Special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry recently warned that the world can’t tackle climate change without first addressing emissions from agriculture.
Kerry noted that agricultural production is responsible for roughly one third of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions and argued that reducing those emissions must be “front and center” in the quest to defeat global warming. Kerry made the remarks at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM (Agriculture Innovation Mission) for Climate Summit in Washington, D.C.
The attack on farming by Western leaders is beyond shocking. It is criminal, treasonous. For his part, Kerry neglected to mention that, though agriculture is purportedly responsible for roughly 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, it is undeniably responsible for the sustenance — and continued existence — of 100% of the world’s roughly 8 billion people.
In places like Minnesota, the Democrat party is — and has long been — known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, or DFL. It is time to take the “F” out of “DFL.” Given its job-killing policies, the “L” should be removed as well. I propose that these letters be replaced by “TG,” for transgender. It would be more accurate to refer to today’s Democrats as members of the DTG Party.
It may sound like a bit of a niche brand, but, to be fair, it is also the party of idiots, globalists, entitled whiners, freedom-deniers, and wealthy wannabe tyrants. In this day and age, that is a pretty big tent.
In any case, Democrats are hell-bent (I’m tempted to stop there, but I won’t) on banning the use of fossil fuels that have provided the world abundant and inexpensive energy that has led to rising living standards and life expectancies and are now attempting to dramatically curtail the production of farm-raised vegetables and animal-based foodstuffs…in the hopes that we will soon make insects a staple of our diets.
Do you understand? Eating insects is not a bug, but a feature of the future the elites have planned for us.
If we let them get away with this, we deserve what we get. Pass the mealworms.
France To Join US, UK In Training Ukrainian Fighter Pilots
The Zelensky government’s longtime lobbying of Western capitals to supply advanced fighter jets just got a big boost, after on Monday French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed his country has “opened the door” to training Ukrainian fighter pilots.
He said this the day after he hosted President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris, amid a broader European tour by the Ukrainian delegation, wherein Macron also pledged to send more tanks to help defend against Russia.
“We have opened the door to training pilots, and this with several other European countries who are also ready,” Macron told France’s TV channel TF1.
Macron additionally said that “discussions were underway with the Americans” concerning a pilot training program. This essentially catches France up to where the UK and US already are: both have yet to approve sending jets but have established pilot training programs in anticipation of a possible future greenlight.
When asked directly whether France would supply jets, Macron responded it was not in the plans at the moment but that training for Western fighters could “start now”. Ukrainian pilots are typically used to operating Soviet-made aircraft.
Zelensky touted this week he plans to push for a “fighter jet coalition” which would give advanced Western-made aircraft to Ukraine’s air force, but this has consistently met quiet resistance – by the Biden administration for example – on fears it would bring Russia and NATO into a direct clash.
Perhaps echoing these fears, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the start of this week that the question of jets “was not a straightforward thing.”
A French official also addressed the serious hurdles facing any future plan to given Ukrainians jets. “Before delivering a plane, you need to train pilots. It takes a long time. Ukrainian pilots are not trained to use French systems. They don’t speak French, let alone English,” an unnamed Elysée official told Politico.
Another question is whether the Ukrainians would use jets to attack border areas inside Russia’s territory, as they are now doing with drones, despite Zelensky’s official stance of not having “approved” such measures. However, recent Pentagon leaks show otherwise…
The leaked documents confirm Zelensky favors occupying Russian villages to gain leverage over Moscow, bombing a pipeline that transfers Russian oil to Hungary, a NATO member, and privately pining for long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia. https://t.co/f7yFPD4Vqx
Russia has repeatedly warned against such a move, and has already leveled the charge that NATO countries are at this point a direct party to the conflict.
Fearing demographic collapse, China is launching a new nationwide program to “build a new-era marriage and childbearing culture” within its population.
The pro-natalist scheme was announced by way of state media outlet the Global Times, which said it was intended to coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Families after the UN expressed concern about fertility decline and “demographic change”.
Officials said the venture will “focus on tasks including promoting marriage and having children at appropriate ages, encouraging parents to share child-rearing responsibilities, and curbing high ‘bride prices’ and other outdated customs.”
The reference to ‘high bride prices’ is a Chinese custom whereby the family of the groom gift the bride’s family a large financial contribution known as a caili.
Young women in China are now being urged to sign pledges where they promise not to demand a caili from the groom.
China Family Planning Association vice president Yao Ying said the policy is “expected to take innovative and proactive measures to help foster childbearing-friendly atmospheres and contribute to advancing Chinese modernization with the support from the high-quality development of the population.”
According to current projections, China’s population is likely to drop below 1 billion by 2080 and below 800 million by 2100.
Demographer demographer He Yafu told Global Times, “The society needs to guide young people more on the concept of marriage and childbirth, and encourage young people to get married and have children.”
Chinese municipal governments are making an effort across the country to hold job fair-style events where they hand out quick and easy marriage licences to encourage couples to tie the knot in order to address the “low willingness to marry and have children” given the financial burden this now places on couples.
China’s new policy is a far cry from its notorious one child policy, which was introduced in 1980 to curb population growth but ended in 2016.
The approach is a massive contrast to western nations, which are relying on huge immigration influxes to maintain their population levels, at the cost of their identity and social cohesion, while popular culture promotes the so-called ‘freedom’ of childless relationships.
In the UK, Dr Paul Morland warns that white British children are likely to become a minority in primary schools by the year 2060.
“In terms of the speed of the decline, there was work done by demographers at Oxford and other work more recently that looks at 2060, where we’ll have perhaps 50-60 per cent of people defining themselves as white British,” said Morland.
“But of course at that point, if you look at the primary school or the school age folk or the people in the large cities, it would be a minority and a declining minority,” he added.
Despite Conservative Party promises to bring immigration down, more than a million new migrants are expected to enter Britain before the next general election.
Net migration to the UK already hit a new year on year record of 504,000 last summer.
Russia Mulls Severing Ties With Poland As US-Supplied HIMARS Deployed Near Kaliningrad
Russia is mulling extreme diplomatic measures as its relations with Poland continue to spiral related to the Ukraine war and US military build-up in the region. Throughout the Ukraine war Poland has been among the most hawkish and outspoken anti-Russia voices within NATO.
Russia’s ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreev issued fresh statements in response to Poland’s prime minister saying it would be “easy” to kick the Russian ambassador out of his country. Andreev said there “was always a possibility” that ties could be severed when asked by reporters about the renewed diplomatic spat. “Whether it becomes reality depends on the decisions of our leadership and the Polish authorities,” he said in an interview, translated in Russian media.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had the prior day told a media outlet that his country is considering a reduction in Russian diplomatic presence in Poland.
“It is very easy to have an ambassador recalled. And then the Russians will have our ambassador recalled,” he asserted to Polsat television. “In such a situation, the flow of information in both directions would be even more restrained.”
Last month, Moscow was infuriated when Polish police raided a Russian school attached to the Russian embassy in Warsaw and took it over. School staff were then given hours to pack up their things and vacate the building, according to RIA Novosti, following local authorities bursting into the grounds using a crow bar.
Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina said at the time that the state was enforcing a court ruling over the building building which says it was “illegally leased by the Russian embassy for years.” Poland’s position is that the building and school isn’t protected under diplomatic status, which Moscow disputes.
Russia’s foreign ministry blasted the “hostile actions” of Polish authorities which are a “blatant violation” of official Russian diplomatic property. “Such an impudent step by Warsaw, which goes beyond the framework of civilized interstate communication, will not remain without our harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities and Poland’s interests in Russia,” the ministry stated at the time.
But the latest development could be taken as even more of a direct threat to Russia, given Warsaw has just received its first shipment of US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS),
What’s more is that Polish leaders say the launchers are to be deployed near the country’s shared border with Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave, which is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania
“This weapon will be deployed in the northeastern part of our country… its task will be to deter the aggressor,” Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told a press briefing. “Blaszczak said that combat in Ukraine had proven the value of the HIMARS and that NATO member Poland was seeking to procure additional launchers, with a goal of acquiring some 500 units,” according to the AP.
“We are watching the developments in Ukraine, and we know that artillery has a key role in the war, in repelling the Russian invasion,” he said.
Remember Putin: “We haven’t even started anything yet.”
“Whispers of an ‘evil power’ were heard in lines at dairy shops, in streetcars, stores, apartments, kitchens, suburban and long-distance trains, at stations large and small, in dachas, and on beaches. Needless to say, truly mature and cultured people did not tell these stories about an evil power’s visit to the capital. In fact they even made fun of them and tried to talk sense into those who told them.”
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
To quote Dylan, who might have been a Bulgakov epigone: “So let us stop talking falsely now/the hour’s getting late.” By now it’s quite clear the delusion of a “peace” deal in Ukraine is the latest wet dream of the “non-agreement capable” usual suspects, always hooked on lies and plunder while deftly manipulating selected liberals among the Russian elite.
The goal would be to appease Moscow with a few concessions, while crucially keeping Odessa, Nikolaev and Dnipro, and safeguarding what would be NATO’s access to the Black Sea.
All that while investing in rabid, resentful Poland to become an armed to the teeth EU military militia.
So any “negotiations” towards “peace” in fact mask a drive to postpone – just for a little while – the original masterplan: dismembering and destroying Russia.
There are very serious discussions in Moscow, even at the highest levels, on how the elite is really positioned.
Rougly three groups can be identified: the Victory party; the “Peace” party – which Victory would describe as surrenders; and the Neutral/Undecided.
Victory certainly includes crucial actors such as Dmitry Medvedev; Rosneft’s Igor Sechin; Foreign Minister Lavrov; Nikolai Patrushev; head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Aleksandr Bastrykin; and – even under fire – certainly Defense Minister Shoigu.
“Peace” would include, among others, the head of Telegram, Pavel Durov; billionaire entrepreneur Andrey Melnichenko; metal/mining czar Alisher Usmanov (born in Uzbekistan); and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Neutral/Undecided would include Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin; mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin; Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, Anton Vaino; First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential administration and media czar, Alexey Gromov; Sberbank’s CEO Herman Gref; Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller; and – special bone of contention – perhaps FSB supremo Alexander Bortnikov.
It’s fair to argue the third group represents the elite majority. This means they heavily influence the entire course of the Special Military Operation (SMO), which by now has metastasized into an Anti-Terror Operation (ATO).
The “counter-offensive” fog of war
These different Russian views at the very top predictably elicit frantic speculation among US and NATO Think Tankland. Hostages of their own excitement, they even forget what anyone with an IQ over room temperature is aware of: Kiev – stuffed with $30 billion in NATO weaponry – may come up with less than zero effects out of its much lauded “counter-offensive”. Russian forces are more than prepared, and Ukraine lacks the surprise element.
Collective West hacks, after feverish head scratching, finally discovered that Kiev needs to go for a “combined arms operation” to get something out of its new deluge of NATO toys.
John Cleese has noted how the coronation of Charles The Tampax King looked like a Monty Python sketch. Now try this one as a sequel: the Hegemon cannot even pay its trillions in debt while Kiev P.R. goons complain that the $30 billion they got is peanuts.
On the Russian front, the indispensable Andrei Martyanov – a maelstrom of wit – has observed how most alarmed Russian military correspondents simply have no idea “what type and volume of combat information is pouring to the command posts in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don or staffs of frontline formations.”
He stresses that “no serious operational level officer” will even talk to these guys, joyfully described as “voenkurva” (roughly, “military bitches”), and simply will not “divulge any kind of operational data which is highly classified.”
So, as it stands, all the sound and fury about the “counter-offensive” is shrouded by a thick fog of war.
And that only serves to add more fuel to the fire of US Think Tankland wishful thinking. The new dominant narrative in the Beltway is that the leadership in Moscow is “fragmented and unpredictable”. And that may be leading to “a conventional defeat of a major nuclear power” whose “command-and-control system broke down.”
Yes: they actually believe in their own silly (copyright John Cleese) propaganda. They are the American equivalent of the Ministry of Silly Walks. Incapable of analyzing why and how the Russian elite holds different views on the method and the extent of the SMO/ATO, the best they can come up with is “protecting Ukraine is a strategic necessity, since the Russian threat increases if Moscow wins in Ukraine.”
What’s behind Prighozin’s sound and fury
Trademark American arrogance/ignorance does not erase the fact there seems to be a serious power struggle among the siloviki. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a siloviki, in fact denounced Shoigu and Gerasimov as incompetent, implying they only keep their posts out of loyalty to President Putin.
This is as serious as it gets. Because it’s linked to a key question posed across several educated silos in Moscow: if Russia is widely known to be the strongest military power in the world with the most advanced defensive and offensive missiles, how come they have not wrapped up the whole deal in the Ukrainian battlefield?
A plausible answer is that only 200,000 members of the Russian army are currently fighting, and about 400,000 to 600,000 are waiting in reserve for the Ukraine attack. While they wait they are in constant training; so waiting works to Russia’s advantage.
Once the famous “counter-offensive” peters out, Ukraine will be hit with massive force. There will be no negotiated settlement. Only unconditional surrender.
What goin’ on right now – the Prigozhin drama – is subordinated to this logic, running in parallel to a quite sophisticated media operation.
Yes, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) made several serious mistakes, as well as other Russian institutions, since the start of the SMO. To criticize them in public, constructively, is a salutary exercise.
Prighozin’s tactics are a gem; he manipulates a degree of public outrage/indignation to put pressure on the MoD bureaucracy by essentially telling the truth. He could even go as far as naming names: officers who are abandoning different sectors of the frontlines. In contrast, his Wagner “musicians” are pictured as true heroes.
Whether Prigozhin’s sound and fury will be enough to fine tune the MoD’s entrenched bureaucracy is an open question. Still, media coverage of the whole drama is essential; now that these problems are in the public domain, people will expect the MoD to act.
And by the way, this is the essential fact: Prighozin has been allowed (italics mine) to go as far as he wants by the Higher Power (the St. Petersburg connection). Otherwise he would be in a revamped-gulag by now.
So the next few weeks are absolutely crucial. Putin and the Security Council certainly know what everyone else doesn’t – including Prighozin. The key take away is that the ground will start to be laid for US/NATO to eventually turn rump Ukraine, the Baltic lap dogs, rabid Poland and a few other extras into a sort of Fortress Eastern Europe engaged in a war of attrition against Russia with the potential to last decades.
That may be the ultimate argument for Russia to finally go for the jugular, as soon as possible. Otherwise the future will be bleak. Well, not so bleak. Remember Putin: “We haven’t even started anything yet.”
Reading through the newly released Durham Report, there’s a lot to absorb and I plan to be filling several reviews in the coming days. But it struck me that the section of the report detailing an aspect of John Brennan’s role in the Clinton campaign and Obama administration’s operation targeting Donald Trump and his aides was most urgent. LS.
The only genuine piece of Russian intelligence that US spy services ever received about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia was intelligence that Russia knew Hillary Clinton backed a 2016 campaign plan to smear Trump as a Russian agent.
According to John Durham’s 300-page report, the information reached the CIA in late July 2016. Brennan told Durham that on August 3 he briefed President Barack Obama at the White House on what the special counsel refers to as the Clinton Plan intelligence. Others in attendance at the meeting were Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey.
Imagine Comey’s reaction when he first heard of the Clinton Plan intelligence, only days after the July 31 start date for the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, code-named Crossfire Hurricane: So, if it’s just a dirty trick staged by the Clinton campaign, I should shut down the Trump-Russia probe, right?
Right. There is little chance Brennan said anything about the Clinton Plan intelligence in that August 3 meeting. Reading the Durham report, it’s not even clear when Brennan first found out about it or the September 2016 CIA memo referring the Clinton Plan intelligence to the FBI’s counterintelligence division.
Brennan’s handwritten notes memorializing his allegedly briefing Obama on the Clinton Plan and the CIA’s referral letter were both declassified by Trump’s Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe in October 2020. Durham’s report sheds light on how the information and subsequent CIA memo were received, who knew about them, and perhaps more significantly who didn’t.
According to the report, virtually none of the officials interviewed by Durham knew about the Clinton Plan intelligence or the referral memo. Former FBI general counsel James Baker “stated that he had neither seen nor heard of the Clinton Plan intelligence or the resulting Referral Memo prior to his interview” with Durham.
Same with Supervisory Special Agent-1, reportedly FBI agent Joe Pientka. According to the report, when Durham showed Pientka the information, he became “visibly upset and emotional, left the interview room with his counsel, and subsequently returned to state emphatically that he had never been apprised of the Clinton Plan intelligence and had never seen the aforementioned Referral Memo. Supervisory Special Agent-1 expressed a sense of betrayal that no one had informed him of the intelligence.”
The reason so few FBI officials knew of the Clinton Plan information is because it was buried. Otherwise, it would have implicated senior Obama officials — from the president and vice president and his security chiefs — and the Crossfire Hurricane team in an illegal surveillance and propaganda operation targeting a presidential campaign.
But how did the Russians know it started with Hillary Clinton? Did they have spies buried deep inside the Democratic National Committee? Maybe Christopher Steele, British ex-spy and author of the Clinton-funded memos tying Trump to Russia, had been compromised by one of the Russian oligarchs he worked for?
No, you wouldn’t have needed an intelligence service to find out the Clinton campaign was using Moscow as an instrument to smear the GOP candidate. By the end of July, much of the anti-Trump campaign was public.
As I explained in my 2019 book The Plot Against the President, the media piece of Russiagate started in Winter 2016 when pro-Clinton reporters first started calling Trump and his aides Russian agents. With Franklin Foer’s July 4 Slatearticle, “Putin’s Puppet,” the press component of the Russia-collusion narrative was in full swing.
In a July 21 Washington Post column, Anne Applebaum cited Foer’s piece and asserted that “Russia is clearly participating in the Trump campaign.” In an Atlantic article published the same day, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that Trump has chosen “to unmask himself as a de facto agent of Russian president Vladimir Putin.”
Before the end of July, scores of articles in the Weekly Standard, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, the New York Timesand elsewhere made the same case: Donald Trump, according to Times columnist Paul Krugman, was the “Siberian candidate.”
Russiagate reporters typically referenced each other’s articles to create an unmistakable echo chamber effect. Media analysts at the Russian foreign ministry or in any Russian embassy couldn’t have missed the frequency with which the US press kept inserting their government into a vague account of the Republican candidate’s uncertain loyalties. Thus, it would not have been hard to figure out who was the beneficiary of this extraordinary amount of newsprint devoted to promoting a storyline labeling Trump a Russian agent.
The Durham report does not disclose how US intelligence agencies found out the Russians were discussing the Clinton Plan. Perhaps it came through the signals intelligence that British agencies and other foreign services reportedly shared with Washington.
On August 22, an FBI cyber-analyst passed the Clinton Plan intelligence on to two members of the Crossfire Hurricane team, including fixer Brian Auten. A 2019 Justice Department report faulted Auten for failing to verify the Clinton-funded Steele dossier tying Trump to Russia. In other words, he cleared the central piece of evidence, now thoroughly discredited, that the FBI used to obtain the warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.
On September 2, a US official briefed Auten and other FBI personnel about the Clinton Plan intelligence. Auten related to Durham that he told the official he wanted to see the CIA’s official referral letter. Completed September 7, the memo was addressed to Comey and FBI counterintelligence official and Crossfire Hurricane point-man Peter Strzok.
According to Durham: “None of the FBI personnel who agreed to be interviewed could specifically recall receiving this Referral Memo, nor did anyone recall the FBI doing anything in response to the Referral Memo.”Auten said that he couldn’t remember if he shared the memo with other members of the Crossfire Hurricane team.
If Brennan was briefed on it at the time, it seems he didn’t share it with anyone — he almost certainly had not spoken of it during the August 3 meeting with Obama and other administration officials. There’s no evidence that Brennan briefed congressional oversight committees on what US agencies had picked up from the Russians on the Clinton Plan. Nor did he say anything about it when he testified before the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017.
Most significantly, it’s not part of the intelligence that was used to produce the January 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election that Obama directed Brennan to finish before Trump came to office. Indeed, the Clinton Plan intelligence would serve as a powerful rebuttal to the ICA’s central conclusion that Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.
Evidence of Brennan’s hiding the Clinton Plan intelligence and CIA referral letter would strongly suggest that he was a crucial part of the effort to target Trump as a Russian agent.
Perhaps it was rumor of Pientka’s rage after Durham showed him the Clinton Plan intelligence and the referral memo in a July 22, 2020 interview that Brennan moved to protect himself. It was nearly a month later, August 21, when he sat for an eight-hour long interview with Durham. Brennan said that he couldn’t remember when he first received the Clinton Plan intelligence but there was evidence that he didn’t hide it — handwritten notes proving that he told Obama, Biden, Lynch and Comey all about it.
Durham states in his report that he declined to pursue a criminal case related to the Clinton Plan intelligence because it “would face what in all likelihood would be insurmountable classification issues given the highly sensitive nature of the information itself.”
And thus, the section on the Clinton Plan intelligence concludes: the government’s treatment of the information “may have amounted to a significant intelligence failure and a troubling instance in which confirmation bias and a tunnel-vision pursuit of investigative ends may have caused government personnel to fail to appreciate the extent to which uncorroborated reporting funded by an opposing political campaign was intended to influence rather than inform the FBI. It did not, all things considered, however, amount to a provable criminal offense.”
Musk’s David Faber Interview: “I’ll Say What I Want And If The Consequence Is Losing Money, So Be It”
Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk sat down for an hour-long candid, sprawling interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday following Tesla’s 2023 annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas. Among many other things, Musk reflected on:
Accusations from the left over his tweets which have been criticized as lending credence to conspiracies about George Soros and a recent mass shooting event in Allen, Texas, insisting “I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.“
Elon Musk on Tuesday said that if his inflammatory tweets scare away advertisers from Twitter, he will accept that. “I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.” https://t.co/0Pi3Yl8Jo2pic.twitter.com/rpZ3Ff8Dw0
Clearly this displeased Musk’s critics, who can’t comprehend how someone who is hopes to receive major ad dollars (and thus be beholden to the largest US corporations via advertising channel) can speak his mind. In fact, according to Bethany McLean, “Elon Musk sounds like a spoiled child when he talks about free speech,” adding that “If you run a business that depends on advertisers you might have to think about it a little bit differently and Musk seems utterly unwilling to make that distinction.” Translation: if you run a business that depends on advertisers, you can’t say anything your advertisers disagree with. Which of course is another way of being subject to the censorship of the establishment, and why traditional media is always silent when certain interests – be it of generous advertisers like Pfizer, or the Deep State, or the Bidens, or the Clintons, etc – are in question.
“Elon Musk sounds like a spoiled child when he talks about free speech,” says @bethanymac12. “If you run a business that depends on advertisers you might have to think about it a little bit differently and Musk seems utterly unwilling to make that distinction.” pic.twitter.com/TfHyCYYblC
Musk defended what Faber said was the spreading of “conspiracy theories” by countering that pointing out that so many of these “conspiracy theories have turned out to be true“, and pointed to the Hunter Biden laptop suppression story, which was an example of “election interference.”
Elon Musk talks about the Hunter Biden Laptop story “that’s election interference” pic.twitter.com/99UVBxf1oy
Naturally, the question of Musk calling George Soros Magnito came up. An incongruous Faber asks where that tweet came from, to which Musk replies “that is my opinion.” Faber then pressed: “why share it” if it could lead to less revenue/sales, and do your tweets “hurt the company”; Musk responds with a quote from the Princess Bride: “offer me money; offer me power. I don’t care.” The sad fact is that all of Musk’s peers in the media world, who aren’t independently wealthy and who do care about money (and power) will gladly be PR agents for their advertising sponsors, pretending to be independent media outlets.
Elon Musk on Tuesday said that if his inflammatory tweets scare away advertisers from Twitter, he will accept that. “I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.” https://t.co/0Pi3Yl8Jo2pic.twitter.com/tQUOc4GChO
How he has managed a takeover of Twitter so far and what lies ahead. Among other things, he said Twitter’s Community Notes feature has cost Twitter $40 million in business when two big clients reduced spending after their ads received community notes accusing them of false advertising. He also claimed that when the acquisition closed, Twitter had negative $3 billion in annual cash flow and $1 billion in the bank. “The analogy I was using was like being teleported into a plane that’s in a nosedive headed to the ground with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work….”
Elon Musk on his acquisition of Twitter: “The analogy I was using was it was like being teleported into a plane that’s in a nosedive, headed to the ground with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work. That’s what it felt like.” https://t.co/HDj69iAFmApic.twitter.com/xsp33uwWnj
Musk even slammed the obvious CIA front Bellingcat. Discussing the recent Texas shooting, Musk said the shooter was “incorrectly described to be a white supremacist. The company that found this is Belingcat. Do you know what Belingcat is? A company that does Psyops.”
Elon Musk on Tuesday said that if his inflammatory tweets scare away advertisers from Twitter, he will accept that. “I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.” https://t.co/0Pi3Yl8Jo2pic.twitter.com/tQUOc4GChO
Going back to twitter, and the historic layoffs there, Musk said that “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” referring to the more than 6,000 job cuts. Remarkably, despite widespread calls that the end of Twitter is nigh as there is no way the company can survive with 80% of its workers fired, so far Twitter is leaner and faster than before, a testament to the epic employee bloat in Silicon Valley over the past decade.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Elon Musk said Tuesday on the layoffs that shed more than 6,000 jobs at Twitter. Musk added that he thinks Twitter now needs to hire more people and possibly “rehire some of the people that were let go.” https://t.co/1lqWEJF3CZpic.twitter.com/LUp2oOcPzI
His involvement in the early days of ChatGPT-developer OpenAI, saying that it exists only because he wanted a non-commercial alternative to Google’s growing dominance in AI. He expressed disappointment that the company has abandoned its non-profit roots. And he said he is no longer friends with Google co-founder Larry Page. “The final straw was Larry calling me a ‘species-ist’ for being pro-human consciousness instead of machine consciousness.”.
Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday that he is “the reason OpenAI exists,” citing his past investment in the entity, and that Microsoft exerts control over the AI company, an assertion strongly denied by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. https://t.co/yEU1gYLa2Spic.twitter.com/3RxJJKpPQb
His personal views and habits when it comes to work and productivity. He said he takes only two or three days off per year, works seven days a week and gets six hours of sleep a night. He also said he believes it’s morally wrong for people in the “laptop class” to advocate for working from home when service workers, such as people who work in factories, still have to show up in person.
“I would just say, you know, to sort of follow their heart in terms of what they find interesting to do or fulfilling to do,” Elon Musk said on Tuesday when asked what career advice he has for his children. “And try to be as useful as possible to the rest of society.” pic.twitter.com/i0c1SG6wCh
Tesla’s ability to weather rocky economic cycles. Musk said that the next 12 months will be difficult for Tesla from a macroeconomic perspective because of increased interest rates pinching consumer budgets. But he also said Tesla could take advantage of Tesla’s “real-time information on demand” for its cars to adjust pricing effectively.
Faber asked what would happen to the global economy if China makes a move to control Taiwan. “The Chinese economy and the rest of the global economy are like conjoined twins. It would be like trying to separate conjoined twins. That’s the severity of the situation. And it’s actually worse for a lot of other companies than it is for Tesla. I mean, I’m not sure where you’re going to get an iPhone, for example.”
Last but not least, there was a discussion of the Fed, which Musk believes is going to be too slow to lower interest rates when the economy slows, and that will hurt consumer demand. “You can think of raising the Fed rate as somewhat of a brake pedal on the economy, frankly,” Musk said. “It makes a lot of things more expensive. So if the car payment or your home mortgage is absorbing more of your monthly budget then you have less money to buy other things.”
“You can think of raising the Fed rate as somewhat of a break pedal on the economy, frankly,” Elon Musk said Tuesday. “It makes a lot of things more expensive.” https://t.co/yqYYRr6a8Upic.twitter.com/X4cjtOhQGF
Head Of Ukraine’s Supreme Court Arrested For “Large-Scale Corruption”
Yet another large-scale corruption scandal has come out of Ukraine as the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) have announced significant action taken against the highest court in the land.
“NABU and SAP have exposed large-scale corruption in the Supreme Court, in particular a scheme to obtain undue advantages by the leadership and judges of the Supreme Court,” the anti-corruption bodies announced on their official social media channels Tuesday. It’s a huge embarrassment given this is the highest legal body in the land, and the nation’s top judge, responsible for interpreting and upholding the law.
The watchdog bodies stated they have “documented the head of the Supreme Court receiving a $2.7 million bribe.” An anti-corruption official revealed in a national press briefing that the head of the Supreme Court, Vsevolod Knyazev, has been arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes. The $2.7 million was seized in a raid on the top judges home.
“At this time, the head of the Supreme Court has been detained and measures are being taken to check other individuals for involvement in criminal activity,” a statement said further.
Knyazev, who was the equivalent of the US Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, has was elected to the position in October 2021. He has since been removed by a special session of other judges with a ‘no confidence’ vote.
Further, reports in Ukrainian media suggest that additional judges might be raided and arrested amid the ongoing corruption probe. According to more details which have emerged in Ukrainian media sources, the case could be the tip of the iceberg:
NABU Director Semen Kryvonos revealed that his bureau has documented a series of contacts between the owner of Finances and Credit Group, Kostiantyn Zhevaho, and one of the owners of an attorney group used to conceal criminal activities. These contacts involved an agreement regarding unlawful benefits in favor of high-ranking court officials for “rendering the necessary decision” in favor of the entrepreneur.
Businessman Zhevaho denies his involvement in the multimillion-dollar bribe, as stated in a press release issued by his spokesperson to Forbes.
“This is the most high-profile case during the tenure of NABU and SAP and the biggest exposure of a top-ranking official in the judicial branch of power,” said Kryvonos.
He said the suspects in the case also attempted to influence the appointment of members of the Higher Qualification Commission of Judges (VKKS), the body responsible for career-related matters within the judicial branch of power.
The past months have seen Ukraine, which consistently ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world, take public steps to root out its notorious corruption problem.
This as tens of billions in US taxpayer aid continues to flow through Kiev’s coffers amid the Russian invasion – also as Blackrock, the world’s largest manager of assets, has reached a tentative agreement with President Zelensky to coordinate major reconstruction investment in the war-ravaged country.
Earlier in the year, a major scandal was revealed in the top ranks of Ukraine’s military…
Ukraine Rocked By Corruption Scandal, Wave Of Top Officials Resign: Sports Cars, Mansions & Luxury Vacations As People Suffered https://t.co/5gvsXbIkNx
Republicans seem determined to die on the hill called abortion in 2024 – and they may take the country down with them.
Abortion is a litmus test for millions of swing voters: nothing else matters if a candidate does not agree with them on it.
This is not good news for the GOP: The results of the 2022 midterm elections – and current polling – show that there are significantly more pro-choice independent voters than pro-life independents.
As a result, immigration, the state of the nation’s economy and the identity of the GOP 2024 presidential nominee may not matter all that much, as President Biden and his publicists in the press ride the abortion issue to victory.
Democrats will then falsely claim their victory is a mandate for radical policies that are dividing and undermining our country, including unsustainable spending, suffocating regulation, open borders, lax law enforcement, and an unquenchable commitment to DEI, ESG, and all the other letters of the woke revolution.
The intricacies of our electoral system are such that Republicans may well hold the House and win the Senate. But four more years of a Democratic presidency in control of the vast federal bureaucracy will unleash innumerable left-wing genies from their bottles, transforming the country in ways that may be impossible to reverse.
Is there any reason for hope? I fear not.
Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, is advising candidates to defend their pro-life values and attack their opponents. “Put them on the defensive and articulate where you stand, and that’s going to be the critical message we have to get out before 2024,” she said last month.
But this stance is a loser in a national election. Since the Dobbs decision overturned the constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. Wade, 13 deep red states have passed laws essentially banning abortion. Republicans can argue that this is democracy in action – a majority of voters in those states oppose abortion. If they change their minds, they can vote in new leaders to write new laws. Their actions have zero impact on pro-choice blue states such as California, New York, and Illinois.
But Democrats and their media allies will argue, with some justification, that Republicans are gunning for every womb. McDaniel’s suggestion that more voters will be turned off by Democrat support for later-term abortions than her party’s support of bans is wishful thinking. If you want to win the electoral votes of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia, which card would you rather play?
In the short term, this is the weak hand of cards Republicans have dealt themselves.
In the longer term there may be some hope – if the GOP stops acting like Democrats, who insist on shoving their controversial policies down people’s throats. Republicans, instead, can give themselves some room on the issue, and perhaps reintroduce some comity into the body politic, by acknowledging that many Americans do not share their objections to abortion and vowing to work harder to change their minds.
To this end, Republicans can also make a stand for small government, states’ rights, and civil discourse by pledging that no Republican-controlled Congress or Republican president will pass a federal ban on the procedure.
I know this position is unacceptable to those who consider abortion murder. I understand, and respect, that this is non-negotiable for them.
Being right is a good start, but it is not an effective strategy. Republicans and their willing pro-life allies must not squander the great opportunity Dobbs has given them to make their case.
At heart, most Americans know that abortion is the taking of an innocent life. Yes, it’s a medical procedure; it’s also a tragedy. That is why there is little support for the Democrat position of abortion on demand with no conditions at all. Yet, a majority of Americans recoil at the idea of making women carry unwanted children to term.
Instead of passing new laws, pro-life forces should focus on making the compassionate case for why this view is not wrong or evil, but mistaken. Championing other traditional values, they can remind Americans that sex is not just a tremendous source of intimacy and pleasure, but a deeply consequential act that binds and obligates us to our partners and our progeny.
That may seem obvious, but it is a fact that has been lost in recent decades as our culture has cast sex as an act of personal gratification leading, among other things, to calamitous increases in unwanted pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births, and single-parent homes.
A thoughtful discussion of abortion would also allow Republicans to espouse another fading value: personal responsibility. In an era of cheap and effective birth control, we should not be creating millions of lives only to destroy them. Instead of dismissing those who become pregnant as irresponsible, we should work to educate and empower them through the message: With simple precautions, you can spare yourself, and an innocent life, from this horror.
It is essential that Republicans start making these arguments immediately. Although their stance on abortion is a political liability, the issue offers them a powerful opportunity to make the case against the left-wing values that are ruining our nation. Extending their compassion for unborn children to adults wrestling with complex problems is an important step toward healing America’s fractured soul.
If we are ever going to reverse the harm Democrats are doing to our culture, we have to start listening to, and loving, and one another.
Some Senate Democrats are urging President Joe Biden to “use” the 14th Amendment to raise the debt limit by executive decree. For example, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) stated:
“The 14th Amendment is not anyone’s first choice. The first choice is that the Republicans raise the debt ceiling because the United States government never, ever, ever, ever defaults on its legal obligations. But if Kevin McCarthy is going to push the United States over a cliff, then it becomes the president’s responsibility to find an alternative path.”
As a former law professor and a senator for more than 10 years, Warren almost certainly knows that keeping the current debt ceiling doesn’t cause default. It merely forces the government to run a balanced budget—something the government should be doing anyway.
And all Warren needs to do is read the 14th Amendment to learn that it gives the president no power to “use” it to create more debt.
Not Raising the Debt Limit Just Means Balancing the Budget
The debt limit is a law restricting how much the federal government may borrow. The current law says $34.4 trillion. If Congress refuses to change the law, it will remain at $34.4 trillion. Borrowing more than that is illegal. So the government will have to pay its debt obligations out of current revenue.
Could the federal government do that? Sure.
Current revenue is about eight times current interest payments. (In other words, debt service is about 13 percent of revenue.) Obviously, there’s enough money coming in to pay existing debt while retaining most government services. Of course, the feds would have to trim other parts of the budget. I’m sure readers have many suggestions on that score.
These facts are no secret. Moreover, they’re buttressed by experience: We have reached earlier debt limits on many occasions, but there has been no default. Mostly what happens is a few federal facilities close. (When that happened last time, the feds closed Rocky Mountain National Park. No problem: The Colorado state government took over the job.)
Still, every time we approach a new debt limit, unscrupulous politicians and their media propagandists claim we’re at risk of default. This is so patently false that we can only conclude that what concerns them isn’t default but something else.
What is that “something else”? That people might learn they really don’t need all that exorbitant federal spending. That they might decide they like the budget being balanced.
The 14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, soon after the Civil War. It’s the longest amendment ever adopted, because it addressed a multiplicity of issues. One reason for the amendment was to ensure that future Congresses, even if dominated by members from former Confederate states, would honor the Union Civil War debt.
The amendment has five sections. Sections 4 and 5 are relevant to our discussion. Here’s the pertinent language:
“Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned …
“Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
Notice what this language says:
The validity of U.S. public debt shall not be questioned. This means that the federal government may not use any pretext for refusing to pay off debt instruments, such as savings bonds and Treasury bills.
The amendment grants Congress the power to pass laws to ensure our debt obligations are met.
Now notice what this language doesn’t say:
It doesn’t say the government must borrow more to pay off existing debt; Congress may meet its obligations from existing revenue.
It doesn’t say Congress must change legal limits on borrowing.
Although it grants power to Congress, it grants none to the president—other than to enforce the laws enacted by Congress. This is because the Constitution requires that the president “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3). One of those laws the president must enforce is the national debt limit.
This Isn’t a Mere Technicality
The principle that a government’s financial powers are lodged in a representative legislature rather than the executive is central to our political system. Many people died for that ideal.
When, in the 17th century, King Charles I exercised financial powers without the approval of Parliament, it led directly to the English Civil War. The king lost that war and his head (literally).
Then, in the 18th century, King George III and a Parliament not representing Americans tried to tax Americans. This led directly to the American Revolution. Again, the king lost. He did keep his head, but he lost all his power within the United States and most of it within Britain.
Biden would be wise to consult these precedents.
The fact that people such as Warren should even mention the possibility of the president’s violating the law and unilaterally taking on more public debt tells us what we need to know about them.
The Makings of Calamity
One of the talking points among those who want to raise the debt limit is that failure to do so would be a “calamity.” Or so claims Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. From experience, we know this isn’t true.
But here’s a real recipe for calamity: Imagine that to pay current debt without cutting spending, Biden tries to sell debt instruments on his own authority. (Call them “Biden Bonds.”) When the Supreme Court strikes down this autocratic edict (as it has struck down several of Biden’s other autocratic edicts), what then would be the effect on United States credit?
And since people in the bond market are risking their own money as Warren and Yellen are not, how many of them would be willing to purchase Biden Bonds? And if they refused to do so, what would that do to U.S. credit?
How Can We Avoid This in the Future?
For more than 50 years, a super-majority of the American people have favored a constitutional amendment forcing the federal government, except in rare cases, to run a balanced budget. That would stop the feds from piling up more and more debt.
In 2017, I wrote (admittedly, a first draft) of such an amendment. It isn’t overly technical. It merely says this: Before Congress may raise the debt limit—in other words, before it runs a budget deficit—Congress must get the approval of a majority of the legislatures of states containing a majority of the U.S. population (pdf).
There are two principal reasons we don’t have a balanced budget amendment: Congress refuses to propose one for the states to ratify, and apologists for the national oligarchy have been misleading Americans about the procedure for proposing an amendment through a convention of states.
Eventually, Americans will get fed up with the delay and force their state lawmakers to call a convention. Let’s hope it will not be too late.
