Authored by Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute, 

The US government has authorized a flurry of arms sales to European allies in recent weeks, including more than $850 million in advanced missiles and rockets to Finland, which is currently seeking to join the NATO military alliance.

The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) outlined the latest sale to Finland on Monday, noting that the State Department has approved a deal for 40 AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and related guidance units, as well as 48 AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons, for an estimated $323.3 million.

“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of a trusted partner, which is an important force for political stability and economic progress in Europe,” the DSCA said, stressing that the deal would “not alter the basic military balance in the region.”

The Sidewinder is a versatile short-range air-to-air munition compatible with a variety of different launchers, first developed by the United States in 1956 and later adopted by dozens of American allies. The AGM-154 medium-range glide bomb is of much newer design, in service in the US since the late 1990s, and is capable of carrying various warheads. Both weapons are produced by Raytheon, and have been used by Finnish forces for several years.

The State Department gave the green light for an even larger arms transfer to Finland earlier this month, approving a $535 million sale for hundreds of Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS), which can be fired from two US-made multi-launch rocket platforms: the M270A1 MLRS and the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). 

The latter weapon has made an appearance on the Ukrainian battlefield, as the Joe Biden administration has provided at least 38 HIMARS launchers to Kiev, one of the heaviest and longest-range weapons shipped to the country since Russia’s invasion kicked off last winter.

Despite reports that Washington and its NATO allies have severely depleted their weapons and ammunition stocks after countless arms transfers to Ukraine – with some officials suggesting it will take years to replenish certain systems – the State Department has approved several other large military sales to European partners this month.

As of November 8, Belgium is set to receive $380 million in AIM-120 air-to-air missiles and related gear, which the DSCA said would help to keep Brussels’ F-16 and F-35 fleets in “combat-ready status.”

Lithuania, meanwhile, is looking to procure eight HIMARS launchers and various munitions to the tune of $495 million, a deal that would require US personnel to visit the country twice each year for “program management reviews” and other support services. The State Department authorized that sale on November 9, though all of the above deals still must receive final approval by Congress.

Switzerland also got in on this month’s European spending spree, outdoing its neighbors by nearly twofold with a $700 million purchase for 72 PAC-3 Segment Enhanced missiles for its US-made Patriot batteries. Despite the country’s nominal non-aligned status, the DSCA said the sale would help improve “interoperability with US and NATO forces,” underscoring Switzerland’s close military ties with the North Atlantic bloc.

As the world’s largest arms exporter, such deals are not uncommon for the United States, though the pace of recent sales to European allies could highlight growing anxieties in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine. 

The offensive also prompted both Finland and Sweden to apply to join NATO back in May, breaking with years of neutrality. While all but two member states have since ratified their admission, the Nordic countries are set to remain close partners to the alliance regardless of their formal membership status. Both conduct regular joint military drills with NATO allies, while Stockholm became the first non-NATO member authorized to purchase and deploy its own Patriot missile battery last year, indicating its tight relations with Washington.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

What is the root of all evil?  Money?  No, not really.  Money is just a tool, like a hammer, a wrench or even a gun.  When I think of evil I don’t envision a handgun or a rifle or a big pile of hundred dollar bills.  Instead, I see nightly news talking heads spreading disinformation and fear.  I see mobs of over-emotional and ignorant activists setting fire to buildings, tearing things down because they don’t know how to build anything useful and new.  And above it all, I see a small group of elites hovering, licking their chops as they fantasize about the potential power that can be gained from exploiting the chaos.

The willingness to destroy and cause suffering for personal benefit is evil.  The willingness to feed off the tragedies of others is evil.  And these are the cold characteristics that currently define the political left.

There have been multiple criminal events and national emergencies over the past few years that leftists have been very quick to hijack or scapegoat onto conservatives, often with embarrassing results for themselves.  The most recent being the Colorado “Club Q” shooting in which 5 people died and at least 19 were injured.  Here was the mainstream media’s reaction to the event, with little to no facts on hand to back their claims:

Leftists use a very predictable strategy when it comes to these kinds of high profile criminal acts – Immediately blame all conservatives and conservative principles for the crimes of one man.  Even if the event had nothing to do with conservatives, let the public think it did.  If a gun is involved, blame the legality of guns in general as if the weapon is the problem rather than the mental illness or psychopathy of the perpetrator.

As it turns out, the Club Q shooter suspect, Anderson Aldrich, is actually a member of the LGBT community and identifies as non-binary with They/Them pronouns.  Watch this CNN anchor’s response as she is forced to admit on air that the suspect does not fit CNN’s original narrative:

She is clearly upset and bewildered at the revelation, and the guests even start making excuses, suggesting that perhaps the suspect is lying about his gender identity (which is rather ironic). But why did they react this way?  Aren’t they supposed to be objective journalists merely reporting the facts as they become available?  Yes, I realize the very idea is ridiculous, but it shouldn’t be.  The mainstream is a hostile force seeking to demonize around half the population of America and we have grown used to it.  

With this latest information on the Club Q shooting the story has all but disappeared from the news feeds as if it never happened.  Just like the Waukesha Massacre perpetrated by a BLM supporter, or the the alleged attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, and dozens of other recent crimes in which the facts do not serve the establishment narrative.  

What can we learn about leftists from the Club Q scenario in particular?  

First, they are robotic in their responses rather than empathetic.  They never pause to consider the complexities of the situation or wait to find out the truth.  They jump to the conclusions they WISH were true, rather than seeking to learn more.  Much like children.  

Second, though the vast majority of crime in the US is committed within Democrat controlled cities and states, the left only wants to highlight a certain type of crime – mass shootings by straight white males.  These events serve their political interests while the others do not.  You will not hear Democrats mention the high murder rate or black-on-black crime in anti-gun cities like Chicago, for instance.  They don’t care, because there’s no benefits or power to be squeezed from that ongoing tragedy.

Third, leftists are not interested in justice, they are interested in control.  Justice is about punishing the people that actually committed the crime; but for them punishment of a suspect is secondary to the control that might be derived from the fear and panic the crime caused.  Leftists will use any and every crisis or tragedy to demonize their political opponents.  

It’s very difficult for the media to attach conservatives and the concept of hate crimes to a shooting enacted by a member of the gay community.  Just as it was very difficult for them to attach white conservatives to hate crimes against Asians last year when most of the attacks were committed in heavily leftist cities by mostly black assailants.  

Fourth, leftists will happily stand on the bodies of victims to undermine rational conservative positions.  In the aftermath of Club Q, there was a mass campaign to attack the conservative stance against the grooming of children in public schools and “all ages” drag shows.  Leftists have decided for some reason that the sexualization of children is a hill they are willing to die on, and they will stop at nothing to justify drag dances and gender identity propaganda targeting kids.

We can speculate on why Democrats are so obsessed with getting kids in front of dancing drag queens flashing their crotches, or forcing kids to use made-up identity pronouns while questioning their biology, but the simplest explanation is that they want to groom impressionable children into the leftist fold so that they can be controlled for the rest of their lives.  

It’s not the LGBT part that we have a big problem with, it’s the propaganda and targeting of children we have a problem with.  Even if the Club Q shooter turned out to be a hardcore conservative instead of a trans person, that still wouldn’t change the underlying situation.  Two things can be true at the same time – Mass murder is wrong, and targeting children with political ideology and gender cultism is also wrong.  

Fifth, leftists often claim they have no interest in taking away American gun rights while at the same time demanding our guns be taken.  It seems schizophrenic if you don’t understand the concept of gaslighting, but narcissistic people often learn that saying one thing and doing the opposite is an excellent way to confuse their victims.   

As mentioned, they don’t care about most crime in the US; they even try to deny rising crime statistics.  However, they LOVE a mass shooting, especially the tiny percentage that involve military-style rifles, because they think it will give them the political capital needed to get a majority of people to support further gun restrictions or outright gun confiscation.

It is a fact:  Leftists want to end gun rights in the US regardless of the constitution.  And, they are willing to punish ALL gun owners for the crimes of a handful of people.  Again, this is not about justice, this is about control.  Why do they want to take away gun rights if they don’t actually care about the deaths of the people involved in crime?  We can only conclude that a well armed population is a considerable obstacle to their agenda.

The media will now have to play a game of spin as the Colorado shooting case unfolds.  They are already claiming that the suspect is not actually trans, as if the suspect is faking as a means to avoid hate crime charges.  If this is true, it would be a meaningless gesture as hate crime charges make no difference in the overall prosecution of multiple murders.  Also, generally speaking, people who commit hate crimes would be loathe to identify as the thing they are supposed to hate.  

The fact remains that you cannot separate the political left from the tragedy-whoring and crisis opportunism they employ.  Without constant calamity leftists serve no purpose and have no platform.  They need disaster to remain relevant, and they need panic as a tool for centralizing power.  They need the populace to be constantly afraid, mostly of threats that do not exist and suspicions that are misplaced.  

They will attempt to gaslight and claim that conservatives are somehow the same – But we are not.  We are not afraid of what we think they might do, we stand in opposition to what they are ALREADY doing.  We aren’t concerned about phantom enemies and imagined crises, we are concerned about the very real antagonists on our doorstep.  

This is one of the many differences between leftists and conservatives:  We’re not going to attack fellow Americans for things they have not done nor suspect people without evidence, we are only interested in stopping the trespasses that are happening right in front of our eyes.  We aren’t going to be victimized while our attackers pretend to be victims and we aren’t going to pretend we don’t see agendas that are obvious.  Most of all, to the best of our ability we rely on the truth to make our case while leftists rely on deceit and spin.  

The fact is, there is a divide now between leftists and conservatives that can never be mended.  We are so different in our goals and our principles it is as if we are two different species, and for now only one side has acted consistently to destroy the other.    

Among all those suffering from the chaos in crypto…we can’t forget about Miami nightclubs.

Yes, apparently the South Beach hotspots are starting to miss the business young awkward crypto millionaires and billionaires, according to a new report from FT. The clubs had formerly been “inundated with phone calls from cryptocurrency entrepreneurs that no one had heard of,” the report says.

Those days are long gone.

When bitcoin was at $60,000, however, there seemed to be an endless supply of crypto geniuses who were eager to “reserve lots of tables — or rent an entire venue for a whole evening at a cost of half a million dollars or more,” the report says. 

Andrea Vimercati, director of food and beverage at Moxy Hotel group, told the Financial Times: “Out of the blue, all these kids from crypto started coming down and spending a lot of money — like, an insane amount of money.” 

“They were booking tables for $50,000, and it was like, who the hell are these people,” he continued, stating they were “95 per cent men, young . . . with a kind of nerdy style. You couldn’t tell they had a lot of money if they were just walking around.”

He continued, talking about the excess which has now been washed back out to sea: “They wanted to show that they didn’t have any limits. They were ordering 12 or 24 bottles of the most expensive champagne and just showering themselves without even drinking.”

One group, who claimed to have sold their crypto company, even paid a more than million dollar tab at a 50 Cent show in crypto, Gino LoPinto, operating partner at the club, recalled. His club transacted more than $6 million in crypto in the last year, he said. 

“They had bathtubs of champagne brought out, and gave 50 Cent a bunch of cash to throw,” she said. “You wouldn’t normally show your bank account, but people do show their crypto wallets/ I’ve seen more crypto wallets in a year than I’ve seen bank accounts in a lifetime.”

Now, the crypto club-goers have “completely disappeared”, Vimercati says. LoPinto noted that his club has only processed $10,000 in crypto transactions in the last 3 months. 

Alan Roth, owner of Rosa Sky rooftop lounge, added: “On the bigger crypto weekends, the groups coming in for private buyouts were these young tech guys. A buyout costs anywhere from 20 per cent to 50 per cent more than we would make on a normal night.”

Brett Harris executive director of luxury sales at real estate firm Douglas Elliman characterized the boom: “It was revenge of the nerds.”

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

Challenging the western monetary system, the Eurasia Economic Union is leading the Global South toward a new common payment system to bypass the US Dollar…

The Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is speeding up its design of a common payment system, which has been closely discussed for nearly a year with the Chinese under the stewardship of Sergei Glazyev, the EAEU’s minister in charge of Integration and Macro-economy.

Through its regulatory body, the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), the EAEU has just extended a very serious proposal to the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) which, crucially, are already on the way to turning into BRICS+: a sort of G20 of the Global South.

The system will include a single payment card – in direct competition with Visa and Mastercard – merging the already existing Russian MIR, China’s UnionPay, India’s RuPay, Brazil’s Elo, and others.

That will represent a direct challenge to the western-designed (and enforced) monetary system, head on. And it comes on the heels of BRICS members already transacting their bilateral trade in local currencies, and bypassing the US dollar.

This EAEU-BRICS union was long in the making – and will now also move toward prefiguring a further geoeconomic merger with the member nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The EAEU was established in 2015 as a customs union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, joined a year later by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Vietnam is already an EAEU free trade partner, and recently enshrined SCO member Iran is also clinching a deal.

The EAEU is designed to implement free movement of goods, services, capital, and workers between member countries. Ukraine would have been an EAEU member if not for the Maidan coup in 2014 masterminded by the Barack Obama administration.

Vladimir Kovalyov, adviser to the chairman of the EEC, summed it all up to Russian newspaper Izvestia. The focus is to establish a joint financial market, and the priority is to develop a common “exchange space:” “We’ve made substantial progress and now the work is focused on such sectors as banking, insurance, and the stock market.”

A new regulatory body for the proposed joint EEU-BRICS financial system will soon be established.

Meanwhile, trade and economic cooperation between the EAEU and BRICS have increased 1.5 times in the first half of 2022 alone.

The BRICS share in the total external trade turnover of the EAEU has reached 30 percent, Kovalyov revealed at the BRICS International Business Forum this past Monday in Moscow:

“It is advisable to combine the potentials of the BRICS and EAEU macro-financial development institutions, in particular the BRICS New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), as well as national development institutions. This will make it possible to achieve a synergistic effect and ensure synchronous investments in sustainable infrastructure, innovative production, and renewable energy sources.”

Here we once again see the advancing convergence of not only BRICS and EAEU but also the financial institutions deeply involved in projects under the China-led New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Halting the Age of Plunder

As if all that was not game-changing enough, Russian President Vladimir Putin is raising the stakes by calling for a new international payment system based on blockchain and digital currencies.

The project for such a system was recently presented at the 1st Eurasian Economic Forum in Bishkek.

At the forum, the EAEU approved a draft agreement on cross-border placement and circulation of securities in member states, and amended technical regulations.

The next big step is to organize the agenda of a crucial meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on 14 December in Moscow. Putin will be there – in person. And there’s nothing he would love more than to make a game-changing announcement.

All of these moves acquire even more importance as they connect to fast increasing, interlocking trade between Russia, China, India, and Iran: from Russia’s drive to build new pipelines serving its Chinese market – to Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan discussing a gas union for both domestic supplies and exports, especially to main client China.

Slowly but surely, what is emerging is the Big Picture of an irretrievably fractured world featuring a dual trade/circulation system: one will be revolving around the remnants of the dollar system, the other is being built centered on the association of BRICS, EAEU, and SCO.

Pushing further on down the road, the recent pathetic metaphor coined by a tawdry Eurocrat boss: the “jungle” is breaking away from the “garden” with a vengeance. May the fracture persist, as a new international payment system – and then a new currency – will aim to halt for good the western-centric Age of Plunder.

A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health revealed the number of law-abiding Americans carrying a loaded handgun daily nearly doubled between 2015-19. 

The study titled “Trend in Loaded Handgun Carrying Among Adult Handgun Owners in the United States, 2015‒2019” found the number of law-abiding US adults carrying handguns nearly doubled from 9 million in 2015 to 16 million in 2019.

“Proportionally fewer handgun owners carried handguns in states where issuing authorities had substantial discretion in granting permits,” the study’s authors said. 

The authors claimed that very “little was known about the frequency and features of firearm carrying among adult handgun owners in the United States before this study. In fact, over the past 30 years, only a few peer-reviewed national surveys, conducted in 1994,1995, 1996, and 2015, have provided even the most basic information about firearm carrying frequency.”

Research firm Ipsos conducted the national survey between July 2019 and August 2019. Respondents were from firearm-owning households drawn from Ipsos’s Knowledge Panel, an online sampling pool of approximately 55,000 adults. 

There was no explanation by the study’s authors for the rapid increase in daily handgun-carrying adults. But during the period, social unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore City, Maryland, as well as surging violent crime across certain metro areas, could be the reason behind the trend. 

After all, an overwhelming number of respondents said they were carrying handguns for “personal protection.” 

“And all of these increases happened before the Covid lockdowns and the “Summer of Love” where many US cities experienced massive rioting, violence and staggering increases in crime,” firearms blog Bearing Arms said. Much of this unleashed a tidal wave of law-abiding citizens panic buying guns, even to this day, for personal protection. 

And then there’s this summer’s US Supreme Court’s NYSRPA v. Bruen ruling affirmed the right-to-carry applies outside the home, which forces states to stop arbitrarily denying carry permits to applicants who didn’t meet specific requirements. This ruling has allowed millions of gun owners to conceal carry if they take a two-day class and pass a background check.  

Suppose the authors were to update the study for the pandemic years and the Bruen ruling. In that case, we believe the number of Americans packing heat has dramatically increased as the country is plagued with violent crime in progressively run cities.

Data shows that not only are more gun owners carrying firearms for self-defense, but more law-abiding gun owners are carrying DAILY.

This is what happens when violent crime is on the rise across the country and #SecondAmendment rights are being attacked from every angle.

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) November 29, 2022

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

At least 42 Biden administration officials were sent letters by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee this month requesting testimony from a variety of White House officials.

Those letters primarily dealt with the suspected politicization of the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ), investigations into U.S. border security, and President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

A recent letter (pdf) led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to White House chief of staff Ron Klain requested testimony from Biden administration staffers relating to alleged “misuse of federal criminal and counterterrorism resources to target concerned parents at school board meetings.” Interviews from four White House officials were requested.

Around the same time, another letter (pdf) from Jordan was sent to the Department of Education requesting testimony from three officials, and another letter to the Department of Homeland Security requests interviews from around a dozen administration officials. That includes embattled Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement chief Tae Johnson.

Even more DOJ and FBI officials were asked to testify during the next Congress, according to two separate letters (pdf, pdf) sent by Jordan and others last week. They’re seeking testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and dozens of other DOJ and FBI officials, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of the GOP-backed letters.

It’s likely that Republicans will seek to investigate how the FBI and DOJ handled investigations into former President Donald Trump and the raid that targeted Mar-a-Lago in August. Republicans and Trump have long said the two agencies have exhibited a politically motivated animus toward the former president, coming after Garland announced he had appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to investigate him.

More than a week ago, Garland appointed Smith as special counsel to “oversee two ongoing criminal investigations” into Trump, namely events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach and the Mar-a-Lago raid, according to a DOJ statement. Just days before, Trump announced he would be embarking on a third presidential bid in 2024.

Other Investigations

House Majority Leader-elect Steve Scalise (R-La.) revealed that some of the GOP’s priorities for the incoming Congress are probing the origins of COVID-19, the widely criticized U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and allegations surrounding Hunter Biden.

The House Oversight Committee, under its top Republican and likely next chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), is “ready to go start looking into a lot of the questions that people have had,” Scalise told Breitbart this weekend.

“Whether it’s Hunter Biden’s dealings with all kinds of foreign countries [or] the laptop scandal, which the liberal media tried to dismiss when it came out in 2020,” he added. “It’s been verified.

“It turns out there’s a lot of information on that laptop that raises serious questions, and James Comer’s committee’s going to be asking those.

Read more here…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a video address on Tuesday estimated it will cost more than $1 trillion to rebuild his country following the Russian assault, now over nine months in. If this number sounds absolutely shocking and unrealistic… it is, given this would be five times Ukraine’s entire GDP.

“The reconstruction of our country will become the most momentous economic, technological, and humanitarian project of our time. Even now, we engage dozens of our partner countries to rebuild Ukraine,” Zelensky said during his nightly video address Tuesday, translated by Newsweek. “The total volume of work amounts to over a trillion dollars.”

He slipped this one trillion dollar figure in while saying he hopes his country can show the world its resilience by hosting the World’s Fair in 2030. 

Further, the Latvia-based English language news outlet Meduza described that the Ukrainian leader floated an unusual plan for meeting his astronomical reconstruction price tag. National governments or even large companies could become permanent sponsors of specific regions, cities, or economic sectors: 

According to Zelensky, Ukraine is developing a system that will allow partner countries to become “patrons” of Ukrainian regions, cities, or businesses. “We’re already seeing interest [in the program] from France, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Portugal, Czechia, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Austria, Greece, Canada, the U.S., Japan, and Australia. And that’s not an exhaustive list,” he said.

This actually isn’t the first time that a stunning $1+ trillion figure has been proposed. 

The first time Zelensky so publicly floated one trillion seems to have been in September, when he was invited to “ring” the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on the 6th of that month (via video feed of course).

He said at the time during comments which included an appeal for $400 billion in foreign investment: “The general project of Ukrainian reconstruction will be the largest economic project in Europe of our time. The largest for several generations. Its volume is already estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Zelensky then emphasized, “And with the necessary modernization of the Ukrainian infrastructure, taking into account security needs, it is more than a trillion dollars and in a fairly short term – less than ten years.”

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Ukraine was worth 200.09 billion US dollars in 2021, according to official data from the World Bank…

Meanwhile, at least one well-known Washington-based think tank has gotten behind this, arguing that it would provide “strategic benefits” to the United States. A report in Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) issued days ago and entitled, United States Aid to Ukraine: An Investment Whose Benefits Greatly Exceed its Cost, had this to say…

“In practice, Ukraine cannot continue to fight and to recover without continuing aid from the U.S. and other powers. Moreover, if the war drags on as it well may do, the total costs of both the war and recovery states could easily rise well over $500 billion. A truly long war could put the total cost of the war and recovery to a trillion dollars or more.”

It noted, “So far, there has been only limited domestic political resistance in the United States to continuing civil and military aid to Ukraine” – suggesting that US officials should push for more and more foreign aid for Kiev amid the general lack of pushback and apathy.

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Texas mother, frustrated by her school board’s reluctance to remove books with graphic sexual content from school libraries, found an embarrassing technique for getting board members and the public to pay attention.

Her unusual method may have hastened the removal of one objectionable book from shelves and brought the issue of sexual content in school libraries to the attention of social media viewers worldwide.

At last count, the number of views of her most-recent appearance at a school board meeting had reached nearly 372,000 on Twitter after being shared by Libs of TikTok.

UNREAL. Parent in @friscoisd reads from a pornographic book available to kids. A board member stops her and says “there’s a child in our board room.”

They acknowledge it’s inappropriate to read in front of children but these books can be in the school library. Make it make sense pic.twitter.com/VwpUBWOYnb

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 17, 2022

The video shows Shannon Ayres reading from the book, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” at a board meeting of the Frisco Independent School District on Nov. 16.

Ayres, the mother of grown children who attended school in the district, now serves on the board of the local chapter of the watchdog group County Citizens Defending Freedom.

In the clip, Ayres takes her spot at the podium during public comment and begins reading a passage from the book found in the library of at least one district high school. The excerpt graphically describes a young girl protesting and crying as a boy forces her to perform oral sex.

“I ask you why this book has survived two attempts…” Ayres tries to ask board members.

Off-camera, a school board trustee can be heard talking over her as Ayres’ microphone is turned off at the end of her comment period.

“Thank you. Your time is up. Thank you so much. There’s a child in our boardroom, so I’d like for you to please stop reading that,” board president Rene Archambault interrupts, drawing loud complaints from the audience.

Ayres told The Epoch Times she decided to begin reading excerpts from books that remained in libraries after making it through at least one review process. Though distasteful, she felt reading passages would focus attention on the remaining books.

“Identical,” which has a scene where a father rapes his daughter, was already under a second review but removed within 48 hours after she read from it at a previous school board meeting.

So Ayres signed up to speak again during the meeting set aside for public comment. And that’s what drew her public scolding now circulating around the world.

“My heart was beating so hard I felt like they could see it beating through my shirt. It was scary. I had to say a little prayer to get the words out. It’s just vile,” she said.

The irony of Archambault’s comment seems to amaze viewers—that a school library book is too graphic to be presented in front of children.

“The hypocrisy was so blatant,” Ayres said.

Archambault’s comments later in the meeting indicated that the child in the audience was of elementary-school age. She said it was vastly different for a child to be “forced” to listen to the material read during a board meeting versus checking out a book from the library.

She apologized that the child’s mother had to cover her ears while the book passage was read and asked people to email concerns about books in the future so children wouldn’t be exposed to the content during board meetings.

At that point, trustee Marvin Lowe, one of two conservative board members, spoke up.

“I understand what you’re saying for a kid to hear what was in that book, but do we need to apologize to the community that those books are in our library, to begin with?” Lowe said, prompting applause from the audience.

Ayres said she did not realize a child was at the meeting.

“And I was upset when I realized afterward there was a child in the room because obviously that’s what I’m trying to avoid is children having to be exposed to that,” she said.

The frustrating part is that she said some objectionable books have been on shelves for a year after being challenged.

Besides the “Wallflower” book, six other titles remain on the shelves: “Check, Please! Book 1:#1 Hockey,” “Chicken Girl,” “Glass,” “Glass Castle,” “The Perks of Being a Wildflower,” “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” and “The Exact Opposite of Okay.”

Frisco ISD’s website says parents and community members may object to titles that don’t follow district policy. But it also noted that the district must protect students’ First Amendment rights.

Ayres said board members shouldn’t hide behind claims that removing inappropriate books would violate students’ rights.

Ayres said minors aren’t allowed to carry guns, which isn’t an infringement on their Second Amendment rights. Likewise, she added, taking books with sexual content out of libraries doesn’t infringe upon their First Amendment rights.

Even with the intervention of state Rep. Jared Patterson, a Frisco Republican, the seven books remain on school library shelves after two appeals.

Patterson told The Epoch Times he was sorry the child in the audience heard the book’s content.

“I’m sorry that any child has to see that in their school,” he said.

Patterson started objecting to books last November, he said. But when school started in August 2022, there were still 28 books with sexual or inappropriate content in Frisco ISD libraries.

Read more here…

Readers have been well-informed about the slide in wholesale used-vehicle prices. A combination of increasing new car and truck supply, soaring interest rates, and economic uncertainty have been drivers of slowing consumer demand. But let’s concentrate on the luxury side of the used car market, where storm clouds quickly gather. 

Twitter user CarDealershipGuy pointed out that a 2021 G-Wagon with only 3,330 miles just sold at auction for around $187,000. He said the latest auction figures were a 30% plunge from the nearly $300,000 price the luxury SUV commanded earlier this year. 

Exotic car market is getting decimated right now.

2021 Mercedes G-Wagon with 3,378 miles just sold for $187K at auction.

that’s nearly an $80K (or 30%) drop in under 12 months.

— CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) November 22, 2022

CarDealershipGuy explained, “exotic car market is getting decimated right,” even though the overall decline in the average wholesale used car prices is only “-13.7% y/y (according to Manheim).” He attributed the turmoil in the luxury space to “crypto bros” panic dumping high-end vehicles. 

Reminder that wholesale used cars are only down 13.7% y/y (according to Manheim)

so yes, crypto bros are hurting.

oh and incase you wanted more proof: pic.twitter.com/moYa9h1AZ4

— CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) November 22, 2022

NYPost said, “an uptick in like-new models of sought-after luxury cars has hit resale sites such as AutoTrader in recent weeks.” 

CarDealershipGuy told The Post the crypto winter has forced “crypto bros” to dump luxury vehicles at auctions or list them on online marketplaces. 

“It’s clear that in the last couple of months the decline in prices for exotic vehicles has accelerated and that correlates very, very well with the meltdown in the crypto markets where we know that some of the biggest customers of exotic vehicles were crypto millionaires,” he said.

Here’s the crash in bitcoin.

Software engineer Brianna Wu also noticed an uptick, though she said McLaren listings on AutoTempest were “exploding.” 

The crypto crash is real.

Right now, @AutoTempest is EXPLODING with McLarens – the flashy and extremely unreliable car of Cryptobros who couldn’t change a tire if their lives depended on it. pic.twitter.com/L8Swam8Qmm

— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) November 16, 2022

If “crypto bros” are offloading vehicles, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before they unload other assets, such as Rolex, yachts, and mansions, as the winter in the digital asset space could worsen in the months ahead. 

Authored by Dan M. Berger via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Early voting in Georgia’s Senate runoff between incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker is setting records, as it did before the November general election.

More than half a million of the state’s 7 million active voters had already voted as the polls opened on Nov. 29.

“Just … Wow!” Georgia’s Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling posted on Twitter late on Nov. 28.

“Georgia voters, facilitated through the hard work of county election and poll workers, have shattered the old early vote turnout, with 300,438 Georgians casting their votes today. They blew up the old record of 233,000 votes in a day. Way to go voters and election workers.”

At the North Fulton County Annex in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs, a line of waiting voters stretched out the front door, down the steps, and onto the sidewalk during four different visits by The Epoch Times to the building on Nov. 28 and Nov. 29.

A man who had just voted on Nov. 29 checked his watch and told The Epoch Times he’d waited about 45 minutes.

Early voting continues through Dec. 2. The runoff Election Day is next Tuesday, Dec. 6.

The closely watched, closely matched race will determine whether the Democrats get a 51-49 majority in the U.S. Senate or whether the chamber splits once more 50-50 between the two parties, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote.

In the previous Congress, Senate party leaders Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) negotiated a power-sharing agreement in which the parties had equal representation on committees, but Democrats held the gavels.

Polls show the race is close. A Fabrizio/Anzalone poll of 500 likely voters from Nov. 11–17  had Warnock up by four points, still within the margin of error.

Another released on Nov. 28, done by FrederickPolls, Complete Digital, and AMMPolitical of 939 likely voters surveyed from Nov. 23–26, had the two tied at 50 percent each.

Georgia AARP said in a press release that Walker runs nine points ahead among voters aged 50 or older, who make up 62 percent of likely runoff voters. But other demographics showing strongly in early voting include female and black voters, who tend to favor Warnock.

The runoff was forced because while Warnock led in the general election, he failed to reach the 50 percent of the ballots required by Georgia law. He had 49.4 percent, Walker had 48.5, and Libertarian Chase Oliver had 2.1 percent.

There are clues to be taken out of the general election results.

Around one in 10 Republicans voted for Republican Brian Kemp for governor but crossed over to vote for Warnock or not vote in the Senate race at all.

Warnock was the Democrats’ leading vote-getter, well ahead of their gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Will those ticket-splitters come back for the runoff or just stay home? Will Oliver’s Libertarian voters come back? If so, who will they vote for?

Walker constitutes a wild card: a celebrity athlete who has never run for office, with huge name recognition in Georgia, but whom Warnock says is unprepared to represent the state.

Warnock has poured more than $100 million into ads attacking Walker over a number scandals—such as allegations of domestic violence, revelations about previously unacknowledged children born out of wedlock, and allegations about abortions the pro-life candidate allegedly paid for or solicited.

Warnock has aired ads featuring Republicans who say they can’t vote for Walker. Those who voted for Kemp and other Republicans running for statewide office—but for Warnock and not Walker—show there is a significant number.

But despite all this, poll numbers in Georgia have hardly moved since the summer. Warnock led narrowly during the summer and Walker in the fall, but always within the margin of error.

Democrats are pressing hard to lock in their base by getting them to vote early.

The party sued and won to get an extra day of early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26, after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who had first said it would be allowed, then changed course and barred it, citing a passage in state election law.

Once permitted, it took place on a county-by-county basis. DeKalb was the only county in the state to start early voting before that, with one day on  Nov. 23, the day before Thanksgiving. Some counties also opened the polls on Nov. 27.

After Nov. 28’s turnout, almost 504,000 Georgians had voted, either through early voting or returned absentee ballots, slightly more than 7 percent of the state’s approximately 7 million registered and active voters. About 468,000 used early voting, while around 36,000 absentee ballots had been returned.

In 11 counties—including DeKalb, the Atlanta metro area county that is the second largest in the state, more than 10 percent of voters had already voted.

Of early voters, about 244,000 were white and 193,000 black, with about 48,000 whose ethnicity was classified “other or unknown,” around 10,000 Hispanics, 8,000 Asian or Pacific Islanders, and a little more than 1,000 classified American Indian or Alaskan Native.

The state is about 57 percent white and 32 percent black, but blacks, who vote heavily Democrat, comprised 41 percent of those voting early.