By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

It is like a cheesy horror movie: Every time there’s a glimpse of hope for a narrow escape, Chinese real estate developers are pulled back into the abyss. The turmoil at the state-backed Sino-Ocean Group underscores the renewed tensions in the market and that the current piecemeal policy easing isn’t working.

Markets can sometimes defy “common sense.” Despite skyrocketing mortgage rates, the US housing market, one of the most interest-rate sensitive sectors, somehow has roared back to life. Some Fed officials noted that “the effect of high interest rates on the housing sector appeared to be bottoming out,” according to the minutes from the June meeting released Wednesday.

In China, the opposite is true. Even with ever lower interest rates, the slump in the property market resumed after the pent-up demand following the end of Covid Zero faded. Sales among the 100 largest developers tumbled 28% in June from a year earlier, when Covid restrictions were still in place, according to China Real Estate Information Corp. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kristy Hung expects a further decline of more than 10% for the remainder of the year.

Without a sales revival, some troubled developers are struggling to repay debt. State-backed Sino-Ocean saw its bonds tumble in recent days amid concerns about its deteriorating cash positions. That’s a significant development. Credit analysts Eric Ollom at Citigroup wrote in a note last week:

…unlike the property companies that have already defaulted in China, Sino-Ocean can be considered a quasi-sovereign.  Thus, any delay in debt servicing is likely to have wider repercussions for the SOEs, particularly in the real estate sector in China.

While we view a scenario of Sino-Ocean default as still unlikely, we believe the tail risks of such an event have expanded. Consequently, the pressure on property sector spreads is likely to persist and valuations are likely to get cheaper.

Where do we go from here? In their conversation with their clients, Goldman Sachs’ economists noted that views are mixed (report available to professional subscribers). Pessimists pointed to structural imbalances between top-tier and lower-tier cities’ property markets, while optimists noted recent property policy loosening in big cities as signs for hope, economists including Maggie Wei wrote in a note.

In any case, the Goldman clients don’t expect any major policies regarding the housing market or local government financing to be rolled out soon as Beijing takes its time to explore different options.

Expect more twists and turns before the horror show comes to the finale.

Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClear Wire,

Every year at Christmastime, news sites reprint the touching letter from a little girl, Virginia O’Hanlon, asking about Santa Claus and the columnist’s reassuring, fatherly response. He doesn’t smack her with the hard fact that Santa is a fictional creation. He points toward a deeper truth about our shared celebrations and the web of fond memories that bind together generations of children, parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.

As we celebrate this Independence Day, we desperately need to remember our own shared beliefs and ideals in hopes they will bind together our divided nation. Our shared ideals and common identity as Americans should bind us. Today, alas, they are too frayed to do the job. Some think it is a fraud even to stress those commonalities.

It is not. Our shared aspirations and common identity are our country’s best hope for the future. And our history should be a source of hope, as well as somber reflection.

Those ideals are not “our country, right or wrong.” They are not “our country with an airbrushed past.” Neither are they “our country as a relentless record of evil and oppression, at home and abroad.”

Rather, they are “our country as it strives to become better, to celebrate its accomplishments, to overcome its historical wrongs, to heal its lasting wounds and, ultimately, to achieve the ideals set before us in the Declaration of Independence and made concrete in our Constitution.” Whether our ancestors came over on the Mayflower, a slave ship, or a boat from Europe, escaping the Nazis, those are our shared ideals, but only if we embrace them.

What are those ideals? What are those accomplishments, incomplete as they still are? They are the promise that all men and women should be treated equally, allowed to speak freely and assemble peaceably, worship as they choose, permit others to worship, speak, and assemble as they choose, vote for whichever candidates they prefer, and live in safety, governed by laws made by the representatives they choose in fair elections. Those goals are grounded in tolerance and mutual forbearance, which are essential for a cohesive society where people come from different backgrounds and hold different beliefs.

Familiar as these homilies are, we need to repeat and defend them in troubled times when most Americans have lost faith in their institutions and the officials who lead them. They think those institutions and their leaders are biased and self-serving, that they protect themselves and other insiders as they grow rich together at the public trough, that they cover up for wrongdoing by friends and punish it in enemies, that once-respected news organizations have become active partisans and unreliable reporters, that “experts” are often partisan hacks, and that we are governed less by laws than by regulations promulgated, enforced, and adjudicated by unelected bureaucrats. It’s a long list.

This sour view is not wrong. It is the lump of coal in young Virginia O’Hanlon’s Christmas stocking.

Nor is it hyperbole to say that public trust has evaporated. That’s the grim conclusion revealed in public opinion poll after poll. In 1972, even as the Watergate scandal was being exposed, about half the public still trusted the government “always or most of the time.” Those numbers ranged from 66% for conservative Republicans to 44% for liberal Democrats. Moderates fell in between. Those 1972 numbers were already well below those from the 1950s and early 1960s, dominated by a population that had suffered through the Great Depression and World War II.

The erosion of public trust has continued apace over the past half-century, interrupted only by a brief “rally round the flag” effect after 9/11. By 2022, trust in government had reached new lows. The highest confidence came from liberal Democrats, who controlled the White House and the administrative state. But even among liberal Democrats, only a quarter still trusted the government. Republican numbers were far lower: 13% for moderate/liberal Republicans and only 7% for conservative Republicans.

It is difficult to maintain a stable democracy with mistrust so pervasive. Worse yet, those public perceptions aren’t mass lunacy. Our institutions have earned their low marks and will have a hard time restoring confidence.

The public’s mistrust had been reinforced by four profound developments in our political parties and governing institutions.

The first is that U.S. politics has become increasingly ideological, with that ideology taking on the character of fundamentalist religious beliefs. Those who differ from us are no longer the “loyal opposition.” They are apostates disseminating evil ideas. That’s yet another reason we see losing candidates refusing to accept the verdict of the electorate. They claim they were defeated only by fraud perpetuated by unscrupulous political enemies.

Second, the country is increasingly divided into self-enclosed groups who see their particular tribal identity as more important than their shared American identity. Those fissures are painfully clear on college campuses, where the fundamental division is between racial, ethnic, and sexual-identity groups who see themselves as “the oppressed” (and band together politically as such) and everyone else who is labeled as “the oppressor.” It is bizarre, really, how the child of a lawyer and a schoolteacher from a middle-class suburb could be seen as an oppressor – and convinced to see himself that way. But it is commonplace. The more progressive the campus, the more common it is. Meanwhile, the “oppressed,” who usually come from comfortable, middle-class homes, see American history as a trail of tears crushing their group.

This effort to divide Americans and set groups against each other is a powerful movement led by left-wing academics, public intellectuals, and private foundations. The worst example is the shoddy, politically-driven work of the New York Times’ “1619 Project.”

Third, the cohesion of American society is fraying as its family structures weaken (more children out of wedlock, more divorces, more single-parent families) and as fewer people join clubs and other voluntary institutions that make up a vibrant civil society. Edmund Burke called these institutions the “little platoons” of society, which join together and make up larger brigades. Alexis de Tocqueville made a similar point. Today, they would weep.

Finally, Americans are much less willing to proclaim the traditional value of self-reliance, preferring to increase their demands for government assistance and subsidies. These demands and the scope of government programs have ballooned since the Great Society legislation of the mid-1960s, even as the quality of government services has declined. It is also increasingly clear, though rarely discussed among intellectuals, that Great Society programs have steadily undermined family structures in poor communities, especially African-American ones.

So, there’s a lot to worry about, a lot to be angry about.

But those dark shadows are not the whole picture or even most of it. There is much to celebrate, too. Ours is a country that sustained the Union and wiped out slavery in a great civil war. Ours is a country that has welcomed millions upon millions of tired, poor, and hungry, yearning to breathe free. Ours is a country that, yes, allowed Jim Crow to fester for decades but then abolished it over a half-century ago. Ours is a country that, despite its support for some noxious dictators, has done more than any other country in history to foster democracy around the world.

Ours is a country whose citizens still believe, overwhelmingly, in the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, the document that gave birth to the Fourth of July celebration. Our is still a country that, despite efforts to divide us, still strives to achieve its national motto, “Out of many, one.”

Those values are embedded in America’s distinctive kind of patriotism. It is not the “blood and soil” nationalism of 19th-century Europe. It is an inclusive civic patriotism, embracing all its citizens and those on the path to becoming one. The family from Vietnam, now in Louisiana, or from South Asia, now in South Carolina, is as American as the family descended from Puritans in Massachusetts.

You don’t have to turn a blind eye to America’s troubles to celebrate its achievements. Yes, Virginia, America’s heart and soul are great, and so are its achievements.

A company’s reputation has become incredibly important in today’s world, where consumers, investors, and stakeholders are more discerning than ever.

That’s why the Axios Harris Poll 100 has been measuring the reputations of the most visible companies in the United States for over two decades. In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Sabrina Fortin visualize the results for 2023, which are based on a survey of over 16,000 Americans from a nationally representative sample.

Data and Highlights

Each company’s score in the ranking is based on nine underlying categories. These are Character, Trajectory, Trust, Culture, Ethics, Citizenship, Vision, Growth, and Products & Services.

The top 10 of the Axios Harris Poll 100 come from a mix of industries including retail, technology, and automotive.

Patagonia takes the top spot overall, ranking first in the Character, Trajectory, Ethics, Citizenship, and Products & Services categories. The outdoor clothing brand has many social initiatives, including a self-imposed Earth tax that provides financial support to nonprofit environmental protection groups.

Costco is another highly ranked retailer, snagging first place in the Trust, Culture, and Growth categories. The company is famous for its unique warehouse-style stores, and is growing its international presence. As of June 2023, Costco had 854 locations in total, with 267 outside of the U.S.

If you’ve been keeping count, these two brands have claimed #1 in eight out of the nine underlying categories. The last category, Vision, goes to fast food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A.

In addition to its chicken sandwiches, Chick-fil-A is widely known for its corporate culture of care, where employees are treated more like family than just workers.

Biggest Reputation Drops

Brands that took the biggest reputational hits in 2023 were Taco Bell (-20), Netflix (-20), Target (-21), Chrysler (-22), and Tesla (-50).

Looking closer at Netflix, the company scores “excellent” in Products & Services, but only “good” in terms of Character and Citizenship. It’s possible that the company’s decision to crack down on password sharing may have negatively impacted its reputation.

Tesla took the biggest hit this year, and a closer look at its category scores reveals some interesting takeaways.

With an “excellent” score in Products & Services, Vision, and Trajectory, it’s safe to assume that consumers still view Tesla as a pioneer in electric vehicles.

Where the firm has fallen, however, is in Character, Trust, and Citizenship, which may have something to do with public perception of CEO Elon Musk. The outspoken billionaire has become increasingly active on social media in recent years, and this may be rubbing some consumers the wrong way.

Tesla’s reputation may have also taken a hit after it announced significant price cuts in early 2023, which angered many recent buyers that had paid a higher price.

Nevertheless, The Trump Organization has the worst brand reputation of the Top 100 – we’d love to know Axios’ demographic breakdown on the survey.

Authored by Michelle Standlee via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

What Causes Mental Illness?

For years, this pressing question has remained unanswered.

Often, patients seeking clarity encounter explanations such as “it’s genetic” or “depression is a lack of serotonin.”

Mental illness has been an enigma and point of confusion for many researchers and scientists. Despite medical advances, the root cause of mental illness has remained unknown.

However, a recent breakthrough in psychiatry may be the missing piece to this mysterious puzzle.

Dr. Christopher Palmer, a Harvard professor of psychiatry, has been connecting the dots of thousands of research articles regarding the relationship between mental illness and mitochondrial dysfunction.

According to Palmer, this collective research raises concerns about the current treatments used for mental disorders.

A pivotal moment in 2016 started the psychiatrist on a new path when he helped a patient with schizoaffective disorder lose weight. The patient not only suffered from severe mental illness but also low self-esteem due to the weight gain he experienced while on psychotropic medication.

Palmer relayed that he initially couldn’t believe switching to a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet could stop chronic auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. He quickly started using this intervention in other patients and saw similar—sometimes even more dramatic—results.

This experience encouraged him to begin a scientific journey to understand how a change in diet could help severe mental illness.

Putting the Pieces Together

Palmer discovered decades of scientific research revealing the connection between metabolic and brain health.

Palmer told The Epoch Times, “The more I uncovered in terms of those concrete mechanisms of action, I realized there’s something much bigger here. I’m beginning to connect a lot of dots that our field hasn’t been able to connect before.”

In November 2022, he released a cutting-edge book entitled “Brain Energy,” highlighting his discoveries and theorizing that mitochondrial disorders are the root cause of all mental illnesses.

Drawing from decades of research on metabolism and mitochondria, Palmer believes that mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain. This means that these conditions are not permanent defects and can be corrected by identifying and addressing their root cause. This insight challenges the notion that conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are lifelong disorders.

“People with labels such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can put their illnesses into remission, they can heal, and they can recover,” Palmer asserted.

“That goes against much of what we tell people today,” he added.

What Is Mitochondrial Dysfunction?

A deep dive into cellular biology reveals tiny organelles within cells responsible for producing energy. Structures called mitochondria are vital for all cells to function normally, including brain cells. When mitochondria are not operating correctly, various health problems can arise, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, obesity, and Type 2 diabetes.

Palmer pointed out that when mitochondria fail to work correctly, this can also lead to mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. The brain needs a considerable amount of energy to work efficiently. When mitochondria are not churning out enough energy, this can lead to abnormalities in the brain’s structure and function, leading to mental illness.

Palmer asserts that mitochondrial dysfunction can produce several changes in the brain that can cause mental illness to develop. These changes include fluctuations in neurotransmitter levels, oxidative stress, and inflammation.

Groundbreaking Theory

If the origin of mental disorders is mitochondrial dysfunction, treatment modalities that address the underlying issue could be more successful than traditional tools.

Medication and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the standard treatment for most mental disorders, can sometimes manage symptoms but fail to cure the disease.

Palmer, whose clinical work spans over two decades and focuses on the most treatment-resistant cases of mental illness, discovered that many patients struggling with mental illness also demonstrate signs of mitochondrial dysfunction.

He said addressing the fundamental mitochondrial disorder can often improve their mental health condition. Some of his patients have experienced remission of mild to severe symptoms, including depression, psychosis, and hallucinations, and reduced or discontinued their medications.

Though helpful for some patients in the short term, psychiatric medications can often produce side effects such as reduced libido, increased risk of suicide, and weight gain.

“We seriously need to look at the risks and benefits of those treatments over the long term,” Palmer said.

He cautioned that readers and patients should never discontinue medications without advice from their medical providers.

Low-Carb, Ketogenic Diet Shows Promise

According to his research and clinical experience, Palmer suggested numerous strategies to mitigate the effects of mitochondrial dysfunction, including common-sense lifestyle changes such as diet, exercise, stress reduction, and adequate sleep.

One dietary intervention has proven to be the most successful with Palmer’s patients. The ketogenic diet, which dates back to 1920, was first used to treat epilepsy. The diet—high in fat, moderate in protein, and low in carbohydrates—has been shown to increase the number of mitochondria in cells and enhance their function.

One of the ways the ketogenic diet benefits mitochondrial health is through the production of ketones. When the body is in ketosis, it produces ketones from stored fat as an alternative, more efficient fuel source. These ketones can provide energy to cells, including brain cells, which rely heavily on mitochondria for their energy needs.

Mitochondria assist in the production of neurotransmitters, chemicals that influence mood and behavior, such as serotonin and dopamine.

The ketogenic diet also improves insulin resistance because it is low in sugar and carbohydrates. Insulin resistance can also impair the creation of new mitochondria. Insulin resistance results in dysfunction of the mitochondria, reduced energy production, and cellular damage, including in brain cells.

Hope on the Horizon

“We have hundreds of cases of people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia putting their illnesses into remission. Scientists are pursuing this. We have at least 10 controlled trials of the ketogenic diet for serious mental illness underway now. One is getting ready to publish their pilot trial results soon,” Palmer said.

“There is a lot of momentum behind this,” he said. “This groundbreaking theory opens up entirely new ways for us to conceptualize and treat mental illness going forward. Studies are already underway and rapidly advancing, yet this can have real results in real people today.”

By George Lei, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

A dose of fiscal stimulus may help to cure some of China’s economic woes but whether Beijing is prepared to loosen its purse strings remains anyone’s guess.

Last month, Dow Jones reported that policymakers were weighing the issuance of special treasury bonds worth roughly 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) to help fund new infrastructure projects. There’s been no official announcement since then but a growing chorus of experts at home and abroad are calling for more aggressive fiscal relief for Chinese businesses and consumers.

According to Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Research Institute who coined the term “balance-sheet recession” to explain Japan’s lost decades, it may take companies and households many years to cut down debt and restore financial health in a “very painful process.” In fact, more Chinese are now expecting their incomes as well as home prices to fall in the coming three months, according to a PBOC depositor survey. What Beijing should do, in Koo’s opinion, is to “focus all energy on fiscal stimulus to keep the economy going.”

Liu Yuhui, a prominent academic at a government think tank and former chief economist at several local brokerages, suggested at a public event last week that Beijing should utilize special government bonds to help companies, households and local authorities “repair their balance sheets in an aggressive manner.” Money raised through such debt can go toward covering social security payments from both employers and employees, so that businesses can hire more and workers earn more disposable income, according to Liu.

Wanting Beijing to shoulder a bigger share of China’s borrowing burden isn’t too much to ask: with corporate leverage well above Japan’s peak in the 1990s, early mortgage payments hitting a five-year high and local government coffers increasingly strained, the central government may be the only major player left to borrow. And it has room to do so: taking into account hidden liabilities from local government financing vehicles, total public debt stood at about 126% of GDP last year, roughly half of Japan’s level, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs.

The central authority borrowed at the fastest pace on record in 1Q. Still, increasing government leverage won’t run into “hard constraints” as long as the balance of payments remains healthy and inflation pressure doesn’t pick up, Xu Gao, chief economist at Bank of China International, argued in an article last week.

Beijing is probably holding back for fear that aggressive stimulus will overstimulate the economy and fuel a jump in leverage, like it did in the past. But authorities may be left with no choice if no one else steps up to revive spending and growth.

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

Actress Allison Mack, who starred in the television series “Smallville,” has been released from prison early, government records suggest.

Online records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons website state that Ms. Mack was released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California—a low-security women’s prison—on July 3, a year earlier than anticipated.

The Epoch Times has contacted the prison for further comment.

Ms. Mack, 40, was arrested in 2018 for her role in NXIVM, a New York-based cult whose leader, Keith Raniere, is serving a 120-year prison sentence for federal racketeering, sex trafficking, and child pornography charges.

Raniere, 60, was also arrested in 2018 at his luxury villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Ms. Mack pleaded guilty in 2019 to racketeering and conspiracy after prosecutors claimed she manipulated women into becoming sex slaves for Raniere while she was a high-ranking member of NXIVM, which billed itself as a self-help organization offering classes that cost up to $5,000.

Initially, Ms. Mack had faced a sentence of up to 17 years behind bars but she ultimately received a shorter sentencing after cooperating with investigators who were pursuing a case against Raniere.

The actress handed over evidence to prosecutors showing how the cult leader had brainwashed women into becoming “slaves” and forced female members of the group, which was based in Albany, New York, to have sex with him.

In some cases, women were placed on starvation diets and allegedly branded with Raniere’s initials, prosecutors said. Others were forced to hand over personal or embarrassing information about themselves, such as nude photos, that were later used to blackmail them into not leaving the group.

Ms. Mack was subsequently handed a three-year sentence in 2021 following her cooperation with prosecutors.

In a letter ahead of her sentencing, which was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Ms. Mack apologized to the individuals who had been harmed by her actions.

‘Biggest Mistake and Regret of My Life’

“It is now of paramount importance for me to say, from the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry,” she wrote. “I threw myself into the teachings of Keith Raniere with everything I had,” she continued. “I believed, wholeheartedly, that his mentorship was leading me to a better, more enlightened version of myself. I devoted my loyalty, my resources, and, ultimately, my life to him. This was the biggest mistake and regret of my life,” Mack added.

Ms. Mack and her lawyers also stressed that she had “publicly denounced Raniere (and her own prior association with Raniere) in the strongest possible terms.”

Meanwhile, Raniere was sentenced to a lengthy term behind bars in 2020 and fined $1.75 million. In an interview with NBC News ahead of his sentencing, the former cult leader insisted he was innocent and apologized for his “participation” in the group.

“I apologize for my participation in all of this … this pain and suffering,” he said in the interview. “I’ve clearly participated. I’ve been the leader of the community. And it has come to this. Even if it is by oppression, I am absolutely sorry and pained. This is a horrible situation.”

In 2021, Raniere was also ordered to pay nearly $3.5 million in restitution to 21 of his victims.

The NXIVM group was founded in 1998 and advertised itself as a “professional business providing educational tools, coaching and trainings to corporations and people from all walks of life,” describing its philosophy as “a new ethical understanding” that allows “humanity to rise to its noble possibility,” court documents (pdf) show.

Other members of the group included Clare Bronfman, a billionaire heiress to the Seagram’s liquor fortune and a daughter of TV star Catherine Oxenberg of “Dynasty” fame.

Bronfman was sentenced in September 2020 to nearly seven years in prison for her role in NXIVM.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

I will start this article with an apology to those readers who lack a sense of humor similar to mine, as well as to those lovely big hearted folks who don’t like labeling of any sort (sheep and/or shrew).

Regarding the term “sheep”—I have tried (and am certain I have failed occasionally) to refrain from calling an individual person as “sheep.” It is rather a term I have applied to a group of people with a similar “mindset.” If you feel you fit that mindset, you may, if you wish, call yourself a “sheep.” If you find it offensive, and do not feel you “fit,” then that is fine by me. Do not include yourself in the sheep group.

As for shrews. Well, that’s where the sense of humour comes in. I needed a term other than “those of us on the other side of the divide who believe in freedom and do not believe in the agenda or the power hungry globalists trying to take over the world”…whew…”shrew” is an easier way to get the same point across once the term is defined.

Why shrew? That’s a long story. But it is a term as good as any, and is complimentary to “sheep” as it starts with the same first two letters, and it too is an animal. Turns out shrews can be ferocious, even though very small. So that fits too.

So there you have it. Read this article with these things in mind, as it is full of reference to sheep and shrew.

The fatal error of sheep is not realizing that the people they call “conspiracy theorists” and “science deniers” are not some small fringe group of weirdos and hillbillies as they might imagine. The fact is we are large in number and include many brilliant minds and formidable members in our individual fields of expertise. This is no ragtag band of ne’er do wells.

Although I have no question we are on the RIGHT side of things, I will say that to the people who have to deal with us—that fact is of no real consequence (being right seems to have to affect on them). It seems the sheep love to ignore us, and act as if we don’t exist, regardless of the fact we are right. They can’t be bothered with us; we are only a nuisance to them. That attitude is going to one day bite them really hard in the you know where.

Many sheep have asked me, “How can you be sure you are right and we are wrong?” I have often asked myself the same question. There are many answers, my favorite is simply to say, “we are right because we are right”—which of course is rather flippant. This, however, seems to be a more prudent answer: Shrews are curious and look hard for answers.

Even if the prevailing consensus seems correct, we always seem to want more. We want to actually understand why things are like they are. Maybe we don’t do this with everything we encounter; we certainly do it when facing big sweeping pronouncements and when the powers that be tell us we all have to “do” this or that, like take a vaccine no one has really studied for a virus that no one really knows that much about. We typically go “huh?”

We then dive into it. We go down every rabbit hole we can find. Many of those holes lead to dead ends, but we discover those dead ends for ourselves. We don’t let anyone bar us from access and say, “you don’t want to go down there.” We say, “huh? Why not?” Once we start to feel that our usual sources for information, generally what they call “Main Stream Media,” is not giving us the whole story, we quickly move into some uncharted territory and start digging there. Yes, again, more dead ends but we become accustomed to “dead ends” being par for the course of truly uninhibited discovery.

We create conclusions, assumptions, speculations built on all the information we have gathered, and begin to come up with something we can make a tenable statement of truth about. But it takes a ton of work. And is usually never final, never ironclad. We don’t seem to like things that “appear” ironclad.

Sheep do not do this.

I have not yet met one that does. They often THINK they do, and throw back to me lines they have heard on NPR, or the WP or NYT, or of course the big “authorities” such as the retired Tsar of Science Fauci, POTUS, heads of major hospitals or pharmaceutical companies, et al. They don’t seem to realize their insistence on these sources being accurate is akin to looking to Goebbels to verify the accuracy of a Hitler speech, or referring to Der Stürmer for the truth about Jews. You need, today, to go to a variety of sources before you will come upon an accurate portrayal of social or scientific reality.

Sheep refuse to accept this.

What is odd about this is that we have never been in a culture where the mainstream news is 100% reliable. Sources have always been biased, and to really get a true picture of something, we have always needed to access several sources.

The problem is that as Americans (or Canadians for that matter) it has been drilled into us that freedom, truth, mom and apple pie are the hallmarks of our American culture. Although most of us have been brought up to believe that, it really never has been the truth. Maybe for a millisecond it was back in 1776, but I doubt it. (The tenets here are true, but being told that these are the hallmarks and intentions of the American or Canadian government is not the truth.)

That doesn’t necessarily mean that this culture has been 100% deprived of any integrity for 200 years (well, right now you might be able to say that) it means we have always been independently responsible for seeing through this wall of subterfuge. Unfortunately I think they finally managed to chop off the chicken’s head. Most people out there seem to have lost the capacity to use their brains.

It didn’t used to take all that much to reveal the boll weevils hiding in the cotton. We had competing newspapers that reveled in revealing untruths in a competitor’s pages. This tended to work well with all but the biggest players (Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans, etc.), now it doesn’t work at all because all the big news sources are bought. This is pretty obvious, but most sheep-types seem to think an owner of a news source has no power over what they print.

Duh.

Many imagine some cigar smoking workaholic editor holding onto his anchor of truth uttering with disgust, “they’re not going to stop ME from printing THAT.” I don’t think that ever really existed. I think if anything kept older news sources more honest than today, it was stumbling onto “truth” as a marketable commodity. This no longer seems to be the case.

So what does this have to do with a sheep fatal error?

Well, just that, truth is no longer a marketable commodity with major news sources, so we must all look to sources where it still is. Sheep don’t realize that shrews have truth on their side. And they align with truth. They also do not believe we have integrity, or that there are quite a few of us, and that we are very SMART, resourceful, and persistent. Eventually that is going to get them, and in a very hard way.

Truth is like rain water on a roof. It will find its way through if there is a way through. Where that analogy fails is when a roof becomes watertight. Culture and human society can never become “truthtight.” Don’t ask me why, it is just a given. Eventually truth finds its way in, no matter what. It may take a while, but truth will get through. It will prevail.

Shrews may not all know all the truth at any given moment, but they look for it, no matter where it might be hiding, and they find it. When they find it, and show other people where it is, they are widening the hole for more of it to come through, just like the leak in the roof, or the hole in the dam.

Eventually the dam will break and the roof will cave in.

Against the backdrop of a weakening consumer, air travel remains a hot spot. New data shows the number of people passing through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security checkpoints at airports hit a new record on Friday. 

“TSA Officers nationwide screened 2,883,595 individuals – beating our previous travel record of 2,882,915 on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2019,” TSA tweeted. 

“This is the highest number of passengers the agency has screened on record,” TSA continued. 

Arrive at the airport with plenty of time to park, check bags, & get through security screening. Have your ID out and ready. The rest of the week will continue to be busy. #FourthOfJuly

— TSA (@TSA) July 1, 2023

Despite ongoing flight delays and cancelations over the past year as a severe shortage of air traffic controllers is causing flight disruptions, that did not deter millions of passengers from traveling over the holiday weekend.  

The question remains, is this a blowoff top in pent-up demand for travel? 

On Tuesday, the Fourth of July, a federal judge in Louisiana kicked the Biden administration’s censorship complex in the teeth – ruling that federal officials (with limited exception) can no longer communicate or collude with big tech companies to censor “protected speech.”

The order prohibits Biden officials from “collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with” key academic groups behind various censorship campaigns, including the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of researchers led by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.

This is a huge win for free speech – and comes on the heels of Twitter Files revelations of government influence and control over various hot button narratives they wished to steer. And of all people who deserve to take a victory lap – journalist Matt Taibbi and Louisiana AG Andrew Baily have opined on the ruling.

First, Taibbi drops his thoughts via Racket News…

Here’s how federal judge Terry Doughty yesterday described the digital censorship controversy at which pundits a half-year now have repeatedly rolled eyes, dismissed, and mocked as a nothingburger: “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

Doughty then ordered a sweeping halt to the censorship schemes outlined in both the extant Missouri v. Biden lawsuit and in the Twitter Files. Critics who’ve been snickering about this issue might want to read this 155-page ruling now, and ask themselves if the current Supreme Court would or would not agree with Doughty. Still think this is a nothingburger?

With this ruling in the Missouri v. Biden censorship case, Doughty went out of his way on the Fourth of July, to issue a stern rebuke at a conga line of government officials, many of them characters in the Twitter Files. Racket readers will recognize names like Elvis Chan and Laura Dehmlow (of the FBI), Jen Easterly and Brian Scully (of the Department of Homeland Security), Laura Rosenberger (Special Assistant to the President, and one of the creators of Hamilton 68) and Daniel Kimmage (of the Global Engagement Center), who were all just ordered to get the hell off the First Amendment’s lawn. Paraphrasing, Doughty enjoined them from:

• meeting with social-media companies for the purpose of pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal or suppression of protected free speech;

• flagging posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding to social-media companies urging the same;

• collaborating with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any “like project” or group for the same purpose;

• threatening or coercing social-media companies to remove protected free speech.

The New York Times, which instantly wrung its hands and stressed the ruling could “curtail efforts to fight disinformation,” grumblingly handed blame to the Twitter Files, without naming them of course, and mislabeling it as a partisan enterprise:

Elon Musk has echoed Republican arguments, releasing internal company documents to chosen journalists suggesting what they claimed was collusion between company and government officials. Though that remains far from proven, some of the documents Mr. Musk disclosed ended up in the lawsuit’s arguments.

The investigation led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri’s Andrew Bailey, produced documents showing overt government requests to censor people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a White House official expressing frustration to Facebook that they weren’t “removing bad information from search,” and emails in which a Facebook official pleads with the White House to understand that they’re already “reducing the virality” of “often-true content” that might promote vaccine hesitancy, among many other things. The Attorneys General likewise scored depositions with people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and confronted him with documents showing Facebook sending his office updates about how “we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove.”

Was this illegal? Unconsititional? Did it show a pattern of mighty tech companies like Facebook and Twitter acting like they were reporting to federal officials like Fauci on content moderation? I knew what I thought it looked like, but what judges or a jury might say, who knew?

Subscribers to Racket News can read the rest here…

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Meanwhile, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey dissected Tuesday’s ruling in an epic Twitter thread. Enjoy.

The judge noted the censorship emanating from the federal government looks a lot like George Orwell’s “1984,” that “the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario” and that the feds appear to have “assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.” pic.twitter.com/9TLuhuaqlN

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 5, 2023

The Court found that this evidence showed “unrelenting pressure” by federal officials and “had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.” pic.twitter.com/KeHpYQclOi

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 5, 2023

Here are just a couple disturbing facts that the Court found:

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 5, 2023

“Faced with unrelenting pressure from the most powerful office in the world, the social-media companies apparently complied.” pic.twitter.com/jpHQ6wFK5Z

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 5, 2023

The feds have been trying to defend their acts by saying tech companies just censored according to their terms of service. Not so. Tech companies were forced to CHANGE their terms of service.

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 5, 2023

That mattered because the FBI told tech companies to expect “a hack-and-leak operation [that] would involve Hunter Biden.” But the Court specifically found that the FBI “knew” that the Hunter Biden information “was not Russian disinformation.” pic.twitter.com/4hmdbcNGWE

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 5, 2023

Here, the Court finds that federal officials also pressured Facebook to censor information that “did not violate Facebook’s policies.” In other words, content was taken down that would not have been but for pressure from the feds. pic.twitter.com/1u6RnpmKW8

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 5, 2023

Click the above tweet to read the rest of the thread…

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow and other areas inside Russia would not be possible without support from the US and NATO.

The comments came after the Russian military said it downed five drones that attacked Moscow on Tuesday morning. No casualties were reported in the attack.

“These attacks would not be possible without the help provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and its NATO allies,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. The ministry added that the US and NATO were “training drone operators and providing the necessary intelligence to commit such crimes.”

It’s not clear if the US and NATO are enabling drone attacks inside Russia, but there are signs the Western powers are involved in some way.

Following drone attacks on Russian airbases in December 2022, an Asia Times report cited military sources in NATO countries who said the drones used US satellite GPS data to hit their targets.

US military equipment has also been used in attacks on Russian territory despite Ukrainian assurances. A cross-border attack in Russia’s Belgorod region was launched on May 22 using US armored vehicles and NATO rifles.

One of the groups involved in the attack armed with US weapons, the Russian Volunteer Corps, includes members who are open neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

Five drones were shot down over the suburbs of Moscow around dawn on Tuesday, authorities said, causing no casualties or damage but marking at least the third drone incident this year and bringing Russia’s war in Ukraine closer to its own capital. https://t.co/UdpurbOvs4

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) July 4, 2023

The New York Times reported last month that the Biden administration is no longer concerned about Ukrainian attacks inside Russia escalating the war. The administration previously worried that such operations could lead to a Russian attack on NATO. But if Russia perceives that the US and NATO are enabling these attacks, the risk of escalation is very high.