the elderly and infirm but still we shut down anyway.

In 2021—this really happened—the Super Bowl was played without the usual number of in-person fans, all in the name of virus control. In the previous year, people like Anthony Fauci were talking about a future without any in-person events and where no one would shake hands or own pets without government permission. It was like crazy people took over the world.

Along the same time, woke ideology made massive advances in the corporate world and academia. This bled into the culture in a huge way, flooding whole societies with insane theories of gender and politics. And this went on for the better part of two years, with whole societies closed on the advice of scientists. It’s simply incredible to imagine that this happened only so recently.

And yet look around. So much has been rebuilt. Not by government. It’s been rebuilt by the forces of society itself, particularly within its commercial sector. The Super Bowl puts it all on display, with a message that all the things you love are back and getting better. And the absence of obvious signs of evil are especially notable.

If you want to know the attitudes and opinions of people today, I cannot think of a better barometer than advertising. This is how business persuades the public to buy. What these companies pay to get on your screen indicates their own evaluation of your preferences and values.

Of course what we saw is an idealized version of what we wish life were really like. The reality in the cities is far grimmer, with refugees flooding in, crime taking over, and people far less prosperous than they once were. Our lives in general function much less well than they once did. The economic data, despite what they tell us, looks terrible. The debt burden for households and government generally is overwhelming.

Still, one cannot help but observe that real restoration is impossible without ideals. And what we saw at the Super Bowl was this ideal in action. It was not perfect. But it sure was a great improvement over the last several years of disaster. At least it gave the country and the world a glimmer of what it is we need to recapture in the aftermath.

In some ways, however, it is deeply tragic that most of what claims our affections and attention are the sights, sounds, and symbols of the past. Public culture took a huge departure and we are left with nothing but what used to be. Still, that all of what we once loved was on display we have to count as progress.

“I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that,” Vice President Kamala Harris told the Wall Street Journal when asked about President Biden’s mental and physical health. 

“I am ready to serve.” Kamala Harris cited her “capacity to lead” before a special counsel report amplifying concerns about President Biden’s age https://t.co/58E06v7HBl https://t.co/58E06v7HBl

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) February 13, 2024

Ready to serve? 

#Kamala Is Ready to Serve pic.twitter.com/GYrc1Z2D8Z

— Marc Rudov (@MarcRudov) February 13, 2024

But in all seriousness, it’s not hard to figure out the White House is quickly recalibrating its re-election message following Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report that called Biden an “elderly man with a poor memory” for mishandling classified documents. Now, trial balloons are being floated to see if Harris could be a substitute on the ballot. 

WSJ pointed out: 

“There is no serious talk of replacing Biden on this year’s presidential ticket, Democratic officials say, pointing to the filing deadlines for primary ballot access that have already closed. In the unlikely circumstance that Biden withdraws as the Democratic nominee, Harris would still have to earn the required delegates to take his place at the party’s convention in August. If it were to happen after the convention, a special meeting of the Democratic National Committee would decide the party’s presidential ticket, according to the DNC’s rules.” 

A significant hurdle for Harris is her awful public perception. And everyone knows she would be an even greater disaster than Biden, who suffers from dementia severe memory loss. 

Kamala Harris suddenly adopts an American Southern accent mid-speech about the 2nd Amendment.

She is bat shit crazy. pic.twitter.com/MHLQDP5zTM

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) February 10, 2024

Kamala Harris is batshit crazy.

America your President doesn’t know which day of the week it is & your Vice President is literally beyond insane.

How did you let this happen? pic.twitter.com/bQ4zcSaSWM

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) July 8, 2023

#USA. A crazy excerpt from Kamala #Harris,vice president of #Biden: “Today is today.And yesterday was today for us,but yesterday.And tomorrow will become for us today,but tomorrow. So live today in such a way that the future today is for you like yesterday’s today, only tomorrow” pic.twitter.com/0dZSLMShwS

— Donato Yaakov Secchi (@doyaksec) April 29, 2023

“No matter how badly Biden is doing; ever since 2021, Harris has polled worse. As one Republican strategist puts it, “She’s the one politician in America who essentially can make Joe Biden look even semi-competent,” British journalist Freddy Gray penned in The Telegraph. 

A recent NBC News survey of American voters found that most respondents view Harris negatively (53%). And only 28% of respondents have a favorable opinion of the VP. 

At the same time, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after the special counsel’s report found that 86% of respondents think Biden’s too old to serve as commander-in-chief. 

Circling back to the WSJ interview, Harris also said she has the “capacity to lead” to lead the nation. If you want a glimpse of leadership, recall she was ‘Border Czar’ for about a year.

Under her watch, the invasion of millions of illegals began to flood the nation – now a national security nightmare. 

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama has said there is “zero chance” she will run for president. 

Are Democrats stuck with Harris? 

By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints

Last week, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Jordan Peterson helped expose the failures of Illinois’ public education system on X. Their engagement with a Wirepoints report, “Illinois education 2022: Not a single student can do math at grade level in 53 schools. For reading, it’s 30 schools,” revealed the thousands of students trapped in completely failing schools in 2022. 

But those results are now old news. Wirepoints has just run the new Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) 2023 Report Card data and the outcomes are worse even though the impacts of covid are another year behind us. 

In 2023, there were 67 Illinois schools where not a single student tested proficient in math and 32 where no student tested proficient in reading. What’s worse, officials in those schools graduated nearly 70% of their students.

More than 12,000 students attend Illinois’ zero-proficiency schools. Every single one of those children will struggle in life because they lack basic reading and math skills. 

Take Collins Academy High School on Chicago’s West Side. With 219 students and 55 employees, Collins spends $27,163 per student. The Illinois State Board of Education declares the school “commendable,” the state’s 2nd-highest rating. Not a single student tested was proficient in reading or math in 2023. And yet 79% of students there graduated.

Nearby North Lawndale Prep Charter-Christiana spends over $20,000 for each of its 308 students. It’s also rated “commendable” by the state. Not a single student tested was proficient in math and only 1 student tested proficient in reading. The graduation rate? 85 percent.

Far to the south, about 60 miles west of the state’s capital of Springfield, there’s the three-school district of Meredosia-Chambersburg 11. Not a single student tested at the elementary school could read at grade level. At the middle school, none were proficient in math. And in Meredosia-Chambersburg High School, where 75 percent of students graduated, not a single student tested was proficient in either reading or math.

Teaching students the basics of reading and math is the bare minimum function of an education system. Unfortunately, an increasing number of Illinois schools can’t even accomplish that.

Pre-covid, there were 21 zero-reading schools and 37 zero-math schools in Illinois. In 2023, that grew to 32 and 67, respectively.

Wirepoints’ count of zero-proficiency schools is based on data straight from ISBE’s 2023 Illinois Report Card. The state board measures students’ reading and math proficiencies based on the test results of the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (grades 3-8), the Scholastic Aptitude Test (grade 11) and the Dynamic Learning Maps assessment (students with cognitive disabilities).

It’s important to note that many of the schools on the two lists above are part of Chicago’s Youth Connection Charter School network – schools that target dropouts and other at-risk students. For sure, educating those students represents an additional challenge, but that’s no excuse for such dismal outcomes. They can’t even get one kid to proficiency? Even in these schools, officials still end up graduating nearly 50% of students despite their total lack of proficiency in reading or math. 

Illinois’ education system is failing its students

Wirepoints’ analysis above focuses only on the Illinois schools where zero of kids were able to read or do math out of the more than 3,500 schools (grades 3 through 12) that test their students every year. 

But we could have just as easily looked at the 408 schools where only 1 out of 10 kids or fewer can read at grade level. Or the 873 schools where just 1 out 10 kids or fewer can do math. That’s 12% and 25% of all grade 3-12 schools in the state, respectively.

In a sane world, a system that spends $24,000 per child, all-in, would be held accountable for such dismal failures. And schools that don’t and can’t teach a single student the most basic of skills would be shut down or at least subject to extreme intervention.

But in Illinois, such schools carry on, the system thrives, and students suffer.