Authored by Mark Glennon and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

Are political preferences truly behind the census data showing migration away from places dominated by Democrats? Where is that heading?

We finally have at least some empirical evidence for the answers beyond the net population changes which we’ve already seen showing flight from blue states. It’s a national survey conducted by the Trafalgar Group last month indicating that America may be politically segregating at a much faster pace than is apparent from net population changes.

The national survey asked likely voters, “Have you moved in the last 3 years, or plan to move in the next year, to a region that aligns more closely with your political and/or personal beliefs?”

Over 4% of Republicans and independents said they had already moved, in the last three years, to a region more closely aligned with their political beliefs.

Far more importantly, over 10% of Republicans and over 9% of Independents say they plan to move in the next year to a region in which they are more politically aligned.

Just as significantly, those numbers are far smaller for Democrats. Results are summarized here:

If those answers are even close to accurately reflecting the direction of political migration, a national re-sorting is unfolding on an historic scale and it’s mostly right-of-center voters who are moving, though a few caveats are in order.

First, it’s possible survey respondents exaggerated since it implies that 10.7 million voters will be moving in the next twelve months for a region to which they are more aligned. That’s a large number given that only around 30 million Americans (not just voters) have moved annually for any reason over the last several years, according to the Census Bureau.

On the other hand, in earlier periods moving was far more common, often exceeding 40 million Americans annually in the 1980s and 1990s, so perhaps the survey reflects a coming return to high migration rates thanks to growing political division.

It’s also possible that far more people are moving for political reasons than a survey would uncover. A person who cares nothing about politics might well say, for example, that she moved to Florida for a good job, low taxes and less crime, not recognizing such things are inherently political.

Second, the survey asked about moves to a different region, which may or may not be a different state, so you cannot necessary let the survey characterize all interstate migration. Intrastate political migration happens, too. For example, liberals in southern Illinois may move to Chicago; conservatives in Portland may head to eastern Oregon and liberals in upstate New York might prefer NYC.

Still, what’s striking about the survey results is how much more likely Republicans and Independents are inclined to move for political reasons than Democrats. The survey therefore certainly does seem to confirm that political preference is a major factor behind the recently released new Census Bureau estimates of interstate migration. For 2022, the bureau estimated particularly severe population losses for New York, Illinois, California and other blue states, with Texas and Florida as the big winners. Taking the survey and census numbers together, in other words, certainly seems to indicate that conservatives and independents are fleeing the most liberal states and dominating interstate migration.

It’s key to remember, when thinking specifically about political segregation, that net population changes shown in census numbers don’t really matter. Net population changes may be small or large for any given state, but they say nothing about the gross numbers moving in and out, which are always far higher than the net. If those gross in and out numbers are based on politics, then the nation is politically segregating at much faster pace than is apparent.

The implications for America are huge. As right-of-center people move to more right-of-center places and vice versa, their new jurisdictions will be more inclined to accommodate them politically, expanding the division and becoming more still more unwelcoming to the other side.

We’ve seen much of that already. For example, Illinois voted in November to constitutionally outlaw right-to-work while Tennessee voted to enshrine it; some conservative states strictly limited abortion after the Dobbs decision while some liberal states moved to further protect it; and many states adopted voting procedures designed to favor the party in power.

If the net result is accelerating population gains for conservative states, their political power will likewise expand. If just the most recent interstate migration trends continue, without any acceleration, the next Congressional seat allocation in 2030 will mean gains of four House seats for Texas and three for Florida, with losses of 5, 3 and 2 for California, New York and Illinois, respectively, according to Michael Li, an analyst at the Brennan Center.

The Trafalgar survey is just a start. Much more research on this topic is badly needed. Given its importance, political scientists and pollsters should be all over this, targeting people who are confirmed movers with multiple, specific questions about their reasons for moving, where they left and where they went.

Call it what you want – the U-Haul Revolution, the Great Re-Sort or the National Divorce – it’s underway, it’s important and we need much better research on it.

States are “the laboratories of democracy,” as Justice of the Supreme Court Louis Brandeis famously wrote. Some are working and some are failing miserably. Get used to it. It’s working beautifully.

Authored by Nick Hubble via FortuneAndFreedom.com,

Is Russia really worse than climate change?

Good news, everyone. Vladimir Putin has single-handedly solved the problem of climate change. How? By invading Ukraine. To understand, let me take you back in time, to when a white policeman ended the pandemic…

Do you remember any significant event taking place in 2020?

Let me help you.

It was the year when the issue of racism in the United States became so important that it triggered a global protest movement. A white policeman killed a black man during an arrest, sparking international chaos and a global movement.

Well, believe it or not, that was also the year a pandemic began. But you wouldn’t know it from reading the news or health advice at the time of the George Floyd arrest. The pandemic was simply suspended to make way for the issue of racism. Black Lives Matter suddenly mattered more than saving the NHS.

Public health officials who had demanded we remain in our homes suddenly advocated gathering in large groups.

Medical experts who told us to limit our breathing recommended screaming at one other.

Advocating for social distancing was replaced with excuses for anti-social behaviour.

Well, it’s the same with Russia and climate change today.

Our attempt to punish Russia’s economy for the invasion of Ukraine has taken precedence over saving the planet.

The shift is equally swift and absolute.

The Germans are so desperate to avoid Russian gas and Russian pipelines that they are felling their own windmills to get at the coal underneath.

United States President Joe Biden is demanding oil companies produce more of what was the world’s most perilous substance before February – oil. He’s even releasing the dangerous stuff from the government’s reserves, presumably to try and fight the coming Russian winter with a little more global warming.

It’s not just the politicians. Bloomberg uncovered that business executives are already trying to hide their efforts to save the planet:

“Survey findings suggest that the stigma of so-called greenwashing is so feared that corporate executives will do anything to avoid being accused of it.”

Greenwashing and greenhushing have taken over from ESG as the themes most covered by the media. In case you didn’t know, because I didn’t, greenhushing is the practice of keeping your company’s environmental efforts secret to avoid any scrutiny.

How’s that for a shift!? From virtue-signalling PR stunts to undercover gardening in the space of a few months. Why? Because we need more energy to fight Putin, not less energy to fight climate change.

Are politicians urging you to shorten your cold showers to save polar bears and the Great Barrier Reef, or to stick it to Putin?

Are pipelines top of the news because of carbon or Crimea?

Are utilities commandeering thermostats to reduce emissions or save gas supplies?

In case advocating for fossil fuels to destroy the planet isn’t virtuous enough, these days, it’s acceptable to risk nuclear Armageddon just to look tough on Russia. Heck, the crazy Germans are keeping their nuclear power plants open, risking another Chernobyl, just to avoid a bit more Russian gas!

But the change has been social, too. Drivers are dragging protestors off their anti-emissions roadblocks. Defacing art is no longer considered acceptable for those trying to save the planet (unless the artwork is a sculpture of someone right-wing and racist). And some marketing genius at Porsche just came up with an absolute masterstroke:

‘Nine of us glued to the floor and some of us on hunger strike until our demands to decarbonise the German transport sector are met.

[Porsche] told us that they supported our right to protest, but they refused our request to provide us with a bowl to urinate and defecate in a decent manner while we are glued, and have turned off the heating.’

It makes me warm inside. Only the Children’s Crusade ended more ignobly than that.

The shifts we’ve seen would have seemed impossible just months ago, when saving the planet was considered more important than fighting Russia. How naïve we were.

But all this must beg the question for all the enthusiastic idealogues gluing themselves to the latest natural element non grata: what if they’re just a bunch of useful idiots?

What if the anti-Russia craze is just another financial fad designed to make politicians more powerful, the wealthy richer, conglomerates cosier and you more compliant?

We’ve seen a lot of financial fads play out over the past few decades. Tech stocks, house prices, bonds and plenty more assets all went the way of the Grand old Duke of York – all the way up, and all the way back down again. But it’s looking like climate change is the latest bubble to burst, and it’s replaced by the issue of Russia.

Of course, it’s understandable. As American philosopher Eric Hoffer famously wrote, “Every great cause starts as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

We don’t need to guess where we were at in that sequence back in 2021. Green tech investors made off like bandits. I watched them, jealously. But, as every good communist knows, after the racket come the consequences.

In 2022, the winds began to change. The green tech bubble imploded quite badly. Coal and oil stocks boomed instead as the Russia narrative delivered stock returns.

What will 2023 bring? What racket will replace the “Russia” one?

It depends on who or what we all decide to obsess about. Or what the media, social media, and politicians decide we should obsess about.

But one thing’s for sure. Vladimir Putin will suddenly matter a lot less, just as saving the planet is unpopular today.

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

While I work to put the finishing touches on my “23 Stocks I’m Watching for 2023”, which should be out this week, one of my favorite investors that I love reading and following, Harris Kupperman, has offered up his own position review for 2022 heading into 2023.

Harris is the founder of Praetorian Capital, a hedge fund focused on using macro trends to guide stock selection. Mr. Kupperman is also the chief adventurer at Adventures in Capitalism, a website that details his investments and travels.

Harris is one of my favorite Twitter follows and I find his opinions – especially on macro and commodities – to be extremely resourceful. I’m certain my readers will find the same. I was excited when he offered up his latest thoughts to Fringe Finance, published below – bold emphasis is QTR’s.

Harris Kupperman’s 2022 Position Review

It seems that everyone has a blog these days. Once a year, we must stop everything, tally up the scores and see who got it right. Besides, what’s the point of going through all this effort, if you cannot point to your record of continuously nailing major trends and investment themes. Even when I get one wrong, there’s a learning process involved in admitting the mistake and avoiding future ones. With that preamble out of the way, let’s dive into the 2022 Position Review. (Prior Position Reviews 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018)

*Normally I publish the review a bit closer to the last day of the trading year, but I’m headed out to Sicily and then Malta for a well-deserved vacation. Don’t worry, I’ll post plenty of vacation pics…

Historically, the year-end review has focused on individual stock tickers, but over the past year and change, I’ve been migrating this blog to focus more on the big picture trends, while Kuppy’s Event Driven Monitor (KEDM) picks up the tickers themselves (or at least the ones that aren’t small caps). With that in mind, let’s dig into the trends, before doing a recap on some legacy positions held over from prior years.

From a performance standpoint, 2022 was something of a listless year after two big years (2020 & 2021) for the home team. For whatever reason, the themes on my books simply didn’t trend; meanwhile I failed to properly capitalize on the trends that dominated the year. That said, 2022 was a painful year for many and a slight positive return certainly feels like a win—especially as I frequently run my book well over 100% net long.

In my mind, there are times like 2020 and 2021 when they literally give the money away, and then there are times when it becomes harder. The pros know the difference between the two and when it gets difficult, they pull back on exposure, score small wins, and wait for the easy times to return. Meanwhile, the amateurs get chewed up during the hard years and have no capital left for when it gets easy again. As the Fed became increasingly dominant in 2022, I continued pulling back on the exposure and risk side. Those who’ve followed this blog for some time know that I’m fast to ramp up market exposure if the narrative changes. Until then, my goal has been to avoid doing anything stupid, slowly stack my chips, and make it through to the other side for when things get easy again.

Fortunately, my roadmap for 2022 saved me from a whole lot of trouble. Admittedly, it was an incredibly contrarian and ballsy call (precisely the type of call that you’ve come to expect from this blog). I challenged orthodoxy by pointing out that after a decade of out-performance, Ponzi Schemes would have a rough year. That undertow would eventually drag down the Tiger-40 list of slightly more “real” businesses, and finally the rot would creep up into the “compounders” that a generation of investors had learned to buy without any regard for valuation metrics. I’m proud to say that I positively nailed this call.

Looking back on that call, I cannot believe how incredibly contrarian it was to say that investing in frauds would be a bad idea. In retrospect, this should have been obvious to everyone, but a decade of outperformance made everyone forget this simple fact. Unfortunately, the other side of my pair trade (value stocks) didn’t perform as well as I had expected. Many of them are up on the year, just not up as much as I had hoped. This is likely caused by an anticipated economic slowdown, due to rapidly increasing interest rates. One could say that the market is looking through a period of over-earning and penalizing their share prices—despite many of these companies trading at low single-digit earnings multiples on full-cycle earnings.

While my exposure remains subdued, I have an amazing shopping list of near-monopoly value names to purchase when The Pause comes, if it becomes obvious that the long end doesn’t completely panic. I’ve spent much of the year building on this list, but have done little besides continue to learn the names better.

Turning to other themes, my strongest held view is that 2023 is the year of oil crushing all other CUSIPs. I know I made the case in early 2022 for a similar outcome, but sometimes things just don’t play out on my schedule. In the months since then, there has been minimal spending growth on exploration, while global demand has continued to rebound and grow. The postponement of my theme was mainly caused by the unexpected purge of SPR inventory, along with China going offline due to germs.

If you enjoy this content, I would love to have you as a subscriber and can offer Zero Hedge readers 50% off by using this link.

These two trends seem destined to reverse during 2023. Meanwhile, Russian oil production is permanently impaired and likely in free-fall. When I tally these three components, I come to a mind-numbing swing of nearly 5 million bbl/d. Now, I know the swing cannot actually be this large—mainly because demand will suffer given the magnitude of the swing. However, demand will only suffer at triple digit oil prices.

While I was off on the price of oil, my energy investments mostly appreciated. I haven’t spoken about offshore oilfield services on these pages, but a pretty good chunk of my exposure is through Valaris (VAL – USA) and Tidewater (TDW – USA) and they’ve both been stalwarts in my portfolio during 2022. Given their valuations, I suspect that they’ll continue to lead the energy markets higher.

Of course, I also had an overweighted position in oil futures and futures options, and these did not appreciate as much as hoped, but maybe they’re just deferring my gratification until oil murders every other CUSIP. Once again, I think it’s important to repeat that if you haven’t stress-tested your portfolio for oil prices north of $200, you’re going to suffer dearly when that should come to pass.

My other core theme was a continuation of the housing strength witnessed during 2020 and 2021. On this score, I was wrong. Housing is now starting to roll over as interest rates take a bite out of affordability. I’ve since tossed my housing supply names, though they trade north of where I mentioned them. While I remain bullish, I’m going to wait for construction activity to bottom and begin its recovery. The demand is there, but not with current interest rates. As an inflection investor, I like to joke that the best inflections are the ones where I get the thesis horribly wrong, yet make some small money anyway, as I was disciplined on valuation. I know I won’t win them all, but not losing when the thesis is wrong, is a different sort of victory that isn’t spoken enough about.

With that waltz through the big picture completed, let’s go through all the positions I’ve publicly carried over from 2022.

Positions mentioned in alphabetical order and % change is from the closing price on 12/31/2021 and the closing price on the last trading day before mentioned or closed. All data is accurate as of the close on December 23, 2022.

Cornerstone Brands (CNR – USA) +38% until closed in 2022 and 232% since the original post

Cornerstone was the scene of a bold robbery as Private Equity lifted it from my hands, right as the demand for building components peaked. Sometimes, I just get lucky as I would have likely held through the pullback. In any case, I caught the recovery in housing components well, played it large, rode through a lot of volatility and exited with a really great return. Don’t cry too hard for the Private Equity boys, they’re going to absolutely bank on this one too, as they bought it simply too cheaply.

Lee Enterprises (LEE – USA) -49% in 2022 and -37% since the original post

During 2022, LEE continued to put up strong performance on the digital front with digital revenue increasing by 27% over the prior year and digital now represents a third of total revenue. Even more impressively, in the fourth quarter, digital represented 55% of total advertising revenue. Meanwhile, digital subscribers grew by 32% over the year. LEE is increasingly a digitally native business, especially when one looks at the adjusted EBITA number. Meanwhile, it trades at roughly one times adjusted EBITDA on an equity basis—which seems ludicrous for a rapidly growing digital business.

Of course, there’s a reason that it trades cheaply; the debt level is high, debt paydown was minimal and EBITDA didn’t convert to cash flow due to one-time charges. My expectation is that these one-time charges continue as the business pivots into the digital world and cash flow will suffer for the next year or two. As an investor, I’m content to look past this muddled performance, with the hope that things normalize at an attractive cash flow number at some future date. Given current growth on the digital side, this should end up as a much more profitable business in the digital format, when compared to the prior print format and we know that the market loves to put high multiples on cash-generative subscription businesses with rapid growth.

While the share price at LEE has not been rewarding during 2022, I’m content with how it’s all panning out.

Oil Futures, Futures Options and Futures Call Spreads 

There was surprisingly little movement in these positions during the year—primarily as the ’23 and ’25 curves stayed rather inert. Near year-end, I did use the decline in the spread between front-month and ’25 futures to swap my ‘25 futures for the Brent Oil ETF (BNO – USO) as I wanted to diversify from WTI, gain some roll yield (which has since become a contango) and get more exposure to the front of the curve as that’s likely to be where the action is going forward. I also picked up some shorter-dated futures positions near the lows in December as I sought to max out my energy exposure. As a consequence of these adjustments, the size of my oil position grew rather dramatically.

Russian Positions (RSX – USA and others)  (original post)

As a contrarian, I often run into a burning building as others flee. Usually this works, sometimes it doesn’t. In terms of my Russian positions, it’s still unclear how they will play out. On one hand, I have massive unrealized gains based on the current marks on the MOEX. On the other hand, I cannot realize these gains and it isn’t clear when or if I ever will be allowed to realize these gains. I’ve marked these positions to zero and like many other investors, I’m going to wait and see how they play out. While this isn’t my proudest investment, I have a sneaking suspicion that my overall IRR will be quite attractive over time—with plenty of risk along the way.

Sandridge Energy (SD – USA) -7% until closed since the original post

Sandridge is a good example of why my best advantage as an investor is my ability to average down as something gets cheaper. I had to average down on Sandridge, multiple times, but eventually I ended up with a large position at a great price and on the recovery in energy equities, I had a nice big gain on my SD position. Admittedly, it was a long road to get to that big win and I unfortunately show a small loss from when I first wrote about SD.

St. Joe (JOE – USA) -26% in 2022 and 82% since original post

My JOE position was one of my largest disappointments during 2022. While the company continues to execute and create value for shareholders, investors ignored this fact and sold the shares off anyway. I’m baffled by this performance, especially given the growth in population and home values in their core Bay and Walton Counties. In any case, I used the recent weakness to increase my position rather dramatically below $40. While investors are likely to continue shunning anything exposed to the housing sector, I’m perfectly content to wait things out, knowing the inherent value of what I own. There’s a whole lot of torque in JOE. It’s just a question of when this one finally gets noticed.

Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (U-U – Canada) +8% in 2022 and 25% (both in Canadian Dollars) from original post

SPUT remains my largest single ticker position. The uranium macro continues to improve, and stockpiles continue to drain. I believe that 2023 is the year when all of this finally matters, and the uranium price begins to levitate. As far as I’m concerned, SPUT is the reincarnation of GBTC, and will become a highly reflexive situation as traders begin to chase the price higher, especially as the liquidity in the spot market continues to dissipate. I’ll have more to say about SPUT in January, but let’s just say I think that 2023 is the year when I get paid on this one. While uranium should not be correlated with oil, I have a suspicion that as oil recovers, ESG-focused investors will rediscover uranium as a substitute. Could uranium become oddly correlated with oil during 2023?

In summary, 2022 was a year where I avoided landmines, and survived to fight another day. I’m excited for the time when I can flex up my exposure, but I’m not going to rush things. For now, I want to stay conservative, stick to low-risk setups and stay highly liquid. I think that 2023 will be difficult for longs, especially as oil crushes everything else. There will be a time to take advantage of that pain, maybe even swapping some barrels for beaten down non-oil names, but this is all into the future…

For now, I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and the best of luck in 2023.

Sincerely,

Kuppy

QTR’s Disclaimer: These are all the opinions of Harris Kupperman and not solicitations to buy or sell any securities. I am not a financial advisor. I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

Police forces in England and Wales were unable to solve 1,145,254 thefts and burglaries in the year ending in June 2022, according to an analysis by the Labour Party.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said domestic burglaries cost victims an average of £1,400 and helped to drive up insurance premiums for everyone.

She told The Telegraph: “This is disgraceful. Theft and burglary are awful crimes and should be properly investigated, not just left for the victims to make an insurance claim.”

‘No Plan’

Criticising Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Cooper said: “The Home Secretary has no plan to turn this around.”

Theft & burglary are awful crimes – yet over 1 million went unsolved in last year.

After 12yrs of Tory policies on policing & crime, fewer crimes solved, more victims let down.

Tories have no plan. Labour will put 13,000 more police & PCSOs on streetshttps://t.co/PGRRglWaEm

— Yvette Cooper (@YvetteCooperMP) December 27, 2022

But the former leader of the Conservative Party, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, said: “Our constituents are complaining endlessly that nobody turns up to deal with burglaries—they just say here’s your crime number, claim your insurance.

“The problem is that the leadership of the police have succumbed to politically correct bullying on this to the extent that the last thing on their priority list seems to be dealing with crime,” he added.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman making a statement to MPs in the House of Commons, London, on Dec. 14, 2022. (House of Commons/PA Media)

Duncan Smith said the police were “overstretched” and were, “increasingly having to take on jobs that social services should be doing.”

He added: “The police service should be the police force and should be there to enforce the law. People want them to investigate crime.”

In the 12 months between July 2021 and June 2022 police forces in England and Wales closed their investigations into 1,145,254 thefts and burglaries, usually because they were unable to find any evidence to charge a suspect.

That amounts to 3,000 crimes every day.

Police forces have been criticised in the past for failing to send officers to do even rudimentary investigations following house burglaries.

According to the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), while some UK police forces already have a policy of attending all home burglaries, others only attend “where it has been established that there are evidential lines of enquiry or where victims are vulnerable or elderly.”

Earlier this year the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, told the BBC the proportion of reported burglaries attended by an officer from the force had fallen to 50 percent.

In October, the chairman of the NPCC, Martin Hewitt, promised officers would start attending every residential burglary in an attempt to restore public confidence in the police.

A CCTV still from a robbery in Keston, UK, in an undated photo. (Metropolitan Police)

Hewitt’s comments followed a speech by Braverman in which she urged police forces to focus on fighting real crimes rather than making “symbolic gestures.”

In an open letter dated Sept. 23, Braverman said she expected the police to cut homicide, serious violence, and neighbourhood crime by 20 percent.

In her Conservative Party conference speech on Oct. 4, Braverman praised forces which were already promising to visit the scene of every burglary and said, “The law-abiding majority expect every force to investigate every neighbourhood crime—and so do I.”

Crime and policing is expected to be a major issue during the next general election, which could come as early as next year but is more likely to take place in 2024.

The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, is a former Director of Public Prosecutions.

Rishi Sunak took over as prime minister in October.

The pair went to head during the summer’s Conservative Party leadership campaign, during which Sunak promised to push back on “woke” policing, saying: “Police forces must be fully focused on fighting actual crime in people’s neighbourhoods, and not policing bad jokes on Twitter.”

The proportion of crimes in England and Wales that end with a charge or court summons has fallen since 2015, reaching 5.6 percent in the year to March 2022, down from 7.1 percent the previous year, and comparing unfavourably with a rate of 15 percent seven years ago.

Two million criminal investigations in the last year led to no suspect being identified, including 300,000 violent crimes.

Among the crimes which have not been solved is the murder of Kennie Carter, 16, who was stabbed to death in Stretford in January 2022, shortly after a game between Manchester United and West Ham at nearby Old Trafford. Ten teenagers have been arrested but nobody has been charged.

A spokesman for the Home Office told the Telegraph: “As the Home Secretary has made clear, we welcome the commitment for police attendance at home burglaries. We continue to support the police, including through record investment and the recruitment of 20,000 additional officers by March 2023.”

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times,

New Olympic guidelines emphasize the “inclusion” of transgender athletes, disqualifying them only after finding proof of “an unfair and disproportionate advantage,” which officials in each sport will define.

“Athletes should be allowed to compete in the category that best aligns with their self-determined gender identity,” the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declares in its Dec. 16 position paper.

Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the statement represents the most recent step in a decades-long evolution of policies affecting female athletes.

The effects could be far-reaching because the IOC sets the tone for sports in community groups, high schools, and universities across the globe.

With the latest update, the IOC was trying to further explain the controversial transgender-related principles that the organization issued in November 2021. That document declared “no presumption of advantage” for male-to-female competitors, triggering a backlash.

Instead of clarifying the situation, the IOC appears to have sparked more confusion and resentment among some prominent female athletes.

‘Total Disregard’ For Women

Ex-Olympians fear that, by clearing the path for biological males to infiltrate women’s categories further, the IOC could cause women’s sports to deteriorate and eventually die. Faced with seemingly unbeatable biological male competitors, fewer girls and women are likely to participate, drying up the talent pool.

Mara Yamauchi, a two-time Olympic marathoner for the United Kingdom, reacted on Twitter to the IOC’s latest statement. She wrote:  “Its total disregard for women and girls made me so angry I was shaking.”

Former Olympians Sharron Davies (R) and Mara Yamauchi (L), outspoken advocates for women’s sports, spoke at a women’s conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 16, 2022. (Andrew Milligan/PA)

Yamauchi interpreted the IOC’s update this way: “We will destroy your sports, Ladies, but you are so totally worthless we won’t bother asking your views.”

However, the IOC said the guidelines included input from “all athletes, including trans athletes and athletes with sex variations, as well as human rights, legal, scientific and medical experts.”

Transgender activists applauded the IOC for its transgender-friendly stance; several Twitter users repeated the phrase:  “All kids deserve to have access to sport.”

No Presumption of Advantage

Last year’s IOC guidelines stirred controversy, mainly because of the “no-presumption-of-advantage” declaration for male-to-female transgender athletes.

The guidelines stated: No athlete should be excluded from competition based on “an unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage” arising from transgender status or physical appearance. “Sex variations,” apparently referring to genetic or physiological differences, also should not be factors.

Ex-Olympians protested, pointing to several well-recognized studies showing that, when compared to biological females, biological males tend to possess superior speed, strength, and stamina–just a few of the advantages that can enhance sports performance.

In 2017, researchers in Israel reported finding more than 3,500 genetic-encoded differences between males and females.

Some people say they don’t need a study to tell them what they see in daily life: observable performance contrasts between males and females.

That’s why much public debate has swirled around biological males who identify as transgender and compete in women’s sports.

Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas (2L) of Penn University and transgender swimmer Iszac Henig (L) of Yale pose with their medals after placing first and second in the 100-yard freestyle swimming race at the 2022 Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Feb. 19, 2022. (Joseph Prezioso/Getty Images)

In recent months, such athletes drew international attention, including U.S. swimmer Lia Thomas, British bicyclist Emily Bridges and New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard. Some people celebrated these athletes as pioneers. Others cried foul.

The IOC’s new statement concedes that restrictions or exclusion may be appropriate for some transgender athletes. Noting that the impact of biological differences may differ from one sport to another, the IOC is allowing each sport’s governing body to put together its own rules.

The IOC says those officials should work with experts “in identifying the metrics and data that may be relevant to defining fair and proportionate advantage in competition.”

Decades-Long Evolution

Since the modern Olympic era began in 1896, Olympic authorities have acknowledged sex-based differences among competitors.

In 1900, the first female athletes competed in the Olympic Games in Paris, France. Ironically, that’s the same location where the 2024 Summer Olympics will be held with the new transgender guidelines in effect, possibly to the detriment of many female sports, critics say.

Since at least the 1930s, people periodically complained about males possibly posing as females in Olympic competitions. As a result, mandatory sex-related tests for female Olympic competitors began in 1968.

The chromosome-based tests were denounced as degrading and sometimes inaccurate. Further, some critics viewed them as harmful to women’s sports.

“Testing evolved into a tool to identify—and eliminate—athletes the IOC deemed too strong, too fast, or too successful,” according to a summary of a 2016 book by author Lindsay Parks Pieper.

In this Aug. 9, 2008, file photo, China’s Chen Xiexia holds up 90kg in the snatch of the women’s 48kg weightlifting competition at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. In 2017, she and other athletes from that Olympiad tested positive for banned substances and were stripped of their medals. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

The IOC voted in 1999 to discontinue mandatory sex tests for females. Some people reasoned that anti-doping regulations, which led to blood or urine screens for banned “performance-enhancing drugs,” would reduce the chances that an athlete could get away with posing as the opposite gender.

Starting with the 2004 Olympics, however, the IOC declared that transsexuals should be allowed to compete in female sports two years after completing sex-reassignment surgeries.

These athletes also needed female hormone therapy long enough to minimize “gender-related advantages,” the IOC wrote at the time. Each transgender athlete would face “a confidential, case-by-case evaluation.”

Testosterone Hotly Debated

For the 2012 Olympics, female athletes of questionable biological sex were required to undergo testosterone tests. The athletes were disqualified if their levels of that masculinizing hormone exceeded a certain level—a requirement some people saw as unfair to athletes with high naturally occurring testosterone levels.

Four years later, the IOC made another change affecting female sports: no reassignment surgery needed for male-to-female competitors. Testosterone limits still applied.

Transgender rights group members protest against an “Our Bodies, Our Sports” rally at the Freedom Plaza in Washington on June 23, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

Now the situation is less clear-cut.

The new IOC document acknowledges that testosterone level “may be an important factor” in some sports. But testosterone tests alone shouldn’t drive decisions on whether to disqualify or limit an athlete, the IOC says.

In a “frequently asked questions” section of its website, the IOC points out that some biological males have become elite athletes despite testosterone levels that were so low, they were considered to be in the “normal” range for biological females.

Therefore, “athletic performance varies independently of an individual athlete’s testosterone levels,” the IOC said. “There is thus no scientific consensus on how testosterone levels can be used across sports to define unfair and disproportionate advantage.”

Female Rights Ignored?

Cathy Devine, a British researcher specializing in sports policy, wrote on Twitter about the latest update: “The IOC has been forced into making some concessions: damage limitation.”

But Devine wrote, “IOC is still ignoring the human rights of female athletes.”

She added: “Female categories should be for females only. This upholds the international human rights framework which protects equality and non-discrimination against females on the basis of sex (means as compared with males).”

The Olympic Charter says that engaging in sports is a human right.

But transgender athletes must overcome barriers and often face “harassment, violence, and even sexual assault,” the IOC says, suggesting that may be why few transgender people participate in sports at all levels.

Against that backdrop, the IOC recommends that youth and community-level sports prioritize “inclusion.” Restrictions or exclusions of transgender athletes should be reserved for elite-level competitions, the IOC said.

‘Beyond Unfair’

Inga Thompson, a cyclist who represented the United States in three Olympiads, said the IOC’s statement is written in hard-to-decipher jargon, but this is her best interpretation of it: “They are acknowledging that women need a sex-separated category, and at the same time, they’re very much advocating for the inclusion of a transgender athlete into the women’s category.”

Thompson made that statement during a Dec. 19 Fox News interview.

“I’m discouraged,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Riley Gaines Barker, a former University of Kentucky swimmer who tied for fifth place against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas at the NCAA Championships in March 2022, speaks at the “Our Bodies, Our Sports” rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington on June 23, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

It is particularly troubling that the IOC’s position paper calls for integrating transgender athletes in community-level sports and shying away from restrictions at the non-elite level, Thompson said.

She said multiple studies show that “young women, if not given a sex-separated sport, get discouraged” when they face off against competitors who possess advantages because they are biologically male.

The girls and women “end up walking away from the sport,” she said.

There’s also a safety concern. In some instances, female athletes have been overpowered and badly injured by males who identify as transgender females, so it’s no wonder that biological females will be intimidated and drop out, Thompson said.

That’s why she considers the IOC’s policy to be “suppressing all of the development of our next generation.” As a result, the future of women’s sports is imperiled, Thompson said.

Women protest as Pennsylvania transgender athlete Lia Thomas competes in the women’s 200 freestyle final at the NCAA swimming and diving championships at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Ga., on March 18, 2022. (John Bazemore/AP Photo)

Possible Solutions

Many sports organizations follow the IOC’s lead, Thompson said. But she urges parents: “You can advocate at your school level, at the state level, to try to keep fairness for these young girls.”

In a separate interview with NewsNation network, Thompson called the new guidelines “beyond unfair.”

“They have sold out women in favor of having more opportunities for more males,” she said.

Selina Soule (L) and Alanna Smith, student-athletes in Connecticut, were plaintiffs in a 2020 lawsuit alleging they faced unfair competition from biological males who identified as transgender females. (Alliance Defending Freedom) 

Thompson pointed out that the Olympics have separate categories for athletes with physical disabilities or mental impairments, along with those based on age, sex, and weight. Yet the IOC advocates putting transgender athletes into the women’s category “at the exclusion of women,” Thompson said.

“If you really want to have true inclusion, you need to start another category” for transgender athletes, she said.

Because each sport must interpret and implement the guidelines, the effects of the IOC’s position on the next Summer Olympics, set for 2024 in Paris, France, remain unclear.

Global coal use jumped to a record high this year because of the sharp increase in natural gas prices. This prompted a wave of fuel switching away from NatGas by utilities for power generation, pushing up demand for price-competitive options, including coal, in many countries.

There are emerging signs across the Western world that ‘gas-to-coal switching’ could be reversed, perhaps only temporarily, as warmer weather is expected across Europe and the US. 

The latest 2-week outlook for the Lower 48 is above-average temperatures for the first half of January. 

Europe is also expected to record warmer temperatures than average for the next two weeks. 

As a result, Henry Hub NatGas prices crashed 12% on Wednesday as cold weather cleared out of the US. This means utilities will become more incentivized to burn NatGas (also more ‘green’) for power generation than coal. 

Even in Europe, NatGas prices are well below the costs for coal. That wasn’t the case several months ago. 

“Cheaper natural gas prices are negative for coal producers, whose product competes against gas for electricity generation,” Bloomberg said. 

Houston-based energy firm Criterion Research said coal-to-gas switching would increase if NatGas prices remained under $7 million British thermal units (MMBtu). 

As natural gas prices weaken at the onset of 2023, we revisited the last few years of data for the United States thermal stack, which includes coal and gas generation. Throughout 2022, natural gas managed to hold 60-70% of the thermal stack while Henry Hub futures remained above $7.00. However, when prices were in the $5-7 range, natural gas was able to post a few days in the 70-75% range. 

With that in mind, if we see prices remain below $5 throughout much of 2023 and natural gas supply within the US continues to hold onto its 100+ Bcf strength, we could continue to see coal burns pushed out of the stack in favor of higher natural gas usage.

Throughout 2022, gas burns managed to account for over 70% of the stack when prices were below $7, but when they moved above $7, it forced gas back below 70%. Overall, the trend is far different than traditional coal-to-gas switching was in 2019 and 2020. #ongt #natgas pic.twitter.com/l3O2r4SnWU

— Criterion Research (@PipelineFlows) December 28, 2022

Energy traders are dumping coal stocks in anticipation of the switching. The Russell 3000 Coal Subsector Index plunged 10% on Wednesday. 

Major coal companies were also dumped. Peabody Energy fell 11%, Alpha Metallurgical Resources -8.8%, Ramaco Resources -8.3%, Arch Resources -8%, and Warrior Met Coal -8%. 

For now, declining NatGas prices means a reduction in coal burns and a transition back to higher burn rates for NatGas. Falling NatGas prices indicate lower electricity prices across the board, a relief desperately needed for many folks across the West.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Little did we know that by 2023 the raging would go beyond paroxysm…

It’s idle to dwell on the cringe-worthy visit of the Kiev clown to Crash Test Dummy at the White House, coupled with a “Churchillian” speech at the War Party dominions in Capitol Hill. History will ridicule this Hollywood soap for centuries ahead.

Way more juice is provided by the latest War Party P.R. show, sponsored by Raytheon Productions. After all Lloyd Austin, the current Pentagon head, is a former Raytheon weapons peddler.

After much fanfare, it was established that the Pentagon will provide not a collection, but a single Patriot battery to Kiev – either with four or eight missile launchers, and either the PAC 2 or PAC 3 version.

A Patriot battery comes with radar, lots of computers, power generating equipment, and an “engagement control station”.

Instead of training Ukrainians at a U.S. Army base in Grafenwoehr, in Germany, the Pentagon is mulling the possibility of training them at a U.S. base, most certainly Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where most instructors actually live, side by side with their integrated training simulators. Up to 90 military are required to operate and maintain a single Patriot battery.

Considering the extensive training required to operate such a costly ($1 billion) and complex system, if they are on the ground during the first semester of 2023 this will mean, ominously, that the operators may be American, or at least NATO mercenaries.

The implied consequences are self-evident. Especially when the Russian Ministry of Defense has already pointed out that the Patriot will be considered a legitimate target.

So assuming all of the above will happen in practice sometime in 2023, it will be a blast to compare the Patriot performance in Ukraine with the Patriots at work in the lands of Arabia – which were routinely dribbled like Messi on an average match by Iranian and Houthi missiles. The Houthis always had a ball targeting Saudi oil installations.

What may change it that unlike in the Arab peninsula, all the collective West’s intel, recon and satellite firepower is in a state of alert in Ukraine 24/7.

The inestimable Andrei Martyanov has already came up with the essential breakdown of all Patriot essentials. Let’s focus on a few intriguing details.

A single Patriot battery will exercise less than zero impact on the Ukrainian battlefield. This battery would in thesis cover the most strategic Ukrainian installations: a very limited area, as in a small military base. That has nothing to do with protecting Kiev.

What’s way more significant, conceptually, is that this Patriot deployment, in connection with other air defense systems such as NASAMS, IRIS-T and the possible transfer of the SAMP-T, proves once again that Ukraine is under a de facto NATO multi-level air defense system. The Patriot is completely integrated with NATINADS, NATO’s air defense system.

Translation, if needed: this keeps evolving, fast, into NATO vs. Russia Total War.

Nice little system you got here

All eyes will be on escalation. The Americans may start with a single Patriot just to test the system under a serious missile attack (assuming the Russians don’t destroy it right away. Remember: “legitimate target”).

It’s fair to consider the Russian General Staff may be already plotting how to instantly go for the kill. The P.R. value, for Moscow, of turning the American P.R. op on its head would be invaluable.

President Putin was barely containing his glee when talking to the Kremlin pool earlier this week: “The Patriot system is not as effective as our S-300 (…) There will always be a countermeasure.”

Then there’s the nagging question of “why now?” The real motive of this “emergency” – sort of – Patriot delivery may have to do with serious problems with the American/NATO systems already on the ground.

The HAWK is woefully incapable of intercepting modern cruise missiles. The IRIS-T is quite raw – and needs non-stop supervision by repair teams from Germany. The NASAMS is also anti-missile impaired. In sum: “inadequate” does not even begin to describe them all.

And all that is happening simultaneously with the depletion of Soviet-era complexes – as well as the anti-aircraft guided missiles that supplied them.

Another key issue is who’s gonna pay for this P.R. op.

The current modified version of Patriot launchers costs roughly $10 million. A single missile costs a whopping $4 million. Russia already spends de facto pocket money on drones – and will spend even more. Firing a $4 million missile at a drone worth at best $50,000 does not even qualify as a joke.

So what is this for? Once again: Empire Escalating, mindlessly, with no end in sight. Putin and his circle, in over two decades, have tried absolutely everything to integrate Russia to the West. Russia was rebuffed every step of the way. Now this strategy has been declared null and void – ever since the American non-response response a year ago to the official Russian letters requesting a serious discussion on “indivisibility of security”. No wonder the Empire is freaking out.

Now both Putin and Russia’s excelling diplomatic corps keep stressing, on the record, that the collective West’s target in using Ukraine is to provoke the disintegration of Russia. So this remains an existential do or die affair. No wonder Russian envoy to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov qualified the state of Russia-U.S. relations as resembling an Ice Age.

Nearly three years ago I christened this decade, right at the start, as the Raging Twenties.

That’s how the Empire made its play, right in the open, when they killed Iran’s Gen Soleimani in a multiple drone attack during an official diplomatic visit to Baghdad.

Little did we know that by 2023 the raging would go beyond paroxysm.

Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

A startup is launching weather balloons capable of releasing reflective sulfur particles into the earth’s atmosphere, with the stated aim of combating climate change through solar geoengineering, while disregarding the negative consequences of such actions.

In solar geoengineering, attempts are made to manipulate the climate by reflecting more sunlight away from earth. Theoretically, releasing sulfur and other such compounds is believed to potentially cool down the planet. Back in 1991, for example, when Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted, it released large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere that spread around the world and triggered a 1-degree Fahrenheit cooling for the next 15 months. The California-based startup, Make Sunsets, is believed to have launched the weather balloons from Mexico.

In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Make Sunsets CEO Luke Iseman said that he expects to be characterized as a “Bond villain” for what the company is doing. But he insists that climate change is a threat, and that since the world is moving slowly to address the problem, a more radical solution is needed.

“It’s morally wrong, in my opinion, for us not to be doing this,” Iseman said.

What’s important is “to do this as quickly and safely as we can.”

Make Sunsets is attempting to make revenue out of its efforts, seeking to sell $10 “cooling credits” for releasing a gram of particles into the atmosphere. The startup has raised $750,000 in funding. It plans on raising the sulfur payload in the future as well as using telemetry devices and other sensors.

Climatic Downsides

A 2018 blog by David Keith, a leading expert on solar geoengineering, explains that he is opposed to commercial work on such technologies due to the fact that commercial development cannot achieve the transparency and trust that is necessary for the world to make decisions on the matter.

Solar geoengineering must only be done by “transparent democratic institutions,” he insisted.

“Solar geoengineering is large-scale climate modification which inherently has global consequences that are difficult to quantify even after deployment. DAC [direct air capture] results in emissions reductions (carbon-neutral synthetic fuels) or net CO2 removal (sequestration), with local impacts that can be measured with reasonable accuracy,” he wrote.

In an interview with MIT, Shuchi Talati, a scholar-in-residence at American University, says that Make Sunset’s actions could end up negatively affecting scientific study on the matter, even leading to reduced funding, boosting calls for restricting such studies, and decreasing government support for it.

“The current state of science is not good enough … to either reject, or to accept, let alone implement [solar geoengineering] … To go ahead with implementation at this stage is a very bad idea,” Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, said in an email to the media outlet.

Widespread Dangers

Solar geoengineering can have devastating consequences for human beings. Such attempts can end up altering the global hydrological cycle, affecting monsoon activity. This can affect agriculture and food security.

Reflecting sunlight to cool down the earth might also make people carelessly pump out more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Excessive CO2 can cause acidification of the oceans.

Moreover, if solar geoengineering were to be stopped suddenly after using it for some time, it could lead to global warming at 10 times more speed.

Solar geoengineering can reduce rainfall on some parts of the earth, thereby affecting the local ecosystem. This would be particularly harmful to evergreen forests and tropical ecosystems.

A change in rainfall, for example, can negatively affect vegetation, which would be bad news for the wildlife that survives on them.

Stanford University has backpedaled on its woke “harmful language” guide after admitting it was wrong to have included the word “American.”

The updated guide from Stanford’s “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative” (EHLI), placed mean words and phrases in various categories, including; “ableist,” “culturally appropriative,” “gender-based,” “imprecise language,” and “institutionalized racism.”

“The purpose of this [EHLI] website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use,” reads the language guide – which also suggested that people should avoid using the word “American,” and instead replace it with “U.S. Citizen,” under the “imprecise language section.”

“[American] often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas,” reads the guide.

Some other recommendations in the guide included replacing the word “Hispanic” with “Latinx, “grandfather” with “legacy,” and “immigrant” with “person who has immigrated.”

“White paper,” which falls under the “institutionalized racism” section, should be replaced by “position paper,” according to the guide. It argued that assigning value connotations based on color, in this case where white means good, is an act that is “subconsciously racialized.” –Epoch Times

Shortly after the story went viral, Elon Musk tweeted “Stanford disapproves of saying you’re proud to be an American? Whoa.”

Stanford disapproves of saying you’re proud to be an American? Whoa.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2022

Musk also said Stanford had “gone too far” and asked for an explanation “for this madness.”

This has gone too far, to say the least! @Stanford, what is your explanation for this madness?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2022

In response to the outrage, Stanford’s chief information officer, Steve Gallagher, said in a Dec. 20 statement that the EHLI website “does not represent university policy.”

“It also does not represent mandates or requirements. The website was created by, and intended for discussion within, the IT community at Stanford,” he continued. “It provides ‘suggested alternatives’ for various terms, and reasons why those terms could be problematic in certain uses.”

Gallagher added that targeting the term “American” was a mistake.

“To be very clear, not only is the use of the term ‘American’ not banned at Stanford, it is absolutely welcomed,” he said. “The intent of this particular entry on the EHLI website was to provide perspective on how the term may be imprecise in some specific uses, and to show that in some cases the alternate term ‘US citizen’ may be more precise and appropriate.”

More via The Epoch Times,

‘Proud to Be an American’

Some Republican lawmakers have taken to Twitter the university’s effort to change the English language.

“The radical left is attempting to destroy our country and erase our history,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) wrote on Dec. 20. “Now, Stanford University is seeking to ban the word ‘American.’”

“Stanford University published an index of forbidden words. One of the words they are trying to eliminate is ‘American.’ ARE YOU SERIOUS?” Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) wrote on Dec. 20.

“I am proud to be an American,” Weber added. “I’ve had enough of the woke liberals trying to destroy America as we know it.”

“If Stanford thinks the word American is harmful, what are they doing with American taxpayer dollars?” Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) wrote on Dec. 21.

Opposition

There is also opposition against the language guide inside the university.

Dr. Jay Bjattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford’s School of Medicine, said he opposed the elimination of the word “American” and added that universities shouldn’t carry out “word policing.”

“I remember how proud I was when I became a naturalized American citizen. I’m still proud to be an American, and I don’t care that @Stanford disapproves of my using the term,” Bhattacharya wrote in a tweet on Dec. 19.

“The problem is the @stanford provenance of the list,” he added in a separate tweet.

“Universities are the wrong place for word policing. There are better ways, more effective & more consistent with liberal norms, to teach students respect and compassion for others than a clumsy list of proscribed words.”

The January 6th special committee has formally withdrawn its subpoena of former President Donald Trump.

“In light of the imminent end of our investigation, the Select Committee can no longer pursue the specific information covered by the subpoena,” wrote Rep. Bernie Thompson (D-MI) in a Wednesday night letter sent to Trump’s attorneys, which was obtained by CNN.

“Therefore, through this letter, I hereby formally withdraw the subpoena issued to former President Trump, and notify you that he is no longer obligated to comply or produce records in response to said subpoena,” the letter continues.

Trump took a victory lap on Truth Social, writing: “Was just advised that the Unselect Committee of political Thugs has withdrawn the Subpoena of me concerning the January 6th Protest of the CROOKED 2020 Presidential Election. They probably did so because they knew I did nothing wrong, or they were about to lose in Court. Perhaps the FBI’s involvement in RIGGING the Election played into their decision. In any event, the Subpoena is DEAD!”

As CNN notes, the committee has already dropped several subpoenas against other witnesses, and has wrapped up its investigation by referring Trump to the DOJ for potential criminal prosecution on four separate charges. The referrals, however, hold no legal weight.