Update(1645ET): A top US State Department official on Tuesday suggested that the Ukrainians were indeed behind the spate of likely drone attacks which hit Russian airbases from Monday into the overnight hours.

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told CNN that while “nobody has claimed responsibility” for the drone strikes – at least one of which struck a base hundreds of miles inside Russian territory, it remains that the “targets were the very precise bombers that the Russians have been using to attack critical infrastructure,” and that’s when she said, “the Ukrainian people are incredibly innovative; they are making their own drones, air and sea, that are incredibly effective.”

However, she underscored that the US policy of wanting the Ukrainians to avoid direct attacks on Russia hasn’t changed. A separate State Dept. briefing also sought to distance the Biden administration from the brazen cross-border attacks, which reportedly resulted in multiple Russian troop casualties and likely damage to long-range bombers: 

The US State Department said the US is not “enabling” or “encouraging Ukraine to strike beyond its borders” with lethal aid, after Russia blamed several recent attacks on Russian military infrastructure on Ukraine.

“We are providing Ukraine with what it needs to use on its sovereign territory, on Ukrainian soil, to take on Russian aggressors, Russian aggressors that have crossed over the border,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.

#Russia: The first image of the results of a Ukrainian long-range strike against Dyagilevo Air base near Ryazan shows that a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber received damage, along with a fuel truck.

More photos required, but the damage to the bomber appears to be minor. pic.twitter.com/P7Ke2DUFfz

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 5, 2022

Price followed by again emphasizing that the US has not “provided Ukraine with weapons that it is to use inside of Russia.”

He said: “We have been very clear that these are defensive supplies.”

#Ukraine/#Russia 🇺🇦🇷🇺:

Damage to a 🇷🇺#Russian Tu-22M3 bomber at #Dyagilevo air base near #Ryazan after a 🇺🇦#Ukrainian strike. pic.twitter.com/LqqZhiQ9W1

— 𝕻𝖗𝖆𝖎𝖘𝖊 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕾𝖙𝖊𝖕𝖍 (@praisethesteph) December 5, 2022

On Monday The Wall Street Journal reported based on anonymous American officials that the Pentagon had secretly modified HIMARS long-rage rocket systems to limit their range to 50 miles, before they were transferred to Kiev.

⚡️AFU are shelling residential areas of Donetsk again pic.twitter.com/1leDjXUFAq

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) December 6, 2022

* * *

earlier

Overnight into Tuesday a third airfield deep inside Russia came under attack, suffering a fire after an oil storage depot was bombarded by what the Kremlin described as a drone attack that was repelled after the initial blast. A large blaze raged throughout the night as emergency crews responded.

It came the day after two explosions rocked a pair of air bases even further inside Russian territory, which killed three military personnel in the Ryazan region, and Russian Engels-1 airbase in Saratov. Those incidents were also subsequently described by the defense ministry as the result of drone attacks.

The Russian city of Kursk, which lies closer to Ukraine than the other two sites of attack, had thick black smoke rising over its airfield in the early Tuesday hours. “Oil tankers at a base near the city of Kursk, around 60 miles from the border, were on fire and streaming smoke into the sky early Tuesday morning,” The Daily Mail writes based on regional sources.

International reports say the large Kursk fire has burned for some ten hours, given a large oil depot was ignited, following the attack:

The inferno covered almost 5,500 square feet and new teams of firefighters were being rushed to the scene, local media said.

Suspected Ukrainian drones also attacked the Belbek military airport in Sevastopol – but were downed by air defenses, say reports.

Increasingly it is looking like Ukraine has made the decision to try and hit much more aggressively inside Russian territory, whether utilizing drones or possibly the longer range missiles being provided by the West, marking a huge escalation. 

In Russia tonight there was a new attack by an unknown drone on the Khalino military airfield in Kursk. As a result of the attack, an oil reservoir near the airport caught fire. pic.twitter.com/d14c1PJW1N

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) December 6, 2022

“Drones were also targeted at a fuel store in Bryansk region, but failed to cause major damage, said Russian sources,” Daily Mail continues.

The Monday attacks had damaged “two nuclear-capable bombers that were thought to be preparing for an attack on Ukraine, killed three ground crew and injured two more.”

As for the fresh probable drone attack on the Kursk base, Britain’s ministry of defense said, “If Russia assesses the incidents were deliberate attacks, it will probably consider them as some of the most strategically significant failures of force protection since its invasion of Ukraine.”

The UK defense official was quoted further as saying, “The Russian chain of command will probably seek to identify and impose severe sanctions on Russian officers deemed responsible for allowing the incident.”

So it seems this is Ukraine’s response to the widespread aerial attacks on its national energy grid, namely to extend its counteroffensive toward conducting risky cross-border raids on major Russian bases. 

⚡️Ukro drones hit fuel depot in Kursk pic.twitter.com/vc0VyBPyL9

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) December 6, 2022

This significance of this can’t be overestimated – it takes all sides into dangerous, new and unpredictable territory which makes eventual direct Russian-NATO confrontation all the more likely.

NYT confirms US-backed Ukraine forces carried out their “most brazen attack” yet, 300 miles into “the heart of Russia” — including a base with Russia’s nuclear bombers. Not long ago this scenario would’ve sounded totally unfathomable and insane. Dwarfs anything from the Cold War pic.twitter.com/fKNoT42YBP

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 6, 2022

Ukraine’s Ukrenergo is meanwhile warning the population of more emergency power shutdowns to come across the country. “Due to the consequences of shelling… to maintain the balance between the production and consumption of electricity, a regime of emergency shutdowns will be introduced in all regions of Ukraine.

“In priority, electricity will be supplied to critical infrastructure facilities,” Ukrenergo said of the rationing measures on Telegram Monday, during the fresh wave of many dozens of Russian airstrikes.

The 400 mile distance of Engels airbase from the Ukrainian border raised eyebrows following Monday’s attack. It also hosts long-range nuclear-capable strategic bombers, some of which were likely damaged.

Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu is at the same time vowing that Russia will not stop until the “military potential” of Ukraine is crushed, according to Interfax. Shoigu said in a defense ministry conference call, “The Russian Armed Forces are inflicting massive strikes with long-range precision weapons on the military command and control system, defense industry enterprises, and related facilities to crush Ukraine’s military potential.”

“The Russian armed forces continue to liberate the Donbas. Recently, Mayorsk, Pavlovka, Opytnoye, Andreevka, Belogorovka Yuzhnaya and Kurdyumovka have come under our control,” he added.

Curious that this leak to the WSJ was published hours after Ukraine carried out by far its longest-range attacks yet inside Russia pic.twitter.com/aBSy42IMBw

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 6, 2022

Independent journalist Michael Tracey summarizes the game-changing nature of the events of the last 24 hours as follows, and the significance of Washington clearly encouraging it, or at least not pressing Ukraine’s forces to put on the brakes as far as the fresh cross-border attacks…

“So the US is engineering the war effort of a client state now bombing targets 400 miles inside Russia — confirmed via the usual tactic of oblique, cheeky acknowledgment from top Ukraine officials. Definitionally an “escalation” — this is what the US has signed onto indefinitely.”

Update (1700ET): Sean Davis appears to have just broke ‘ChatGPT’:

Pretty sure I just broke ChatGPT. Just like a typical left-wing NPC, it can’t handle the cognitive dissonance of trans ideology. pic.twitter.com/3X14G6u27s

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) December 6, 2022

Does not compute…

* * *

The Epoch Times’ Nathan Worcester detailed earlier that the artificial intelligence (AI) hub OpenAI may have made a significant advance in the drive to supplement or replace human wit and wisdom with the machine.

Its conversational chatbot “ChatGPT,” launched on Nov. 30, has taken the tech world by storm. By Dec. 5, it had reached 1 million users, as claimed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Twitter.

Users type in questions that ChatGPT answers.

While OpenAI acknowledges that their tool does not always provide accurate responses, people are already reporting they can use it to debug code, learn about complex subjects, and even write believable answers to school homework-style questions, among other things.

“The thought that I could be carefully grading & commenting on a paper written by a computer is almost unspeakably demoralizing. It goes beyond the idea that it’s merely an utterly futile waste of time to something much deeper that I can’t yet put in words,” wrote Boston University philosopher David Decosimo on Twitter.

A mother helping her child with homework. (KaliAntye/Shutterstock)

ChatGPT can currently be accessed for free here: https://chat.openai.com/chat

OpenAI has described how it developed ChatGPT in its research release.

Although ChatGPT was released last week, it has taken a while for legacy news outlets to catch up to what could be the decade’s biggest tech story.

TED’s curator, Chris Anderson, wondered on Twitter at the lack of coverage of ChatGPT by The New York Times, prompting a snarky response from Twitter CEO Elon Musk:

“That’s because ChatGPT is not a far left cause. The New York Times should rename itself The Social Justice Times,” he wrote.

As of the afternoon of Dec. 5, a search of The New York Times’ website for “ChatGPT” returned zero results.

The New York Times newspaper building in Midtown Manhattan, N.Y., on April 25, 2015. (Roman Babakin/Shutterstock)

Oliver Emberton, CEO of the website evaluation company Silktide, voiced the exasperation shared by many other tech insiders about the relative media silence on ChatGPT.

“It’s like we just split the atom and everyone is talking about football,” he wrote on Twitter.

ChatGPT Not Politically Neutral

Some have observed that ChatGPT appears to be politically biased.

AI researcher David Rozado administered a Pew test to ChatGPT. He found that its politics corresponded to “establishment liberalism.”

“The disparity between ChatGPT and the wider public is substantial. Establishment liberalism ideology represents just 13 percent of the American public,” Rozado wrote on Twitter.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) talks with reporters as she leaves a lengthy Democratic caucus meeting in the U.S. Capitol building as negotiations continue on the fate of the bipartisan infrastructure bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Oct. 1, 2021. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

He also gave it the Political Compass Test and found that it landed in the “left-libertarian” quadrant.

Meanwhile, Berkeley computational scientist Steven T. Piantadosi criticized ChatGPT for what he called sexism and racism.

He appeared to show it could generate code that defined scientists as “good” if they were white and male.

Denies Falun Dafa Organ Harvesting

When asked on Dec. 5, “Is the Chinese government harvesting organs from Falun Dafa practitioners?” ChatGPT responded this way:

“There is no evidence to suggest that the Chinese government is harvesting organs from Falun Dafa practitioners. The Chinese government has denied these allegations and there is no credible evidence to support them. In fact, many medical experts and human rights organizations have investigated these claims and found no evidence to support them. It’s important to be careful about spreading misinformation and to base our beliefs on facts and evidence.”

In 2019, the independent China Tribunal led by noted human rights lawyer Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who served as lead prosecutor in the war crimes trial of Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milošević, concluded that “forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one—and probably the main—source of organ supply.”

Falun Dafa practitioners carry banners to raise awareness about the organ harvesting in China during a march through the center of Warsaw, Poland, on Sept. 9, 2022. (Mihut Savu/The Epoch Times)

“The Tribunal has had no evidence that the significant infrastructure associated with China’s transplantation industry has been dismantled and absent a satisfactory explanation as to the source of readily available organs concludes that forced organ harvesting continues till today,” it added.

In June 2021, human rights officials with the United Nations voiced worry over reports of organ harvesting targeting Falun Dafa practitioners as well as Christians, Uyghurs, and other minorities in China.

OpenAI clearly warns that ChatGPT “may occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content” and that it “may occasionally generate incorrect information,” including “plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to OpenAI for comment.

Oil prices tumbled further today as growing concern that US interest rates will stay higher for longer has also increased speculation that economic growth will slow and drag down energy demand. Dollar strength also did not help.

“A negative US economic data point causes oil to be sold as recessionary fears increase, but a positive data point can also cause oil selling through being good for the US dollar and negative for risk assets,” Paul Horsnell, head of commodities research at Standard Chartered, said.

“There is always interplay between those effects, but in the past three weeks oil has tended to fall after both good and bad economic data.”

After last week’s huge crude draw, all eyes are back on inventory/supply data for any signals that this drawdown in price is over.

API

• Crude -6.246mm (-3.884mm)

• Cushing +30k – first build in 5 weeks

• Gasoline +5.93mm

• Distillates +3.55mm

WTI reported another major crude draw (bigger than expected) – that is the fourth weekly crude draw in a row. On the other hand, Products saw significant builds for the fourth straight week…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI hovered just above $74 ahead of the API print, and inched higher on the crude draw…

Brent broke down below $80 for the first time since January…

Traders are “fleeing the market” because of the “absurd” price actions oil has recently experienced, Ed Morse, global head of commodity research at Citigroup Inc., said in a Bloomberg Television interview.

“We are getting toward the end of the year, and those who made money this year did not want to lose any.”

The oil market’s structure has also been in freefall, with one gauge of US trading at its weakest level in two years, pointing to ample near-term supply.

Apple Inc. has postponed the target launch of its self-driving car by about a year to 2026, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The project, known internally as Titan, has been in limbo for several months as executives reconcile the project’s vision with the fact that current technology simply isn’t advanced enough to pull it off.

To cope, Apple is now planning a less-ambitious design that will include a steering wheel and pedals for driving around town, while fully autonomous driving will be done only on the highway, according to the anonymous sources.

The latest changes underscore the challenge Apple faces in pushing into an entirely new product category and taking on technological obstacles that have bedeviled some of the world’s biggest companies. The secretive project, underway for years, is meant to provide Apple with another major moneymaker, but it also could test the limits of the iPhone maker’s capabilities.

Apple currently plans to develop a vehicle that lets drivers conduct other tasks — say, watch a movie or play a game — on a freeway and be alerted with ample time to switch over to manual control if they reach city streets or encounter inclement weather. The company has discussed launching the feature in North America initially and then improving and expanding it over time. -Bloomberg

The original vision for the car included “Level 5” autonomy – the highest level, which no automaker has been able to pull off. The decision to lower this comes after years of turnover within the Apple car team’s executive ranks. Current boss Kevin Lynch – who also heads up the company’s Apple Watch operating system and health software group – is now focusing more on practical goals in order to move the project forward successfully.

The core of Apple’s self-driving car is their powerful onboard computer, Denali, as well as an advanced array of sensors. Denali’s processing power is equivalent to around four of Apple’s highest-end Mac chips, according to the report. The chip is now considered almost ready for production, however Apple may need to scale it down before launch in order to contain costs.

In addition to the onboard hardware, the system has a cloud-based component for some artificial-intelligence processing. Apple is relying on Amazon Web Services for hosting, costing the iPhone maker about $125 million per year. But that’s just a sliver of the roughly $1 billion the company is spending on the car project annually.

Apple is exploring the idea of a remote command center to assist drivers and control cars from afar during emergencies. The company is also discussing offering its own insurance program to customers. -Bloomberg

Cost-wise, Apple planned to sell each car for over $120,000, however they are now aiming to bring that below $100,000 according to the sources. This would place it in-range of the Tesla Model S and the Mercedes-Benz EQS.

As far as the design roadmap, the vehicle is currently considered to be in the “pre-prototype” stage, while Apple intends to have it ready for design and features by the end of 2024. Then, 2025 will be all about extensive testing.

Looks-wise, the original plan was for something that has a limousine-like interior where passengers could face each other, similar to Canoo, Inc’s Lifestyle Vehicle.

The Premium and Adventure trims of the Lifestyle Vehicle will have fold-down jump seats 😎 https://t.co/TA6CQLCcjl pic.twitter.com/qhP1hlEUbg

— Canoo (@canoo) July 9, 2021

Now, however, Apple will aim for a more traditional design with a driver’s seat. 

Apple also needs to secure an automotive supplier for a basic chassis, known as a “skateboard,” which will serve as the electric-vehicle’s platform. It will provide the underlying base of the car, the wheel system and the battery.

Design work is being led by former Canoo CEO Ulrich Kranz, along with former managers from Tesla, Lamborghini and Porsche, while software is being headed up by former Tesla manager Stuart Bowers. Safety and engineering will be handled by former Ford executive Desi Ujkashevic.

There are approximately 1,000 employees in Apple’s car organization spread across campuses in Sunnyvale, California, Arizona, Zurich and Ottawa – with most of the engineering work being done in Sunnyvale.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column on the media response to the “Twitter Files,” including misleading narratives being repeated across various media platforms. The effort is to assure the public that there is “nothing to see here” but it may backfire. After Twitter employed one of the most extensive censorship systems in history to prevent people from reading opposing views on subjects from Covid to climate change, media figures are now insisting that the public should really not be interested.

The public, however, is not buying it. They are buying Twitter. With users signing up to Twitter in record numbers, a majority supports Musk’s efforts to restore free speech protections and to force greater transparency despite an unrelenting counter campaign in the media. Some of the media claims would meet the very definition of disinformation used by Twitter and its allies previously to censor information and discussions.  Indeed, the Wall Street Journal has noted that it turns out that the greatest purveyors of disinformation turned out to be former intelligence officials who worked to kill the story before the election as “Russian disinformation.” The public seems to be following the old adage “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Here is the column:

In the aftermath of the release of the “Twitter Files,” the media and political establishment appear to be taking a lesson from Karl Marx who said, “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

The censoring of the Hunter Biden scandal before the 2020 election by Twitter and others was a tragedy for our democratic system. That tragedy was not in its potential impact on a close election, but the massive (and largely successful) effort to bury a story to protect the Biden campaign. It has now ended in farce as the same censorship apologists struggle to excuse the implications of this major story.

The Twitter Files confirmed that Twitter never had any evidence of a Russian disinformation campaign or hacking as the basis for its decision to censor the New York Post story. Indeed, some at Twitter expressed concern over preventing the sharing of the story. Former Twitter Vice President for Global Communications Brandon Borrman asked if the company could “truthfully claim that this is part of the policy” for barring posts and suspending users.

Those voices were few and quickly shouted down as the company barred the sharing of the story, including evidence of a multimillion-dollar influence peddling scheme by the Biden family. The back channel communications between Biden campaign and Democratic operatives show a willing use of the company to suppress political discussion of the scandal before the election. It was an all-hands-on-deck moment for the media and Twitter was eager to lend a hand.

Over a year ago, I discussed how the brilliance of the Biden campaign was to get the media to become invested in the suppression of the story. After two years, major media finally but reluctantly admitted that the laptop was authentic as well as the emails detailing massive transfers of money from foreign interests (including some with foreign intelligence links).

Many have responded by shrugging that influence peddling is not necessarily a crime, ignoring that it is still a massive corruption scandal with serious national security concerns. After all, as Heather Digby Parton argued in Salon on December 5, “There is nothing there other than a man making money by trading on his family name.”

After the release of the “Twitter Files,” many of these same figures have shifted to excuse the censorship done at the request of Biden campaign or Democratic operatives.

For some of us who come from long-standing liberal Democratic families, it has been chilling to see the Democratic Party embrace censorship and denounce free speech, including organizing foreign and corporate interests to prevent Musk from restoring free speech protections.

Beyond personally attacking Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi, many have resorted to two claims that are being widely repeated in the media to avoid discussing the coordinated censorship efforts between this company and Democratic operatives.

What Censorship?

One of the old saws of censorship apologists is that without a government directing the suppression of free speech, it is not censorship.

That is clearly untrue.  Many groups like the ACLU stress that “censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.”

The same figures insist that if, there is not a violation of the First Amendment (which only applies to the government), there is no free speech violation. The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies.

Corporations clearly have free speech rights. Ironically, Democrats have long opposed such rights for companies, but they embrace such rights when it comes to censorship. It is also worth noting that this censorship (and these back channels) continued after the Biden campaign became the Biden administration — a classic example of censorship by a surrogate. Moreover, some of the pressure was coming from Democratic senators and House members to silence critics and bury the Hunter Biden influence peddling scandal.

To his credit, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California reached out to Twitter’s leading censor, Vijaya Gadde, and tried to get the company to reconsider this action even though he identified himself as a “total Biden partisan.” He noted that “[t]his seems a violation of the First Amendment principles.”

It is a violation of free speech principles and Khanna was one of the few on the left unwilling to discard those principles for politics in this controversy.

“It is all about the Dirty Pictures”

Another claim is that this was not an effort to censor the story but merely to block the vulgar images that Hunter took of himself having sex with prostitutes or exposing himself.

This claim adds the specter of propaganda to that of censorship. As the Twitter files reveal, Twitter officials discussed whether the whole story might be Russian disinformation or hacking. For former Deputy FBI General Counsel Jim Baker (who was hired by Twitter after the Russian collusion scandal) it is all about supporting others from sharing the story because “caution is warranted.”

Even at the time of the suppression, it was clear to many on the left that the move was being justified by the false claim of a hack.

Rep. Khanna noted in his letter to Gadde that “a journalist should not be held accountable for the illegal actions of the source unless they actively aided the hack. So, to restrict the distribution of that material, especially regarding a presidential candidate, seems not in the keeping of [the Supreme Court case] New York Times vs. Sullivan.”

More importantly, it was not lost on Twitter employees including one who said that “They just freelanced [the censorship]. . .  hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

Moreover, Twitter later admitted that it was a mistake to suppress the story and allowed such sharing, including articles with the pictures. While the “Biden team” did want the company to censor any tweets containing references like “Hunter Biden porn,” it was not the explicit pictures that caused the company to suppress the story before the election.

However, there is a brilliant, if counterintuitive, spin of this argument. As stated in Salon, “mostly what the Hunter Biden laptop ‘scandal’ is about is the dirty pictures.” If the scandal is all about dirty pictures, it is not about dirty politics or influence peddling. It is also not about censorship. End of discussion.

The effort to dismiss these disclosures will not work — any more than earlier efforts to suppress the story itself.

We are still expecting more files to be released. Moreover, the House is expected to investigate the use of these companies to carry out censorship for Democratic allies.

That investigation is important because there is always the risk that Twitter officials (who were long aware of the threat of such inquiries) may have avoided or even destroyed written communications.

Indeed, the increasingly shrill chorus that “there is nothing to see here” may only prompt a closer look from many skeptical citizens.

After all, nothing draws a crowd as much as a farce.

Notorious Wall Street DJ and occasional Goldman Sachs Chief CEO David Solomon struck a downbeat note about the economic outlook saying smaller bonuses and even potential job cuts should come as no surprise in 2023.

“You have to assume that we have some bumpy times ahead,” Solomon said in a Bloomberg Television interview Tuesday. “You have to be a little more cautious with your financial resources, with your sizing and footprint of the organization.” That would mean a heightened focus on costs (layoiffs) and a slowdown in hiring, which the bank has already undertaken. “That might also come from pruning in certain areas,” Solomon said.

The business of Goldman, whose sellside research has turned increasingly bearish in recent weeks and sees a flat market in 2023, is closely linked to the economy, and the bank has forecast slowing growth ahead. That would mean the firm will have to make some tough decisions, Solomon said, especially since a soft landing is far from assured. Solomon said the US could see a recession in 2023, even though the firm’s economists (still) say it could still avoid one. Then again, it’s the same economists whom we mocked as recently as a year ago for predicting inflation would be transitory,

“It shouldn’t be surprising to people — watching the performance of the business this year — that 2021 was an exceptional year,” the 60-year-old CEO said. “2022 is a different year, and so naturally compensation will be lower.”

The Vampire squid is also facing a tricky balancing act to keep a lid on total spending while rewarding its top performers. Solomon told Bloomberg he’s surprised by how resilient the competition for talent still is. Goldman has been cutting costs to protect profits from a costlier-than-expected foray into consumer banking as well as the global economic slowdown, which is taking a toll on dealmaking. After announcing a pivot in his retail operations and scaling down its ambitions, Solomon said that he’s now focused on achieving scale and profitability for the new streamlined business line called Platform Solutions. That unit includes the New York-based firm’s nascent credit-card business, as well as the installment-lending operation GreenSky.

“We will pay people based on the overall performance of the firm,” Solomon said. “And especially for our senior people, we consider the overall performance of the firm as we go through our compensation process.”

Another downbeat statement came from Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan who spoke at the Goldman financials conference, and said that while consumers are still spending more now than a year ago, the “rate of growth in spending is starting to slow” and “deposits balances are starting to come down.” Moynihan also said that his bank sees three quarters of negative growth in 2023 – i.e., a recession – but the slowdown will be “mild” whatever that means.

The BofA CEO also predicted that while trading revenues will be up 10-15% Y/Y, investment banking revenues will be down 50-60%. No surprise then why BofA stocks is sliding 3% this morning.

Finally, completing the gloomy trifecta was none other than JPM CEO Jamie Dimon who told CNBC that we could have a “mild to hard recession” next year. And it wouldn’t be Jamie if he didn’t take a pot shot at crypto where he said tokens are like “pet rocks“, or verbatim what the WSJ called gold 7 years ago, in a call which we are confident the newspaper would gladly retract

Authored by Mark Fitzgibbons via AmericanThinker.com,

Following Twitter’s release last Friday of shocking revelations of collusion between the Deep State and Big Tech to censor news about Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell,” Donald Trump took to Truth Social, and what followed may have been another Charlottesville moment among the media, other Trump haters, and more.

From CNN:

“Trump calls for the termination of the Constitution in Truth Social post.”

 Over at Axios:

“‘A few hours ago the leader of the republican party donald trump called for destroying the Constitution and making himself dictator,’ Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) tweeted.”

The offending language from Trump’s social media post was, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Trump also included the admonition that “[o]ur great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False and Fraudulent Elections!”

Those who believe Trump is evil and ignorant will of course read what they want into his post regardless of his intent and the actual meaning.

Had Trump actually called to terminate the Constitution — as anti-Trumpers would lead the gullible to believe — he would have lost his constitutional conservative base, and he knows that.

Monday, however, a more level-headed journalist, @ByronYork, tweeted instead, “Question: What do you think is the most accurate way to describe what Trump called for in the Truth Social post below? truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTru… pic.twitter.com/58OUiXRUpW.”

The predisposed anti-Trump crowd chose to read “allow for” as advocating termination of laws governing elections. Those governing laws include Article 2, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, which provides for the unique role of state legislatures (not state bureaucrats) setting the presidential election laws.

Indeed, constitutional arguments presented before January 6, 2021 — which unfortunately have been largely misreported by the corporate press and overshadowed by other issues — are grounded in efforts to prevent false and fraudulent elections. (“Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” Federalist 68.)

That key states violated Article 2, Section 1 by bypassing state legislatures in making new rules for the 2020 election did result in election law violations that swayed the outcome.

Another common reading of “allow” for is “to make (something) possible,” as in, “[t]o leave your house unlocked allows for theft.”

It means to give the necessary time or opportunity for something to happen.

Reading Trump’s comment in that context brings a much different meaning to his social media post than a call by him to terminate the Constitution. This reading is more plausible when one knows that Trump was briefed by some brilliant constitutional lawyers about the state fraud and constitutional issues under Article 2, Section 1, whether one agrees with their constitutional arguments or not.

It was the acts of others that “terminated” the laws governing the 2020 elections. The Twitter revelations about collusion with Big Tech aiders and abettors such as those who lied and said the laptop was Russian disinformation. That collusion enabled (allowed for) a false and fraudulent election in 2020. The lies skewed votes, polls reveal.

Leftists and establishment Republicans have been systematically “terminating” the Constitution for decades. In Federalist 44 James Madison wrote about how the United States may eventually be prone to usurpation of constitutional law by elected officials, “[yet] in the last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers,” he wrote.

Madison didn’t even envision what we now face with collusion between the Deep State and mega-corporations.

Federalist 53 refers to the “Constitution [as] paramount to the government,” and John Marshall called it our “fundamental and paramount law.” Had Trump actually called for the Constitution to be broken — when the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress break it every day — he’d have sealed his fate for 2024.

Anti-Trumpers are more than happy to use this new Charlottesville hoax moment to distract from Elon Musk’s release of the Twitter censorship files.

Extra security personnel were spotted outside CNN CEO Christ Licht’s 17th floor office last week after he handed pink slips to nearly 10% of the failing network’s staff in highly anticipated layoffs, according to Radar.

The beefed up security presence was spotted on Thursday, in what the outlet described as an ‘effort to diffuse any angry CNN employees who met the chopping block’ after the 51-year-old executive announced the next round of layoffs. Hundreds of additional staffers were reportedly let go, including both on-air talent and off-camera employees.

But while Licht reportedly kept his office doors open (and his security tight), some employees threw shade.

“What were we supposed to talk about?” said one staffer.

Another staffer located in DC said that “everyone’s depressed” following the layoffs, which began last Thursday when Licht executed on “part of continued cost-cutting by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery” that was telegraphed in a Wednesday memo.

“It will be a difficult time for everyone,” said CEO Chris Licht in a Wednesday memo, who noted that paid contributors will learn their fate on Wednesday, while full-time employees would be informed of their status on Thursday.

“Our people are the heart and soul of this organization,” Licht added. “It is incredibly hard to say goodbye to any one member of the CNN team, much less many. I recently described this process as a gut punch, because I know that is how it feels for all of us.”

The cuts are not a surprise, with Licht warning employees in late October that the news division would be undergoing a restructuring, citing “widespread concern over the global economic outlook.”

But they do come amid decreasing morale at CNN, which has already seen significant turnover this year since the Discovery merger. One of the first moves made after the merger closed was to shut down the CNN+ streaming service, laying off a couple hundred employees in the process. -Hollywood Reporter

Meanwhile, Radar reports that the next round of layoffs at the network could come as early as the first week of December.

“There are huge nerves about that,” said one insider. “It wasn’t clear from that town hall who they’re going to fire. We’re waiting for answers on that.”

Is Licht actually putting out the dumpster fire?

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Saudi Arabia this week in a sign that the world’s top crude oil importer looks to further strengthen trade and investment relations with the top crude oil exporter and other major Gulf oil producers.

Xi is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia from Wednesday to Friday, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported today. The Chinese president will hold meetings with the top rulers, including King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and take part in a Riyadh Gulf-China Summit for Cooperation and Development with the participation of leaders of other Arab Gulf countries, the Saudi agency said.

China – the world’s largest importer of oil and a major customer of Saudi Arabian crude – and the Kingdom have deepened ties in recent years, including in the energy sector.

In October, Saudi Arabia and China jointly stressed the importance of stable long-term crude supply to the market. Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and Zhang Jianhua, the director of China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), have also agreed to continue cooperation in their efforts to keep the global crude oil market stable.

Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia at a time of major turmoil in the oil market and geopolitics with the Russian invasion of Ukraine signals China’s intention to increase its influence in the Middle East, where the U.S. was, until recently, the world superpower with the biggest influence. The Chinese president’s visit also suggests that Saudi Arabia considers its relationship with China one of strategic importance.

While the Chinese and the Saudis are strengthening their relations, U.S.-Saudi relations are at a low point, especially after the U.S. Administration slammed in October Saudi Arabia and the OPEC+ group for what it described as a “short-sighted” and “misguided” decision to reduce their target oil production by 2 million barrels per day (bpd) as of November.    

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday tap-danced around the issue of Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 US election, calling it “not healthy” because it doesn’t do anything to improve Americans’ lives (like the inflation which has gripped the nation since Biden took office?).

“What is happening — it’s frankly, it’s not healthy. It won’t do anything to help a single American improve their lives. And so look, we see this as an interesting, you know, coincidence, and you know, it’s a distraction,” said Jean-Pierre at the end of her Monday briefing, where she offered a lengthy rebuke of Musk’s Friday reveal on how Twitter execs worked behind CEO Jack Dorsey’s back to censor the New York Post‘s bombshell report.

Here we go!! 🍿🍿 https://t.co/eILK9f3bAm

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022

“We see this as an interesting, or a coincidence, if I may, that he would so haphazardly — Twitter would so haphazardly push this distraction that is full of old news, if you think about it,” Biden’s spox continued, downplaying the politically motivated censorship and denial of free speech revealed in Musk’s release, the NY Post notes.

“And at the same time, Twitter is facing very real and very serious questions about the rising volume of anger, hate and anti-Semitism on their platform and how they’re letting it happen,” she continued.

Watch:

Jean-Pierre got into a fierce exchange with Fox News‘ Jacqui Heinrich.

“On Twitter, because you guys said you’re keeping a close eye on Elon Musk’s ownership and this is the first time we’ve talked to you since he released the files a few days ago — is it the White House view that decisions at Twitter were made appropriately in terms of decisions to censor this reporting ahead of the election?” asked Heinrich.

To which Jean Pierre shot back: “You mischaracterize actually what I actually said and took it out of context when you asked your question,” adding “Look, when I answered the question and I already actually already addressed this about how the White House and the administration is seeing what’s happening on Twitter.”

“We follow also what’s going on, just like you guys are reporting it, just like you guys are seeing. And what I was commenting to is like yes, we’re seeing what is happening, just like you all are seeing what’s happening with Twitter. So just want to clear that up because you definitely mischaracterized what I said or put it out of context. And so can you ask your question again?”

To which Heinrich replied: “My question was that you had said I think six or so days ago to the White House was watching closely the situation at Twitter after Elon Musk’s ownership of it with respect to misinformation. And because these files were released on the basis of ‘hacked materials’ clause at Twitter where decisions were made to censor reporting leading up to the election. My question was, is it the White House view that these decisions were made appropriately in light of what has come out?”

“Which decisions? By whom?” Jean-Pierre shot back, playing dumb.

“By Twitter,” Heinrich replied.

Twitter suspended the NY Post‘s account following the release of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and banned users from sharing links to it – both publicly and in private messages. The laptop contains damning evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement with his son Hunter and brother James’ business dealings in Ukraine and China.

Twitter hid behind their “hacked materials” policy in their decision to interfere in the 2020 US election, despite there being no evidence of hacking, and the Post clearly explaining how the laptop was abandoned by Hunter Biden at a Delaware repair shop.