VDH: It Was Always Only About Power With The Left Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness, Why do so many liberal climate-activist grandees fly on private jets? Or why do those who profited from Black Lives Matter have a propensity for estate living? Or why do the community-activist Obamas prefer to live in not one, but three mansions?  The answer is that calls for radical equity, “power for the people,” and mandated equality are usually mostly sloganeering for those who enjoy power and the lucre it brings, and their wish is to augment both for themselves. The result is that the issue du jour of mandated equality often becomes secondary if not irrelevant. There is neither fear of inconstancy nor hypocrisy, given the central theme that governs a leftist party line is political utility—or the ends of power always more than justify the hypocritical means used to obtain it.  Spout racialist nonsense for 40 years? Harass women and young girls by blowing in their hair and squeezing them too tightly? Create a family grifting syndicate to leverage foreign cash in quid pro quo fashion? Praise racial segregationists?   Joe Biden did all those things and more. But he also did them in service to a supposed noble cause, sort of like the current board president of the NAACP promoting a black travel ban on Florida, while he lives—in Florida! Keep political utility in mind and the baffling hypocrisy of the Left makes all too perfect sense.  January 6 vs. the “Summer of Love”  From all the tens of thousands of January 6 Capitol protesters a small percentage entered the Capitol itself. Of that group, an even smaller number committed violent acts. Most of those seriously injured that day were among the protesters themselves. Despite official propaganda, there were not five police officers killed on January 6 as alleged by the Left.  Instead, the only likely death at the hand of another was the diminutive, 5’2’’, 14-year-military veteran and unarmed Ashli Babbitt. She was lethally shot by a Capitol officer Michael Byrd for the likely misdemeanor of trespassing and—illegally entering a broken window to the Capitol.  Yet over a thousand protesters were arrested, tried, and mostly convicted of various charges from parading without a permit to insurrection. Many of them were sentenced to long prison sentences. Some may spend most of their remaining lives in prison.   The Left has justified long sentences on three grounds: One, the protesters targeted iconic government buildings as the object of their attacks. Two, the protesters were ideologically motivated and seemed bent on insurrection to warp the political process. Three, the protesters were attempting to nullify an election by their massing at the Capitol and therefore questioned the very integrity of the 2020 election.   In theory these were legitimate reasons to treat harshly any convicted of such insurrectionary crimes. But in reality, the Left cared little about its pretexts justifying harsh responses, much less proving their charges. What mattered were the political opportunities offered by January 6, and the chance to leverage the occasion to consolidate power.   Why and how can one assume that?  In 2020, for 120 days, left-wing mobs led by Antifa and Black Lives Matter wrought far greater destruction in nonstop rioting, arson, looting, and assault. Over 35 people died. Two billion dollars in property damage followed. Some 1,500 officers were assaulted and injured. Over 14,000 protesters were arrested.  Yet few were convicted of any serious crimes; fewer were sentenced to long sentences—given prosecutors, state and federal, claimed the violence was merely a result of protesters exercising their “constitutional right” of dissent.   Left-wing politicians and activists from then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris (“They’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.”) to Nikole Hannah Jones (“Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.”) either excused the often violent protests or urged that they continue.   Far from sending in 20,000 federal troops, as occurred after January 6, the Left demanded that then President Trump not resort to such Draconian measures.   Note that there were lots of government properties deliberately targeted in iconic fashion. A Seattle police precinct (with officers inside ) was set afire. A mob in Washington, D.C. tried to storm the White House grounds in a fashion that sent the president and secret service agents into a subterranean bunker. A historic Washington, D.C. church was torched. Violent mobs set federal and state courthouses on fire in Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and Portland.  Second, note these riots and violence were not random. They were coordinated and seemed to wax and wane with some sort of precise coordination—a fact deemed useful in an election year by the Democratic Left.   In her now notorious self-confessional Time essay, Molly Ball bragged that, “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs.”  “The conversation that followed was a difficult one,” Ball explained, “led by the activists charged with the protest strategy . . . We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street.”  Third, had Trump won the 2020 election, the Left was gearing up for yet another round of violence under the pretense that the election had been stolen, in the fashion of its coordinated Washington, D.C. violence on the day of Trump’s 2017 inauguration.  Left-wing election denialism—and real efforts to overturn a presidential election—were certainly not new. After the 2016 election, wealthy leftists and celebrities ran television ads begging electors to reject their constitutional fidelity and the popular vote counts in their states, and instead, in insurrectionary style, cast electoral ballots for Hillary Clinton.  Prominent leftists from Jimmy Carter to Hillary Clinton also had been on record following the 2016 election claiming that Trump was an illegitimate president and the 2016 election had been rigged in Trump’s favor due to the hoax of Russian collusion.   Hillary Clinton—who paid Christopher Steele to use Clinton-related fake sources to compile fabrications and destroy her 2016 rival—later even bragged she was joining “La Résistance.” The chairman of the January 6 committee that damned Trump’s supposed election denialism, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), himself was an election denialist par excellence, who absurdly voted in the Congress to reject George Bush’s popular vote victory in Ohio that decided the 2004 election.  By any fair measure the violence of 2020 was a far greater and more deadly threat to the republic than anything occurring on January 6, 2021. But most of the 14,000 arrested perpetrators who were responsible for that incredible summer of violence were exempted because their mayhem was deemed politically useful—in the same fashion it was advantageous to turn the buffoonish Capitol protesters into seasoned revolutionaries. The common denominator was only the Left’s efforts to warp events to achieve power.  Liberalism That Loses Utility is Left Behind  California has been building massive solar farms in pristine deserts and rural areas. Many spread over thousands of acres and require disruptive supporting infrastructure. In the American Midwest, these new generations of solar farms are unlike anything in our recent past. Often in size larger than Manhattan, they take out of production tens of thousands of acres of prime farmland. What is curious about all these next-generation projects is the relative silence of environmentalists to the radical disruptions and dangers they pose to fragile and pristine natural landscapes, rare species of flora and fauna, and quality of life for surrounding rural communities.   In the case of hundreds of thousands of lost farm acres, prior liberal advocacy for preserving America’s heartland, and its precious family farm acreage and those who work it, likewise go out the window.  Yet if any clean-burning natural gas plant, affordable housing development, a border wall, retirement community, or farming operation caused as much havoc to the environment as solar—and often wind—farms, there would arise leftist outrage replete with environmentalist-driven court injunctions. In other words, left-wing environmentalism is calibrated only by whether the Left or the Right is reengineering the landscape.   Irina and Tamara Press, c1960s. Schirner/ullstein bild via Getty Images Title IX was an addendum to the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex. Through liberal lawsuits and the intervention of activist courts, the statute soon was transmogrified into a sports equity act. Title IX then began to revolutionize high school and college sports programs by demanding equity—in the sense of mandating equal budgets and facilities for women’s and men’s sports.   The rationale was that women’s athletics could only achieve parity with male sports if they were gifted the same sorts of budgets, infrastructure, and institutional support. Whatever the intent of the original statute, whatever the effects of activist court intervention, the result was that women’s sports did achieve a much higher social and cultural profile.   So how ironic, then, that a half-century of athletic transformation has been completely undermined by the current ritual takeover of the sport by biological men declaring themselves transgendered women. The transgendered have done more damage in three years to women’s sports than a century of chauvinist pigs.  In almost every category of competition—track and field, swimming, team sports—prior women’s records have been shattered by athletes who enjoy huge advantages in natural musculoskeletal mass, body size and weight, and innate strength. In the Cold War past, males competing as females were largely a Soviet or Eastern European phenomenon—most notably the Ukrainian sisters, Tamara and Irina Press. The communist bloc, as the Third Reich had earlier in the case of Heinrich Ratjen, scored propaganda points by using males to win “women’s” events.  Soon in reaction, hormonal testing and eventually DNA tests were used to ensure an equal playing field for biological women. No matter. What was once a feminist issue is now considered a right-wing hate crime of insisting that biological males not be allowed simply to redefine an entire segment of American life and culture.   Note that the Left has sided against feminism in its near hysterical promotion of its newest cause célèbre, transgenderism. Note further that biological women do not win many, if any, events as transgendered males, despite the shibboleth that one can construct one’s own sexual identity that will be equivalent to a biological one.  Finally, note that there is no transgendered effort to create a separate category of transgendered sports. Apparently a transgendered Olympics or NCAA event would not offer transgendered contestants and champions the attention and lucre they now achieve by dominating women’s sports. Again, “equity” and feminism were never left-wing positions, but simply useful malleable issues to embrace or reject depending on where and how contemporary political advantage was calibrated.  From Reining in Government Abuse to Cheering It  Read the contemporary news accounts of the 1975-76 so-called “Church Committee,” a select Senate committee formed to expose and rectify dangerous abuses of civil rights and constitutional norms by the CIA, NSA, and at times the FBI.   Most Democrats cheered the post-Watergate committee on, eager to virtue signal as civil libertarians and to stop the rogue and often politically weaponized antics of our investigatory and intelligence agencies.   But while there were true civil libertarians, Left and Right, who weighed in on the committee, the general left-wing giddiness over the investigations was predicated on the post-Watergate Democratic revival—one that ensued from ridding the nation of Richard Nixon and using his disgrace to discredit what were considered conservative institutions.   Fast forward to 2015-23. Over the last eight years it is hard to imagine any illegal act that the CIA, NSA, or FBI would not commit. Their directors—James Clapper, John Brennan, and Andrew McCabe—have all confessed to lying under oath. A more insidious Robert Mueller, James Comey, and Christopher Wray simply invoke amnesiac excuses or plead ignorance when asked directly about the wrongdoing of their agencies or investigations.   The U.S. government, along with the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, paid a foreign national to spy on a rival campaign, compile lies about a rival candidate, and then spread them through government and the media. The FBI arguably sought to alter both the 2016 and 2020 elections.  In this same eight-year period, a FISA court was deluded, and an FBI lawyer altered court documents. Phone records were wiped clean. Subpoenaed devices were destroyed. Key evidence that affected a current campaign was put under FBI wraps. Agents openly texted their intent to ensure a predetermined presidential election result. Americans in general were routinely spied upon. Many were framed by FBI skullduggery and had their lives ruined.   The extent of the lawbreaking and the warping of elections dwarfs anything discovered during Watergate. And yet the Left never objected to these violations of civil rights or the illegal freelancing of intelligence agencies. Far from it—the Left cheered on the illegality.   Why? Because for them hating or worshiping the CIA, NSA, and FBI—or for that matter the Pentagon, IRS, and Justice Department—was never a matter of consistent principle. Instead these bureaucracies were deemed pathological when associated with conservatism and traditionalism, and angelic when their extralegal efforts were put to use for the progressive agenda.  There are some grassroots leftists who are deluded into sincerely believing “equity” can be achieved by government confiscation and redistribution. But for most of the elite, the cause is a means to personal and professional power, a fact that explains why one day walking only on four leftist legs is alone correct, the next day just two. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 19:30.....»»

Philadelphia Crime Wave Of Burglary, Larceny And Auto Theft Spills Into Nearby Suburbs The crime wave that has been actively taking place in Philadelphia (among many other U.S. cities) is now starting to spread to the suburbs.  Crime statistics were up "double-digit percentages" in Delaware, Montgomery, and Bucks counties - three major suburban counties that border Philadelphia county - from 2021 to 2022, according to the Delaware Valley Journal.  The Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting System shows that increasing crimes include burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. Oddly, the report notes that Chester County, usually seen as a hotbed of crime near Philadelphia, saw its numbers decrease in almost ever statistical category.  In other words, the crime wave that started near the middle of 2020 appears to be moving out of the city and into the nearby suburbs. Larceny and auto thefts are seeing two of the biggest increases, the report wrote: Taking the four counties combined, auto thefts climbed from 2,302 in 2021 to 2,834 in 2022, an increase of 23 percent. Those figures compare to a dramatic spike in auto thefts in Philadelphia. In 2022, the city reached a two-decade-long high of 14,533 car thefts, up from 11,341 in 2021. This year, however, the city is set to blow past both of those figures, as the current trend shows Philadelphia will likely surpass 20,000 car thefts in 2023. In the four counties, larceny counts went from 23,690 in 2021 to 30,496 in 2022. Burglaries are up 32%, 24% and 17% in Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery counties, the report notes.  Montgomery County DA Kevin Steele's website has focused instead on gun crimes, which don't show in the above categories. His office's website says he is “strategically focused on: A) homicides; B) illegal guns on our streets: ghost guns and gun traffickers putting deadly weapons in the hands of criminals; C) drug traffickers who are killing people by peddling their deadly poisons like fentanyl and other drugs; and D) those who cause harm to women and children.” In Bucks County, DA Weintraub commented: “One trend we’re seeing across the state is younger and younger people, especially minors, are the population rising the quickest [for] carrying firearms.” And Delco DA Jack Stollsteimer wrote an op-ed in January which stated: “We have reduced the gun violence homicide rate in the City of Chester by 60 percent and the overall number of gun violence incidents by 46 percent,” Stollsteimer wrote. The only other measurement he provided in the piece was to say, “Through collaboration and innovation, my team has spearheaded a 30 percent reduction in the prison population here in Delaware County.” The city is already starting to implement changes, electing former state representative and city councilor Cherelle Parker as the Democratic nominee for mayor, which nearly assures her win in November. Parker was seen as the most pro-law enforcement candidate of the left, running on bolstering the police's ranks and supporting policies like stop and frisk. Now the only question is whether the suburbs will have to be next in addressing the issue... Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 20:05.....»»

There Are 99 Pages Of Details In The Debt-Ceiling Deal, And A Big Trap On Republicans.....»»

More Than 50,000 US Stores Will Close By 2027 According To UBS Over 2,000 stores across all retail sectors have closed in the past 12 months according to a recent report from UBS retail analyst Michael Lasser (available to pro subs in the usual place), and that is just the beginning. "As of 3Q’22 (latest available data), retailers shed -1,500 net stores. This number is already up significantly in ‘23 with the likes of Bed Bath & Beyond, Foot Locker, Tuesday Morning and others closing stores recently" the UBS economists wrote. “We believe this trend should continue in the years to come, with consumers consolidating their trips and shifting towards online channels. As underperforming retail stores are shuttered, it should help the store productivity of surviving locations,” the report authors said, and predicted that over the next 5 years, "another 50,000 stores will close on the current store base of ~940K stores in the US (ex. gas and food service)." "This simply implies that there will be -5% fewer stores by the end of ’27. As this happens, we believe this trend will benefit the large, well-capitalized retailers HD, LOW, WMT, TGT, COST) and those with unique differentiations (FND, ASO, EYE) who stand to capture a disproportionate amount of market share." In other words, just like with US banks, the big players will only get bigger while the small ones disappear. To put this in perspective, UBS calculates that assuming 50k stores close over the next five years and that the average sales per store is $5.7mm, it would translate to $285b of retail sales that are “up for grabs”. Assuming that 26% of these sales go online (the bank's ’27 estimate for penetration), it would mean that retailers like WMT, HD and COST have the potential to attract $210b in sales. This translates to $1,600 annual spend per household that has the potential to shift to the leading retailers. The good news for big retailers is bad news for the small ones: In our view, these smaller chains and mom & pops are most at risk of closures given these firms typically have less access to capital needed to invest in developing a robust omni-channel offering. As of 2020, 57% of retail stores are operated by firms with less than 20 employees and 68% of stores are operated by chains with less than 500 employees. These smaller chains shed -40K stores in the past 10 years while chains with 500+ employees added 17K stores. It could get even worse: the base case scenario assumes that retail sales growth continues at 4% annually which is inline with the long-term trend. However, in a downside case, the protracted US recession would put downward pressure on the UBS store closure forecast where if retail sales only grow 3.0-3.5% it would result in 70K-90K closures UBS highlighted several factors that are driving retail store closures. They include higher costs, which raise the bar for keeping stores open; a decline in units per store in most retail sectors; and the likelihood that store closures will disproportionately affect smaller chains. From 2007 to 2019, firms with less than 500 employees closed about 40,000 stores, or 5% of their base, while retailers with more than 500 employees added 17,000 stores. The overall cost of doing business rose significantly in the last 12 months, due in part to higher wages. Retail hourly wages, which are typically the largest cost component of running a store, increased about 5% over the last years, the analysts said. On top of that, retailers will need to increase store productivity by 4.5% annually as retail rents per square foot increase for neighborhood and community centers. “These costs will likely continue to move higher, increasing the hurdle rate to keep stores open,” UBS said. As RetailDive notes, about 14,000 of the estimated closings will be in the softlines sector. UBS forecasts that department stores and specialty retailers will remain net store closers. And while retailers with a heavy mall presence will continue store closings, there is a faint silver lining for off-price retailers who should grow units. The report also singles out consumer electronics and home furnishings as retail sectors that also need to shrink their store footprint. Consumer electronics retailers should close about 9,000 stores, while home furniture stores should shrink by about 4,000 locations. One change that’s become essential versus discretionary for retailers is an increasing embrace of digital investments like buy online, pay in store; ship from store; same-day delivery; and buy online, return in store. UBS says online retail spending per household was $9,900 in 2022, up from $8,900 a year ago and up from $4,000 in 2015. Companies with a strong DTC focus combined with high brand loyalty, like Nike and Levi’s, are best positioned for the ongoing shift to digital fulfillment. Finally, while there is much more in the full report, here are the 9 main takeaways: Takeaway #1: We estimate 50K+ stores will close by ‘27 if online penetration goes to 26% & retail sales grow 4% Takeaway #2: Store closures will vary by subsector Takeaway #3: In 2022, there were net store closings, a reversal from strong store openings in 2021 Takeaway #4: We assume 4% retail sales growth until 2027, in-line with its long-term average Takeaway #5: A step change in banks willingness to lend tends to be a leading indicator of an acceleration in store closures Takeaway #6: Higher costs raises the hurdle rate on keeping stores open Takeaway #7: Store closures will likely impact smaller chains disproportionately Takeaway #8: Several sectors are at or near peak store productivity Takeaway #9: Units per store declined for most sub-sectors in 2022 (trends vary by sub-sector) Much more in the full report and slideshows available to pro subs in the usual place. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 21:15.....»»

"Trans Rights" Means Trans Entitlements And The End Of Civil Society Authored by Wendy McElroy via The Mises Institute, A “civil society” is a community of individuals who are linked together by common interests and activities. Common interests include being able to walk the streets safely (peace) and to exercise such rights as freedom of speech (individual freedom). These shared interests allow common activities to flourish, including commerce and the education of children. Civil society is possible only because most people want to live securely, protect their loved ones, and prosper. This laissez-faire attitude used to be a defining characteristic of Americans, but an engineered and well-financed cultural war is destroying America’s renowned tolerance. If the common interests of society break down and peace and freedom are replaced by violence and privilege, then common activities like free-market commerce and education cannot function. One movement captures the raw destruction of this culture war against civil society - a demand for “Trans rights!” blasts across America. But a sharp backlash against it has also developed, epitomized by the boycott of Bud Light beer over the company’s use of trans activist Dylan Mulvaney as a new “woman” ambassador for its brand. The media characterizes this backlash as antitrans hatred by conservatives, Christians, and other troglodytes. But few people care about the sexual or gender orientation of their neighbors. Critics of the trans movement are rebelling against the forced redefinition of biology, the destruction of women’s sports by trans athletes, the hijacking of children’s education, the medical experiment of gender-transitioning children, and the intrusion of penises in women-only spaces like bathrooms, locker rooms, prisons, and shelters. Critics don’t want to oppress anyone; they want a return to civil society of peace and individual rights. To understand why the “trans rights” movement has caused such damage, it is necessary to ask three questions. What is a “transgendered” person? What are “rights”? What is produced by the actions the movement takes? What is a transgendered person? Already we’re in trouble. Many prominent intellectuals today can’t even answer the simpler question, What is a woman? This article uses a common definition: “Transgender describes people whose gender identity does not match their assigned gender at birth.” It is one of many gender categories being advanced by social justice. There are as many as eighty-one distinct categories, all of which are said to be fluid or constructed over time. Politically speaking, transgenderism and the other gender categories are a continuation of identity politics. This is a fairly standard definition of identity politics: “The politics of group-based movements claiming to represent the interests and identity of a particular group, rather than policy issues relating to all members of the community. The group identity may be based on ethnicity, class, religion, sex, sexuality, or other criteria” (emphasis added). It is an attempt to splinter society into groups and categories, all of which are at war with each other because their interests are said to conflict. What does this war look like? Consider a controversial example: gender transitioning. This is when a person uses reassignment therapy, hormone replacement, and sex reassignment surgery to change their birth sex. Few argue against the gender transition of adults who pay for the process themselves. But the trans movement demands the gender transitioning of children, often at taxpayer expense; that is, a tomboy might become a “boy” through methods that include irreversible surgery. There are at least two flash points here. One is the minimum age at which a person should transition. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health claims hormones can start at age fourteen and some surgeries at fifteen—in other words, at the height of a teenager’s sexual confusion. Recently, a licensed social worker at a children’s medical center in Austin, Texas, was reportedly recorded as saying the center provided gender modification to children as young as eight. On April 25, Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Chip Roy submitted a formal request to the center for information on how gender dysphoria is diagnosed, how federal dollars are spent in the process, and whether patients under eighteen underwent “experimental medical procedures.” The group war here is between a child’s right against physical abuse and trans activists’ demands for children’s access to transition. The other flash point is that transitions are often performed without parental consent or despite parental objections. The rights war here—trans activists are usurping traditional parental rights, and parents are outraged. The idea that the rights of one group conflict with those of another is perverse because it destroys the very basis of human rights. Human rights are universal because they are rooted in human nature. All human beings possess the same rights to the same degree. Rights are not based on secondary characteristics such as gender; they rest on a shared humanity. In other words, a trans person has the same rights to the same degree as every other person in society. No more, no less. The “rights” demanded by trans activists are actually entitlements or group privileges. This is made clear by the claim of historical oppression, which is used to justify many demands. What is really being claimed is victimhood, upon which their entitlements are based. For trans activists to sustain their victimhood status, however, those who oppose them must be cast as oppressors and endless haters. Conveniently, this characterization removes the need to deal with any argument the “haters” present, such as the need for real human rights. Again, this trans stance is a perversion. If the trans movement has been historically oppressed—and I do not argue against this—then the movement should value individual rights more than the average person. These freedoms are how an aggrieved individual rises to his or her feet. But trans activists do not want to be treated as equal individuals; they want to be a privileged group that imposes huge costs on the majority of society to their great benefit. Individual rights are an obstacle. Gender transition is one area in which civil society is being replaced with civil warfare, but there are many others: Trans “women” housed in women-only venues, like prisons and shelters, put biological women there at risk of sexual assault. Rapes are already happening. Trans curricula in American public schools indoctrinate children at the expense of teaching basic life skills, like math and literacy. A prominent doctor on Fox News warned, “First-year medical students [are] exposed to woke ‘sex and gender primer’ lesson.” This shifts the focus away from medical problems; it could also damage relationships with patients who do not share woke ideology or are not in a privileged group. The same is happening in law schools. The trans agenda violates constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech in myriad ways, from forcing schools to use pronouns like “xe” and “hir” to shouting down speakers or violently attacking them. Draconian hate speech laws are destroying meaningful public discourse. A new bill passing through the Irish parliament, for example, outlaws communication or the possession of material that might incite hatred against “protected” classes, including gender. This is punishable by up to five years in prison. The demand to include trans athletes in women’s sports is destroying the entire field. Transitioned children who deeply regret transitioning are generally silenced or dismissed. One way detransitioners are dismissed is through studies and statistics into which little trust can be invested. An article in the Associated Press claims, “In a review of 27 studies” of transgender surgeries, “1 percent on average expressed regret.” If this is true, it is good news. But is it true? The incessant ideology pumped through academia and the airwaves is yet another cost to civil society. Academics, journalists, and so-called experts have earned the public’s scorn. Studies and research have become just one more front in this war of all against all. The media and authorities richly deserve this summary judgment from the public. Consider how they handle acts of violence. Every act of violence against a trans person seems to be widely reported and condemned, as it should be. But trans violence against biological women or other outsiders seems to be ignored or excused. Even the trans shooter in Nashville who killed three nine-year-old school children and three adults is protected by authorities who refuse to release the shooter’s manifesto. And media reports often expressed more concern about a backlash against trans people than about the dead children. SAVE Services, an agency that works to assure due process and fairness in schools, has an interesting page called “Stop the Wave of Transgender Violence” where many cases of trans violence are documented. In this environment, it is simply not possible to know what’s true about the levels of violence and against whom. I would end by asking, can a more general violence—a savage civil unrest—be far behind? I believe it is already here. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 21:50.....»»

Total Farce: Real Spending Under Debt Ceiling Deal Actually Goes Up Next Year.....»»

Remember The Fallen... And Those They Left Behind Authored by Brooke Rollins via RealClearPolitics.com, The Christmas season of 1942 was clouded by war in the small town of Waterloo, Iowa, but for Mrs. Alleta Sullivan, it was especially dreadful. A rumor was going about town, and it was about her sons. Or rather, it was about all five sons, each of whom had volunteered for the Navy — and elected to serve together aboard the same ship. The brothers meant to fight as they lived, as a team, as a family, each helping the other out — on the vast and distant Pacific as much as in idyllic Iowa.  The rumor that reached their mother was that their ship, the light cruiser Juneau, had sunk off Guadalcanal. But Mrs. Alleta Sullivan had received no news.  So, she did something very American. She wrote to the Navy. “Dear Sirs,” she began, “I am writing you in regards to a rumor going around that my five sons were killed in action in November. A mother from here came and told me she got a letter from her son and he heard my five sons were killed.” The next line, even softened by 80 years, still breaks the heart in its simplicity and directness: “It is all over town now, and I am so worried.” Mrs. Sullivan would have been entirely justified in demanding news of her boys. She would have been justified in demanding that the Navy account for them, that she did not have to endure the quiet hell of rumors of her sons. Instead, she does something remarkable, and reading it now is a window into a different — and better — America. She writes that even if her five sons are gone, she will still do her own duty.  “[P]lease let me know the truth. I am to christen the U.S.S. TAWASA, Feb. 12th, at Portland, Oregon. If anything has happened to my five sons, I will still christen the ship as it was their wish that I do so.” Stop there for a moment and re-read that. Even in the shadow of the most terrible prospect a mother can face, Mrs. Alleta Sullivan tells the Navy it can count on her to keep her commitments. She would never have said it, but here you can see from whom her five sons inherited their own sense of sacrificial devotion.  “I hated to bother you,” she continued as if she had anything at all to apologize for, “but it has worried me so that I wanted to know if it was true. So please tell me. It was hard to give five sons all at once to the Navy, but I am proud of my boys that they can serve and help protect their country.” Mrs. Sullivan did not have to wait long for her answer. Her letter went to the Navy and crossed paths with the inbound casualty notification. Her letter went out in early January 1943. On the early morning of January 11, three Navy officers arrived at the little house on 98 Adams St. in Waterloo. Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan knew why they had come. The officer in charge knew he could not soften the blow. “I’m sorry,” he said, “All five.” The story of the Fighting Sullivans is a famous one, notable for its contrast of great virtue — five brothers, on fire with duty imparted by their parents — and great tragedy, in their death together on a black day off the Solomon Islands. We have an obligation to remember. We should also remember that it is not the only tale of its kind. We today are as far from World War II as it was from the Civil War. In that war, there was the heartbreaking episode of Mrs. Bixby and her five sons, all fallen in battle, of whom President Lincoln wrote that they were “so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.” In his 2013 “The Guns at Last Light,” Rick Atkinson tells a lesser-known tale of an elderly widower in Missouri, one Henry A. Wright, who waits at his small-town train station for the casket bearing his son, killed on Christmas Eve 1944 in the Ardennes. He also received the remains of another son, who died in a German prison camp. He also received the remains of still another son, who died in combat in Germany, 10 days before war’s end. Atkinson writes that the three brothers were buried “side by side by side beneath an iron sky.” These stories of the grievous loss of the young, strong, brave, and parents burying their children, hit us hard. They should. If they do not, then we are undeserving of the fallen. The five Sullivans, the five Bixbys, and the three Wrights seize our attention and hearts because of the numbers. But make no mistake: the mother, the father, the brother, and the sister who lose a single son at war, do not grieve less because it is just one.  For them, there is the consolation in the grace that is only God’s to give. On this Memorial Day, we remember all the fallen — and we remember those whom they left behind. We have a sacred obligation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” — and that obligation increases a hundredfold because the battle was borne, and the wife was widowed, and the child was orphaned, for us. “Freedom is not free” is an overused phrase, almost cliche, which does not mean it should not be said. But this Memorial Day, when you say it, think of what it means on the most human level. You live in the greatest nation, among the greatest people, in the history of the world. You have that privilege because, across three centuries, unnumbered Americans laid down everything for it.   A young man died in battle on a sunny morning on the road to Concord. A loving father fell in the wheatfield at Gettysburg.  A draftee determined to make his father proud died on the Imjin. A bright and eager student breathed his last at Khe Sanh. A young woman took her final flight over Fallujah.  Remember them. Let the memory steel you - to deserve them. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 23:00.....»»

China To Put Humans On The Moon By 2030 Weeks after Russia's former head of the Roscomsmos space agency cast doubt on the US moon landing in 1969, China announced plans to put a person on the moon by 2030. Moon Base Alpha by digital painter Jon Hrubesch In a Monday announcement, Lin Xiqiang, the deputy director of China’s Manned Space Agency, said that the CCP's moon landing project - part of the country's broader Lunar Exploration Project (Chang'e Project, named after the Chinese moon goddess) - had only "recently" been kick started. The project seeks to eventually enable short-term stays on the lunar surface, as along with the collection of samples and other research, The NY Times reports. Chinese scientists have previously nodded at a 2030 goal in a less formal capacity; for example, the chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program said last month that a 2030 landing would be “no problem.” The Monday announcement came at a news conference to mark the liftoff of three new astronauts on Tuesday to China’s new space station, which was completed late last year. A manned lunar landing would be a major milestone for China’s, and the world’s, space exploration: No human has been on the moon since the United States’ Apollo missions in the 1960s and ’70s. And it could mark a significant achievement for China in its burgeoning competition with the United States in space. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has said that the country should become a “great space power.” The announcement follows one by NASA, which announced a plan to put a team on the moon by 2025 as part of the (repeatedly delayed) Artemis program. A painting of a prospective future lunar colony by artist Rick Guidice for NASA Both Beijing and Washington want to build research stations on the moon, and to land people on Mars. The Times frames the announcement as a point of contention between the US and China, echoing the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. NASA’s administrator, Bill Nelson, has said that the United States should “watch out” for Chinese attempts to dominate the lunar surface and keep Americans out. A Pentagon report last year warned that China could overtake American capabilities in space by 2045. -NY Times China has accelerated its space program in recent years, and is currently the only country (known) to have landed anything on the moon in the 21st century. The CCP also landed a lunar probe on the moon's far side for the first time in history in 2019. If the moon is next for humans, it might be a good time to bone up on your Heinlein. Careful, China. You never know what's up there! Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 23:30.....»»

Taiwan Says It's In Talks On Being Brought Under US Nuclear Umbrella Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, Taiwan’s foreign minister said last week that the US and Taiwan are in talks on the possibility of the island being brought under Washington’s nuclear umbrella, a step that would make a catastrophic war between the US and China much more likely. Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu made the comments before Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan. Wu declined to detail the talks when pressed if Taiwan had asked the US to bring the island into its nuclear umbrella. US military file image "Regarding the discussion of this issue with the United States, it is not suitable for me to make it public here," Wu said, according to The South China Morning Post. Many of the US’s allies are considered to be under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella, including Japan, South Korea, and every member of NATO. Giving such a guarantee to Taiwan would mean the US could use nuclear weapons if China invades the island or if war breaks out by other means. According to the SCMP report: As Washington and Beijing ramp up their military signaling on Taiwan, the self-ruled island has started to discuss what was once unthinkable – to come under the US nuclear umbrella that has successfully protected Japan, South Korea and Australia for decades. The debate was set off after Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu suggested on Monday that the island had been in talks with the United States on the nuclear umbrella issue. Such a guarantee is unlikely to happen in the near term as it would require a radical change to US policy. While President Biden has vowed to send troops to intervene if China attacks Taiwan, the official policy on how the US would react to a Chinese invasion is still ambiguous. But the fact that the idea is being discussed will be viewed as a major provocation in Beijing. China has a no-first-use policy for its nuclear arsenal, but US policy leaves open the option to use nukes in response to a conventional attack. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 14:50.....»»

World's First "Battery Tanker" Slated For 2026 Sea Trials Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a bold prediction in 2017: "Everything will go fully electric, apart from (ironically) rockets. Ships are the next easiest to solve after cars." Six years later, the world's second-richest person might be right about the next battery boom in ships.  Japanese battery startup PowerX Inc. revealed a 140-meter-long electric propulsion vessel capable of transporting stored electricity across oceans. The "battery tanker" will be equipped with 96 containerized marine batteries that can haul renewable energy worldwide, connecting grids, islands, and offshore wind farms. The completion of the vessel is slated for 2025, with sea trials in 2026.  "For instance, in Japan, a battery tanker can carry power from regions with high renewable energy supply potential, such as Kyushu and Hokkaido, to high-demand areas of Honshu or for inter-island power transmission," the company explained. While electric propulsion vessels might be the future to decarbonize the shipping industry, there appears to be a need to haul stored renewable power to other grids worldwide via a new tanker class.    Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 15:25.....»»

The Great Silence Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com, The kids are two years behind in education. Inflation still rages. White-collar jobs are disappearing thanks to the reversal of Fed policy. Household finances are a wreck. The medical industry is in upheaval. Trust in government has never been lower. Major media too is discredited. Young people are dying at levels never seen. Populations are still on the move from lockdown states to where it is less likely. Surveillance is everywhere, and so is political persecution. Public health is in a disastrous state, with substance abuse and obesity all at new records. Each one of these, and many more besides, are continued fallout from the pandemic response that began in March 2020. And yet here we are 38 months later and we still don’t have honesty or truth about the experience. Officials have resigned, politicians have tumbled out of office and lifetime civil servants have departed their posts, but they don’t cite the great disaster as the excuse. There is always some other reason. This is the period of the great silence. We’ve all noticed it. The stories in the press recounting all the above are conventionally scrupulous about naming the pandemic response much less naming the individuals responsible. Maybe there is a Freudian explanation: things so obviously terrible and in such recent memory are too painful to mentally process, so we just pretend it didn’t happen. Plenty in power like this solution. Everyone in a position of influence knows the rules. Don’t talk about the lockdowns. Don’t talk about the mask mandates. Don’t talk about the vaccine mandates that proved useless and damaging and led to millions of professional upheavals. Don’t talk about the economics of it. Don’t talk about collateral damage. When the topic comes up, just say, “We did the best we could with the knowledge we had,” even if that is an obvious lie. Above all, don’t seek justice. Where’s the National Commission? There is this document intended to be the “Warren Commission” of COVID slapped together by the old gangsters who advocated for lockdowns. It is called Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report. The authors are people like Michael Callahan (Massachusetts General Hospital), Gary Edson (former deputy national security adviser), Richard Hatchett (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), Marc Lipsitch (Harvard University), Carter Mecher (Veterans Affairs), and Rajeev Venkayya (former Gates Foundation and now Aerium Therapeutics). If you have been following this disaster, you might know at least some of the names. Years before 2020, they were pushing lockdowns as the solution for infectious disease. Some claim credit for having invented pandemic planning. The years 2020–2022 were their experiment. As it was ongoing, they became media stars, pushing compliance, condemning as disinformation and misinformation anyone who disagreed with them. They were at the heart of the coup d’etat, as engineers or champions of it, that replaced representative democracy with quasi-martial law run by the administrative state. The first sentence of the report is a complaint: We were supposed to lay the groundwork for a National COVID Commission. The COVID Crisis Group formed at the beginning of 2021, one year into the pandemic. We thought the U.S. government would soon create or facilitate a commission to study the biggest global crisis so far in the 21st century. It has not. That is true. There is no National COVID Commission. You know why? Because they could never get away with it, not with legions of experts and passionate citizens who wouldn’t tolerate a coverup. The public anger is too intense. Lawmakers would be flooded with emails, phone calls and daily expressions of disgust. It would be a disaster. An honest commission would demand answers that the ruling class is not prepared to give. An “official commission” perpetuating a bunch of baloney would be dead on arrival. This by itself is a huge victory and a tribute to indefatigable critics. ‘We Didn’t Crack Down Hard Enough’ Instead, the “COVID Crisis Group” met with funding from the Rockefeller and Charles Koch foundations and slapped together this report. Despite being celebrated as definitive by The New York Times and The Washington Post, it has mostly had no impact at all. It is far from obtaining the status of being some kind of canonical assessment. It reads like they were on deadline, fed up, typed lots of words and called it a day. Of course it is whitewash. It begins with a bang to denounce the U.S. policy response: “Our institutions did not meet the moment. They did not have adequate practical strategies or capabilities to prevent, to warn, to defend their communities or fight back in a coordinated way, in the United States and globally.” Mistakes were made, as they say. Of course the upshot of this kvetching is not to criticize what Justice Neil Gorsuch calls “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” They hardly mention those at all. Instead they conclude that the U.S. should have surveilled more, locked down sooner (“We believe that on Jan. 28 the U.S. government should have started mobilizing for a possible COVID war”), directed more funds to this agency rather than that and centralized the response so that rogue states like South Dakota and Florida could not evade centralized authoritarian diktats next time. The authors propose a series of lessons that are anodyne, bloodless and carefully crafted to be more-or-less true but ultimately structured to minimize the sheer radicalism and destructiveness of what they favored and did. The lessons are clichés such as we need “not just goals but road maps,” and next time we need more “situation awareness.” There is no new information in the book that I could find, unless something is hidden therein that escaped my notice. It’s more interesting for what it does not say. Some words that never appear in the text: Sweden, ivermectin, ventilators, remdesivir and myocarditis. ‘Look, Lockdowns and Mandates Worked!’ Perhaps this gives you a sense of the book and its mission. And on matters of the lockdowns, readers are forced to endure claims such as “all of New England — Massachusetts, the city of Boston, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine — seem to us to have done relatively well, including their ad hoc crisis management setups.” Oh really! Boston destroyed thousands of small businesses and imposed vaccine passports, closed churches, persecuted people for holding house parties, and imposed travel restrictions. There is a reason why the authors don’t elaborate on such preposterous claims. They are simply unsustainable. One amusing feature seems to me to be a foreshadowing of what is coming. They throw Anthony Fauci under the bus with sniffy dismissals: “Fauci was vulnerable to some attacks because he tried to cover the waterfront in briefing the press and public, stretching beyond his core expertise—and sometimes it showed.” Ooooh, burn! “Trump Was a Comorbidity” This is very likely the future. At some point, Fauci will be scapegoated for the whole disaster. He will be assigned to take the fall for what is really the failure of the national security arm of the administrative bureaucracy, which in fact took charge of all rule-making from March 13, 2020, onward, along with their intellectual cheerleaders. The public health people were just there to provide cover. Curious about the political bias of the book? It is summed up in this passing statement: “Trump was a comorbidity.” Oh how highbrow! How clever! No political bias here! Maybe this book by the Covid Crisis Group hopes to be the last word. This will never happen. We are only at the beginning of this. As the economic, social, cultural, and political problems mount, it will become impossible to ignore the incredibly obvious. The masters of lockdowns are influential and well-connected but not even they can invent their own reality. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 16:00.....»»

Liberal US Cities Top Global List For Highest Homelessness Problem Insider Monkey, a finance website, revealed a list of the top 30 cities worldwide with the highest homeless population. Notably, a handful of the US cities on the list are governed by progressive leadership, which may not surprise readers. While it is evident that some unfortunate individuals are facing homelessness, a trend exacerbated by recent inflationary pressures and a drug addiction crisis, some liberal policies have enabled others to sustain their nomadic lifestyles with taxpayer funds.  Insider Monkey found New York City is number 5 on the list, with a homeless population of about 69,000. Next is Chicago, at number 7 with 65,611. Washington, DC, is number 8 with 57,416, Los Angeles number 13 with 41,980, and San Fransisco number 14 with 38,000.  Even with the US government spending $54 billion on several programs to tackle the homelessness crisis, hundreds of thousands of Americans are still wandering the streets. This has been made worse by inflation in recent years and an out-of-control drug addiction crisis.  As for the rest of the world, Manila, Philippines, ranks number 1 with a staggering 3 million homeless. Buenos Aires, Argentina, is number 2 with 198,000. Moscow, Russia, is number 3 with 100,000, and Kanpur, India, is number 4 with 81,000. Here's the partial list of 6 through 30: 6. Kolkata, India Estimated Number of Homeless People: 68,798 Kolkata is one of India's largest cities. It has played a crucial role in the country's history due to its port. 7. Chicago, United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 65,611 Chicago is one of the largest cities in the U.S. in terms of population and one of the largest business hubs in the country. 8. Washington, D.C., United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 57,416 Washington D.C. is one of the most expensive places to live in America - making it unsurprising that it also has a high number of homeless people. 9. Mumbai, India Estimated Number of Homeless People: 57,415 Mumbai is India's financial hub, but it is also famous for generations of homeless who are born and die on the streets. 10. Lagos, Nigeria Estimated Number of Homeless People: 50,000 Lagos is one of the largest cities in the world with more than 24 million people living in the city. 11. Damascus, Syria Estimated Number of Homeless People: 50,000 Damascus is the capital of Syria and one of the oldest cities in the world as it has been inhabited for thousands of years. 12. Delhi, India Estimated Number of Homeless People: 46,724 Delhi has more than ten million residents and is one of the most historic cities in the world. 13. Los Angeles, United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 41,980 Los Angeles is the second largest city in America in terms of population. It is a cultural center place for its state and the U.S. 14. San Francisco, United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 38,000 San Francisco is a cultural and economic hub and a city that is notorious for high housing costs. 15. Surat, India Estimated Number of Homeless People: 36,144 Surat is a Western Indian city in the state of Gujrat. It is the second largest city in its state and a hub for the global diamond industry. 16. Sao Paulo, Brazil Estimated Number of Homeless People: 31,884 Sao Paulo is the largest city in Brazil in terms of both its population and economic output. 17. Mexico City, Mexico Estimated Number of Homeless People: 30,000 Mexico City is the capital of Mexico. It is one of the largest cities in the world with a population of 9.2 million people. 18. Athens, Greece Estimated Number of Homeless People: 20,000 Athens is one of the most historical cities in the world and the capital of Greece. 19. Auckland, New Zealand Estimated Number of Homeless People: 18,417 Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand and has a population of 1.4 million people. It is an economic hub in its country and accounts for a large portion of New Zealand's economic output. 20. Tampa, United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 16,000 Tampa is a coastal Floridian city with one of the biggest ports in its state. 21. Seattle, United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 11,751 Seattle is a highly developed city in the U.S. state of Washington. 22. San Jose, United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 10,028 San Jose is an economic hub in the U.S. with a large presence of the technology industry. 23. Budapest, Hungary Estimated Number of Homeless People: 10,000 Budapest is the capital and largest city of Hungary with nearly a million residents. 24. Oakland, United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 9,747 Oakland is a Californian city. It is one of the busiest port cities in America. 25. Dublin, Ireland Estimated Number of Homeless People: 8,523 Dublin is the capital of Ireland and the largest city in terms of population. It is also a hub for global multinational firms. 26. San Diego, United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 8,427 San Diego is one of the most populous cities in America with a population of more than a million people 27. Rio De Janeiro, Brazil Estimated Number of Homeless People: 7,865 Rio De Janeiro is the second largest city in Brazil. It also has the second largest economy in the country. 28. Rome, Italy Estimated Number of Homeless People: 7,709 Rome is the capital city of Italy and one of the largest cities in the world with a population of more than 2.8 million people. 29. Denver, United States Estimated Number of Homeless People: 6,888 Denver is the capital city of the U.S. state of Colorado. It has a population of more than seven hundred thousand people and is an economic hub in its state. 30. Lisbon, Portugal Estimated Number of Homeless People: 3,780 Lisbon is the capital city of Portugal. It is also the largest city in the country, with more than half a million people living in its boundaries. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 16:35.....»»

DOJ, Prosecutors Trying To Claw Back Donations Made To J6 Defendants While BLM protesters got a Kamala Harris-endorsed bail fund during the violent and destructive mostly peaceful George Floyd riots, the Department of Justice is trying to claw back donations made to January 6th political prisoners. According to AP, the DOJ is trying to seize over $25,000 raised by Texas resident Daniel Goodwyn, who appeared on Tucker Carlson's former Fox News show where he promoted a website for political donations. The AP looked at over 1,000 criminal cases from Jan 6., and noted that prosecutors have been asking judges to enhance fines on top of prison sentences to offset donations from supporters. Dozens of defendants have set up online fundraising appeals for help with legal fees, and prosecutors acknowledge there's nothing wrong with asking for help for attorney expenses. But the Justice Department has, in some cases, questioned where the money is really going because many of those charged have had government-funded legal representation. Most of the fundraising efforts appear on GiveSendGo, which bills itself as “The #1 Free Christian Fundraising Site” and has become a haven for Jan. 6 defendants barred from using mainstream crowdfunding sites, including GoFundMe, to raise money. Were any of the BLM-linked fundraisers, or BLM itself, subject to DOJ scrutiny? As the AP notes, the success many J6 prisoners have had fundraising "suggests that many people in the United States still view Jan. 6 rioters as patriots and cling to the baseless belief that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump." Virginia resident Markus Maly, who is set to be sentenced next month for assaulting police at the Capitol, raised over $16,000 from an online campaign. Prosecutors have requested a $16,000 fine, noting that he had a public defender and didn't owe any legal fees. "He should not be able to use his own notoriety gained in the commission of his crimes to ‘capitalize’ on his participation in the Capitol breach in this way," wrote a prosecutor in a court filing. A jury convicted romance novel cover model John Strand of storming the Capitol with Dr. Simone Gold, a California physician who is a leading figure in the anti-vaccine movement. Now prosecutors are seeking a $50,000 fine on top of a prison term for Strand when a judge sentences him on Thursday. Strand has raised more than $17,300 for his legal defense without disclosing that he has a taxpayer-funded lawyer, according to prosecutors. They say Strand appears to have “substantial financial means,” living in a home that was purchased for more than $3 million last year. -AP So far in 2023, prosecutors have sought to levy $390,000 in fines against at least 21 defendants, with amounts ranging from $450 to over $71,000, per AP. Of that, Judges have imposed at least $124,127 in fines against 33 riot defendants YTD, while in the past two years, over 100 defendants have been ordered to pay more than $240,000 in fines. Separately, hundreds of convicted rioters have been ordered to pay over $524,000 in restitution to the government to offset over $2.8 million in damage to the Capitol and other J6 related expenses. We don't recall BLM protesters being ordered to help pay to clean up cities they set on fire. Wonder why?   Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 14:15.....»»

Carnival Sunshine Cruise Ship Battered By Massive Waves, Leaving Multiple Decks Flooded Passengers aboard the Carnival Sunshine had a nightmarish experience as the cruiseliner attempted to return to its home port in Charleston on Friday. The cruise ship was battered by rough seas and powerful winds, flooding the lower decks. The situation worsened late Friday night into early Saturday when passengers saw crew members putting on life jackets.  The aftermath aboard Carnival Sunshine after a severe storm. The crew from Deck 0-4 evacuated to the theater, and anywhere they could rest… the crew bar destroyed. pic.twitter.com/MqsDJYvrSG — Crew Center (@CrewCenter) May 28, 2023 pic.twitter.com/fLDXm4Nn2b — Gabby Whorley (@gabs_whorley) May 28, 2023 Bloomberg ship tracking data shows the vessel zig-zagged off the coast of Charleston while a low-pressure storm slammed the ship with monster waves and 80 mph winds.  Passenger Daniel Taylor shared his terrifying experience between Friday evening and mid-day Saturday with Daily Mail:  But at around 4.30pm on Friday, the trip took a turn for the worse as the ship approached choppy waters. Just 15 minutes later, Taylor said, the captain made an announcement that due to the adverse weather conditions, the Sunshine may arrive back in Charleston later than it was scheduled to. 'He said that the staff would do everything they could to minimize discomfort,' Taylor recounted, noting that shortly thereafter vomit bags were put out on all the elevators. By 7pm, he said, the ship started hitting large swells of water. 'I went to a show in the Liquid Lounge at the front of the ship at that time,' Taylor said. 'The sound of us crashing into the swells could be heard over the music playing. 'Stage lights mounted on the ceiling began to shake, the disco ball started swinging and the LED wall on the stage,' which he said was probably about 20 to 30 feet tall and wide, 'began rolling side by side on its own.' Around 8pm, the staff started closing off and evacuating all the public deck areas, and just about one hour later, Taylor said he went to the buffet, where he saw plates and cups topple. He then returned to his room on the second level of the ship, where he watched as a glass chalice fell off the counter and shattered.  Throughout this time, Taylor said, the ship was still traveling at 11 knots per hour, only reducing speed to 5 knots per hour at 11.15pm when winds started hitting the ship at 80mph. At that point, he said, the 'captain turned the ship from sailing northwest toward Charleston to head northeast heading directly into the eye of the storm.' Taylor also said he watched as the cabin across from his started to leak from the ceiling, and told how there were no announcements from the crew. At around 2am, he said, the staff changed the television screens to a standby announcement — thereby wiping off the screen showing the direction the ship was traveling and how fast. 'We were no longer able to see where we were going, how fast we were going, what the wind speed was or anything,' Taylor said. 'We were blind to what was going on — especially with no weather or course update since 4.45pm the previous day. 'This was also around the time our Internet went out, so we weren't able to look at the weather online or contact anyone,' he added.  'At this point, we were hitting large swells over and over. They had to be anywhere from 10 to 20 feet.' Meanwhile, he said, he saw crew members wearing life jackets. It wasn't until 7.30am, Taylor recounted, the cruise director came on the air and made an announcement that they were outside Charleston harbor but could not dock as scheduled. The ship finally arrived at the port at around 5.30pm Saturday night — more than nine hours after it was scheduled to dock. Another passenger posted on Facebook:  "I believe the Carnival SunShine Ship is in trouble. The ship is stop and We are sitting ducks with huge waves and 50 up to 70 knots of wind. Somewhere off the coast of GA-FL. Lock down in our rooms. Pray."  That passenger continued: "Piss and scared, the ship is still stop. No communications from Captain or staff. TV is out with message "Public announcement please standby:" The winds are hurricane Gail force and ship is leaning to the left. I believe the Captain was trying to our run the storm. Bad decision. I'm sure we will be breaking news tomorrow!" Passenger Sharon Tutrone tweeted, "After 14 hours of high winds, rain and massive waves. The ship took a hit from a wave that sounded like the ship split in two." After nearly a day of hell, the cruise ship arrived in Charleston on Saturday evening. The vessel is back on the seas, sailing on a five-day Bahamas cruise. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 09:35.....»»

Graham Criticizes Defense Spending In Debt Ceiling Deal: "Biggest Winner Of Biden Defense Budget Is China" Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that China would be the beneficiary of the U.S. defense budget proposed in the tentative debt ceiling deal. “I respect Kevin McCarthy. I want to raise the debt ceiling. It would be irresponsible not to do it. I want to control spending. I’d like to have a smaller IRS. I’d like to claw back the unused COVID money. I know you can’t get the perfect—but what I will not do is adopt the Biden defense budget and call it a success,” Graham told Fox News on May 28. “Kevin said that the defense is fully funded. If we adopt the Biden defense budget, it increases defense spending below inflation,” Graham added. “The Biden defense budget was a joke before, and if we adopt it as Republicans we will be doing a great disservice to the party of [former President] Ronald Reagan,” he added. “The biggest winner of the Biden defense budget is China because they’ll have a bigger navy.” The debt ceiling agreement negotiated between the White House and Republican leaders in the House would cap defense funding at President Joe Biden’s defense budget request, at $886 billion in fiscal 2024, about a 3.5 percent increase. That is below the current rate of inflation, which was 5 percent in March and 4.9 percent in April. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks to the press after meeting President Joe Biden to discuss the debt limit at the White House in Washington on May 22, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times) Navy The Navy’s share of the FY2024 defense budget is estimated at $255.8 billion, an amount that Republican lawmakers have argued is inadequate given how quickly China is building up its navy. During a congressional hearing in March, U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro acknowledged that under the current budget proposal, the U.S. Navy would have 291 ships by 2028, while China would have “upward of 440” ships. As of April, the U.S. Navy had a fleet of 298 ships, according to the the Congressional Research Service (pdf). China currently maintains the largest navy in the world. According to the Pentagon’s 2022 report on China’s military (pdf), the Chinese navy has about 340 ships and submarines, including approximately 125 major surface combatants. “The overmatch with China is real. The Biden defense budget makes it even worse for us. I look forward to the details, but if you send me the Biden defense budget to the United States Senate and declare it fully funds the military, you will have a hard time with me,” Graham said. The South Carolina senator added that he would not be “intimidated” by June 5, the deadline marked by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to avoid a default on the nation’s financial obligations. “We should raise the debt ceiling, but we should not cripple the military’s ability to defend the nation as a trade-off,” Graham added. “Spending below inflation is not fully funding the military. Cutting the size of the Navy only helps China.” Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen addresses to soldiers amid the COVID-19 pandemic during her visit to a military base in Tainan, southern Taiwan, on April 9, 2020. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images) Taiwan During the Fox News interview, Graham was also asked to comment about U.S. military supply, in the event that China decides to invade Taiwan. “Ukraine’s consumption of U.S.-supplied materiel is outstripping the capacity of American defense firms to quickly replenish it,” host Shannon Bream said, quoting from a February article from Defense News. “A Center for Strategic and International Studies report last month found the U.S. defense-industrial base is unprepared for a notional battle with China over Taiwan.” “How do we manage that?” Bream asked Graham. “If you don’t see the connection between Ukraine and China, you’re missing a lot,” Graham responded. “We need more defense spending. They’re right about the weapons. We need to increase our arsenal. We have multiple threats. Let’s help Ukraine defeat [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. End the war on favorable terms in Ukraine, you’ll make China less likely to invade Taiwan.” He added: “The defense budget that they’re proposing as part of this deal makes it impossible for us to do the things we need to do. You’re reducing defense spending at a time we need more of it.” The report, which was published in January, found that the United States would likely run out of key long-range, precision-guided munitions in less than one week in a battle against China defending Taiwan. “These shortfalls would make it extremely difficult for the United States to sustain a protracted conflict—and, equally concerning, the deficiencies undermine deterrence,” the report says. “These problems are particularly concerning since China is heavily investing in munitions and acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the United States, according to some U.S. government estimates.” Taiwan is a self-ruled democracy with its own military, constitution, and currency. However, the Chinese Communist Party sees the self-ruled island as a part of its territory that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.  Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 10:10.....»»

Old Navy To Shutter Downtown San Francisco Store Amid Retail Exodus.....»»

Lawyer Uses ChatGPT In Court And Now "Greatly Regrets" It Authored by Ciaran Lyons via CoinTelegraph.com, A New York attorney has been blasted for using ChatGPT for legal research as part of a lawsuit against a Columbian airline. Steven Schwartz, an attorney with the New York law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, was hired by Robert Mata to pursue an injury claim against Avianca Airlines. Mata claims he sustained the injury from a serving cart during his flight with the airline in 2019, according to a May 28 report from CNN Business. However, after a judge noticed inconsistencies and factual errors in the case documentation, Schwartz has admitted to using ChatGPT for his legal research, according to a May 24 sworn affidavit. He claims that this was his first time using ChatGPT for legal research and “was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.” In an April 5 court filing, the judge presiding over the case stated: “Six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations.” The judge further claimed that certain cases referenced in the submissions did not exist, and there was an instance where a docket number on a filing was mixed up with another court filing.  Extract of Steven Schwartz's affidavit on May 24. Source: courtlistener.com Schwartz said he also regrets having trusted the artificial chatbot without conducting his own due diligence. The affidavit noted: “[Schwartz] Greatly regrets having utilized generative artificial intelligence to supplement the legal research performed herein and will never do so in the future without absolute verification of its authenticity.” In recent times there has been an ongoing debate regarding the extent to which ChatGPT can be integrated into workforces. However, reports indicate that the intelligence levels of ChatGPT are rapidly advancing. But developers are skeptical about whether it has the potential to replace humans altogether.  Blockchain developer Syed Ghazanfer said while he favors ChatGPT, he is doubtful that it has the communication skills to completely replace human workers. “For it to replace you, you have to communicate requirements which are not possible in native English. That’s why we invented programming languages,” he said. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 11:20.....»»

Russia Issues Arrest Warrant For Lindsey Graham Over "Killing Russians" Remarks.....»»

Rabobank: Will The Debt Deal Pass Smoothly Or Will Congress Spoil It In The Last Minute? By Benjamin Picton, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank Market comments So, a debt deal is done, and now all that remains is for it to be articulated in a bill that can pass through Congress and be signed off by the President. This is by no means a fait accompli, but there should be sufficient support from both Republicans and Democrats to get it over the line before Janet Yellen’s revised X-date of next Monday. Early reports over the weekend suggest that a bill will come before Congress on Wednesday, with the hope of a speedy passage through both the House and Senate. Neither side is happy with the terms of the agreement, which probably suggests that it strikes the right balance. The debt ceiling will be suspended for two years, which is just long enough to see Biden through to the other side of the 2024 presidential election. Republicans have extracted spending concessions from Biden that limit growth in non-essential spending to 0% in fiscal 2024 and just 1% in fiscal 2025. That represents a real-terms cut, but wasn’t enough for some of the fiscal hawks in the Republican Party who have pointed out that given that the national debt will hit $35 trillion in 2025 under this deal. Likewise, progressive Democrats are upset that Biden has agreed to any spending cuts at all. If the deficit had to be reduced, those members favored tax increases as the means to do it. Despite the Sturm und Drang it looks like the debt can has been kicked down the road once again and that financial repression remains the only real debt reduction strategy that has any prospect of actually working. Of course, this would require some help from our friends at the Fed. The flow of data on Friday threw up some new challenges for the Fed’s thinking on the future path of the Fed Funds rate. The Core PCE deflator for April came in hot at 0.4% m-o-m vs expectations of 0.3%, and a prior read of just 0.1%. Likewise, personal spending in April lifted by twice as much as expected: up by 0.8%. That’s particularly striking given that personal income only rose by 0.4% in the month, and growth in spending was flat in the month prior. St Louis Fed data shows that average revolving credit balances have grown from the fourth quarter to the first quarter for the last two years, which represents one of the strongest gains we have seen since the mid-2000s. So, reading between the lines, it appears that Americans are spending more, but they are using credit to do it. That sounds an awful lot like Congress (until now, at least), and must weigh on the thinking of the Fed, whose primary tool for slowing the economy is to make that big stock of credit more expensive. On that subject, the Cleveland Fed’s Loretta Mester suggested that a June rate hike was still a possibility, while noting that “progress on inflation is slow, concerning” and that it would be a mistake for the Fed to under-tighten and allow inflation to persist. She also said that she may revise up her inflation estimate at the June meeting and that she believes the Fed does need to tighten further, even if it doesn’t happen in June. A similarly hawkish Thomas Barkin of the Richmond Fed described labor demand in skilled trades as “crazy hot”, but Susan Collins of the Boston Fed was a little more sanguine. She said that the Fed is at, or near a pause in the hiking cycle, which is a view shared by Rabobank’s Fed expert Philip Marey. The strong run of data over the last few days has seen the traders up their bets on the future path of rates to the extent that a further hike is now fully priced in by July. Elsewhere over the weekend we saw news that Turkish President Erdogan has been successful in his bid for re-election. Erdogan faced a strong challenge from Kemal Kilicdaroglu, but ultimately prevailed in the second round of voting. Erdogan’s victory has seen further pressure on the Turkish Lira, which is down more than 70% against the USD since the start of 2020, and concerns over Turkey’s dwindling foreign exchange reserves. Erdogan has been successful in positioning Turkey as an increasingly important player in geopolitics, especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but opposition parties believed that unorthodox economic policies and very high inflation would be enough to convince voters to elect for a transition in power. Turkey isn’t Robinson Crusoe in experiencing pressure on foreign currency reserves. We have seen similar troubles in Argentina, Sri Lanka, Lebanon and a host of other emerging markets in recent months. The rapid policy tightening and accompanying balance sheet runoff from the Fed is sucking dollar liquidity out of the market, and leaving some of those emerging economies unable to service their debts or pay for their imports. China and Russia have been helpfully stepping into the breach in an attempt to end the United States’ “exorbitant privilege” (and protect themselves from US sanctions), but as my compatriot Michael Every points out, the death of the Dollar-based system is much exaggerated. So, another week of debt-ceiling chicanery beckons, but at least we are nearing the end of it (for now). While the big question around whether or not a deal would be done seems to have been answered, lots of new questions have now fallen out of it: Will the passage of the deal through Congress go smoothly, or will there be last minute spoil attempts? What does the reduced fiscal impulse mean for dollar liquidity and emerging markets? And does the debt deal give the Fed a clear runway for more tightening? I guess we will find out this week. Preview of the Week ahead Monday: The Memorial Day holiday in the United States and Bank Holiday in the UK should see a muted start to the week. Expect debt ceiling coverage to soak up most of the headlines. The one event for the day will be remarks by ECB Governing Council member de Cos. Tuesday: New Zealand building permits for April kick us off. There is no survey estimate for this one, but don’t be surprised if the number looks rubbish. Both the RBNZ and the NZ Government have suggested that housing investment will be under pressure this year as rate hikes and high inflation keep developers on the sidelines. Shortly afterwards we will see employment data for Japan and April building approvals for Australia where survey expectations are for a gain of 2%. Spanish retail sales for April and the preliminary read of Spain’s May CPI will be next up. Surveyed economists are expecting CPI to print at 0.1% m-o-m. Later in the day we will hear from the ECB’s Holzmann, before the Conference Board consumer confidence numbers are released in the United States. The market is looking for a slight dip back below 100. To round out the day we get The Dallas Fed’s manufacturing index, and both Villeroy from the ECB and Barkin from the Fed will be speaking. Wednesday: RBA Governor Philip Lowe is first up on a very busy day. He will be giving testimony before the Senate Economics Legislation Committee. This comes hot on the heels of leaked details of a private briefing where Governor Lowe reportedly told politicians to brace themselves for more rate hikes. Keep an eye out for comments on wages and productivity, as unit labor costs seem to be the chief concern for the RBA recently. Following Lowe, we have Japanese industrial production, as well as Aussie private sector credit and monthly CPI for April. The ANZ consumer confidence index for New Zealand will also be released. The highlight of the Asian session will be China PMIs for May. Here the manufacturing index is seen improving slightly to a still contractionary 49.5, while the services reading recedes slightly to 55.3. In the European session we will see preliminary May CPI data for France, where the y-o-y reading is expected to fall from 5.9% to 5.5%. This will be followed by French PPI and German employment data for May (unemployment expected to remain steady at 5.6%), before we see Italian CPI (7.5% y-o-y) German CPI (6.4% y-o-y) and the release of the ECB’s Financial Stability Review. In the US session we will get Canadian 1st quarter GDP data (2.5% annualized expected) before the release of May Chicago PMIs and the Jolts survey for April, where job openings are expected to have declined to just over 9,400,000. The Fed’s Collins, Harker, Bowman and Jefferson will all be speaking, as will the BOE’s Mann and the ECB’s Villeroy and Visco. Thursday: China’s Caixin manufacturing PMI is first up and expected to confirm a slightly contractionary read of 49.5. This will be followed by manufacturing PMIs for Spain, Italy, France, the UK, Germany, Canada and the United States, as well as UK house prices for May and German retail sales for April. US initial jobless claims will also be released with the market expecting a slight increase to 235,000 w-o-w. The May ISM survey closes out the day in data with the manufacturing index expected to slip 1 tick to 47, while the prices paid index is also expected to moderate slightly to 52.5. ECB speakers on the day will include President Christine Lagarde, Bank of France Governor Villeroy and Financial Stability Board Chair Klaas Knot. followed by the Fed’s Harker. Friday: The morning brings Aussie home loan data and 1st quarter terms of trade numbers for New Zealand. Later on we get French industrial production and Spanish employment figures before the real hero of the day: US non-farm payrolls. Payrolls for May are expected to have increased by 190,000, while the labor force participation rate remains steady at 62.6% and the unemployment rate moves up one tick to 3.5%. Non-farm payrolls is always an important number, and doubly so this week as the market looks for further direction after the bullish end to last week. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 12:30.....»»

Japan On High Alert As North Korea Plans Satellite Launch In Coming Days On Monday, North Korea informed neighboring Japan that it plans to launch a satellite into low Earth orbit in the coming days, which might be Pyongyang's first spy satellite.  Reuters said Japan had placed missile defense systems on heightened alert and warned it would shoot down any projectile over its airspace.  "We will take destructive measures against ballistic and other missiles that are confirmed to land in our territory," Japan's defense ministry said in a statement, adding it would use Standard Missile-3 or Patriot Missile to destroy the rocket. We detailed last month Japan was preparing for this.  Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told his cabinet to collect intel on North Korea's planned rocket launch. He said Japan is already talking with relevant countries to deter its northern neighbor from conducting the launch:  "For North Korea to go ahead with a ballistic missile launch that it is calling a 'satellite' is a serious provocation against our country's national security.  "Any launch using ballistic missile technology breaches related UN Security Council resolutions," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters.  AP News pointed out, "North Korea would have to use long-range missile technology banned by UN Security Council resolutions" to catapult a satellite into space. The media outlet said, "Its past launches of Earth observation satellites were seen as disguised missile tests."  Just weeks ago, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected a spy satellite at a defense facility in his country. Monday's launch notice did not provide details about the satellite's specifics.  Meanwhile, South Korea launched its first commercial-grade satellite into space last week. Experts told the AP, "Kim would want his country to launch a spy satellite before South Korea does."  Reuters said North Korea has attempted to launch "earth observation" satellites, though every attempt has failed. The latest attempt was in 2016. In the last 1.5 years, North Korea has ramped up missile launches, testing over 100, some of which can carry nuclear weapons to South Korea, Japan, and the mainland US.  And last week, a US Defense Department told Congress that the Pentagon plans to build a multi-layered air defense system in Guam to keep tabs on North Korea and China.  Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 13:05.....»»