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https://www.orfonline.org/research/contesting-mutual-security-india-nepal-relations/

Contesting Mutual Security: India- Nepal Relations

The present paper analyses the existing security relations and strategic perceptions of India and Nepal and attempts to identify the common and divergent perceptions existing, if any. It tries to understand the reasons for the erosion of mutuality and its impact on Indo- Nepal relationship. The present paper analyses the existing security relations and strategic perceptions of India and Nepal and attempts to identify the common and divergent perceptions existing, if any. It tries to understand the reasons for the erosion of mutuality and its impact on Indo- Nepal relationship. India’s Security Concerns The geo-strategic significance of Nepal’s location between India and China has been emphasized as a prominent variable in defining India’s security perceptions towards it. If British India regarded Nepal as a buffer between the Indian and Russian empires, independent India considered it as a `principal barrier to India’ defending the northern frontiers. The security concerns of India became alive after the northern border became alive for security concerns with China going Communist in 1949 and annexing Tibet in 1950. Though India had sent protest notes to China deploring its military operations in Tibet, it accepted Chinese suzerainty over Tibet in 1954 after realistically assessing its own limitations on being able to make any difference to the situation. Consequently, to make its exposed frontiers more secure, India tried to consolidate its security interests in the north. It signed treaties of Peace and Friendship with Bhutan in 1949 and with Nepal and Sikkim in 1950 with distinct clauses that continue to bind the security of these states with that of India. In 1949, India and Nepal had also signed an agreement on the recruitment of the Nepali Gorkhas in the Indian Army which bound the two countries with a military link. Some of the measures that were taken to strengthen India’s security interests were: setting up check posts on the border, joint monitoring and patrolling of the border by the Indian and Nepalese army personnel and intelligence sharing. India also sent military missions to help Nepal reorganise its Armed Forces. The need to reorganise the army first appeared in 1952 when a small armed force revolted against King Tribhuvan. In fact India’s security concern was not only to keep China away from Nepal but also to assist in achieving political and economic stability that could act as a guard against any foreign intervention. These sentiments find expression in Nehru’s statement in the Parliament saying “our interests in the internal conditions of Nepal became still more acute and personal, if I may say so, because of the developments across our border, because of the developments in China and Tibet, to be frank”. Consequently India’s involvement increased in developing the infrastructure and economy of Nepal which could take care of the latter’s security interests also. Indian Army Engineers constructed roads and airfields linking places of strategic importance. Significant emphasis was laid on development sectors such as education, health, agriculture, power, irrigation etc. However, fissures in the commonality of the security interests were visible in the late fifties and early sixties. Nepal had signed agreements with China such as the Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1960, road construction project from Kathmandu to Kodari (1961) and resolving the boundary issue between the two countries (1961) coinciding with strained Sino- India relations. The road had immense strategic and political importance because it was a major breach of Nepal Himalayas from the North from where there was connectivity to India. This is not to negate a country’s sovereignty to establish diplomatic relations with another country but Nepal did not show reciprocity in understanding India’s security concerns that emanated from Chinese activism in South Asia. Moreover, China’s attempts at road construction were not confined to Nepal. It had constructed the Sin kiang- Tibet Highway that cuts across the Ladakh region to India by 1958 and had built link roads from it reaching the borders of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. Even Nepal’s relations with India were strained after King Mahendra took over power in his hands after dismissing the democratically elected Koirala government. If Nehru considered the royal take over as a `set back to democracy’ Mahendra considered that statements, propaganda and activities by irresponsible elements against the Kingdom could affect the friendship between the two countries and act as a hurdle in cementing the friendly ties on a permanent basis. Similarly in a press conference Mahendra said that the Kathmandu- Kodari road had economic significance for Nepal which was an internal matter of the country and, hence, outside the purview of consultations with India. Nepal, however, took a neutral stand during the Sino India war in 1962. Its Gorkha soldiers in the Indian Army fought the war. The convergence and divergence of security interests were once again visible on the issue of the Arms Assistance Agreement, signed in 1965, to assist in reorganization and modernization of the Royal Nepal Army with the objective of strengthening the security and independence of Nepal. The agreement was a recognition of the military links between the two countries and it established India as the primary supplier of arms to Nepal. The Government of India undertook to `supply arms, ammunition and equipment for the entire Nepalese Army on the basis of a total strength of about 17,000 men, comprising of four recognized brigades’ (clause 3(a) and also agreed to `replace the existing stock of Nepalese weapons’ (clause 3(b) The military assistance provided by India was for Nepal’s use only and `not to be diverted to any third party’ (clause 3(f). In case of India’s inability to provide arms the Government of US and UK would furnish some defence assistance to Nepal (clause 4). India also took the responsibility to train the Nepalese armed forces personnel in the defence establishments in India. (clause 3(c)). Though India was the primary supplier of arms and ammunitions to Nepal, it was not exclusive. Nepal could buy arms or ammunitions essential for its security from or through the territory of India (clause 5). In fact Nepal has been buying arms from sources other than India including China. However its major arms purchase from China in 1989 strained relations with India. Nepal had bought anti-aircraft guns, medium range SSM, and AK- 47 rifles. Nepal insisted on it’s sovereign and independent right to buy arms for defence against anti- terrorist activities threatening the country’s internal security. Nepal’s arms purchase from China technically was not against the arms assistance agreement or the treaty of peace and friendship. However it was against the spirit of the 1950 Treaty and 1965 Agreement, implying that the underlying motive behind signing the treaties was to have a common threat perception on China. Arms purchase from China was a step diverging from reciprocity in security concerns. Nepal did not consider China as a threat to its security, nor was it ready to accept mutuality of security concerns. As a sovereign country Nepal has a right to buy arms for its security. Nonetheless it is treaty bound to buy arms from India and in case of inability of India in providing arms it can approach the US and UK. In recent years to counter the Maoists insurgency Nepal has procured arms from the US, UK, Belgium and India. India has given arms worth one billion Indian rupees and has pledged to give a billion worth more. India’s security concerns became pronounced when smugglers, militants, , terrorists and criminals misused its open border with Nepal. Stricter vigilance on the Indo- Pak border, and concerted anti- terrorist activities in various parts of the country made Nepal a favourite refuge for extremists, thanks mainly to it’s thick jungles and porous borders which provide easy access to cross border terrorism. Pakistan has increased its presence in Nepal through Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and other means directed against India. Pakistan sees Nepal as a launching pad in India because of the easy accessibility to cross border due to lack of security checks in Nepal. Pakistan embassy in Nepal is alleged to be rendering regular financial assistance and providing transit facilities and fake passports to the Kashmiri and Sikh militants. It is involved in large-scale counterfeit Indian currency. ISI is said to have purchased benami land in the Terai from where anti- India activities are carried out. Pakistan is also alleged to be the lead player of the Islamic nexus that has started focusing on Nepal by funding madrasas. The increase in the number of madrasas astride India Nepal border and the possibility of Pakistan utilizing them for anti India activities cannot be ruled out. Madrasas per se do not posse’ a problem but their misuse in misguiding people through religious extremism is a cause of concern. More so because ISI activities are reported to be concentrated in the Terai region. Besides this, ISI is also involved in fake Indian currency operations from Nepal. India’s allegation of ISI activities from its soil disturbs Nepal. Even if Nepal is not directly involved in the increase of these activities, it has little resistance capacity to stop them. The hijacking of Indian Airlines plane IC 814 after it left Tribhuvan International airport at Kathmandu in December 2000 once again brought fore Indian vulnerabilities from its northern border. In a statement issued in Parliament, the then Foreign Minister, Jaswant Singh said, “the hijacking incident has once again highlighted the complicity of Pakistan and of organisations patronised and supported by it in terrorist acts against India… The hijacking was masterminded by Pakistan’s ISI with the assistance of the Harkat ul Mujahideen”. The incident not only illustrates the strategic significance of Nepal in India’s security parameters but also exposes how serious were the security lacunae in the northern border. Flights between the two countries were stopped and were resumed after Nepal agreed to allow Indian officials to carry out security checks at the airport. Pakistan’s Nepal policy is active in trying to create wedge between India and Nepal and use it to its advantage. For example, on more than one occasion Pakistan has raised the Kashmir issue in its bilateral discussions with Nepal. However, Nepal has constantly maintained the Kashmir issue to be a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan that has to be resolved amicably by the two countries. Though Nepal tries to decrease its dependence on India, it has not taken policies against India. Such as its stand on Kashmir is closer to that of India’s position. Similarly on terrorists and extremists the Government of Nepal has assured India its full cooperation. In fact, way back in 1992 Prime Minister G.P. Koirala had assured his government’s cooperation to resist terrorism and to deter terrorists from using Nepal as a transit camp. Subsequent governments in Nepal have reiterated their cooperation with India. India and Nepal have agreed to resist the misuse of open border and unrestricted movement of population to each other’s territory by strengthening mechanisms for monitoring at airports, terminals and border crossings. In 1997, a Joint Working Group was established to determine modalities to monitor the border. In April 1997, Uttar Pradesh – Nepal Border Police force was raised to check illegal activities along the border. Nepal’s Threat Perception As said earlier, Nepal’s geo-strategic location has an overarching impact in defining its security perception. The description of Nepal as the `Yam between the two boulder’ by Prithvi Narayan Shah, the founder of the Shah dynasty, still holds true in the Nepalese perception. He had realized the vulnerability of Nepal’s landlocked location between India and China and advocated a policy of friendship with both. In the early fifties, military threat from China became prominent after it had made claims on Tibet. Nepal’s apprehensions found support in India, which was also disturbed by the political changes in the north. The common security perception found expression in the Treaty of Peace and Friendship. Nepal’s threat perception was defined by the elite in power that equated regime security with state security. Nationalism was narrowly defined as loyalty to the regime. Consequently, anti-monarchy pro-democracy forces were viewed as a threat to the regime and their ideological links with political parties and ideologues in India was seen as a threat to state security. This is not to discount the personality of the leaders. King Tribhuvan, brought in to power with the help of India, was content to be working with the political parties. However subsequent rulers wanted to marginalise democratic forces and consolidate power in their hands. Instead of following the policy of special relationship with India, King Mahendra followed the policy of equidistance between its neighbours. There by, Nepal accepted the Chinese gestures to begin diplomatic initiatives and maintain cordial relations with it. In July 1955 both Nepal and China signed an agreement for the establishment of diplomatic relations based on Panchasheel. From here on the threat perceptions of both India and Nepal diverged not because of the diplomatic relations but due to the subsequent measures that were taken to erode India’s security interests. Such as Kathmandu Kodari road construction projects to China at the time of worsening of Sino -India relations, which finally culminated in the war in 1962, was not an expression of Nepal’s reciprocity to India’s security concerns. Projects related to development work or infrastructure developments were granted to China astride India’s border. This is not to negate the sovereign rights of a country to develop diplomatic relations with another country but they ought not to be directed at the security interests of a third country. Nepal’s policy to pursue equidistance between its two neighbours found expression in its `Zone of Peace Concept’ in 1975. The proposal became the major foreign policy objective when on 15 December 1980 through the third amendment it was incorporated in Nepal’s constitution. Article 19 (6) of the amended Constitution declared that `The Foreign Policy of the Panchayat system shall be striven for making for making Nepal a Zone of Peace in pursuance of the basic purpose of the UNO and the Principles of non- alignment”. Thus Nepal’s policy was solemnized as equal to both its neighbours. Where as in reality Nepal had an open border and unrestricted movement of population with India and not with China. Nepal’s proposal equated the geographical reality of India with China and ignored the security concerns of India. Ignoring the reciprocity in relations Nepalese Prime Minister Tulsi Giri said that `since Nepal’s territory lies both to the North as well as to the South of the Himalayas, there is no reason to suppose that Nepal’s geopolitical importance in India is greater than it is to China’. India considered the proposal lacking in clarity and asked clarification in terms of motives and objectives achieved through the proposal. There was little difference in the attitude of the Janata Government of Prime Minister Morarji Desai and the Congress Government of Narsimha Rao in their stand on the peace zone proposal. Both wanted the entire region to be declared as a Zone of Peace. Acceptance of the proposal would have been at the cost of the neglecting geopolitical reality. There did not seem to be any mutual agreement between India and Nepal. Nepal’s insistence that its relations with China were independent of India did not find a favourable response by the latter. Despite Government of India’s assurances on various occasions, Nepal apprehended India’s support to the forces opposed to the regime. One reason could be that certain political ideologues in India like the socialists supported the cause of the Nepali Congress. Even during the agitation against the monarchy in 1989, a few political leaders from India were present in Kathmandu to extend their support to the democrats. A shift in the perception of Nepal was visible after the multi party democracy was established in 1990. Firstly, at the regional level Sino – India relations were improving. Democratic Nepal has not been overtly concerned with regime insecurity. Though India is still an important factor in the internal and external politics of Nepal, the fear of Indian interference does not seem to be prominent. The mutuality in security perception was once again emphasised in the Joint Communiqué that was signed during the visit of Prime Minister K.P. Bhattarai to India in 1991. It stressed to have “prior consultations with a view to reaching agreement on such defence related matters which in view of either country could pose a threat to its security”. These assurances not just reiterated the understanding reached in the 1950 Treaty or the 1965 Agreement but also gave an implicit assurance that Nepal would not use its policy of equidistance violating Indian security sensitivities. By accepting `prior consultations’ both the signatories accepted mutuality and sensitivity to each other’s security interests. On subsequent occasions Nepal’s policy pronouncements have been closer to India such as during the Kargil incident, Foreign Minister Dr Ram Sharan Mahat said that “the sanctity of the LOC should be maintained, the party which had violated the LOC, should restore it immediately and all intruders withdraw across the LOC”. The statement was much closer to India’s official position on LOC in the context of the Pakistani infiltration in Kargil. However most of Nepal’s security concerns emanate from inside the country such as the political instability, poor governance, dismal economic performance, Maoist insurgency etc. India’s response has been issue based. For example India considers the Maoists insurgency as an internal matter of Nepal and is ready to provide assistance when asked for. India has extended financial aid and arms to Nepal and has handed over a few Maoists from its territory taking care of Nepal’s sensitivity on Maoists links with the extreme Marxist groups in India. India considers multi-party democracy and constitutional monarchy as the two pillars essential for the peaceful accommodation and resolution of differences. However on the issue of Bhutanese refugees Nepal wanted India to be a party in its negotiations with Bhutan. Where as, the Indian stand has been to treat it as a bilateral issue between the two countries. To understand the element of mutuality in the security concerns of both the countries the Treaty of Peace and Friendship has been analysed. The Treaty was particularly selected because it contains most of the variables in the relationship whether related to security concerns or socio- economic interests. Violation of the treaty suggests breach in the mutuality of interests. Treaty Of Peace And Friendship A holistic approach of security was encapsuled in the Treaty, which takes into consideration the external and internal dimensions of threats. The treaty binds the two countries through socio- cultural and economic ties. Through the treaty India tried to be accommodative to Nepal’s socio- economic progress and stability and Nepal accepted to be sensitive to India’s security interests. Signed at the time of Chinese expansion towards Tibet, the treaty highlights the security considerations of both India and Nepal from its northern border. Both the governments agreed `to inform each other of any serious friction or misunderstanding with neighbouring state likely to cause any breach in the friendly relations subsisting between the two governments’. (clause 2) Here, the name of neighbouring state was not mentioned. No treaty categorically mentions names of an unfriendly country or those countries from which the threat emanates. Highlighting the reciprocity in security interests both India and Nepal agreed to share information on any eventuality or crisis and agreed to solve the problem through mutual consultation. Both also agreed to act in consultation on Nepal’s `imports of arms, ammunitions or war like material from or through the territory of India’.(clause 5) In fact, in the letter exchanged along with the treaty the complimentarity in the security interests gets reinforced with both the signatories agreeing `that neither government shall tolerate any threat to the security of the other by a foreign aggressor’. Both also agreed to `devise effective counter measures’ to deal with such threats. It meant that the threat to one country would be looked upon by the other as a threat to its own security. This common threat perception was the hallmark of the treaty. The other provisions of the treaty addressed the socio- economic variables in the relationship. Such as the citizens of one country could participate in industrial and economic development in another country without any discrimination. (Clause 6) Similarly, citizens could enjoy right of `residence, ownership or property, participation in trade and commerce and movement’ in each other’s country. (Clause 7) The provisions were favourable to Nepal as people could enter India unhindered in search of better opportunities. The letters exchanged along with the treaty explicitly states that `it may be necessary for some time to come to offer the Nepalese nationals in India protection from unrestricted competition” (clause 3). This was done to protect the interests of the Nepalese. At the same time, Nepal also agreed to give first preference to the Government of India or Indian nationals in development projects related to natural resources. India showed interest and primacy in developing the economy of Nepal. Though voices against India -Nepal mutual security were heard in Nepal from earlier days, officially, the Prime Minister of Nepal, K.N. Bista spoke against it following the then Indian Foreign Minister Dinesh Singh’s statement that `situated as India and Nepal are with an open and common border both had similar problems of security, which however, did not mean there was any defence pact between the two’. Reacting to the phrase `similar problems of security’ Bista said that the Treaty of Peace and Friendship was outdated and non- operative and it was not essential to inform each other while developing relations with any third country. Holding India responsible for violating certain provisions of the Treaty, Bista said that `developments have taken place in India’s relations with the Soviet Union and the United States on the one hand and with Pakistan and China on the other. Nepal was not informed about of these developments and India therefore herself assumed and has led Nepal to assume that exchange of information in such cases is unnecessary’. He also said that the arms assistance agreement does not exist’. Officially, the Government of Nepal took the issue of the review of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship during Prime Minister Man Mohan Adhikari’s visit to India in 1994. The provisions related to the security provisions (refer article 2 and 5) and the letter exchanged along with was considered out of date. Adhikari said that his government was `prepared to commit totally for strengthening India’s security and from Nepal there can be no harm on India but the concept of security umbrella is outdated”. On the provision related to the open border and the unrestricted movement of population Adhikari said, “India could absorb many Nepalese but so many Indians coming on its soils would swamp Nepal”. Several academicians and foreign policy experts from Nepal have raised voice against the treaty. Many feel that the review and updating of the Treaty is essential in the changing political conditions. It is said that the Treaty was signed between the Indian Government and the Rana rulers who were overthrown form power in 1951 revolution. However, treaties do not change with the changing governments. The security clauses (articles 2 and 5) are considered to be contradictory to Nepal’s policy of maintaining equidistance with its neighbours. As mentioned earlier this provision has been breached on a number of occasions by Nepal. Often mentioned is clause 6 of the Treaty which allows the citizens to participate in industrial and national development in each other’s country and clause 7 which grants the citizens the right to reside, own property, participate in trade and commerce and enjoy other privileges in one another’s country. Nepal is concerned about the inflow of Indians in its territory. It is often mentioned that the number of Indians moving towards Nepal is increasing and it is not in a position to allow unrestricted immigration into the country because of its size, population and economy. The reciprocity inherent in this provision was infringed when Government of Nepal passed an order in 1957 that made mandatory possession of a citizen ship certificate for all the Indian teachers working in Nepal. Restrictions were levied on all the foreigners including Indians from buying immovable property in Nepal in 1958. The underlying motives of these provisions were to provide a special treatment to the citizens of both countries that were not extended to people from neighbouring countries except Bhutan. For example people from neighbouring countries moving in India without visa or passport are treated as illegal but the Nepalese can move in, reside and avail job opportunities legally. But Nepal equated Indians with people from other nations. The political parties in Nepal are not in unison in their demands on the treaty. The Nepali Congress manifesto speaks of resolving all the problems through diplomatic dialogues by keeping intact the Nepal’s national interest, sovereignty, integrity and dignity. It doesn’t want to abrogate treaty. The Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist) manifesto states that `the unequal and derogatory treaties and agreements including the 1950 treaty, and others signed by the Nepali Congress Panchayat and earlier Governments will all be reviewed and will be modified in compliance with the principle of equality, mutual respect and benefit’. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) manifesto refers to the treaty as a black mark upon the name of peace and friendship. For Nepal it is humiliating and unequal. It is harmful to Nepal’s sovereignty, independence, security, national integrity and well being. None of the political parties has spelt out how the treaty has been an affront to Nepali respect and dignity. None of them have given alternatives to the existing treaty except a non- paper that was presented by Kamal Thapa, the Foreign Minister of Nepal in 1997. During Prime Minister G.P. Koirala’s visit to Indian in July- August 2000, the two sides agreed that the foreign secretaries of India and Nepal would review issues pertaining to the 1950 treaty. The first meeting of the two foreign secretaries was held on January 30 and 31, 2001 in Delhi. Government of India has agreed to the Nepalese demand to review the treaty but has not shown any attempt to take initiatives in providing alternatives to the existing treaty. Unlike Nepal the manifestos of the political parties in India do include comments and opinions on India- Nepal relations. The need to review the treaty has been mentioned mechanically by Nepal in every state level bilateral meeting with India with out clearly stating what the review means. The treaty shows lack of mutual understanding in the security concerns of both the countries. Nepal’s possible gains from review of the Treaty could be: lessened dependence on India on strategic perception, pursuing a policy of equidistance between India and China, reduced India’s economic stakes in Nepal by abolishing reciprocity meanwhile enjoying a favourable treatment from India on socio- economic issues. The emerging relation envisaged is based on non- reciprocity. This non- reciprocal relation for India would imply vulnerable border in the north and additional measures to consolidate its security. However, even with the Treaty in place India’s strategic vulnerability emerges from time to time. No treaty can bring forth mutual trust and reciprocity in security interests unless both the signatories want it. A strained treaty brings forth more suspicion and distrust on each other impacting on cooperation in other variables involved in a relationship such economy, trade, transit, harnessing of water resources, power trade. Hence the moot question is does it help to continue with a Treaty which creates more strains in relations? Conclusion Security relations between India and Nepal have been characterized by two factors: desire of India for mutual security understanding that emanates from geo-strategic significance of the northern border and Nepal’s desire to reduce salience of this by pursuing policy of equidistance between India and China. The 1950 treaty incorporated the concept of mutuality between both the countries and its operationality shows the contradictions inherent in it. The Indian effort has been to use a strong economic and social leverage which results from the open border, Nepalese working in India, and reliance of Nepal on India for transit facilities to ensure that Nepal’s behaviour corresponds to the Indian strategic requirement. The Nepalese, on the other hand, have tried to maintain closer relations with China and to thin out their defence cooperation with India to suit their purpose at various levels in an attempt to achieve their aim. If for India a secure northern border is essential for its security, for Nepal it is sovereignty and independence. Though, many a times, regime security was equated with state security. The fear emanating from mistrust and suspicion of each other has brought in tensions in the relations. In India- Nepal relations their own set of priorities and interests come in the way of mutual understanding on security interests. Sangeeta Thapliyal, Research Fellow, ORF

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(21)00209-X/fulltext

Child maltreatment and incident mental disorders in middle and older ages: a retrospective UK Biobank cohort study

Following the baseline interviews, a series of measurements, including height, weight, and blood pressure, were collected along with urine and blood samples. Body mass index (BMI) was derived from weight/heightmeasured using standardized equipment and used to classify individuals as underweight (<18.5 kg/m), normal weight (18.5 to 24.9 kg/m), overweight (25 to 29.9 kg/m), or obese (>30.0 kg/m). Biomarkers were measured at a dedicated central laboratory between 2014 and 2017. In this study, we have selected triglyceride (TG), a lipid found to be associated with mood disorders [], and C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of systemic inflammation and indicator of a stress response []. Details of these measures and assay performances can be found online in the UK Biobank showcase and protocol []. Recruitment was conducted by sending letters to home addresses obtained from national health records, and follow-up data were obtained via linkage to routine health records, web-based questionnaires and repeat assessment clinics attended by a sub-group ( https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/ ). At the baseline assessment clinic, participants completed a self-administered questionnaire on general health and a more in-depth face to face interview on medical history. Self-reported variables included ethnicity, education level, sleep duration, television viewing time, smoking status, and alcohol intake. Deprivation level was measured via the Townsend area deprivation index which sums a score derived from assets, income, and household factors applied to postcode of residence []. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) was used to assess physical activity levels []. This was a retrospective cohort study using data from UK Biobank. Child maltreatment was recalled by participants after they were recruited into the UK Biobank. Incident mental disorders were ascertained through record linkage after the baseline assessment. In this study, participants with prevalent/prior mental disorders at baseline assessment were excluded. This is to reduce recall bias and to focus on incident events in middle and older ages. The timeline of measurements is shown in Supplementary Figure 1 Child maltreatment was assessed through a web-based questionnaire conducted in August 2017 []. Overall 339,229 participants who provided an email address were invited and approximately half (n = 157,348) of participants completed the online questionnaire. Respondents were generally younger, more likely to be female and white, and had healthier lifestyles compared with non-respondents []. The web-based questionnaire included the Childhood Trauma Screener (CTS) [], a shortened version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) []. It consists of a 5-point Likert scale for each of five types of child maltreatment, physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and sexual abuse, and has been validated against the CTQ with good overall correlation (r = 0.88) and satisfactory type-specific correlations (r = 0.55–0.87) []. The CTQ is a widely used instrument for measuring child maltreatment and has been validated against actual records of abuse and neglect []. The threshold values on the Likert scale derived from a validation study [] were used to define the presence or absence of each type of child maltreatment. In this study, the primary exposure variable was the number of types of child maltreatment, and was categorised as 0, 1, 2, and ≥3 as there were not sufficient number of events to analyse participants with 4 or 5 types of maltreatment separately. Mental disorders were ascertained through individual-level record linkage to primary care records available for 45% of the UK Biobank cohort until May 2017 for Scotland, September 2017 for Wales, and August 2017 for England. The detailed linkage procedures relating to primary care records are available online ( http://biobank.ndph.ox.ac.uk/showcase/showcase/docs/primary_care_data.pdf ). READ codes in the primary care record were mapped to ICD-10 codes. The outcomes in this study included: all mental disorders (ICD-10 F01-F99), dementia (F01-F03), substances abuse (F10-F19), including alcohol-related, disorders, schizophrenia (F20-F29), affective disorder (F30-F39), depression disorder (F32-F33), anxiety disorder (F40-F48), PTSD (F43.1), and behavioural syndrome (F50-F59) encompassing eating and sleep disorders, as well as syndromes associated with physiological disturbances and physical factors. 2.4 Statistical analyses [7] Maughan B Rutter M Retrospective reporting of childhood adversity: Issues in assessing long-term recall. Cox proportional hazard models were used to analyse the associations between child maltreatment and incident mental disorders. The results are reported as hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). In the primary analysis we only included participants who did not have any mental disorder diagnosis at or before baseline assessment. This can reduce reverse causation because prevalent mental disorders could affect child maltreatment recall []. The models were adjusted for age at baseline assessment, sex, and ethnicity as potential confounders. Deprivation and education could be the consequence of child maltreatment (mediator) or affecting child maltreatment recall (confounder), but were primarily hypothesised to be mediators in the analysis. The hypothetical causal assumption is shown in Supplementary Figure 2 . Since excluding participants who had mental disorder diagnosis prior to baseline assessment may induce selection bias, we conducted sensitivity analyses including all participants with complete data. In these sensitivity analyses, follow-up was assumed to start when they were at the age of 30 years and all mental disorder diagnoses after that were included. Moderation analyses were conducted by: sex, age group (38–50, 51–60, and 61–72 years; approximate tertiles), education level (with vs. without university degree), and area-based deprivation index (≥ vs. < median), physical activity (<600 vs ≥600 MET-min/week), obesity (BMI ≥30kg/m2 vs <30kg/m2), alcohol drinking (≤14 vs >14 units/week), binge drinking (binge drinker [average drinking unit per occasion >6 for female and >8 for male] vs non-binger drinker), ability to confide (never/almost never vs sometimes or more), and frequency of social visits (never/almost never vs sometimes or more), and household factors (household size, living with partner, living with children, living with relatives, living with unrelated person/people). We selected these factors because age could affect the reporting of maltreatment, sex could affect the type of maltreatment, and socioeconomic and lifestyle factors might influence the long-term effects of maltreatment experiences. Both stratified (sub-group) and interaction analyses were conducted for mental disorders, depression disorder, anxiety disorder, and behavioural syndrome as these outcomes had sufficient events for subgroup analyses. We also conducted sensitivity analyses including all mental disorder diagnoses for the moderation analysis of sex, age group, and education level as these factors should be the same or very similar between age of 30 and the baseline assessment. We studied five groups of potential mediators: PA and TV (physical activity >600 MET-min/week [binary variable], time spent watching television [continuous variable]), smoking and drinking (any smoking and alcohol drinking >14 units a week [binary variable]), social factors (able to confide and social visit frequency [binary variables]), CVD risk factors (obesity and blood pressure [continuous variable]), and CRP and TG (continuous variable). All potential mediators were selected because of their potential associations with both child maltreatment and mental health. These groups of mediators were adjusted for in the Cox models to examine whether, and to what extent, the HRs between child maltreatment and mental disorders were attenuated. [23] Tingley D Yamamoto T Hirose K Keele L Imai K Mediation: R package for causal mediation analysis. [24] Richiardi L Bellocco R Zugna D Mediation analysis in epidemiology: methods, interpretation and bias. [25] Gelfand LA MacKinnon DP DeRubeis RJ Baraldi AN Mediation analysis with survival outcomes: accelerated failure time vs. proportional hazards models. Formal mediation analysis based on counterfactual framework was then conducted []. Counterfactual framework defines direct (non-mediated) and indirect (mediated) effects and are more robust against various limitations of traditional adjustment-based mediation analysis, such as mediator-outcome confounding affected by exposure []. To reduce multicollinearity and overadjustment, the potential mediators were selected using a stepwise approach. Firstly, mental disorder was regressed by child maltreatment and all potential mediators and confounders in a Weibull regression model with robust standard errors. Weibull regression was chosen because of its superior statistical properties in mediation analysis []. Potential mediators were then selected based on their associations with mental disorder after mutual adjustments. The selected potential mediators were then regressed by child maltreatment count and other covariates (mediator model) in either logistic (for binary mediators) or linear (for other mediators) models adjusting for other mediators and confounders. The outcome and mediator models were then combined to compute the mediation proportions based on natural indirect effect (NIE) divided by total effect (TE) for each participant which was then averaged. Quasi-Bayesian estimation with 1,000 iterations were used for estimating the 95% CI and p-values of the NIE and TE. Analyses were conducted in R version 4.0.2 using packages survival and mediation.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-military-admits-afghan-war-a-strategic-failure-/6249806.html

US Military Admits Afghan War Was 'Strategic Failure'

Twenty years of American blood and treasure spent in Afghanistan was reduced Tuesday to about six hours of testimony in the United States Senate, with the nation's top military officer admitting that the war amounted to a "strategic failure" that in the end, perhaps, could never have been won. The hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee with U.S. President Joe Biden's top military officials saw a staunch defense of the efforts and sacrifices of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with lawmakers both praising the decision to end the country's longest war and condemning its final days as a debacle. In between, it featured sobering assessments of what, if anything, could have been done differently. "It was a logistical success but a strategic failure," General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation's top-ranking military officer, told lawmakers of America's final days in Kabul, which saw the evacuation of 124,000 people, including about 6,000 Americans. "Outcomes in a war like this, an outcome that is a strategic failure — the enemy is in charge in Kabul; there's no way else to describe that — that outcome is a cumulative effect of 20 years, not 20 days," Milley added. Pressed on whether Washington could have done anything differently to prevent the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan from crumbling and stop the Taliban takeover, Milley was blunt. "If you kept advisers there, kept money following, etc., then we could probably have sustained them for a lengthy or indefinite period of time," he said of the Afghan government and the Afghan security forces. "If you would have had a different result at the end of the day, that's a different question," Milley added. "I think the end state probably would have been the same no matter when you did it." Testifying alongside Milley, General Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said that in hindsight, the 2020 Doha agreement, which paved the way for the U.S. exit, "had a profound psychological effect" on the Afghan forces and may have hastened their collapse. "The Taliban were heartened by what they saw happen at Doha and what followed and our eventual decision to get out by a certain date," McKenzie said. "I think the Afghans were very weakened by that morally and spiritually." Republican anger Such somber assessments did little to mollify some lawmakers, with at least two demanding the resignations of Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the way the U.S. ultimately left. "Our exit from Afghanistan was a disaster," said Nebraska Republican Senator Deb Fischer. Another Republican, Senator Joni Ernst, called the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan "haphazard." She pointed to the deaths of 13 U.S. troops and close to 170 Afghans from a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport days before the last military plane took off. "The loss of our service members and abandonment of Americans and Afghan allies last month was an unforced, disgraceful humiliation that didn't have to happen," Ernst said. Some Democrats, however, praised Biden and his administration for finally ending the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. "It took guts, and it was the right thing to do, and it should have been done earlier," Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said. Others scolded their Republican colleagues. "Anyone who says the last few months were a failure but everything before that was great clearly hasn't been paying attention," said Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren. But most of the outrage was saved for the White House, with Republican lawmakers questioning the president's decision-making, and some accusing him of misleading the American public when he told ABC news last month that his top advisers did not recommend keeping about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. "No, they didn't," Biden said at the time. "It was split." On Tuesday, both Milley and CENTCOM's McKenzie told lawmakers that in the early days of Biden's presidency, they advised keeping 2,500 to 3,500 troops in Afghanistan because the Taliban had not met their commitments under the 2020 Doha agreement. "My view is that 2,500 was an appropriate number to remain and that if we went below that number, in fact, we would probably witness a collapse of the Afghan government and the Afghan military," McKenzie said. WATCH: US reflects on Afghan war Cost of staying At the White House on Tuesday, press secretary Jen Psaki defended Biden and the decision to end the war in Afghanistan. "There was a range of viewpoints, as evidenced by their testimony today, that were presented to the president, that were presented to his national security team, as would be expected, as he asked for," she said. "It was also clear to him that that would not be a long-standing recommendation, that there would need to be an escalation, an increase in troop numbers," she said. "It would also mean war with the Taliban, and it would also mean the potential loss of casualties. The president was just not willing to make that decision." Milley also cautioned that staying in Afghanistan once the U.S.-backed government had collapsed could have been done, but at a cost. "On the first of September, we were going to go to war again with the Taliban. Of that there was no doubt," he told lawmakers, saying it would have required the U.S. to send in as many as another 25,000 troops. "We would have had to reseize Bagram (Airfield). We would have had to clear Kabul of 6,000 Taliban," Milley said. "That would have resulted in significant casualties on the U.S. side, and it would have placed American citizens that are still there at greater risk." Additionally, Milley and the other U.S. defense officials told lawmakers that even with troops and all but about 100 U.S. citizens out of Afghanistan and out of harm's way, dangers would remain from terror groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS Khorasan or ISIS-K. "A reconstituted al-Qaida or ISIS with aspirations to attack the United States is a very real possibility," Milley warned lawmakers, adding that the exact nature of the threat might not be evident for months or years. "They're gathering their strength," CENTCOM's General McKenzie said of the threat from IS Khorasan, thought to have about 2,000 fighters now roaming Afghanistan. "We have yet to see how it's going to manifest itself," McKenzie said. "We know with certainty that they do aspire to attack us in our homeland." The U.S. first sent troops into Afghanistan to pursue al-Qaida, after the militant group used the country to plan the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Milley and McKenzie said that despite the Taliban's commitments under the terms of the Doha agreement, the group had yet to sever its long-standing ties with al-Qaida. "I think al-Qaida is at war with the United States, still," Milley said. No going back For his part, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers that the Pentagon remains focused on the threat but will use its over-the-horizon strike capabilities to target al-Qaida and IS Khorasan as needed. "We've not been tasked to construct any plans to go back," Austin said. Austin also defended the evacuation, telling lawmakers that it went as smoothly as possible, and that no other military in the world could have done any better. "It was the largest airlift conducted in U.S. history, and it was executed in just 17 days," he told committee members. "We planned to evacuate between 70,000 and 80,000 people. They evacuated more than 124,000." "Was it perfect? Of course not," Austin added, describing as "difficult" the first two days of the airlift, when huge crowds had rushed to the airport following the Taliban's unexpectedly swift takeover. "We moved so many people so quickly out of Kabul that we ran into capacity and screening problems at intermediate staging bases outside of Afghanistan," he said. But some lawmakers, such as the committee's top Republican, Senator Jim Inhofe, were unconvinced. "We all witnessed a horror of the president's own making," Inhofe said, accusing the Biden administration of failing to create a plan to counter the terror threats likely to emerge in Afghanistan with the Taliban in control. "The terrorist threat to American families is rising significantly," the senator said. "While our ability to deal with these threats has declined decidedly." Austin, Milley and McKenzie are all due to appear again Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/574492-manchin-pushes-back-at-pelosi-legislative-language-plan

Manchin pushes back at Pelosi 'legislative language' plan

Sen. Joe Manchin Joe ManchinTrump haunts Biden vaccine mandate in courts IRS data proves Trump tax cuts benefited middle, working-class Americans most Overnight Energy & Environment — Presented by ExxonMobil — Dems press drillers over methane leaks MORE (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday shot down a push by Speaker Nancy Pelosi Nancy PelosiUS expected to announce diplomatic boycott of Beijing Olympics soon: report Pressure grows to remove Boebert from committees Lawmakers remember Bob Dole: 'Bona fide American hero' MORE (D-Calif.) to get a deal on legislative text of a sweeping spending bill before a House vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Pelosi told reporters earlier Wednesday that Democrats need to "have agreement in legislative language" before a vote on a bipartisan Senate-passed infrastructure bill, which is still expected to get a vote on the House floor on Thursday. Manchin, asked about the timeline, told reporters: "That won't happen." ADVERTISEMENT "We haven't been negotiating yet in a good faith. No one has been negotiating along those lines," Manchin added. New: Manchin told me “that won’t happen” when asked about Pelosi saying there needs to be deal on “legislative language” with WH on reconciliaton to get progressives to support infrastructure tomorrow “No one has been negotiating along those lines with the other parties here” pic.twitter.com/Aabgu0kbut — Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 29, 2021 Manchin's comments come after he warned reporters earlier this week that it was unlikely Democrats would even be able to reach a "framework" for the social spending bill, including a top-line price tag, which Democratic leadership had hoped to be able to offer to progressives to get them to vote for the Senate-passed bipartisan bill. Progressives have been pushing for months for Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema Kyrsten SinemaIRS data proves Trump tax cuts benefited middle, working-class Americans most Photos of the Week: Schumer, ASU protest and sea turtles Green groups spend big to promote climate policy MORE (D-Ariz.) to give them a reassurance that they'll support a massive spending bill of up to $3.5 trillion. Democrats need every senator in their party to back the plan with Republicans unanimously opposed to it. ADVERTISEMENT But neither have committed to supporting a larger bill. They've both warned they can't support a $3.5 trillion price tag, forcing Democrats to recalibrate on the size of the bill. Biden urged moderates to give him a top-line figure they could live with during a closed-door meeting last week, but Manchin reiterated on Wednesday that "we haven't talked about figures at all." Pelosi upped the stakes of the standoff between moderates and progressives, and the House and Senate, on Wednesday, telling reporters that a promise from the Senate centrists to support the larger "family" package won't be enough to spur the House to act. Instead, she wants legislative text to be drafted on that broader piece of Biden's agenda. "We come to a place where we have agreement in legislative language — not just principle, in legislative language — that the president supports," she said. "It has to be his standard." Pelosi cut a deal with moderates earlier this year to have a vote on the Senate-passed roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill by Sept. 27, though she delayed that vote until Thursday to try to defuse a progressive threat to vote against the bill. Though progressives aren't backing down in their threat to sink the infrastructure bill, delaying it would also risk alienating moderate Democrats who are trying to get the Senate legislation passed quickly. Manchin, speaking to reporters, pushed for the House to pass the bipartisan bill and then for Democrats to keep negotiating on the reconciliation bill. "All we need to do is pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, sit down and start negotiating in faith," Manchin said. Updated at 1:03 p.m.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-defense-secretary-blames-state-department-for-chaotic-afghan-civilian-evacuation

Biden Defense Secretary Blames State Department For ‘Chaotic’ Civilian Evacuation From Afghanistan

Biden administration Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin laid the blame for the “chaotic” evacuation of American civilians, green card holders, and Afghan citizens with special immigrant visas (SIVs) at the feet of the Biden administration State Department in his testimony to Congress on Wednesday. Pentagon officials also labeled the scene “chaotic” themselves, telling members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that while they were able to offer their “input” to the State Department, they were ultimately in Afghanistan to serve a separate mission and that the military evacuation and the civilian evacuation were handled by two different teams of people. The civilian evacuation, of course, made headlines across the globe, as thousands of Afghan residents, Americans, and SIVs, swarmed Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in a mad dash to leave the country before coalition forces withdrew, leaving the Taliban in charge. The U.S. government has struggled to explain why hundreds of Americans were reportedly left behind when U.S. forces left Afghanistan, and the State Department, especially, has been reticent to give hard numbers on how many Americans remain in or near Kabul, and how many Afghans still require evacuation. Austin told Congress Wednesday that the blame for the confusion lies squarely with the State Department, particularly the decision to delay beginning evacuations and move slowly in the days before the president’s self-imposed August 31st deadline. That was a “State Department call,” Austin said. “We provide an input, as I said in my opening statement, to the State Department,” he added, noting that the State Department was being “cautioned” by then-president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, that “if they withdrew American citizens and SIV applicants at a pace that was too fast, it would cause a collapse of the government that we were trying to prevent.” Ghani, of course, left in a private aircraft just as the Taliban entered Kabul, leaving a power vacuum. “We certainly would have liked to see it go faster or sooner,” Austin said in response to questions. “But, again, they had a number of things to think through as well.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, also seemed to slough off responsibility for the civilian evacuation. “I just want to be clear – we’re talking about two different missions,” Milley told members of Congress. “The retrograde of troops…that is complete by mid-July, and that was done, actually, without any significant incident. And that’s the handover of 11 bases, the bringing out of a lot of equipment — that was done under the command of Gen. Miller.” “Noncombatant evacuation operation is different,” Milley said. “Noncombat operation – that was done under conditions of great volatility, great violence, great threat.” “That’s a different operation,” he added. “And I think, that, in the first two days as we saw, were not only chaotic, but violent and high-risk.” A suicide bomber, who made it past Taliban checkpoints to an HKIA gate where the U.S. military was processing evacuees, managed to kill more than a hundred people, including 13 U.S. soldiers. The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/09/28/democrats-must-unify-infrastructure/5889676001/

Democrats must to prevent Republican obstruction

Brazile: Democrats need to unify on infrastructure to fight GOP obstruction Most Republicans in Congress are determined to put former President Trump first and America last. Democrats should put America first: Compromise Show Caption Hide Caption White House: What we are trying to do in Congress 'is hard' The White House says President Joe Biden knows getting his agenda through Congress "is hard" but he is determined to work with Democratic leadership to win the votes. (Sept. 27) AP Democrats paralyzed by internal feuding should unite this week to pass both the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a scaled-down version of President Biden’s $3.5 trillion plan to benefit parents, children, seniors and our environment. Congressional Republicans, who are now a cult of personality worshiping former President Donald Trump, have made it clear that they will do everything possible to kill both these extraordinarily beneficial bills. By sabotaging our nation and harming the American people, GOP lawmakers believe they will make it easier for Trump to declare President Joe Biden a failure and run against him in 2024. Most are determined to put Trump first and America last because they are terrified of angering the grievance-filled defeated president, lest he oppose them in primaries. Infrastructure bill stalled in the Senate The infrastructure bill, which was passed by the Senate in August, would provide badly needed investments in roads, bridges, mass transit, railroads, ports, airports, electric vehicle charging stations, electric school buses, water treatment and storage, pipeline safety, replacement of lead pipes, pollution cleanup, the electric power grid and more – and, according to Moody's Analytics, create more than 600,000 jobs. Unfortunately, progressive Democrats in the House are holding the Senate bill hostage, demanding unanimous agreement first by all Democrats in the Senate and nearly all in the House to approve spending $3.5 trillion over 10 years on a long list of outstanding programs. The larger bill includes: guaranteed paid family, parental and personal sick leave; the extension of expanded earned income tax credits, and child and dependent care tax credits; free preschool; federally subsidized child care up to age 5; an expanded child nutrition program; free community college; larger Pell Grants to aid low-income college students; an expansion of Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing care; actions to lower prescription drug prices; and programs to combat climate change. Democrats want to pay for their new spending by raising taxes on corporations and the rich. They also want to close loopholes that enable some of the super rich and giant companies to pay little or no taxes. As someone who supports both these bills, I urge House Democrats to give final legislative passage to the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill when it comes up for a vote this week and send it to Biden to sign into law. Then they should pass a smaller compromise version of the $3.5 trillion bill that can gain the support of moderate Democrats in the House and Senate who don’t want to spend as much. Larry Hogan: Maryland governor to Congress: The infrastructure bill drama is arcane. 'Just get it done.' Democrats can pass the bill in Senate under the reconciliation process, which means they just need a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than the 60-vote supermajority needed to stop a Republican filibuster. If all 50 Democrats support a bill, Vice President Kamala Harris will provide the 51st and tie-breaking vote. My fellow Democrats, compromise and get something done for the American people. Take the advice of The Rolling Stones, who sang in 1969: “You can’t always get what you want/But if you try sometimes/Well you just might find/You get what you need.” A time for compromise, growth If Democrats pick up congressional seats in the 2022 elections, we can increase our investment in the valuable programs that must be cut now to reach a compromise. But if Democrats deadlock, it makes it more likely we will lose our majorities in the House, the Senate or both next year. We can then expect Republicans to cut spending on programs that help average Americans and those in the greatest need, and slash taxes for the rich and corporations. They rewarded their rich donors with tax cuts that sharply increased the deficit in 2017, and they will do it again if they have the chance. Republicans are also showing their true colors – playing politics to help Trump no matter how much harm they inflict on the American people – with their opposition to raising the federal debt ceiling and to funding government past the end of the fiscal year Thursday. They raised the debt ceiling many times in the past when Republicans were in the White House, but now they are determined to throw a hand grenade into our economy just to make Biden and Democrats look bad. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., made it clear in May that he had no interest in compromising with Democrats in Congress or with Biden when he said: “100% of our focus is on stopping this new administration.” McConnell made a similar comment in 2010, saying: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Infrastructure: Mold in the cafeteria: Schools' crumbling infrastructure needs Congress to invest in kids There’s an old saying that “politics is the art of compromise.” Today, too many elected officials in both parties reject compromise and boast incessantly about how hard they will fight their political opponents, as if they were prizefighters rather than lawmakers. Fighting without compromise may make lawmakers feel good and please their bases. But the job of lawmakers is to make laws to improve the lives of the American people, not to fight endlessly without getting anything done. Democrats must unite and not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, an ABC News contributor, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University. She previously served as interim chair of the Democratic National Committee and of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute, and managed the Gore campaign in 2000.

https://nypost.com/2021/09/28/biden-democrats-have-declared-war-on-american-small-biz/

Biden Democrats have declared war on American small biz

Thousands of America’s small businesses are teetering on the edge of permanent closure, and Democrats in Washington are about to give them one final shove. The result will be the further fraying of our social fabric and the permanent loss of working-class jobs. Over the last several months, small businesses persevered the best they could, holding on until “temporary” welfare programs driving people away from work expired. But if there were any doubt left that Dems’ ultimate goal wasn’t a temporary boost to Americans most impacted by lockdowns, but rather a calculated step toward government control and socialism, their proposed $4.3 trillion tax-and-spend bill removes it all ($4.3 trillion is the true cost, as we learned in the Budget Committee). Walk down any main street or city avenue in America today, and you will see sign after sign with help-wanted pleas, hiring incentives or apologies in advance for shortened hours and delayed service due to staff shortages. There are nearly 11 million job openings nationwide, and our small businesses are trying to get back on their feet after the crushing lockdowns. But where are the workers? The short answer is that the Biden administration is more interested in handouts that pay more, or just as much, to stay home than going back to work. Since taking office, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have prioritized big government over earned pay stubs. The Democratic tax-and-spend plan won’t solve this problem. The proposal would eliminate the child tax credit as we know it, replacing it with welfare without any work requirement. Republicans believe the family is the foundation of a strong society, which is why we have supported expanding the child tax credit in the past. But we also know work establishes purpose, and there is no government substitute for a job and an earned income. By removing a work requirement, the government is putting itself in competition with small businesses. And as the last year has proved, small businesses operating on tight margins are no match for the government printing press or mandate machine. Another damaging effect of $4.3 trillion of government spending is continued inflation. It’s good for Americans to have more money in their pockets, but that is best achieved through lower taxes, not ill-conceived labor policies and subsidies that render the dollar worthless. After already passing nearly $2 trillion in spending this year, our economy is running at the highest rate of inflation in 13 years. That means higher prices for everyday goods for families and businesses. This isn’t just an indicator reserved for economists: “Sysco, one of the nation’s biggest food distributors, showed food inflation of 10.2 percent on its most recent quarterly report, increases that are passed along to restaurants and to the restaurants’ customers in turn,” The Washington Post reported. Moreover, even wage gains for lower-wage workers are negated by these higher consumer costs. A Democratic agenda that artificially boosts demand through government stimulus while curtailing supply through a self-inflicted labor crisis and higher energy costs will only make this situation worse. Finally, the Democrats are planning the largest tax increase in history. The headliner is the increased corporate tax rate, which will affect all businesses and ultimately their employees. In 2017, Republicans in Congress and then-President Donald Trump slashed the corporate rate to 21 percent, from 35 percent, resulting in the greatest economy we’ve seen in a generation. Jobs and wages increased at historic levels for Americans across the socio-economic spectrum. Biden and the Democrats’ plan raises the corporate tax rate to 26.5 percent, even further away from a proposed “global minimum tax” of 19 percent that will drive more businesses overseas, further discouraging production and innovation in America. The Democrats argue that big business can afford to pay more. But aside from their hypocrisy that creates new carve-outs for rich university endowments like Harvard, their plan hurts the little guy. By removing deductions and increasing taxes by nearly 4 percent for business owners that operate as “pass throughs,” the plan puts at risk small businesses that have been struggling since March 2020 — and the new ones created since the pandemic under assumed tax burdens. As a former small-business owner, I know these conditions aren’t sustainable. Americans don’t deserve to bear the brunt of policies pushed by people in Washington who will never feel the effects of them, and who will receive a healthy paycheck each month no matter what. The Democrats’ idea of an economic plan is to punish citizens who are producing for our country and working to support their families, while rewarding themselves and others for staying home. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is the House minority leader.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-most-dangerous-man-in-america/

The Most Dangerous Man in America

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley arrives before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan and plans for future counterterrorism operations on Capitol Hill on September 28, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images) Four-star General Mark A. Milley, 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and highest-ranking officer in the United States Armed Forces, is a walking answer to the unasked question, “What if Jim Mattis were fat and dumb?” With his fellow four-star and President Trump’s first secretary of defense, Milley shares a powerful but muted arrogance, a strong but less than rabid hawkishness, a clear political ambition that nonetheless defies immediate identification, and the obvious desire to be seen as a 21st-century warrior-scholar. He does not share with Mattis the requisite intelligence to uphold these delusions of soldier-sagehood, nor the basic capacities required to competently lead men and fight wars. Milley’s warfighting incompetence—shared by almost all the top military brass—was on full display in the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal executed last month, and the chairman, along with CENTCOM commander General Kenneth McKenzie and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (himself a retired four-star), was called yesterday before the United States Senate Armed Services Committee to answer for the failure. While granting an equivocal admission that “it is clear, it is obvious, the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted, with the Taliban now in power in Kabul,” Milley left it unclear whether he would have let the war end on any terms at all, if it were up to him. After suggesting that he had played a part in killing President Trump’s initial order to end the war by January 2021, Milley recounted: On 17 November [2020], we received a new order to reduce levels to 2,500, plus enabling forces, no later than 15 January [2021]. When President Biden was inaugurated [on 20 January] there were approximately 3,500 U.S. troops, 5,400 NATO troops, and 6,300 contractors in Afghanistan with the specified task of train, advise, and assist, along with a small contingent of counterterrorism forces. The strategic situation at inauguration was stalemate. In other words: Either deliberately or through a fundamental inability to carry out their basic responsibilities, the chairman and other military leaders had failed to meet the president’s ordered drawdown target by a full thousand troops. (It seems no senator noticed this discrepancy, as none pressed the general further on the matter.) Further, Milley, McKenzie, and Austin all testified repeatedly that they had continued to advise in favor of that residual force of 2,500—the reduction to which they had spectacularly failed to execute the first time it was ordered by their commander-in-chief—up to the bitter end, and apparently in perpetuity. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pressed Secretary Austin on what exactly this meant. To Warren’s questioning on what another year in Afghanistan would have looked like, Austin answered simply: “If you stayed there at a posture of 2,500 certainly you’d be in a fight with the Taliban and you’d have to reinforce yourself.” That is, the safe, modest presence for security and support has always been a lie; any presence past the withdrawal deadline would have meant renewed war with the Taliban, revamped deployment of American service members, and further combat casualties in America’s longest and most fruitless war. Senator Warren also drove home that fruitlessness, pointing out the fact that the Taliban takeover was well underway long before the withdrawal of American troops, and that neither the Afghan nor the American people had anything to show for two decades of nation building. What’s more, she effectively forced Austin to admit that the failure to execute the withdrawal safely was entirely the fault of military leaders, and not the civilian authorities. And yet, speaking to that botched withdrawal, Milley managed to simultaneously pat himself and his buddies on the back and pander to patriotic impulse with the dead American troops as props: Although the NEO [noncombatant evacuation operation] was unprecedented as the largest air evacuation in history, evacuating 124,000 people, it came at an incredible cost of 11 marines, one soldier, and a Navy corpsman. Those 13 gave their lives so that people they never met will have an opportunity to live in freedom. Maybe Milley really is that much of a naive idealist. But it seems much more likely that the general knows those 13 Americans gave their lives because he and his peers could not, or would not, do their jobs properly. Abstractions about some universal “opportunity to live in freedom” in a homogenized global liberal order are what got us into this mess in the first place. But Milley is predictably hesitant to take much of the blame: Over the course of four presidents, 12 secretaries of defense, seven chairmen, ten CENTCOM commanders, 20 commanders in Afghanistan, hundreds of congressional delegation visits, and 20 years of congressional oversight, there are many lessons to be learned. Two specific to the military that we need to take a look at, and we will, is [sic] “Did we mirror-image the development of the Afghan National Army?” and the second is the rapid collapse, unprecedented rapid collapse of the Afghan military in only 11 days in August. Many lessons to be learned from two decades of war, two trillion dollars spent, and thousands upon thousands of lives snuffed out; of those lessons, exactly two must be learned by Milley himself and dealt with in his job. Two. Don’t hold your breath for any meaningful reform. Milley then pivoted to pander once again: “However, one lesson must never be forgotten: Every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine who served there in Afghanistan for 20 consecutive years protected our country from attack by terrorists, and for that they should be forever proud and we should be forever grateful.” Of course, this sentence does more to legitimize the misadventure directed by Milley and his ilk (on the grounds that it hypothetically might have “protected our country from attack by terrorists,” thus justifying the human and financial costs) than to actually thank the men and woman whose lives and wellbeing they sacrificed. (Nor was this the only pseudo-sentimental piffle the general trotted out on Tuesday; asked why American intelligence and military leaders failed to predict the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and military, Milley answered, “You can’t measure the human heart with a machine.”) Perhaps the most significant part of Milley’s testimony, though, was his answer to allegations in the media—taken from the Bobs Woodward and Costa’s forthcoming book Peril—that he had promised to warn China if the president ever ordered an attack against them, and that he had made senior military officials swear an oath not to take orders from the commander-in-chief unless Milley himself was involved. Regarding China, the Princeton-educated Milley assured the committee that he was merely taking necessary steps to prevent conflict between “great powers that are armed with the world’s most deadliest weapons.” He insisted that the two calls in question were well within his routine responsibilities as chairman, but simply neglected to comment on the allegations that he had promised to warn his Chinese counterpart of any U.S. action—which, of course, had been the most concerning part of the report by far. As far as the extra-constitutional oath supposedly extracted from other officers, Milley said that the meeting in question was routine and that he had gone over communication protocols, but did not comment on whether any such oath had taken place. Concerning his January 8 call with Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Milley suggested that he had disagreed with the speaker where he could, or perhaps tried to stay above the fray, without addressing one of the key lines from the transcript: “I agree with you on everything.” All in all, the general’s congressional testimony reinforced what many have speculated ever since reports emerged that SecDef Esper had in fact known about the “secret” calls to China: That in talking to Woodward, Costa, and others, Milley exaggerated his own role as a Resistance hero, perhaps underestimating the blowback from the right and others interested in civilian control of the military. It’s worth considering why he might have done that. The American Enterprise Institutes’s Kori Schake was quoted in the New York Times on Monday pointing out: “I have yet to read a book about policymaking in the Trump administration that doesn’t quote General Milley directly, or quote friends of Milley casting his actions in the best possible light.” By all appearances, the chairman of the joint chiefs has been actively courting the media, and carefully (so to speak) curating his public political image. The Times‘ explanation for this is that the soldier simply wants to make up for crossing Lafayette Square with President Trump on June 1, 2020. Even as late as Monday, the paper was republishing the long-discredited lie that “troops had used chemical spray to clear the area of protesters so that the president could walk, untroubled, through the park to St. John’s Church.” Thus, Milley “is still trying to make amends” for appearing to dabble in politics, and in a less than opportune moment optically. (The park had actually been cleared in accordance with a preexisting plan to push the security barrier back further from the White House, but images of protestors being pushed out soon before the president, the general, and others crossed the square—and the false narrative crafted around them—stuck.) But why was the general participating in a fundamentally political photo op to begin with? (Worth noting briefly: alongside Milley in the infamous pictures from that day, President Trump looks thin, Bill Barr looks bulimic, and Jared Kushner simply disappears—another key testament to the general’s inadequacy as a soldier.) It cannot have had anything to do with his job as the chief military advisor to the president. But it can be easily understood as a bungled installment in a balancing act between perceived neutrality and perceived Trump loyalism. His presence on June 1 only makes sense if we assume he wanted to curry political favor with the right. Characteristically, he failed. But now, in light of these latest revelations, Milley has become a darling of the neocon and NeverTrumper media. Those who despise the previous president have come to consider Milley something of a hero, the sole “adult in the room” who managed to counteract the commander-in-chief who had appointed him. To those interested in extending the United States’ overseas commitments, Milley can be counted on to ensure that endless war stays that way. These are two very powerful constituencies, and the long-converging combination of neoconservative money with popular anti-Trump sentiment on the center-left and center-right could prove formidable in the future. This could be worth keeping in mind, given that the general’s activity—courting powerful factions of the race-obsessed left, appending himself to key politicians of both parties, chasing media attention left and right—suggests he does not intend to pursue the quiet life of military-industrial complex sinecures automatically reserved for retiring four-stars. At 63, Milley’s days in uniform are numbered—but 2024 is just around the corner.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/unvaccinated-police-nurses-getting-fired-isn-t-tragedy-n1280288

Unvaccinated police and nurses getting fired isn't a tragedy

Call me crazy, but I think public servants should first and foremost serve the public. That’s not to say they deserve fewer individual rights than others, but it is to say they should understand the trade-off between those rights and the rights of the public whose interests they were put in place to protect. That includes people who are employed by law enforcement, military and health care services, all of whom have, over the last year and a half, been heralded in some circles as vital first responders who have helped keep society running throughout the pandemic. This is why I’ve had very little patience with people in these fields who have refused to get Covid-19 vaccinations. The issue for them, unlike for some who are still hesitant, isn’t a lack of access. Neither is it about a lack of information. Instead, they’ve had early access to the vaccines, ample opportunity to be educated about their safety and more than enough time to figure out that it’s in their communities’ best interests that they be vaccinated. Which is why recent reports of police officers’ and health care staffers’ losing their jobs because they choose to remain unvaccinated sound entirely appropriate to me. It’s important to maintain perspective: The number of people who have actually been penalized by vaccination mandates is exceedingly small. Massachusetts is requiring all of its executive department employees to get their Covid shots before Oct. 17. The State Police union has been trying to get around this requirement given that up to a fifth of its 1,800 members are unvaccinated, per the union’s attorney. After a judge denied the union's request to put the governor’s order on hold, the president of the union put out a statement claiming that “dozens of troopers have already submitted their resignation paperwork, some of whom plan to return to other departments offering reasonable alternatives such as mask wearing and regular testing.” There are two things wrong with that: First, “dozens” is vague — but it’s also not how you would describe it if all 350 or so unvaccinated state troopers had decided to call it quits. Second, according to the spokesperson for the State Police, only one trooper has actually filed a resignation. The number of people who have actually been penalized by vaccine mandates is exceedingly small. It mirrors the bluster and panic we’ve seen people like Fox News host Tucker Carlson spread about the Pentagon’s decision last month to require all active-duty U.S. service members to be vaccinated by Dec. 15. “Hundreds of Navy SEALs” could resign because of the mandate, fretted a former GOP member of Congress. Instead, we’ve seen one entirely baseless story about 27 Air Force pilots’ resigning go viral and one case of an Army officer who resigned because of the “Marxist takeover” the mandate represented. Contrary to the fearmongering, the rate of service members with at least one shot had gone up from 76 percent to 83 percent earlier this month. We’ll see how high that is in two months, when those still refusing vaccinations “and have not been given an exemption will face suspension or even dismissal.” Meanwhile, the consequences of refusing inoculation can be severe for patients under the care of health care workers, especially those who deal with immunocompromised adults and unvaccinated children. And yet a higher-than-expected number of people in the health care field remain unvaccinated. We’re starting to see that part of the industry face consequences. The head of New York City’s public hospital system announced Monday that about 5,000 of its 43,000 workers — or about 12 percent — were still unvaccinated. That's after 3,000 workers got their first shots in the week before the city's mandate kicked in. Those remaining staffers “cannot come to work and will not get paid; they're not being put on leave yet,” The New York Times’ Emma Fitzsimmons reported. In North Carolina, a hospital system suspended 375 workers and gave them five days to comply with its mandatory vaccination policy. By Monday, almost 200 of them had already gotten their first doses, according to a spokesperson. Those who hadn’t were considered to have voluntarily resigned, the hospital system — which operates 15 hospitals and 800 clinics — confirmed on Tuesday. At most, 0.5 percent of the system’s 35,000 employees were negatively affected by the mandate. The same pattern repeats in most places you look. Houston Methodist Hospital had 153 staffers resign or be fired for defying its vaccination mandate, or about 0.6 percent of its 25,000 employees. The CBS affiliate in Baltimore found a grand total of one hospital staffer who had quit because of the city’s and the state’s mandates. All in all, there really doesn’t appear to be a mass movement of people choosing to leave their jobs over vaccinations. And we’re seeing, both anecdotally and through the data, that mandates move the needle on getting more people protected against Covid-19. And yet across the country, police departments and their unions have spent the last year refusing to accept vaccination mandates. The people who are in those careers have entered fields in which their employment is conditioned on their willingness to put the safety of their communities first. If they now find that they are unwilling to do so by helping contain a deadly pandemic? Then, frankly, they have been in the wrong line of work this whole time.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/america-having-violence-wave-not-crime-wave/620234/

America Is Having a Violence Wave, Not a Crime Wave

A historic rise in homicides in 2020—and continued bloodshed in 2021—has incited fears that after years of plummeting crime rates, the U.S. could be headed back to the bad old days, when a crime wave gripped the country from the 1970s to the 1990s. But the FBI’s “Uniform Crime Report” for 2020, released Monday, suggests something stranger: Perhaps America is in the midst of what is specifically a violence wave, not a broad crime wave. Even as violent crime rose, led by significant jumps in murders and aggravated assaults, property crime continued a years-long decline. “There was no crime wave—there was a tsunami of lethal violence, and that’s it,” Philip Cook, a crime expert at Duke University, wrote to me in an email. The murder rate rose by nearly 30 percent, the largest increase on record. There were about 21,500 murders, or 6.5 per 100,000 people. Aggravated assault, the most common form of violent crime, rose 12 percent. Among other components of the violent-crime rate, robbery actually decreased and rape reports were flat. But property crimes overall fell 8 percent, led by drops in burglary and larceny—though motor-vehicle theft increased. David A. Graham: Murders are spiking in America This kind of divergence is very unusual, especially given how much violent crime rose. On the most basic level, the culprits for the strange year in statistics are clear: guns, the coronavirus, and protests. Big changes in the crime rate correlate with the start of the pandemic and major protests after the murder of George Floyd, as I noted last week, but figuring out how these factors work and how they are entangled with one another is difficult and perhaps impossible. Some logical surmises exist for why the pandemic would have driven down property crime. More people were at home in 2020, and burglars generally avoid occupied houses, hence the drop in burglaries. That might also explain why robberies, a violent crime, sank—if fewer people are on the street and many businesses are closed, a would-be robber has fewer opportunities—but vehicle thefts, a property crime, rose, because cars were left on streets rather than being driven to work. Yet if the pandemic helped depress property crime, the result follows a years-long trend. Since a recent peak in 1991, overall property-crime rates rose only once. How the pandemic and last summer’s protests connect to the rise in violence is more complicated. The stress and strain of the pandemic on citizens—lost jobs, sick relatives, being forced into close quarters—could increase a propensity for violence. Many government and nongovernment programs that create diversions from conflict were closed, including formal education, after-school curricula, and violence-interruption programs. Law-enforcement officers were social distancing and policing less directly. An increase in murders in many cities also corresponds closely to protests over the summer of 2020, though experts aren’t sure why. One theory is that police who were busy patrolling some of the largest protests in American history were not patrolling other streets. Officers also may have pulled back from policing, either as a counterprotest or as an attempt to respond to political pressures. Attention to police violence against citizens can delegitimize police in the public’s eyes, which could lead to people being more inclined to take justice into their own hands, or simply not to report crimes they witnessed. Historically, violent crime and property crime have moved in concert, but they previously diverged in 2015 and 2016, following an earlier round of widespread protests after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri. One factor in the shocking increase in violence is very clear: “The rise in violence in 2020 appears to be almost entirely a rise in gun violence, rather than a more general increase in all forms of crime,” the Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey wrote to me in an email. In an average year, guns account for roughly two-thirds of American homicides, but in 2020, 77 percent of murders were shootings. More Americans are carrying guns, both legally and illegally, than they have in the past. Firearms sales shot up last year, and so did police retrievals of illegal guns. “You can ask law-abiding people or you can ask people who do not abide by the law, ‘Why are you armed with a firearm?’ ‘I need to protect myself,’” says Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. That creates a vicious cycle: More people carrying guns tends to result in more shootings, which in turn heightens the desire to carry a weapon for protection. When crime is decreasing, this dynamic helps it continue to fall, but once it begins to rise, the feedback loop turns ugly. Several analyses have found that murders have continued to rise this year, though not as sharply as last year. Zaid Jilani: Progressive denial won’t stop violent crime The FBI numbers could be wrong. Homicide statistics are very reliable because the crime produces a body or a missing person, but other categories are hazier because they rely on reports. People might fail to report crimes for various reasons: Maybe they are distrustful of the police because of cases like Floyd’s murder; maybe they see enough crime going unsolved in their neighborhood that they conclude it’s pointless to call the cops. In 2020, reports of drug crimes dropped sharply, even as overdoses reached a record of more than 93,000—suggesting that drug arrests, not use, had changed. This challenge is compounded by an overhaul of how the FBI gathers its numbers. One state crime-data official told The Washington Post that the country would have dependable data “in five or six years,” not an especially encouraging prediction. Because the rates of many crimes fell in 2020 and because murder rates remain well below their early-’90s peak, some observers have downplayed last year’s statistics. Often, warnings not to overinterpret the numbers come from advocates for worthy and necessary causes such as police reform and decarceration. “It’s disingenuous in the face of a historic 30 percent rise in homicide to say that overall crime is down, simply because the majority of crime is low-level misdemeanors,” Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and a former Justice Department official, told me. “That does not capture the lived experience of the people who are impacted.” Thinking about the problem facing the country as a violence wave rather than a crime wave might help sidestep that dilemma, though. It doesn’t overhype the statistical evidence to suggest a widespread crime wave, in a way that might panic the public and encourage heavy-handed and unjust backlash, nor does it downplay the seriousness of violence in some communities.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/09/28/democrats-would-prefer-that-you-ignore-all-of-the-violent-crime-around-you-n1520273

Democrats Would Prefer That You Ignore the Violent Crime

As if it weren’t already obvious from looking outside our own windows or reading the news, the FBI recently confirmed that Americans weren’t exactly on our best behavior last year during all of the plague and riot stuff. My colleague A.J. Kaufman had the story: The FBI’s annual report Monday made official what most unfortunately presumed: The United States in 2020 experienced the biggest rise in murders since the start of national record-keeping 60 years ago. The Uniform Crime Report detailed a murder increase of nearly 30 percent. The previous largest one-year change was a 12.7 percent increase back in 1968. The national rate of murders per 100,000, however, still remains about one-third below the rate in the early 1990s. The FBI data show around 21,500 total murders last year, which is 5,000 more murders than in 2019. More than three-fourths of reported murders in 2020 were committed with a firearm, the highest rate ever reported. Now before you start jumping to conclusions about a correlation between the leftist fever to defund the police and a huge jump in the nation’s murder rate, you should probably be aware of the fact that the Democrats want you to know that there’s no problem at all. That’s right, the same people who want us all to live in mortal fear of being breathed on by a stranger at Kroeger are trying to poof away a pile of bodies. City Journal: A robust debate has broken out over the underlying causes of the surge in violence across the country that began last summer. Was the pandemic to blame, or the riots after George Floyd’s death? That debate has been healthy, but an indefensible position occasionally crops up: partisans who insist, against all evidence, that rising crime is nothing to worry about. That was the view taken by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who labeled such concerns “hysteria” this past June. And it’s the view propounded in a new report from the think tank Third Way, whose policy chief, Jim Kessler, similarly suggests that “hysteria” about crime has gripped the nation. Third Way’s brief has attracted the attention of commentators eager to downplay rising violence. NBC’s writeup on the report has been widely shared. But the report’s claims that the crime wave is made up don’t withstand scrutiny. Even Third Way’s own statistics confirm the surge in violent crime that serious analysts have been warning about. It’s not surprising that AOC had the wrong take–she is America’s Dumbest Bartender, after all. NBC’s eternal leftist hackery never surprises either. In the write-up mentioned above, the headline assures us that “overall crime” was down. The statement was technically true, but NBC was practically employing a team to bury the lede there. It is no secret that statistics can be spun, tortured, and rearranged in ways that can make a little part of what’s being examined seem like the whole thing. That is precisely what happened with the conclusion from Third Way. More from City Journal: These results are exactly what anyone following crime statistics since last year would expect: a decline in most property crime (as well as rape, which is infamously difficult to track), and an increase in homicide, assault (a proxy for shootings), and grand theft auto. Explaining that trend is simple. Most property crimes fell as lockdowns and Covid restrictions sent people home and shuttered businesses, reducing the opportunity for offending. Simultaneously, grand theft auto rose as cars and streets became less attended. Violence, meantime, spiked last summer, a trend likely driven by anti-police protests and ensuing de-policing. Property crime might have risen, too, except that concurrent policy pressures kept opportunities for offending low while funneling trillions of dollars in relief to individuals who might otherwise have turned to theft amid the recession. Inexplicably, Third Way’s analysts do not consider this explanation. Instead, they reduce any increase in crime to the murder spike, waving away the aggravated-assault increase (and the ample evidence of surging gun violence). Murder may be up 30 percent, they argue, but property crime is down; nothing to see here. I suppose we can take comfort in the fact that all of those extra dead people probably didn’t have their houses broken into. And Nicole Brown no longer had a headache after O.J. left that night. The reason that the people who are left-of-center in American politics want to downplay the carnage is that they all spent the summer of 2020 cheering it on. “Cops Bad, Violence Good” was their summer lockdown vacation theme. We all remember the image of the CNN reporter standing in front of a burning building and telling his audience that the protests were “mostly peaceful.” These leftist cretins were spinning the violence while it was happening, so of course they are going to continue to do so now. There is also the fact that any discussion of an increase in violent crimes last year brings to the fore the above-mentioned correlation with their defund the police insanity, which began proving itself to be a horrible idea almost immediately. Democrats still want you to be afraid, but only of people who won’t get vaccinated or wear masks while taking a shower. The real scary stuff — murder, assault, spiraling inflation, a resurgent al Qaeda — is just a product of your anti-science Rethuglican imagination. They won’t be happy until we are permanently living in a post-reality reality.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/28/opinions/debt-ceiling-platinum-coin-biden-baker/index.html

Joe Biden could be tempted to reach for the platinum coin

(CNN) On Monday night -- and with a Thursday deadline to fund the government bearing down -- Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have suspended the United States' debt limit. The move puts the country at risk of default, thereby potentially tanking the economy and delaying payments to millions. This at the same time President Biden and Democrats are advancing a make-or-break effort to pass a multitrillion-dollar, 10-year economic and climate package. Debt limit negotiations continue -- but Biden does have an ace in the hole if Congress doesn't suspend the debt limit. Such a move would be ridiculous, of course, but the whole standoff on the debt is ridiculous. If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republicans insist on pushing it, Biden could well decide to get out the platinum coin. Why are we at this point? In the United States, we periodically -- like now -- get a charade where Republicans and Democrats fight over increasing the debt limit to allow for the borrowing that they have already approved. We will almost certainly get through it -- not getting through it would be catastrophic -- but there may be a lot of turmoil in financial markets before we do. It is important to understand what is at stake. Other than Denmark , our country is alone in the world in having a self-imposed limit on the amount of money it can borrow. In other countries, legislatures approve spending and taxes, and governments borrow to cover any gaps. In the United States, Congress authorizes spending and sets taxing levels, and then separately sets a limit on how much the country can borrow. The debt limit we are about to hit was due to actions of both parties. Much of the recent increase in the debt was incurred by pandemic spending that had overwhelming bipartisan support . But the new spending under President Biden is only a small part of this story. The tax cuts pushed through earlier b y former President Donald Trump and a Republican Congress also played a large role. Congress has regularly raised the debt limit to allow the Treasury to borrow the money needed to pay our bills, but once again the Treasury is hitting the limits of authorized borrowing. There is some uncertainty about when this will happen, mainly because of the irregularity of tax collections, but the department predicts that it will be some time in mid-October If the debt limit is not increased by then, the government will be unable to borrow to cover its normal expenses, including Social Security payments, salaries for government workers and interest payments on the debt. The debt limit is not a sacred principle in the Constitution. It is simply a quirk in the law that was put in place in 1917 to facilitate borrowing to pay for World War I. It is absurd that it now leads to these high-tension showdowns. The Democrats have added to the tension by linking the bill raising the debt ceiling to the bill to extend the government's funding. The bill to extend the government's funding is absolutely standard. Congress routinely passes "continuing resolutions" that essentially keep funding in place at the prior year's level until Congress makes any changes it wants. The fiscal year ends on Thursday, September 30. After midnight, large segments of the government will not have funding to continue to operate. Hence, if the debt ceiling/continuing resolution bill is not approved, much of the government will have to shut down on Friday. This will include national parks and museums, the Social Security Administration, which processes new benefit claims, and much of the rest of the government. Essential services will be maintained, but close to 60% of the federal workforce may not be working on Friday. A shutdown would be a major problem for the country. Even a short shutdown will cause major obstacles for an economy already struggling to overcome pandemic-related shortages. But as bad as a shutdown will be, failing to increase the debt ceiling will be even worse. It means the government will not be able to pay its bills, including pay for soldiers, Social Security checks and interest on government bonds. This is a game of chicken. Mitch McConnell wants the Biden administration to pay a big price to get him on board on increasing the debt ceiling. We have been in this situation before. In 2011, McConnell forced President Barack Obama to accept large cuts to the federal budget. These cuts both crippled several important government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service and the Justice Department, and slowed the pace of the recovery. The strong stimulus in the CARES Acts and the American Recovery Act under this administration has led to a rapid, but still not full, recovery from the pandemic recession. The unemployment rate is now down to 5.2% just a year and a half after the start of the recession that had rapidly hiked unemployment in just a few months. Get our free weekly newsletter Sign up for CNN Opinion's new newsletter. Join us on Twitter and Facebook By contrast, in part due to the spending cuts demanded by McConnell in an earlier standoff 10 years ago, growth in demand, GDP, and employment was very slow following the Great Recession . The unemployment rate did not fall to today's 5.2% level until July of 2015, almost eight years after the start of that recession.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-debt-limit-can-save-us/

Debt Limit: Republicans Should Push for Reform

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) arrives to speak to reporters following the weekly Senate Republican policy lunch at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., September 14, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters) How congressional Republicans can use the debt-limit vote to push meaningful reform In a gift to humanity, way back in 1917, the Second Liberty Bond Act established an aggregate debt limit. Since then, Congress, much to its chagrin, has had to lift the debt limit whenever it is about to be breached. There is perhaps no more painful vote for a politician of either party than the debt-limit vote. Spending increases can be celebrated as humane attempts to support social justice without raising a murmur from the electorate. But during these votes, everyone sweats profusely awaiting the final tally. That’s why it is common for the party out of power to slow-roll the debt-limit increase. It is a way to make the party in power own, perhaps unfairly, all the cumulative fiscal irresponsibility that has piled up since the last increase. It is the only time that those responsible for runaway spending are made to feel at least a little bit bad about it. Advertisement Advertisement So far, it has always worked out in the end. The government-debt limit is decried in the media as a horrible sideshow that risks the good credit rating of the U.S. government. We have been told that the world is about to end and that financial collapse is upon us if the ceiling is not lifted, until, like clockwork, victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat at the last minute. If it feels like the kabuki is getting old, perhaps that’s because it is. In 1949, the federal-debt limit was $49 billion. Since 1949 it has been increased 92 times, or more than once per year, allowing the debt to climb all the way to $28.5 trillion. The debt-limit show runs more often than the World Series! Advertisement To be sure, some of those debt-limit increases were almost as entertaining as the World Series, and sometimes they have actually led to sound policy. In 1979, for example, a Democratic Congress lifted the debt limit but required that future budgets be balanced. In 2011, the divided Congress lifted the debt limit but tied it to the Budget Control Act that was designed to reduce the deficit sharply. Advertisement Despite those minor victories, in the end, shame over lifting the debt limit has had little long-run impact. In 1947, government spending took up 13.81 percent of GDP. The July CBO estimate suggests that government spending as a portion of GDP will be just shy of 31 percent for 2021 — 10 percentage points higher than the levels reached in 1942, when the war machine was ramping up to engage in World War II. While votes over the government-debt limit are painful for politicians, the inexorable increase in debt indicates that it is largely toothless. Advertisement Today, Democrats are proposing to ram through a giant budget package that will continue to run deficits approaching World War II levels, but they are wary of lifting the debt limit all by themselves, for fear of scaring the tar out of voters. Sensing weakness, Republicans have vowed to make Democrats do it alone. If they do, the history just discussed will make it clear that Democrats will lift the debt limit (probably past the midterm), experience some pain, and then go on with their business as if nothing ever happened. A year from now, all will be forgotten, and government spending will have continued to trend upward. Against that backdrop, Republicans have a much smarter play than simple opposition. Over the past decade, an average of around 55 percent of Americans have said they are concerned “a great deal” about federal spending and the budget deficit, according to Gallup. A balanced budget would be appealing to those voters, and the current debt-limit vote can help Republicans achieve it and grab political credit for it. As a reminder, if the debt limit is hit, that just means that the government cannot borrow to fund current spending. It needs, in real time, to make sure that it has the revenues coming in to cover spending. It’s like a balanced-budget amendment on steroids. Of course, if we were to hit the debt limit in October, we would have few cash reserves, and little ability to pay interest and keep government running. That’s the problem. Republicans have tended not to think about the debt limit until the last minute. But if, on the other hand, Republicans plan ahead, and agree to lift the debt limit enough for say, the next three years of spending, but then require a supermajority of votes in the Senate to lift it thereafter, policymakers will have committed to a future balanced budget, while giving themselves a few years to get their ducks in a row to make it as painless as such a process can be. While a simple-majority vote could overrule the supermajority rule, the legislative history of such rules is that they tend to stick. It’s the easiest path imaginable to a balanced-budget amendment. Advertisement Democrats are terrified enough about the midterm elections that they might well take a deal that allows them to spread the blame around for the ten trillion or so dollars’ worth of debt that needs to be added to the limit now. If they do, Republicans should grab the opportunity to lock us into a path for a balanced budget. If they don’t, adopting this approach should be top of the agenda when they recapture Congress.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/29/it_looks_like_americas_energy_future_is_still_going_to_be_a_gas_796510.html

It Looks Like America's Energy Future Is Still Going to Be a Gas

The battle over President Joe Biden’s sweeping clean energy plan isn’t over, but there already appears to be a winner – natural gas. The fossil fuel will likely remain a mainstay of America’s electrical grid for some time, according to energy experts and lawmakers. That’s a big disappointment to liberal Democrats and environmentalists. In protests in cities and campuses nationwide, one of them fronted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, they made natural gas the new climate villain, replacing coal, the dirtier fossil fuel that’s fading in the states. Climate activists had pinned their hopes on the administration’s proposal to remake the energy industry at breakneck speed. It gives financial incentives to utilities to ramp up the deployment of clean energy sources such as wind and solar and would slow if not stop the expansion of gas-fired power plants. ... which has a large footprint in the home state of one of the Senate's linchpin Democratic votes, Joe Manchin. (West Virginia license plate, top image.) Progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticize the concession to natural gas ... But Sen. Joe Manchin, who controls climate policy as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in early September that he would block Biden’s ambitious plan and seek a middle ground. The West Virginian’s insistence that any climate policy must leave plenty of room for natural gas was criticized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among other progressives, as a favor to the fossil fuel industry, which has a large footprint in his home state. As Manchin tells it, hitting the brakes on natural gas is a risk he’s not willing to take. Although such a move would reduce carbon emissions – a goal the senator shares – it makes the nation’s aging and feeble grid more vulnerable to dangerous blackouts as wind and solar energy play a larger role. They don’t supply power when the wind stops blowing and the sun is down. So natural gas plants, which have contributed to the closing of hundreds of coal burners, need to anchor the grid until viable clean substitutes come of age. “The United States leads the world in emissions reductions and that’s largely because of the increased utilization of natural gas,” says Anne Bradbury, CEO of the gas and oil trade group American Exploration & Production Council. “It seems extremely shortsighted to be demonizing the use of natural gas.” The prospect that the fossil fuel will have more staying power than opponents had hoped is an early signpost of America’s energy future as Democrats aim to transform it – and much else in society – in its roughly $4 trillion spending snarl. Here are others. A Setback for Carbon Capture Environmental groups are getting in the way of the rollout of a technology that could eventually clean up gas plants, according to carbon capture advocates, which emit about half the emissions of coal. ... which, this group argues, could keep gas plants from overheating the planet. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other greens have a cold view of carbon capture technology ... The Carbon Capture Coalition, a group of energy and advocacy groups, has been lobbying for an increase in the federal tax credit for a technology that can remove more than 90% of carbon emissions from gas plants. The bigger subsidy is needed to kick-start the commercial rollout of large carbon-capture installations, much like the tax credits that spurred the expansion of wind and solar power. But groups like Greenpeace and the National Resources Defense Council are campaigning against federal support for the technology, arguing that it would needlessly extend the life of fossil fuels and delay the deployment of renewables. They have the upper hand. The House Ways & Means Committee failed to boost the tax credit as part of the big reconciliation bill it released earlier this month that carries the administration’s climate package. That may change if the bill reaches the Senate. Manchin is a big supporter of carbon capture. A Lack of Transparency Americans have had only a limited view of the consequential battle over Biden’s clean energy plan in Congress – which affects almost everyone who depends on electricity, and their pocketbooks. So far consumers have paid an average of 2.6% more for green power. Secrecy: Congress's present wrangling over energy is a big departure from the sunshine that typically illuminates big proposals. Democrats are pushing their climate plan through the budget reconciliation process because it requires only 50 votes for passage in a divided Senate and avoids a Republican filibuster. It’s also an expediated process that limits debate on the floor of Congress and public transparency. Without congressional hearings, consumers haven’t had the benefit of testimony from experts who can point out the merits and flaws of Biden’s plan. That’s a big departure from the sunshine that typically illuminates such big proposals. The last time Congress considered a major climate measure, the Waxman-Markey bill, experts testified in high-profile public hearings in the House that were covered by the national media. The Affordable Care Act featured hundreds of hours of public hearings. “With something as important as energy policy that could have a big impact on the national economy, it should be fully debatable and fully amendable,” says Bill Hoagland, a former staff director of the Senate Budget Committee who worked on 17 of 21 previous reconciliation laws. “It’s not something that should be done in a partisan manner through reconciliation.” Hoagland says both parties have “abused” that procedure to create new laws after it was set up in the 1970s to bring fiscal accountability to existing laws. Biden’s climate plan marks the first attempt to transform a major industry through reconciliation. Hoagland, now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, says Senate staffers and advocates called him to get his advice. “I told them not to use the reconciliation process for energy policy,” he says. “They said, ‘Thank you very much. But this is the only tool we have to allow us to get it through and we are not going to waste any more time.’” A grid more prone to blackouts? Who knows? But both sides have computer models to back their case. The Truthiness of Computer Models Computer models – a bête noire of climate skeptics – live on in the debate over the clean energy transformation, providing ammunition for each side. The dispute boils down to the reliability of the electrical grid. If intermittent wind and solar power quickly dethrone natural gas as the dominant source of energy, as the Biden administration envisions, will the grid become even more prone to blackouts? No one really knows for sure. Enter computer models. University of California-Berkeley experts earlier this year asked their model the big question: Will the grid be reliable if 80% of its power comes from clean sources such as wind and solar farms and nuclear plants by 2030? The model, which analyzed seven years of weather and energy use data, answered with a resounding yes. In fact, gas use could be cut in half, supplying the remaining 20%, without a glitch. “The expansion of natural gas should come to a halt if the Biden policy is passed,” says Mike O’Boyle, who collaborated on the study as director of electricity policy at Energy Innovation. “I’m sure some utilities will make the case that they need it for reliability. So it will be up to the regulators to hold their feet to the fire and make sure that the gas plant is the most economic option.” But models by Energy and Environmental Economics, a consulting group, draw the opposite conclusion. A 2020 study, which covered 40 years of weather data, looked at ways to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in New England. It found that natural gas capacity would need to grow by about one-third from today’s level. Even a large deployment of wind and solar farms won’t be able to meet peak demand – which is expected to grow in coming decades – when the wind and sun are down, says Arne Olson, a senior partner at the consulting firm and co-author of the study. That means additional gas power needs to be available, particularly in regions where coal plants are closing, until the day arrives that cleaner fuels like hydrogen can carry the load, he says. With the best computer models providing conflicting answers, Olson says having plenty of natural gas on hand to shore up the grid makes sense: “Once we get closer to the other side of the energy transition, we will learn how the systems are going to perform and we can shut down some gas plants if we don't need them anymore. But in the meantime, people want to make sure that they have reliable power.” Tina Smith Takes the Stage If the administration and Manchin come together on a clean energy plan, Tina Smith will be a big reason why. Tina Smith, a self-described Democratic pragmatist from Minnesota, now finds herself at center stage in negotiations with Manchin -- and under pressure to disappoint the left anew with a further break for natural gas. Since 2019, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, a self-described pragmatist, has focused on crafting a practical policy that utilities could support. Biden’s team took some ideas from Smith’s playbook but set far more ambitious goals: 80% carbon-free electricity by 2030. Even supporters consider the Biden plan “aspirational.” It’s meant to line up with the greenhouse gas reduction targets of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which recently concluded that the warming of the planet has already caused “irreversible” effects such as rising sea levels. Some Republicans and moderate Democrats are backing a much slower transition by 2050 that wouldn’t push gas power aside. The influential utility trade group Edison Electric Institute and labor unions, including the United Mine Workers – a backer of Manchin – have rallied behind the bipartisan bill. Smith, who was first elected in 2018, now finds herself at center stage in negotiations with Manchin. They are trying to find a middle ground, which may be somewhere between 2030 and 2050. There are more knobs to turn in the negotiations. The administration wants to compel utilities to adopt any form of clean power by giving them a federal grant if they hit an annual growth target of about 3% to 4%. They will also pay penalties for missing it. (The spending and revenue scheme was also devised to try to make the energy plan eligible for the budget reconciliation process.) But gas power isn’t included in the proposal, putting it at an economic disadvantage compared to renewables. Industry and utility groups object and are lobbying for gas to receive a partial grant since it's cleaner than coal. Adding to the uncertainty over a climate policy in Congress, Democratic leaders in the Senate recently put a politically controversial carbon tax back on the table. They see it as a way to reduce emissions and raise revenue to help pay for the social spending package. “I'm always interested in figuring out how we can make adjustments to solve problems that people see, and frankly, sometimes that makes a bill better,” Smith told RealClearInvestigations. “There are a lot of issues in this. But I think we are going to get there.”

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/virginia-governor-race-what-glenn-youngkin-says-about-trump-s-n1280283

Virginia governor race: What Glenn Youngkin says about Trump's power

The Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, knows that he has to try to run in a moderate lane if he wants a real shot at winning in his increasingly blue Southern state in November. But his insistence on raising doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election signals that even Republican candidates who want distance from former President Donald Trump feel obligated to peddle some version of the “big lie.” That disconcerting reality came into focus in an Axios report published Sunday, which reported that Youngkin took a rather odd position on 2020: Youngkin believes Biden beat Trump in the 2020 election legitimately. But while speaking with Axios, he wouldn’t say whether he would have voted to certify the election on Jan. 6 if he were a member of Congress. He did say there’s “no room for violence in America.” Youngkin was trying in this interview to send different signals to different camps — condemning the Jan. 6 violence and accepting Joe Biden’s victory, but at the same time implying that there are open questions in some states about whether the election results were reliable. The worrying subtext was that even being a more “moderate” Republican still entails casting doubt on the election process and deferring to Trump’s election disinformation. Youngkin’s Axios interview caused a stir and got pushback from some of the very Never Trump-style Republicans he’s concerned with winning over, particularly in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. His office released a statement the next day saying he would have, in fact, certified the election had he been in Congress — and acted like it was obvious the entire time. “Glenn Youngkin has repeatedly said that Joe Biden was legitimately elected and that there was no significant fraud in Virginia’s 2020 election, leading to the only logical conclusion that he would have certified the election,” the statement said. But the reality is that it’s not the only logical conclusion — because Youngkin has deliberately muddied the waters about his election views in the past. In the run-up to the Republican primary for this race, Youngkin’s most fleshed-out policy proposal was a five point “election integrity” plan. The proposal was presented as something that could have bipartisan appeal, but it was a clear bid to affirm the Trump-fueled myth that the electoral system is insecure and untrustworthy. He would also dodge questions about the legitimacy of Biden’s election, preferring to acknowledge only that Biden was the sitting president. After he won the primary, he changed his tune on that point, finally admitting that Biden’s election was legitimate. Youngkin is coding as independent and somewhat moderate to some Republicans — all while flirting with Trump’s authoritarian project of casting doubt on the U.S. election process. Youngkin has also played games on other disinformation-affected policy fronts, like Covid-19 vaccination efforts, both running ads featuring anti-vaxxers and boasting about being the only candidate encouraging Virginians to join him in getting vaccinated. When it comes to his relationship with Trump, Youngkin has also tried to play both sides. He supported Trump and won his endorsement, but he has also tried to claim independence from Trump and played up his ability to win the attention of moderates who despised the former president. “I brought together Forever-Trumpers and Never-Trumpers, sitting in the same audience, excited about what we’re doing," Youngkin told Axios. Youngkin’s Janus-faced politicking is a function of Virginia’s unique political currents. Trump lost Virginia in both his elections — the second time by a larger margin. And during the Trump years, Democrats won control of the governor’s mansion and the Legislature in defiance of state trends dating back to the ’90s. Virginia’s northern suburbs — packed with affluent, educated and politically engaged residents — typify the exact kind of voter who pivoted away from the GOP during the Trump era, and are seen as an important constituency for Republicans to win to get back in power in the state. So Youngkin's political positioning is a useful signpost for what Republicans think could help them win back moderates. Youngkin is a real competitor in this race — he narrowly trails his Democratic opponent, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, in the latest polls. Political strategists in the state see him as potentially the next Larry Hogan — the Republican governor of Maryland who has managed to thrive in a deeply blue state. Which is what makes Youngkin winking at Trump’s “big lie”-loving base all the scarier. Youngkin is coding as independent and somewhat moderate to some Republicans — all while flirting with Trump’s authoritarian project of casting doubt on the election system. In the process, he’s mainstreaming the idea that undermining trust in the election system and disregarding typical burdens for evidence aren't extreme positions.

https://spectator.org/john-durham-dissects-a-smear-campaign/

John Durham Dissects a Smear Campaign

This is the third in a series of articles analyzing the 27-page federal grand jury indictment charging lawyer Michael Sussmann with making a false statement to the FBI. The second article analyzed the indictment’s detailed factual averments that spelled out how Sussmann and others conspired to concoct a false but “plausible” narrative purportedly demonstrating the existence of a secret channel of internet communications between the Trump Organization, owned by Donald Trump, and the Russian Alfa Bank. The article ended at the point where Sussmann was about to meet with James Baker, the general counsel of the FBI. At the meeting, Sussmann allegedly delivered to Baker deceptive “white papers,” documents and computer data that were calculated to trigger an FBI investigation of the purported Trump-Alfa Bank connection. According to the indictment, once the FBI began its investigation, Sussmann, the top echelon of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign (“Clinton Campaign”) and others publicized the fact that the FBI was investigating possible ties between Trump and Russia. Moreover, the indictment also avers that, even before his September 19, 2016, meeting with Baker, Sussmann disseminated the fabricated Trump-Alfa Bank narrative to the media. Quoting billing records and emails from Sussmann’s law firm (“Perkins Coie” which represented the Clinton Campaign), the indictment gives the following examples of how the smear was spread: On “about August 30, 2016, Reporter-1, who worked for “a major U.S. newspaper (‘Newspaper-1’),” emailed Sussmann: “I’m back in town. I see Russians are hacking away. [A]ny big news?” To this Sussmann replied: “Mind reader!… Can you meet Thurs and Fri?” On Thursday, September 1, 2016, Sussmann met with Reporter-1. He “billed his time for the meeting to the Clinton Campaign under the broader billing description ‘confidential meetings regarding confidential project.’” On September 12, 2016, Sussmann spoke with “Campaign Lawyer-1” (identified elsewhere as Sussmann’s law partner, Marc Elias, who represented the Clinton Campaign) by telephone regarding the Trump-Alfa Bank narrative. Sussmann and Elias each billed the call to the Clinton Campaign with Elias using the billing description “teleconference with M. Sussmann re: [Newspaper-1]” and Sussmann using the description “work regarding confidential project.” On September 15, 2016, Elias “exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor concerning the [Trump-Alfa Bank allegations] that Sussmann had recently shared with Reporter-1.” Elias “billed his time for this correspondence to the Clinton Campaign with the billing entry, ‘email correspondence with [name of foreign policy advisor], [name of campaign manager], [name of communications director] re: the [Alfa Bank] Article.’” Now hit the pause button and consider this. These examples — as with so many other averments in the indictment — quote Perkins Coie’s billing records as well as emails between Sussmann, Elias, and others. They are direct, real-time, and devastating proof of overt acts and statements made in the course and in furtherance of the illegal but thus-far uncharged conspiracy outlined in the indictment. The fact that Durham has obtained this type of closely-guarded evidence speaks to his skill, tenacity, and seriousness of purpose, and spells serious legal trouble for all those who participated in concocting and spreading the Trump-Alfa Bank smear. So, what happened when Sussmann met with Baker? The indictment avers some very unusual circumstances. First, according to the indictment, when Baker and Sussmann met, “[n]o one else attended the meeting.” (Emphasis added) How did that happen? When interviewing even the lowliest witness, the FBI always works in pairs. One agent does the questioning while the other takes notes. But here, when a lawyer from a “major international law firm” representing the Clinton Campaign met with the FBI’s top lawyer during the Presidential campaign, no one else was present to document what transpired. Why? Did Baker know in advance why Sussmann wanted to meet? If so, why wouldn’t Baker require the presence of a witness to document what was to transpire? Second, why did Baker even agree to the meeting? Doesn’t the FBI have plenty of trained, perfectly competent special agents who gather facts and document their findings? Why wasn’t Sussmann’s contact handled by way of the FBI’s regular interview process? The indictment explains that Sussmann’s meeting with Baker wasn’t his first interaction with the FBI. It states that “[i]n or about April 2016, the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”) retained Sussmann to represent it in connection with the hacking of its email servers by the Russian government. In connection with his representation of the DNC as the victim of the hack, the defendant met and communicated regularly with the FBI, the DOJ, and other U.S. government agencies. In or around the same time period, Sussmann was also advising the Clinton Campaign in connection with cybersecurity issues.” A later article in this series will discuss Sussmann’s role in the FBI’s bizarre, pretend investigation of the DNC hack in which the FBI opted not to conduct its own forensic examination of the DNC’s server. Instead, it relied on Crowdstrike, a private company reportedly retained by Sussmann, to examine the server. More on that later. But, for now, suffice it to say that prior to meeting with Baker, Sussmann had interacted with the FBI. Also, as Baker later told congressional investigators, he and Sussmann had “a pre-existing relationship.” The particulars of that relationship remain unclear. But, before Congress, Baker testified in reference to Sussmann, “I had a personal relationship with Michael.” The indictment describes what happened at the meeting as follows: Sussmann stated falsely that he was not acting on behalf of any client, which led Baker to understand that Sussmann was conveying the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations as “a good citizen and not as an advocate for any client.” He stated that he had been “approached by multiple cyber security experts” concerning the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations. He provided the names of three cyber experts but did not mention “the Clinton Campaign, or any other person or company referenced” in the indictment. He “described the allegations of a secret Trump Organization server that was in communication with” the Alfa Bank. He “stated that media outlets were in possession of information about the Trump Organization’s secret server, and that a story would be published on Friday of that week.” Sussmann provided to Baker two thumb drives and hard copy “white papers” drafted by Sussmann and others as well as Fusion GPS. The white papers “contained no date or author’s name.” He also provided eight files containing Alfa Bank data and other “purported data and information relating to the mail1.trump-email.com domain.” Immediately after the meeting, Baker spoke with the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division (identified elsewhere as William Priestap) concerning his meeting with Sussmann. Priestap took contemporaneous handwritten notes which reflect Sussmann’s statements to Baker, and state, in relevant part: Michael Sussman[n] – Atty: Perkins Coie – said not doing this for any client. Represents DNC, Clinton Foundation, etc. Been approached by Prominent Cyber People (Academic or Corp. POCs) People like: [three names redacted]. According to the indictment, in the days following Sussmann’s meeting with Baker, and as a result of that meeting, the FBI opened an investigation of the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations. During that time, Sussmann is alleged to have to have coordinated with Fusion GPS and his law partner, Marc Elias, who represented the Clinton Campaign, to disseminate the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations to the media. He continued to bill his time for such work to the Clinton Campaign. For example, “on or about October 10, 2016, Sussmann is alleged to have emailed Reporter-1 a link to an opinion article which asserted, in substance and in part, that Newspaper-1’s investigative reporters had not published as many stories regarding Trump as other media outlets.” The subject line of Sussmann’s email was “for your editors,” and the body stated, “You should send this link to them.” According to public sources, Reporter-1 was working on an article about the Trump-Alfa Bank narrative, but his editors at Newspaper-1 had not yet authorized publication of the article. According to the indictment, “on or about October 30, 2016,” an employee of Fusion GPS forwarded to another reporter (“Reporter-2”) a tweet which indicated that the FBI director had “explosive information about Trump’s ties to Russia.” The GPS employee’s email stated “time to hurry,” suggesting that Reporter-2 should hurry to publish an article regarding the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations. The indictment avers that Reporter-2 responded by emailing the Fusion GPS employee a draft article regarding the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations along with the cover message: “Here’s the first 2500 words.” The opening paragraphs of the indictment state that “[i]n or about late October 2016 — approximately one week before the 2016 U.S. Presidential election — multiple media outlets reported that U.S. government authorities had received and were investigating allegations concerning a purported secret channel of communications between the Trump Organization, owned by Donald J. Trump, and” the Russian Alfa Bank. The indictment cites the article by Newspaper-1 as stating that intelligence officials possessed information concerning “what cyber experts said appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and” the Alfa Bank. The article further reported that the FBI had “spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server,” and that “[c]omputer logs obtained by [Newspaper-1]” showed “that two servers at” the Alfa Bank “sent more than 2,700 ‘look up’ messages … to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring.” According to other articles, this information had been assembled by an anonymous computer researcher who used the moniker “Tea Leaves.” (Identified as “Originator-1” in my previous article.) As this news broke, Hillary Clinton announced on Twitter that “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” She added that “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia.” Meanwhile, the Clinton Campaign posted a “Statement from Jake Sullivan on New Report Exposing Trump’s Secret Line of Communication to Russia.” In it, Sullivan is quoted as follows: This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal this link when it was discovered by journalists. This line of communication may help explain Trump’s bizarre adoration of Vladimir Putin and endorsement of so many pro-Kremlin positions throughout this campaign. It raises even more troubling questions in light of Russia’s masterminding of hacking efforts that are clearly intended to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. We can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe of Russia’s meddling in our elections.” This was by no means the end of Sullivan’s involvement. As will be documented in a later article, Sullivan, who now serves as the Biden regime’s National Security Advisor, worked assiduously on behalf of the Clinton Campaign to spread the Trump-Alfa Bank story. But that’s enough for now. There’s much more to this tale of the most successful and destructive political smear in American history. So stay tuned for the next exciting episode of “John Durham Blows Up Washington.” George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor who blogs at knowledgeisgood.net. He may be reached by email at kignet1@gmail.com.

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/09/29/every_student_deserves_every_opportunity_110640.html

Every Student Deserves Every Opportunity

Federal lawsuit aims to unlock the potential of millions of students The past two years have shined a bright light on widespread inequalities in education. As state after state dealt with pandemic disruptions, we’ve seen painful reminders of what’s always existed: some kids have access to great schools, multiple options for learning, and abundant resources like computers and high-speed internet access, advanced courses, online classes, and modern buildings with science labs and excellent libraries. And other kids are left behind, decade after decade, assigned to government-run underperforming and failing schools, without a chance for anything better. That’s painfully true in Michigan, where a student’s ability to move to a better school is limited by antiquated state laws that don’t serve the needs of each and every individual student. Consider Michigan’s failure in teaching students to read according to the “Nation’s Report Card.” For a dozen years, Michigan’s 4th grade reading scores have been below the national average, and, in 2019, six out of 10 Michigan 4th graders were not proficient in reading. These scores touch all parts of Michigan, including the urban centers of Detroit, Flint, and Grand Rapids, and rural communities throughout the state. Math scores are below the national average, and there’s a growing achievement gap between white and Black students. But why? If we’ve learned one thing from the pandemic, it’s that our education system must be flexible and centered around students. A single, one-size-fits-all pathway for every kid will never deliver great results. A quality education that meets a child’s needs unlocks countless doors. It can break cycles of poverty, lift up communities, and help ensure all students can reach their God-given potential. But in Michigan, special interests—some fueled by religious bigotry—have funded education in a way that ignores what parents want and shuts down flexibility and options. It prizes one system alone over the needs of individual students, ignoring what Florida and other states have proven to be true: that it shouldn’t matter the type of school a student attends. What matters is what’s best for each child. Michigan can do better for her kids. But, so far, the state has failed to modernize its industrial-age education system. Now Michigan families, like the Hile family in Kalamazoo, the Bagos family in Royal Oak, and the Lupanoff family in Grand Rapids, are fighting a legal battle to break down the barriers that limit options for Michigan’s kids. They are part of a lawsuit challenging religious-based restrictions that limit their access to better schools. Winning this lawsuit could transform their children’s lives. It could transform Michigan. Jill Hile works for the public school system, but after COVID-19 forced her kids to learn remotely, she saw deficits of the one-size-fits-all model and decided to enroll her kids in a local private Christian school. The new school resulted in a remarkable benefit for their daughter, who was struggling with remote learning at her local public school. But like many families, opting for a new school wasn’t easy, and it came with a hefty price tag since Michigan doesn’t allow for education funds to follow the child to the school of their choice. Nor does Michigan’s outdated Constitution allow parents to use their 529 Education Savings Plans to pay for their child’s education. In fact, the Michigan Constitution specifically prohibits it, despite federal law making it an allowable expense. Right now, millions of families like the Hiles are denied their rights, denied their freedoms, denied access to an education of their choice. That's not acceptable. It’s time for a change in how we deliver education to our kids. Students need more choices, and there’s simply no downside to providing that. In recent decades, states around the nation have taken steps to open up more options to parents who want to choose the best school for their kids. Michigan is alone among its neighbors—Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Illinois—in not offering students more educational freedom. The current lawsuit, if successful, will tear down a wall that’s holding too many kids back. Today’s challenges in education are real, but I believe the future is bright. We must continue working toward a world where school options are available to all, where our education dollars can follow a student anywhere. That’s the golden key that will unlock doors otherwise closed, unlock potential otherwise ignored, and unlock a world where all students have a chance to excel in a learning environment that serves them best.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/biden-got-caught-in-lie-about-afghanistan

Joe Biden just got caught in a lie about Afghanistan

On Aug. 18, three days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul but eight days before 13 U.S. service members were killed by a suicide bomber, ABC’s George Stephanopolous asked President Joe Biden about what advice he received on leaving a residual force in Afghanistan. “Your top military advisers warned against withdrawing on this timeline," Stephanopoulos said. "They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.” Biden replied, “No, they didn't.” “So no one told — your military advisers did not tell you, ‘No, we should just keep 2,500 troops? It's been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that’?” Stephanopoulos asked. Biden restated his answer, “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.” Fast forward to yesterday’s Senate Armed Services Committee oversight hearing. Based on the testimony, it appears very clear that Biden's statement was a lie. Under questioning from Republican Sen. James Inhofe, U.S. Central Command Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie testified, “I won’t share my personal recommendation to the president, but I will give you my honest opinion. And my honest opinion and view shaped my recommendation. I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton later followed up, asking Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, “It is your testimony that you recommended 2,500 troops, approximately, to stay in Afghanistan?” Like McKenzie, Milley declined to say exactly what he told the president. “Yes, my assessment was back in the fall of '20, and it remains consistent throughout, that we should keep a steady state of 2,500, and it could bounce up to 3,500, in order to move toward a negotiated solution," he said. Pressed by Cotton if he shared that specific assessment with Biden, Milley again declined to share what he told the president, saying, “But I will tell you what my personal opinion was, and I am always candid.” Cotton then turned to Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin and asked him if Biden’s statement to Stephanopolous that no military advisers advised him to leave a small troop presence was true. Austin waited five long seconds before answering, “I believe that … Well first of all, I believe the president to be an honest and forthright man.” Cotton stopped him and asked, “Did these officers' recommendations get to the president personally? Austin responded, “Their input was received by the president and considered by the president for sure.” So there you have it — Biden lied, and 13 U.S. service members died soon after. This issue is not in the rearview window. Al Qaeda is now empowered to use Afghanistan as a base to target the United States again. There are also still 2,500 troops in Iraq assisting its government in fighting against the Islamic State. Biden lied about the advice he got on Afghanistan. Will he be honest this time about the costs and benefits of keeping these troops in harm's way? There is no reason to trust him.

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-edit-the-buck-stops-there-20210929-dmu4hie7fvgj3myf5vray6lypi-story.html

The buck stops there: Biden can’t deflect responsibility for the Afghanistan meltdown

It is impossible to square those statements with what military brass told the Senate Armed Services Committee under oath yesterday. Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command overseeing that part of the world, relayed that earlier this year, he recommended maintaining a small force in Afghanistan. And while he would not testify that he said this directly to the president, that was the indisputable implication. Additionally, McKenzie told the committee that he spoke with Biden directly about the recommendation by Gen. Scott Miller, who until July was the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, that the military leave a few thousand troops on the ground there.

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/09/27/use_and_abuse_of_online_instruction_110638.html

The Use and Abuse of Online Instruction

As a new college year begins, it’s clear that the online classroom is here to stay. In some instances, teachers have found unique, enhanced pedagogies online that have vast potential for widening access to quality education. What remains urgently important is building an ethical system for the online classroom that is as robust as its technology – a system of communication that respects privacy, maintains trust, and fosters the free exchange of ideas. There is already too much fear within the campus community that any idea out of step with campus norms will not simply become part of a creative battle of ideas, but instead will bring shame or loss of status to those espousing it. Nearly two years ago, former president Barack Obama decried the growing power of campus cancel culture: “One danger I see among young people, particularly on college campuses . . . there is this sense sometimes of ‘The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that’s enough.’” Those effects were evident even before the pandemic: a Knight Foundation/Gallup survey in 2019 reported that 61% of college students agreed with the statement that “the climate on their campus deters students from expressing themselves openly.” Other surveys show that everything from classroom participation to social relations have suffered. Among the more alarming findings of a College Pulse/American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) survey: nearly half of college students believe that pressure to conform to prevailing opinion has a negative effect on the development of close personal relationships. Now the problem has worsened. In 2021, College Pulse/ACTA found that by a two-to-one margin, students report greater difficulty discussing their views in an online environment as compared to an in-person class. They have reason to be uneasy. Unlike the experience of the physical classroom, everything that teachers and students share online, whether text, voice discussion, or video, is immediately available for posting and distribution, authorized or not. Heterodox classroom opinions readily become the spark igniting a Twitter mob. Worse yet, it is all too easy to decontextualize a dissenting opinion, turning a thoughtful colleague into a villain. As the remote learning environment adopts features of the social media marketplace, the fear of cancellation will spread to the classroom. A 2020 FIRE survey of almost 20,000 students found that fully 63% are uncomfortable expressing opinions on social media. Misuse of the online classroom crosses political lines: it’s an equal opportunity bully. Soon after the pandemic began, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, tweeted to his network of college students a request for videos of liberal indoctrination. One year later, the dean of the Georgetown University Law Center fired one adjunct professor and suspended another after their private conversation concerning disparate racial outcomes in grading was accidentally recorded. What should have been a confidential discussion between well-meaning colleagues concerned about minority achievement quickly made its way onto Twitter, and the law school violated its own procedures in disciplining the professors, as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) observed. The power of social media ran roughshod over process, university policies, and academic freedom. The online classroom needs rules of engagement to protect free and open deliberation. Going back to 1915, when John Dewey and Arthur Lovejoy founded the AAUP, a core principle was that the classroom is a sanctuary for the free exchange of ideas where students and faculty can be intellectually fearless, safe in the knowledge that the classroom walls contain the discussion. Every college and university should create guidelines for the recording and sharing of online lectures and discussions. Some institutions will wisely incorporate online classroom privacy procedures into their honor code, requiring consent before recording and distribution. Consequences for violation of improper use should be clearly stated and vigorously enforced. There is every likelihood of mischief if colleges fail to instill necessary ethical boundaries for the powerful tools we now have at our fingertips. And yet, the online classroom has the potential to be a catalyst for a new reassertion of academic freedom. The split-screen format is an invitation to dialectic. By taking advantage of the platforms and pedagogies that include student debate, undergraduate education can embrace the methods of critical inquiry that have been the mainstay of legal education for generations. To be sure, what was forced upon higher education by the pandemic has the potential to worsen the call-out, cancel culture that has damaged campus values. But it could serve instead to renew the culture of unfettered exploration that is the lifeblood of learning.

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/yellen-and-powell-see-inflation-higher-anticipated-dems-push-35-trillion

Fed, Treasury bosses up inflation forecasts as Dems seek trillions for progressive agenda

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are now saying that inflation is rising higher than they originally anticipated, as President Biden and Democratic leaders push for passage of a $3.5 trillion social safety net spending bill. "Inflation is elevated and will likely remain so in coming months before moderating," Powell said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday. "As the economy continues to reopen and spending rebounds, we are seeing upward pressure on prices, particularly due to supply bottlenecks in some sectors. These effects have been larger and longer lasting than anticipated, but they will abate, and as they do, inflation is expected to drop back toward our longer-run 2 percent goal.: The Federal Reserve has adjusted its inflation prediction from 3.4% in June to 4.2%. Yellen previously predicted 2% inflation for 2021. She amended her prediction on Tuesday during questioning from Louisiana GOP Sen. John Kennedy. "Probably closer to 4% and that already almost must be the case based on what's happened this year," Yellen said during the same Senate Banking Committee hearing. Despite rising inflation, Yellen advocated for passage of Biden's "Build Back Better Act," which the Democrat-led Congress is planning to pass as a budget reconciliation bill with a party-line vote to avoid the filibuster. Senate Democratic leaders are aiming to pass the bill before the end of the year. The House has a test vote scheduled on Thursday for a separate $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that mainly consists of transportation-related spending. Under questioning from South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott, Yellen told the committee that the "Build Back Better" legislation would be fully paid for over time due to the tax hikes proposed by Biden and the Democrats. The proposed bill includes new programs such as universal pre-K, tuition-free community college and support for child care. It also currently includes expansion of Medicare to include dental and vision coverage for the first time, as well as federal funding for home health care. "There is nothing compassionate about spending money we don't have on new benefits we can't afford all the while discouraging work, and increasing the likelihood of a future default, when the yet to be born American receives the bill for benefits she didn't experience and are no longer available," Scott said. "It's also important to note," he continued, "that our labor force participation rate is down, not up even with the new programs and the payouts that I heard this morning during this hearing that somehow is supposedly increasing our labor force participation, when in fact, it's apparent and clear to Americans that's not the case." According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal budget, the bill falls short of paying for itself in its current form. "Due to a combination of larger tax breaks and less revenue collection, the Ways and Means Committee's tax draft would net about $943 billion of revenue for other priorities, compared to $2.5 trillion from the White House proposals," read a CRFB analysis. "That net revenue will be necessary, but likely not sufficient, to cover the cost of other spending proposals in reconciliation." The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 550 points on Tuesday as inflation concerns rise among investors.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-shutdown-2021-senate-bill-vote/

Senate prepares to move on bill to prevent government shutdown

Washington — The Senate is preparing to take up a short-term government funding bill that keeps federal agencies operating through December 3, but does not address the looming deadline to raise the debt ceiling to avoid default. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats are introducing a stopgap bill and could take action as early as Wednesday, two days after GOP senators blocked a funding measure that both averted a government shutdown and suspended the debt limit. Any proposal addressing the latter has been a non-starter for Republicans, who have warned that Democrats have to hike the debt limit without relying on their support. Known as a "clean" continuing resolution, the measure maintains current funding levels through December 3 and includes $6.3 billion for relocation efforts for Afghan refugees, as well as $28.6 billion for disaster assistance following a spate of devastating hurricanes and wildfires. "We can approve this measure quickly and send it to the House so it can reach the president's desk before funding expires midnight tomorrow," Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor. "With so many critical issues to address, the last thing the American people need right now is a government shutdown. This proposal will prevent one from happening." Senate Democrats were gauging support on Tuesday evening for quickly passing the continuing resolution through unanimous consent, a source familiar with the matter told CBS News. Passing it via unanimous consent would not require a formal vote, but a single senator could object and derail the process. If passed by the Senate, the stopgap funding bill would head to the House, where its passage would stave off at least one fiscal crisis facing the Democratic-controlled Congress. Government funding is set to run out end-of-day Thursday, and a lapse in funding would trigger a partial government shutdown while federal agencies continue efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday that the House could vote Wednesday on a clean continuing resolution, as well as a separate measure suspending the debt ceiling. "We'll see what the Senate sends us," Hoyer said. "They're trying to send us something." Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said Republicans would support a clean government funding bill to avoid a shutdown. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday that a "great deal of public health" would be exempted from a shutdown, but said "that doesn't change the fact that having services shut down, staffing cut in different agencies is not in the interests of addressing any crisis we face, including the pandemic." Still, the White House last week issued guidance to federal agencies to begin planning for a lapse in funding. Keeping the government operating is not the only legislative must-do for Congress, as lawmakers are staring down a debt crisis absent action to raise the debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told congressional leaders in a letter Tuesday that the U.S. would exhaust extraordinary measures allowing the government to pay its bills on October 18, and a failure by lawmakers to hike the debt limit would send the nation into default for the first time in its history. Democrats earlier this week attempted to pass a stopgap measure that would have funded the government through December 3 and suspended the debt limit through December 2022. But the bill failed to garner the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate, as Republican senators objected to the inclusion of the debt limit provision. Alongside efforts to forestall a government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, Democratic leaders are looking to make progress this week on two key aspects of President Biden's domestic policy agenda: a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a $3.5 trillion package that would strengthen social programs and overhaul major portions of the economy. While the House is slated to vote on the infrastructure plan Thursday, it's unclear whether it will pass, as progressive lawmakers have threatened to tank the bill. They want the Senate to vote first on the $3.5 trillion proposal, though there are objections to the bill's price tag from a pair of Senate Democrats, whose support is needed in order for the sweeping package to pass. Alan He and Zak Hudak contributed reporting.

https://www.propublica.org/article/why-we-are-publishing-the-tax-secrets-of-the-001

Why We Are Publishing the Tax Secrets of the .001%

Why We Are Publishing the Tax Secrets of the .001% We are disclosing the tax details of the richest Americans because we believe the public interest in an informed debate outweighs privacy considerations. Series: The Secret IRS Files Inside the Tax Records of the .001% ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. The Secret IRS Files is an ongoing reporting project. Sign up to be notified when the next installment publishes. Today, ProPublica is launching the first in a series of stories based on the private tax data of some of our nation’s richest citizens. We obtained the information from an anonymous source who provided us with large amounts of information on the ultrawealthy, everything from the taxes they paid to the income they reported to the profits from their stock trades. In the coming months, we plan to use this material to explore how the nation’s wealthiest people — roughly the .001% — exploit the structure of our tax code to avoid the tax burdens borne by ordinary citizens. ProPublica The Secret IRS Files This is an ongoing investigation. Sign up to be notified when the next story publishes. Thanks for signing up. If you like our stories, mind sharing this with a friend? https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/the-secret-irs-files?source=www.propublica.org&placement=share®ion=national Copy link For more ways to keep up, be sure to check out the rest of our newsletters. See All Fact-based, independent journalism is needed now more than ever. Donate Many will ask about the ethics of publishing such private data. We are doing so — quite selectively and carefully — because we believe it serves the public interest in fundamental ways, allowing readers to see patterns that were until now hidden. Tax experts have long understood that the wealthiest Americans reap outsized benefits from the federal tax code’s emphasis on taxing income rather than assets like stock holdings and property. Yet, when The New York Times disclosed in 2020 that President Donald Trump had amassed so many deductions he paid no taxes in 11 of 18 years, it was assumed that his case was an anomaly, reflecting the unique breaks real estate developers receive under our tax system. It is now clear that there isn’t just one such taxpayer — there are many, in multiple industries. We believe that disclosing the identities of billionaires who paid little to no taxes in years their fortunes grew by billions of dollars will help readers understand the magnitude of the tax advantages the ultrarich enjoy. We also believe that disclosure of specific figures about the tax returns of people like Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett and Elon Musk will deepen readers’ interest and understanding of this complex and arcane subject. Our publication of this tax data comes at a possibly pivotal moment in America’s long, often contentious debate about the fairness of our tax system. The Biden administration has proposed raising a number of taxes to pay for additional trillions of dollars in government spending. So far, the conversation in Washington has been dominated by an issue long seen as central on Capitol Hill: whether to increase the top tax rate from its current level of 37% by a few percentage points. Such a change, as our story shows, would touch the richest hardly at all. The secret tax files offer new, factual evidence for lawmakers considering such changes: Should the biggest winners in America’s epochal concentration of wealth over the last 40 years be permitted to pay levies of considerably less than 37%? A second question certain to arise is the motives and identity of the source who has provided this data to ProPublica. We live in an age in which people with access to information can copy it with the click of a mouse and transmit it in a variety of ways to news organizations. Many years ago, ProPublica and other news organizations set up secure systems that allow whistleblowers to transmit information to us without revealing their identity. We do not know the identity of our source. We did not solicit the information they sent us. The source says they were motivated by our previous coverage of issues surrounding the IRS and tax enforcement, but we do not know for certain that is true. We have considered the possibility that information we have received could have come from a state actor hostile to American interests. In particular, a number of government agencies were compromised last year by what the U.S. has said were Russian hackers who exploited vulnerabilities in software sold by SolarWinds, a Texas-based information technology company. We do note, however, that the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration wrote in December that, “At this time, there is no evidence that any taxpayer information was exposed” in the SolarWinds hack. While the revelations in today’s story are extraordinary, the procedures we used in assessing the data’s value are standard in the craft of journalism. When a reporter makes contact with a source and is provided information, we begin with questions. Is the material authentic? Is it newsworthy? Is it complete? We understand that nearly everyone who provides material to a reporter is doing so in ways that reflect their worldview, agenda or biases. We have long held that those motives are irrelevant if the information is reliable. Seven years ago, a team of hackers believed to be directed by the North Korean government revealed a trove of emails to and from Sony. The motivation, American intelligence officials said at the time, was to punish the studio for having distributed a satirical movie about Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea. Some of the documents released through that breach led to a 2015 ProPublica story on questionable political contributions in Los Angeles. We published that story because it was important and something we believed the public needed to know. We publish today’s much more important story for similar reasons. Provenance is not essential; accuracy is. We have gone to considerable lengths to confirm that the information sent to us is accurate. We compared the tax data in our possession to other sources of the same information wherever we could find them, some of which were public (a tax return for a candidate for national office), others of which were private. In every instance we were able to check — involving tax filings by more than 50 separate people — the details provided to ProPublica matched the information from other sources. Having said that, because it remains possible that not everything in our database is accurate, every person whose tax information was described in today’s story was given an opportunity to point out inaccuracies or omissions before the story appeared. There is also a legal question here, and we want you to know we have taken it seriously. A federal law ostensibly makes it a criminal offense to disclose tax return information. But we do not believe that law would be constitutional if applied to bar or sanction publication of a story in the public interest when the news organization did not itself remove the information from the control of the IRS or solicit anyone else to do so — as we did not. And this is not our first experience with this law. In 2012, someone at the IRS (we don’t know who or why; they used a plain brown IRS envelope) sent ProPublica copies of tax filings seeking exemption for a number of political committees, including Republican political guru Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. The filings were not yet supposed to be public, and the IRS indicated that it would consider our publication of them to be criminal. We explained our view of the constitutionality of that statute as applied in such circumstances and published our story, which raised concerns about whether Rove’s group had been forthcoming with the agency. We never heard about the matter from the IRS again. Finally, it’s worth noting that taxes have not always been a private matter. Many politicians, including every presidential nominee for decades, except Trump, has made his or her tax returns public. Today, in Wisconsin, anyone can file a public records request to find out how much state residents pay in state taxes. Outside of the U.S., Sweden, Norway and Finland make public every citizen’s tax returns. We hope you will read today’s story and the following stories in the series, and perhaps participate in the public debate about the future of our tax system. We welcome any help, confidential or otherwise, to further our reporting. If you think you have something to contribute, you can use this page.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/koch-critical-race-theory-bans

Koch network opposes banning critical race theory

A network built by the Koch family, famous for backing conservative political candidates, decided not to support a government ban on critical race theory being taught in schools, the latest in the splintering between establishment GOP figures and more populist Trump supporters. Although leaders in the Stand Together Foundation, a philanthropic community founded by Charles Koch, do not agree with the teachings of critical race theory , which holds that U.S. institutions are inherently racist, they said it was not the role of the government to control what is taught in school, arguing that silencing the topic would harm the debate needed for democracy. “Using government to ban ideas, even those we disagree with, is also counter to core American principles — the principles that help drive social progress,” Evan Feinberg, the executive director of the Stand Together Foundation, told the Associated Press . MACARTHUR 2021 ‘GENIUS’ GRANT RECIPIENTS PUT SPOTLIGHT ON RACIAL EQUALITY Other Koch-affiliated leaders have adopted similar views in the past, with Charlie Ruger, the Charles Koch Foundation’s vice president of philanthropy, publishing a letter encouraging debate in schools. “Both learning and research require openness to new ideas and the ability to argue productively,” Ruger said in the letter, which was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education's May issue. “That requires standing against censorship.” Despite the leaders’ public stance, many of the candidates Koch Industries supports favor bans on teaching critical race theory in schools, similar to bans implemented in a handful of states, including Texas. The conversation surrounding what should and should not be taught in schools remains controversial, particularly in regions where parents have expressed vocal opposition to critical race theory. In Virginia, candidates for governor have made it a focal point of their campaigns, with Republican Glenn Youngkin saying "parents should be in charge of their kids' education." Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe had stated, "I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." Virginia's Loudoun County became ground zero in parents' fight against critical race theory when six members of the county's school board formed a private Facebook group targeting parents who opposed the teaching of the theory in the school system. Though Loudon County’s superintendent denied that critical race theory was ever taught in its schools, a public records request by Fox News and remarks by a school board member showed otherwise. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER While Gov. Ralph Northam called Republicans' concerns about critical race theory a "dog whistle," many parents argued the theory promoted racism. "[CRT] is racist, it is abusive, [and] it discriminates against one’s color," one Loudoun County mother said . The Washington Examiner has reached out to Koch Industries representatives for comment.

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/germany-merkel-and-the-danger-of-self-confidence/

Germany, Merkel and the Danger of Self-Confidence

Germany held an election to replace Angela Merkel, who led the German government for 16 years – through much of the implementation of the European Union, the economic crisis of 2008 and the immigration crisis of 2015. Compare her tenure with that of Konrad Adenauer. He presided over the redemption of the German soul, accepting German responsibility for the Holocaust but making certain that the Holocaust was not the final word on Germany. He changed the reality and perception of Germany from the incarnation of evil to another nation, part of the West and part of the force confronting the Soviet threat. In short, Adenauer returned Germany to the family of nations. Above all, Merkel maintained. She oversaw the transformation of Germany into the dominant power in the European Union, a region that had been the heartland of world economic and military power. Under her stewardship, Germany become the fourth-largest economic power in the world, the arbiter of Europe and the engine that drove its economy. Perhaps most important, she did so without conjuring more than the inevitable unease about the reemergence of Germany as a European boogeyman. She helped make Germany merely another, if singularly powerful, European country. She exercised power without generating the utter terror Germany had evoked a few years before she was born. She deserved much credit, but some of it is misplaced. We tend to think of leaders as if they personally shepherded nations to greatness, horror or mediocrity. Nations are vast enterprises, consisting of many people and many factions, dancing a complex dance. Had Adenauer not lived, Germany would have emerged from its crimes. Its people would not accept the burden for generations, because indeed, the crimes a nation commits cannot be blamed on those who were not alive or in power at the time. And that generation would have sought and found the solution of Adenauer and crafted Germany back into humanity, with different personalities remembered. So too with Merkel, under whose leadership Germany again became the most powerful nation on the Continent. But she was less a shepherd than a passenger on a journey that included nations we won’t forget and names already forgotten. History writes itself, and then someone takes credit for the words. Still, the end of the Merkel era is important. There was an election, although it is unclear what if any meaning it will have. Two parties, far less different than they pretend, came in as a virtual tie. Neither will be powerful enough to redefine German history, and German history, for the moment, will not tolerate revision. Germany fears military power and basks in economic power. And like any sort of power, it imposes itself on Europe’s economy because it is in its interest to do so. Merkel’s successors will continue to do this, acting as if this was an act of genius on their part. Perhaps history will shift and permit them to shift. If not, then their names will be forgotten along with those of most other leaders. Politics is cruel, and you can go from a household name to a figure of no consequence as history works its impersonal game. Germany’s historical game is war and calamity. There was always a Germanic people, but a German nation did not emerge until 1871, alongside a minor war that Prussia won. A united Germany was stunning to behold. What had been scattered principalities emerged by the turn of the century as the greatest economic power on the Continent, and one challenging Britain, a global economic giant. Why a united Germany could do something a divided Germany could not dream of is a long story, but it did. And it caused the rest of Europe to fear it. Britain and France had their own empires to import raw materials from and to export their products. Germany did not. But it had Eastern and Southern Europe, so unlike Britain and France, it had to exert its force in Europe. The details are beside the point here, but the surge of German power coupled with a surge of German insecurity led to the First World War, a conflict in which Germany was crushed and left in an economic depression, which lasted through the 1920s until Hitler emerged, reuniting Germany in rage against the rest of Europe with a sense of victimization. Once again, Europe was terrified by the extraordinary power of Germany. In a few years, it had gone from a cripple to an economic and military miracle. World War II was a German war of rectification, a war intended to recover the German dominance in Europe that it nearly achieved in 1913. But this time, Germany went from being a European power that could be understood in European terms to a sphere of madness. Europe could be understood in normal terms. The Germans selected an abnormal understanding of Europe, whereby Jews controlled both communism and capitalism and represented an enemy with whom there could be no peace. The Nazis believed Europe could be cleansed only by total war against the conspirators. Germany had set itself a goal that couldn’t be achieved, and if achieved, couldn’t solve its problems, plunging it into a war against all of Europe and, in a final act of madness, the United States. It fought a war it could not win without mystical powers, which it had only in its mind. Germany went from war to failure, to war, to another failure. And it may well have won World War II had it acted with reason and prudence. But its appetites were as extreme as its madness. When it emerged from its madness in 1945, it realized what it had done, above all to itself. Like a junky with an unlimited amount of their drug of choice, it hit rock bottom and was left with a choice between death and going straight. Adenauer presided over the latter, and Merkel presided over the results of an economic miracle so improbable that it required the Brothers Grimm to be the author. And once more Germany sought to gather Europe into a German world, this time with the eagerness of the Europeans and a lack of malice. But in the last years of Merkel’s rule, the idea that all of Europe was simply one entity with a common desire and common values, committed to peace and prosperity, began to slip. 2008 raised questions about perpetual prosperity. The immigration crisis raised questions about perpetual peace. The bitterness against the immigrants and the bitterness about the powers that compelled them to come raised questions about a common European identity. Yes, Europe had achieved peace, but only if the Balkans were regarded as something other than European. About 100,000 were said to have died in that war. The EU became the self-assurance of its righteousness in the face of reality. When the U.K. left the bloc, the EU sought to trivialize it. We understand what Germany is in the context of a united and aligned Europe. It resumes its economic supremacy, foregoes a significant military and abandons its vices for something more virtuous. But the EU is under enormous stress as its different members have different interests. Germany does not want to carry Italy, it does not want to allay Polish fears of Russian pipelines, and it does not really appreciate the importance of France or the significance of Britain. The safe place that Germany wanted to build is fraying. It is not fraying enough to excite deep German fears, but enough to create German irritation. The future of Germany depends on the future of the EU. If the EU breaks, Germany will not collapse. On the contrary, it will have no choice but to increase its fears and powers. But a Germany that is afraid and strong is the brew that in the distant – or not-so-distant – future can make Europe a different place. The EU was intended by Germany above all to end history in blissful comfort. What happens if the EU fragments with more countries leaving or refusing to submit? Merkel managed the EU well during an era in which it began to fragment. The EU does not want to fail, and Merkel did well in avoiding what was not wanted. Now that age is gone, and Merkel, the very sigil of that age, has left as well. The new period will be about satisfying the contradictory needs of nations in the EU. This will require the use of German power because Germany is the economic heart of the EU. Germany has feared exercising the power it so carefully resurrected. So in a way, the situation is almost a concern driven by the fact that there is a common belief that Germany will manage it. Merkel created a new dimension of German self-confidence. But historically, Germany has handled its power better than its self-confidence. Editor’s note: An earlier version of this analysis incorrectly stated the winner of the Franco-Prussian War. The error has been corrected on site.

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/supply-chain-problems

Supply chain problems

Since the summer of 2021, widespread disruption to supply chains has hit the headlines – both in the UK and globally. Supply problems have led to delayed deliveries, higher prices, gaps on supermarket shelves[1] and empty petrol stations.[2] Greggs,[3] Ikea[4] and BP[5] are just some of the companies that have reported issues. The evolution of the supply chain crisis has been complex, with some issues emerging over many years. Many media stories have focused on sporadic shortages of specific goods, such as carbon dioxide or petrol. Some disruption has been temporary or local – with fuel shortages the most obvious example. But other problems are more widespread, with a general reduction in choice and reliability of supply visible in some sectors, like food and drink. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows just how wide-ranging and publicly visible these shortages have been. Between 20 and 31 October, an average of one in six (or 17%) of adults in Great Britain experienced shortages of essential food items; during the peak of the fuel crisis, 6–17 Oct, 37% struggled to get fuel.[6] Businesses have also reported problems. Another ONS survey, covering business conditions, found that, of firms trying to get goods and materials between 4 and 31 October, 17% were unable to get goods from the EU, while 11% were unable to get goods from within the UK.[7] However, the survey data suggests that some supply chain problems have been going on much longer than they have been in the news, with between 15 and 20% of businesses reporting issues getting supplies from the EU since February 2021, and around 10% consistently reporting issues within the UK since June 2020. In August 2021, a survey from the Confederation of British Industry found that stock levels among firms were at their lowest levels since 1983.[8] Watch our explainer on the supply chain problems

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/09/syria-be-key-topic-erdogan-putin-summit

Syria to be key topic in Erdogan-Putin summit

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to travel to Russia Wednesday to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Sochi to hash out a range of critical issues, from Syria to Ukraine and anti-missile batteries to natural gas. Coming days after Erdogan aired his dissatisfaction with NATO ally the United States, suggested that Turkey would acquire a second set of the Russian made S-400 anti-missile system and asserted that US forces should leave Syria, the stage is set for what may have otherwise been a less cordial reception at the Kremlin. Relations between the fellow autocrats have cooled ever since Russian air force jets bombed Turkish positions in Syria’s northwest province of Idlib in late February 2020, causing the deaths of at least 37 Turkish soldiers and many more Sunni opposition rebels allied with Turkey. It may be no coincidence that Turkey has since edged even closer to its other large Black Sea neighbor Ukraine, selling it armed drones and backing its demands that Russia return the Crimean peninsula it occupied in 2014 and end the conflict in the Donbass. Erdogan repeated those demands in his speech to the UN General Assembly summit, prompting a flurry of angry commentary in the Russian media. For context, Erdogan and Putin spoke four times over the phone in February and 23 times in 2020. They have spoken only nine times since Erdogan traveled to Moscow in March to sign a new accord over Idlib, mostly on Russia’s terms, according to Aydin Sezer, a Turkish political analyst who closely monitors the Russo-Turkish relationship. Russia continues to rebuke Turkey over its failure to fulfill its pledges to eliminate the threat posed to its forces in Syria, principally by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Sunni extremist group that holds sway over much of Idlib and with which Turkey enjoys an opaque alliance managed by its spy service MIT. Russia sees Idlib as a “terrorist incubator which exports terrorists beyond Syria’s borders and poses a threat to Russia’s security,” Sezer noted. That view is shared to some extent by the Biden administration, which has made it clear that it’s not interested in engaging with HTS, despite its leader’s recent efforts to repackage himself as some kind of a moderate. The outfit is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations and — somewhat incongruously, some would say — by Turkey. As such, Washington is not egging on Turkey to take on the regime and Russia in Idlib and elsewhere in the way that the Trump administration’s Syria envoy, Jim Jeffrey, so enthusiastically did. Piling on the pressure in the run-up to tomorrow's summit, Russian air force jets have been pounding rebel positions in and around Idlib, widening their assault to Turkish-occupied zones in the mainly Kurdish enclave of Afrin and near Tell Tamir in the so-called “Peace Spring Zone" occupied by Turkey in its latest cross-border offensive against the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in October 2019. "Russia's escalation has intensified this week and begun from Idlib province and now stretches to areas in northern Aleppo province along the border," Major Youssef Hamoud, a spokesman for the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, told Reuters. Turkey is in turn beefing up its military presence with men and equipment. "The Turkish army deployment is taking a combat posture with all the military bases reinforced and has poured in convoys, whether of armored vehicles, fighters or equipment," Hamoud said. Turkey’s main worry is that any full-scale offensive on Idlib will drive up to a million Syrians toward the Turkish border. Resentment is soaring toward the estimated 3.7 million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey and those feelings are being cynically exploited by the opposition in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections that are slated to take place in 2023. With his poll numbers slipping to unprecedented lows, Erdogan is therefore anxious to preserve the status quo in Idlib, at least until then. But it may no longer be possible. Ankara’s best bet at this point is to work with the regime to contain an influx of further Syrians, not against it, Sezer argued. “Turkey needs to fix its relationship with Damascus. If Erdogan doesn’t, the opposition certainly will, should it come to power,” he told Al-Monitor. Either way, “Ankara appears to believe its troop deployments have changed the dynamic. Moscow may not,” observed Nicholas Danforth, the author of the newly published “The Remaking of Republican Turkey: Memory and Modernity.” Danforth added, “Erdogan is going into the meeting emphasizing his estrangement from Washington. I am not sure that strengthens his hand. Moving closer to Moscow may make Putin more hesitant to alienate Ankara over Idlib, but it will leave Turkey more exposed to Russian pressure in the long run.” US officials warn that should Turkey proceed with the acquisition of a second set of S-400s it will lead to further sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Act. Erdogan’s apparent volte-face — until his trip to New York last week, he seemed determined to patch up ties with Washington — was prompted by President Joe Biden’s failure to meet him on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly summit. The famously thin-skinned Turkish leader may well have concluded that Biden’s lack of interest stemmed from the fact that he no longer needs Turkey to operate Kabul airport, a role Qatar has claimed, sidelining Ankara, its close ally, in the process. A common narrative propounded by some pundits contends that Turkish pushback in Idlib and its key role in securing Azerbaijan’s victory against Armenia last year have put Ankara on a more even footing with the Kremlin, as has its corralling of the Russian-backed Libyan warlord Khalifa Hifter. Turkey’s intervention in Azerbaijan allowed the latter to resolve its 30-year-long dispute with Armenia by force. But it also allowed Russian troops to deploy in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh enclave for the first time since the Soviet Union’s collapse. In Libya too, Ankara and Russia will look to accommodate, not oppose each other. The most immediately critical issue on the table relates to energy. A contract to carry Russian natural gas from Siberia via the Black Sea to Turkey’s Bulgarian border will expire at the end of this year. Moscow has been pressing Ankara to renew the contract but Ankara kept stalling in what proved to be a grave miscalculation that natural gas prices, including that of the liquefied natural gas that it’s been acquiring in large quantities from US suppliers, would remain low. With natural gas and LNG prices soaring worldwide, Russia will undoubtedly drive a hard bargain, seeking concessions elsewhere in exchange for affordable gas.

https://thediplomat.com/2021/09/the-plas-new-generals-security-implications/

The PLA’s New Generals: Security Implications

Advertisement China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) promoted yet another four senior officers to the rank of general or admiral in early September. That this most recent round of promotions happened in such a short timeframe – just a couple of months after the last promotions – should be understood as part of the preparations for the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), slated for the fall of 2022. Incumbent Chinese President Xi Jinping, whether he seeks a third term in office or just tries to maintain his political influence behind the scenes, must have been inspired by previous leader Jiang Zemin, who set a precedent by promoting quite a few generals to higher ranks during his remaining days in office. That move had the effect of helping Jiang keep the Central Military Commission (CMC) under his control even after he was no longer in power. Whether the same thing will happen again during Xi’s likely third term is worthy of note. Whoever controls the military will gain political domination. The CCP, after all, still strongly believes in Mao Zedong’s famous saying: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Below, I profile the new generals and admirals and what their promotions tell us about China’s evolving military. New Air Force Commander Chang Dingqiu Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month. Chang, born in Hunan province in 1967, served as deputy commander of Southern Theater Command before he was selected as the new leader of the PLA Air Force (PLAAF). He had been deputy commander of the 14th Air Division under the now defunct Nanjing Military Region, commander of 3rd Air Division under the Nanjing Military Region, assistant to PLAAF chief of staff (he got this deputy corps commander-grade position in 2012 and was promoted to the rank of major general in the same year), deputy of chief of staff of the former Shenyang Military Region (a corps commander-grade position), and chief of staff of the Shenyang Military Region Air Force. He even flew a J-10 fighter jet in a flypast over Tiananmen Square in Beijing in a military parade in September of 2015. Besides having been deputy commander of Southern Theater Command, Chang also assumed the post of deputy chief of staff of the Joint Staff Department (JSD) of the CMC in 2018. With his command-and-control experience in joint operations in the upper and lower echelons of the PLA, Chang stood out as the most qualified candidate for the current position. His being an alternate member of the Central Committee of the CCP also helped. His service as deputy chief of staff of the JSD was especially consequential. Now as commander of a service (a theater command commander-grade position), Chang has gone through a promotion process identical to that of his predecessor, Ma Xiaotian. Diplomat Brief Weekly Newsletter N Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to watch across the Asia-Pacific. Get the Newsletter Though without the experience of commanding a theater command, Chang had cooperated with the navy multiple times in joint operations between the PLAAF and PLA Navy (PLAN) and had participated in the arrangement of flights and voyages to far seas while being deputy commander of the Southern Theater Command. Whether such work experience will help him realize the PLA’s objective of enabling “each service to be fully responsible for operations” remains unclear. After all, there is still quite a difference between being a deputy chief of staff of the JSD and being a theater command commander, in that the latter is tasked with the mission of facilitating coordination between the services and interaction between the military and local authorities, a job usually not assigned to a deputy theater command commander. Advertisement New Central Theater Command Commander Lin Xiangyang Lin Xiangyang, born in Fujian province in 1964, served mainly in the former Nanjing Military Region, which was deactivated in the most recent round of military reform launched in 2016. He is a member of the so-called “Southeastern Corps,” referring to a group of officers with tours of duty in southeast China. This group has been highly appreciated by Xi in recent years. Lin’s appointment as commander of the Central Theater Command represents the command’s return to control by the army once again. It is significant as a sign that the joint operations mechanism desperately needed by the PLA is now fully in place. A more important reason for the arrangement is that it is important to secure control of the military, which in turn ensures political power, in the lead-up to next year’s 20th National Congress of the CCP. The Central Theater Command is especially important because it is responsible for the security of the capital city. Its commander must be a general that Xi can trust. New Southern Theater Command Commander Wang Xiubin Wang Xiubin, born in Jiangsu province in 1964, previously also served mainly in the Nanjing Military Region, where he took positions in the 1st and 31st Group Armies in sequence. He is a member of the “Southeastern Corps” as well. The significance of his appointment as commander of the Southern Theater Command does not lie in its association with the re-emergence of the army-centric mentality in recent days, but rather in the possible strengthening of combat deployments targeted at Taiwan. The Eastern Theater Command used to be mainly responsible for operations against Taiwan. Now that the PLA adopts a tactic of responding to emergency situations in four sea regions (the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the South China Sea) at once, the Southern Theater Command thus becomes vital in a campaign against Taiwan. Wang’s previous ties with Xi might also be a reason for him to become the chosen one. Notably, the PLA Army (PLAA)’s recent efforts to expand its aviation branch and the PLA Marine Corps’ efforts in the same direction might get a boost from the deployment of the Type 075 amphibious assault ship. While serving in group armies under the Nanjing Military Region, Wang might have accumulated sufficient experience in the operation of amphibious mechanized infantry brigades. Whether such experience can be of use to the operation of amphibious assault ships under the Southern Theater Command is worthy of our attention. Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month. New Western Theater Command Commander Wang Haijiang Wang Haijiang, born in Sichuan province in 1963, participated in the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979. His work under Li Qianyuan, who was commander of the Lanzhou Military Region in 1999, as Li’s secretary gave a great boost to his military career. He commanded the Tibet Military Region and later the Xinjiang Military Region. That was the reason why he was selected to command the Western Theater Command. What should be noted is that former Western Theater Command Commander Xu Qiling just took the position in July. Xu was replaced in a matter of two months. Discipline problems or health issues might be the reason for the replacement. Another possible reason, however, might have something to do with the situation in Afghanistan. Whether the Taliban’s return to power might embolden rebels in Xinjiang and thereby cause unrest in the autonomous region is of great concern to Beijing. With his previous experience in Tibet and Xinjiang, Wang might be better able to handle unexpected happenings in the Western Theater Command. His relations with local authorities will also help. That might be the reason why he was selected to replace Xu. Advertisement Xu, born in Henan Province in 1962, spent most of his time in the military in field units. Because of that, he lacked work experience in the top echelon or experience in joint operations, which became factors most detrimental to his further development in the military. He was especially lacking in relations with local authorities, which group army commanders or service commanders under theater commands are not supposed to be responsible for cultivating. A commanding officer who spends most or all of his time in the military in field units might not know the attitude of people within his area of responsibility. It will be interesting to find out what Xu’s next appointment will be. After having been commander of the Western Theater Command, Xu could not take a corps commander-grade position or deputy theater command commander-grade one. As we try to learn more about newly appointed PLA generals, we should find out whether the replaced ones have reached the retirement age or whether there are other reasons, such as health conditions, power struggles, and corruption. It is also possible that the new positions are meant as promotions or demotions. New Navy Commander Dong Jun Newly appointed PLAN Commander Dong had served as director of PLAN Command Military Training Department, deputy chief of staff of the North Sea Fleet, and commander of the 92269th Unit (Zhoushan Water District). He was promoted to the rank of rear admiral in July of 2012 and became deputy commander of the East Sea Fleet in September of 2014. He had also been chief of staff of the East Sea Fleet and deputy commander of the Southern Theater Command. In 2017, he had the opportunity to cooperate with Chang Dingqiu, who was then deputy Commander of the Southern Theater Command. They are now commanders of the navy and air force respectively. Such a combination should be helpful to the PLA’s efforts to develop joint operations between the air force and navy. With aircraft carriers entering into service one after another in recent years, cooperation between the air force and navy should be something the PLA is trying to enhance. Admirals who have served in the Southern Theater Command should have a lot to offer to the navy with their understanding of the situation in the South China Sea and the military strength of other countries in the region. This is something we will notice while observing the PLAN’s exercises in the future. Conclusion: Taiwan as the Apparent Target? The noticeable reshuffle of PLA leadership as described above happened within only two months. As stated previously, it might have something to do with the upcoming 20th National Congress of the CCP. Control of the military will help determine whether Xi can extend his tenure by one more term and whether he can secure his power base during his third term. Promoting generals is a method often used by Chinese leaders to control the military. What we should note, however, is that new Central Theater Command Commander Lin, Southern Theater Command Commander Wang (promoted in July), and Eastern Theater Command Commander He Weidong all have same background of serving in in the former Nanjing Military Region and its successor, the Eastern Theater Command. Their service in the Nanjing Military Region might have coincided with Xi’s years in southeast China, especially Fujian province. But we also need to consider that three theater commands tasked with the mission of invading Taiwan have been given new commanders who have served in units with a primary mission of taking Taiwan. Unifying Taiwan by force has always been a primary mission of the Eastern Theater Command. In a campaign against Taiwan, bombers based in the Central Theater Command will provide fire cover and make cross-theater flights to other bases. The main reserve force for operations against Taiwan and airborne troops required for such operations are concentrated in the Central Theater Command. Airborne troops are one of the “iron-fist forces” established for the sole purpose of attacking Taiwan. The forces mentioned above form part of the order of battle for an invasion of Taiwan. What does these recent promotions mean for Taiwan? Are the generals or admirals involved simply men trusted by Xi because their previous service in southeast China happened to coincide with Xi’s time in the same region? Or does this series of promotions reveal something about the recent situation in the Taiwan Strait? We need to pay more attention to this question. These generals or admirals will surely try their best in the coming year. The next promotion of generals, set to take place at the beginning of next year, could decide the future membership of the CMC. It’s very possible that the CMC members might have all been involved in the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1996. If the 18th National Congress of the CCP could be described as the rise of the “Vietnam War Gang,” referring to generals who participated in the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, next year’s 20th National Congress is the right time for the rise of the “Taiwan Strait Gang.” The recent promotion of PLA leaders is suggestive of the growing importance of the “Southeast Corps” and the “Taiwan Strait Gang.” By analyzing personnel arrangements in the PLA, we can find out whether there is any change in PLA strategy or whether there are any other destabilizing factors in China.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-tech-giants-policy

Why China crushed its tech giants

China's ban on all cryptocurrency transactions, announced on Friday, is just the latest of a series of bombshells that over just one year have profoundly reshaped the country's technological landscape. It is not only bitcoin miners, crypto-traders, or video gamers that have suddenly found themselves in Beijing's crosshairs. By and large it is China's largest internet platforms that have been feeling the heat. One after another, tech giants like Ant, Meituan, and Didi have been targets of antitrust probes. This has intersected with a tightening of data protection regulation, which is seen as a national security issue, and a general drive to curb capitalist excess. Ride-hailing firm Didi, for instance, hasn’t just come under antitrust scrutiny: two days after its New York IPO in June, it was forced to stop accepting new users while regulators investigated suspicions it might leak user data to the US. Just a few years ago, China’s technology companies used to seem immune to regulation. Their CEOs were idolised. Almost every STEM student in China wanted to work in consumer tech, not hardware. The government favoured these companies, which never would have gotten so big without it. They were allowed to grow in a nurturing policy environment with no competition from overseas tech giants, enjoying what Tiffany Wong, a consultant at China-focused research firm Sinolytics, calls an “experimental Wild West period of growth”. Like some of their counterparts elsewhere in the world, Chinese tech giants exploited legal grey areas. They maintained a work culture where white-collar employees stayed in the office until the early morning, and worked over national holidays. They designed algorithms that pressured delivery workers to drive dangerously and also fined them arbitrarily. They deliberately misclassified their workers, using intermediaries to hire them, to avoid legal responsibility for paying social security for drivers. Workers who attempted to fight legal cases found that they were in fact employed not by the platform, but by a company in a city they’d never worked in. When a driver for food delivery giant Ele.me died on the job, the company maintained it had no labour contract with him, and paid his family the equivalent of £220 as compensation. Bad practices and minimal regulation continued in the name of economic growth and innovation. Tech companies hired former regulatory officials, which contributed to regulation’s ineffectiveness. Even when regulators tried to govern new consumer tech, for instance, by releasing the E-Commerce Law in 2019, tech companies successfully lobbied for softer guidelines. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, these companies have continued to grow, and Chinese consumers have become even more reliant on them, but also more aware of their ugliest practices.

https://www.city-journal.org/the-fallacy-of-elder-parole

The Fallacy of Elder Parole

The national decarceration and “prison abolition” movements aim to free as many people from confinement as possible, using any available arguments. The crisis on Rikers Island, for instance, prompted rapid passage of the “Less Is More Act,” which reduces the penalties for “technical violations” of parole, such as not checking in with parole officers, doing drugs, or hanging out with felons. The general process of parole and clemency—by which convicted criminals can get released before the expiration of their sentence, usually predicated on years of good behavior, the expression of remorse, and faith that the inmate has repented of his wicked ways—has been identified as a soft spot in the nation’s system of punishment. The public has limited appetite for non-carceral alternatives for serious criminals, such as restorative justice or community supervision, but it is easier to sell people on stories of redemption after the partial completion of a sentence. The criminal-justice advocacy complex—including leftist officials, major foundations and think tanks, activist groups, and supportive media voices—has embraced this fight. The ACLU, for instance, calls the nation’s parole process “under-utilized, broken, or non-existent.” Following controversial commutations of the sentences of terrorist killers Sirhan Sirhan and David Gilbert, the New York Times ran an item by convicted murderer and jailhouse journalist John J. Lennon taking issue with a system that relies on gubernatorial grace to achieve mercy. “But many of us are perplexed about clemency,” writes Lennon. “Who deserves mercy? Can we earn it? If our victims won’t forgive us, will a governor? And why should mercy fall on the grace of the governor alone?” The implication is that mercy is too important to be left up to an individual and must be codified in order to make early release from prison impartial and relatively automatic. Activists argue that older prisoners pose no threat to society and should be let out of prison as a matter of course. A proposal in the New York State legislature called the Elder Parole Bill seeks to end “death by incarceration” by giving inmates over the age of 55 “the opportunity for parole consideration after they have served 15 years of their sentence,” in the words of State Senator Brad Hoylman, the bill’s sponsor. According to Hoylman, “long prison sentences without a meaningful chance for parole don’t keep New Yorkers safer or deter crime. They keep people languishing in jail cells for decades after they’ve been rehabilitated.” About 21 percent of the people incarcerated in New York State prisons are over 50. It’s a myth, though, that most people in prison will be there for an extraordinary period of time. The average inmate currently serving time in prison has been there for two years and is looking at an average of 19 months until he is released, though almost two-thirds of all prisoners have been convicted of a violent felony. The percentage of people serving a sentence of life without parole is actually tiny—less than 1 percent of all inmates. So it’s useful to consider who would really be served by Hoylman’s bill, which aims to “help bring our elders home” and give them “a chance to reconnect with their families and communities in their golden years.” Anyone over 55 who was sentenced to life without parole, having already served at least 15 years, is likely to have committed some heinous crimes. What types of people would benefit from the Elder Parole Bill? Mark David Chapman, who stalked and assassinated former Beatle John Lennon in 1980, is 66, and has spent more than 40 years in prison. Colin Ferguson shot 25 people on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993, citing his hatred of whites. He is now 63. Joel Rifkin murdered at least 17 women between 1989 and 1993, dumping their bodies in creeks and empty lots; Rifkin is now 62. David Berkowitz, the infamous Son of Sam killer, murdered six people and wounded seven others in the course of his 1976 spree. Berkowitz is now 68, has become an evangelical Christian, and writes essays on faith and repentance for Christian websites and periodicals. Richard Angelo, a Long Island nurse who poisoned dozens of his patients, killing at least eight, was sent to prison in 1987; he is 59 now. By the longevity standards of 2021, these convicted killers could easily live for another 25 years each, and with good health could certainly enjoy their “golden years” in relative comfort outside the confines of the New York State correctional system. Sounds good for them; the benefits to society, on the other hand, are somewhat dubious. It’s not the case that violent crime is strictly a young man’s game. In 2020, nearly 24 percent of new commitments for violent felonies in New York State were people over 40, and 10 percent were older than 50. And there is no reason to assume that sex murderers and poisoners change their attitudes just because they qualify for discounted theater tickets. Indeed, the decarceration movement finds itself in an uncomfortable paradox that it prefers to skirt. The prison system, we’re told, is a vicious hellhole that instructs young people how to become better criminals and dehumanizes its subjects to the point that they become moral monsters. But at the same time, we are asked to believe that innumerable longtime inmates have become valedictorians, AIDS educators, peer counselors, and service-dog trainers, whom society should recruit at once to teach anger management to young people “at risk” of becoming involved in the justice system. How did they turn their lives around in such a nightmarish environment? It’s hard to have it both ways. Policymakers need to acknowledge the reality of a persistently violent subculture that is not amenable to do-gooder social engineering. We will continue to need prisons as long as we have people who need to be in them. Photo: Cesar Okada/iStock

https://www.thedailybeast.com/xi-jinping-takes-a-page-from-mao-zedongs-red-playbook?source=articles&via=rss

Xi Takes a Page From Mao’s Red Playbook

In the 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future, California teen Marty McFly journeyed back in time to save his present. The film’s universal themes are known around the world, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears to have internalized them as he approaches the most fraught moment of his political career. What Xi lacks in a time-traveling DeLorean, however, he more than makes up for with the theory of “continuous revolution,” as first championed by Mao Zedong. Xi’s re-election campaign, which could see him anointed leader for life, unofficially began more than two years ago when he eliminated term-limits from China’s constitution. But it was not until this July’s Chinese Communist Party centennial celebration, and a fiery speech mere steps from Mao’s tomb in Tiananmen Square, that Xi truly kicked his campaign into high gear. China watchers have long mused about the many similarities between Mao and Xi. Both came of age during a time of great socio-economic upheaval, and both led China through periods of intense international pressure. The difference, though, between Mao’s past and Xi’s present is that China itself has changed. The country and its people are more connected to the outside world than at any point in Mao’s era, and the party itself is more accountable to Chinese public opinion. Which raises the question: If the geopolitical game has changed, does Mao’s playbook still apply? Mao’s revolutionary zeal and deep affinity for asymmetric warfare were borne out of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Front and center in China’s victory was Mao’s concept of a “united front,” which entailed unifying all of Chinese society, nationalists and communists alike, to defeat the country’s then-main adversary, Japan. After consolidating power and expelling the nationalists, Mao recycled the term “united front” throughout his reign, first when partnering with the Soviet Union against imperialist forces and later against the Soviet Union itself after the 1960 Sino-Soviet split. Central to Mao’s foreign policy, beyond his role as China’s sole decision-maker, was his strong emphasis on security and sovereignty, as well as his attempted elevation of China’s international prestige. But like any good revolutionary seeking job security, Mao realized early in his tenure that the key to sustaining his political longevity was not simply eliminating rivals. Rather, it was about mobilizing the masses, namely through the adoption of a revolutionary foreign policy centered around crisis creation. In casting the People’s Republic of China’s birth as the first step in a long revolutionary march—one linked to an ill-defined destination —Mao successfully managed to enhance his own authority and legitimacy. Fast-forward to the last two months in China, which were marked by a policy blitzkrieg geared toward deepening the party’s ideological dominion over the country. In a series of crackdowns aimed at reining in private business and redirecting entrepreneurial energies in service of the party’s priorities, Xi, tapping into memories of Mao’s cultural revolution, reminded Chinese entrepreneurs that they are dispensable tools of the party. In a move reminiscent of the 1960s and early 1970s, China’s education curricula will now be centered around permeating party ideology deeper into the minds of the masses. This time, it will be Xi Thought reinforced in children’s textbooks and blasted from loudspeakers in the countryside. Not even video games are safe, with the government now restricting daily play to one hour. The net effect of these moves is that entrepreneurs will be more willing to comply with the party’s demands and intellectuals more inclined to stay silent. Xi has announced these and other policies under the banner of his latest rallying slogan, “common prosperity,” which aims to improve standards of living and to address the widening rich-poor gap, both of which threaten Xi and the party’s long-term legitimacy. Even less clear is how these draconian, Maoist measures fit into Xi’s even grander ambition of bringing about China’s “great rejuvenation,” a term which Xi and his acolytes have never defined. But as Mao also dreamt, it ensures that China’s revolution can continue indefinitely, and all in the name of Xi’s political survival. Which explains the events leading up to President Biden’s most recent phone call with Xi, one ripped directly from Mao’s script. The White House sought to frame the call as an opportunity to conduct a “broad, strategic discussion” following months of unproductive, lower-level engagements. Of course, the inability of lower-level Chinese and American officials to make any meaningful headway was largely by Xi’s design, one that places him, not his lieutenants, at the center of China’s relationship with its external rival, the United States. The call also occurred only days after the end of the annual conclave of party heavyweights in Beidaihe, one geared toward discussing policy and high-level appointments. This year, however, there are reports that Xi may have not even bothered to attend, a sign that he has so thoroughly consolidated power that he makes personnel and policy decisions on his own without any input from party bigwigs. Somewhere, Mao must be smiling. Xi’s emphasis on leader-to-leader exchanges is thus a personification of his Maoist tendencies, and one certain to persist until his re-election in 2022. What’s more, Xi appears unlikely to outsource control over any major bilateral decisions that could impact, positively or negatively, his own political standing. This includes meaningful progress on climate change negotiations, which Xi has smartly dangled before a White House eager to deliver on its domestic priorities. Whereas China’s historic pragmatism and reliance on exports may have previously constrained Xi’s revisionist behavior, he—like Mao—increasingly sees China’s fate as less dependent on outside influence. It is a political calculus that sits at the center of China’s 14th Five Year Plan, one focused on building up China’s domestic economy. Like Mao’s consolidation of power, in the coming year Xi will also further intertwine foreign and domestic crises, even at the risk of potentially serious flair ups with Washington over Taiwan. The first true test will come this month, when the U.S is expected to allow the Taiwanese government to change the name of its representative office in Washington to include the word “Taiwan.” Just how Xi intends to navigate a wholesale restructuring of China’s economy and increasing tensions over Taiwan remains unclear — even to him, it seems. What is clear, however, is that to get wherever they are going, which presumably does not include a war, Xi and President Biden are going to need to build some personal in-roads. It is a challenge made all the more difficult for Biden given Xi’s refusal to travel outside of China for more than 600 days and counting. For now, the best Washington can do it buckle up, and hope that Xi’s sequel is a whole lot better than Mao’s original.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/28/americans-are-over-bidens-pandemic-incompetence/

Americans Are Over Biden’s Pandemic Incompetence

Just eight months into Joe Biden’s presidency, it looks like most people have realized they’ve been had. His promise that he was the one they could trust to bring a swift end to the pandemic was a con. An Axios-Ipsos poll released Tuesday showed that for the first time, a majority of U.S. adults, 53 percent, have little to no trust in Biden to relay accurate information related to COVID-19. Compare that to when nearly 60 percent of the public said they did trust him immediately at the time of his inauguration. But trust in Biden since then has melted away at a steady pace. Why wouldn’t it? When he vowed to “shut down” the virus, voters presumably thought he was sitting on a plan that would carry us safely from the tail-end of the most depressing winter months, when we saw the daily death average climb last year in mid-October from 673 to a peak in mid-January of 4,030. There were already three different and highly effective vaccines available, and Biden had signed yet another multitrillion-dollar welfare package (sometimes referred to as “COVID relief”) that was sold as a desperately needed remedy to the pandemic. But thanks to Democrats — including Biden and his vice president, having spent 2020 casting doubt on any vaccine developed under the previous administration (after all, they had an election to win, even if it meant people would die) — a sizable chunk of the population vulnerable to the virus has resisted getting shots. And the bloated spending bill wasn’t so much intended to beat back the virus as it was to keep people out of work by giving them obscene amounts of cash to stay home, the result of which has been a frustrating, persistent labor shortage and skyrocketing gas and food prices to boot. So after months of a declining rate of infections, and even with a majority of the country having been vaccinated, beginning in early July, Biden oversaw only then the second-worst wave of new infection rates since the start of the pandemic. On July 5, we were averaging 10,608 new cases each day. By the middle of this month, that number had soared to 175,822. In that same period, we were averaging 206 COVID-related deaths each day. By mid-September, the number was 1,618. All the while, Biden has looked like Mr. Magoo, pleading for people to wear masks for 100 days, then telling them to keep them on indefinitely. By the way, we’re now on day 250 of that 100 days. The vaccines were the promised ticket back to normalcy. Now even the vaccinated are told to wear masks. If they leave the country and are infected abroad, they’re not allowed to return until they render a negative test. The vaccines are dramatically effective at keeping people out of the hospital, but the Biden administration is telling people who have received one that their lives can be no different than anyone who refuses a shot. And recall the president’s panicked, premature vow to make “booster shots” available to everyone, only to have his Food and Drug Administration shoot him down. Biden: And we’ll make sure you all get a booster shot! FDA: Not so fast… Biden: Well, some of you, but not all of you, at least not now. But hopefully soon! The incompetence is awe-inspiring. At the White House on Monday, a reporter asked Biden how much of the population would need to be vaccinated in order to “go back to normal.” The president said as much as 98 percent. He might as well have said, “Wishful thinking.” Only 55 percent of the population right now is fully vaccinated and The New York Times estimates that at the current pace, it won’t be until late July of 2022 that just 85 percent of the eligible public aged 12 and up might have received one dose of vaccine. Most Americans have apparently grown tired of this. It’s time for them to leave the pandemic life behind and to leave Joe Biden with it.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/09/army-pilot-just-re-invented-flight-training-digital-era/185690/

An Army Pilot Just Re-Invented Flight Training for the Digital Era

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https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/09/29/work-life_balance_what_really_makes_us_happy_796554.html

Work-Life Balance: What Really Makes Us Happy?

Finding the right work-life balance is by no means a new issue in our society. But the tension between the two has been heightened by the pandemic, with workers increasingly dwelling over the nature of their work, its meaning and purpose, and how these affect their quality of life. You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here. Studies suggest people are leaving or planning to leave their employers in record numbers in 2021 – a “great resignation” that appears to have been precipitated by these reflections. But if we’re all reconsidering where and how work slots into our lives, what should we be aiming at? It’s easy to believe that if only we didn’t need to work, or we could work far fewer hours, we’d be happier, living a life of hedonic experiences in all their healthy and unhealthy forms. But this fails to explain why some retirees pick up freelance jobs and some lottery winners go straight back to work. Striking the perfect work-life balance, if there is such a thing, isn’t necessarily about tinkering with when, where and how we work – it’s a question of why we work. And that means understanding sources of happiness that might not be so obvious to us, but which have crept into view over the course of the pandemic. Attempts to find a better work-life balance are well merited. Work is consistently and positively related to our wellbeing and constitutes a large part of our identity. Ask yourself who you are, and very soon you’ll resort to describing what you do for work. Our jobs can provide us with a sense of competence, which contributes to wellbeing. Researchers have demonstrated not only that labour leads to validation but that, when these feelings are threatened, we’re particularly drawn to activities that require effort – often some form of work – because these demonstrate our ability to shape our environment, confirming our identities as competent individuals. Work even seems to makes us happier in circumstances when we’d rather opt for leisure. This was demonstrated by a series of clever experiments in which participants had the option to be idle (waiting in a room for 15 minutes for an experiment to start) or to be busy (walking for 15 minutes to another venue to participate in an experiment). Very few participants chose to be busy, unless they were forced to make the walk, or given a reason to (being told there was chocolate at the other venue). Yet the researchers found that those who’d spent 15 minutes walking ended up significantly happier than those who’d spent 15 minutes waiting – no matter whether they’d had a choice or a chocolate or neither. In other words, busyness contributes to happiness even when you think you’d prefer to be idle. Animals seem to get this instinctively: in experiments, most would rather work for food than get it for free. Eudaimonic happiness The idea that work, or putting effort into tasks, contributes to our general wellbeing is closely related to the psychological concept of eudaimonic happiness. This is the sort of happiness that we derive from optimal functioning and realising our potential. Research has shown that work and effort is central to eudaimonic happiness, explaining that satisfaction and pride you feel on completing a gruelling task. On the other side of the work-life balance stands hedonic happiness, which is defined as the presence of positive feelings such as cheerfulness and the relative scarcity of negative feelings such as sadness or anger. We know that hedonic happiness offers empirical mental and physical health benefits, and that leisure is a great way to pursue hedonic happiness. But even in the realm of leisure, our unconscious orientation towards busyness lurks in the background. A recent study has suggested that there really is such a thing as too much free time – and that our subjective wellbeing actually begins to drop if we have more than five hours of it in a day. Whiling away effortless days on the beach doesn’t seem to be the key to long-term happiness. This might explain why some people prefer to expend significant effort during their leisure time. Researchers have likened this to compiling an experiential CV, sampling unique but potentially unpleasant or even painful experiences – at the extremes, this might be spending a night in an ice hotel, or joining an endurance desert race. People who take part in these forms of “leisure” typically talk about fulfilling personal goals, making progress and accumulating accomplishments – all features of eudaimonic happiness, not the hedonism we associate with leisure. The real balance This orientation sits well with a new concept in the field of wellbeing studies: that a rich and diverse experiential happiness is the third component of a “good life”, in addition to hedonic and eudaimonic happiness. Across nine countries and tens of thousands of participants, researchers recently found that most people (over 50% in each country) would still prefer a happy life typified by hedonic happiness. But around a quarter prefer a meaningful life embodied by eudaimonic happiness, and a small but nevertheless significant amount of people (about 10-15% in each country) choose to pursue a rich and diverse experiential life. Given these different approaches to life, perhaps the key to long-lasting wellbeing is to consider which lifestyle suits you best: hedonic, eudaimonic or experiential. Rather than pitching work against life, the real balance to strike post-pandemic is between these three sources of happiness. Lis Ku, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, De Montfort University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/light-beads-microscopy-to-image-brain-activity/

Light Beads Microscopy To Image Brain Activity

The current estimate is that the average human brain contains 86 billion neurons. These neurons connect to each other in a complex network, involving 100 trillion connections. The job of neuroscientists is to map all these connections and to see how they work – no small task. There are multiple ways to approach this task. At first neuroscientists just looked at the brain and described its macroscopic (or “gross”) anatomical structures. We can see there are different lobes of the brain and major connecting cables. You can also slice up the brain and see its internal structure. When the microscope was developed we could then look at the microscopic structure of the brain, and by using different staining techniques we could visualize the branching structure of axons and dendrites (the parts of neurons that connect to other neurons), we could see that there were different kinds of neurons, various layers in the cortex, and lots of pathways and nodes. But even when we had a detailed map of the neuroanatomy of the brain down to the microscopic level, we still needed to know how it all functioned. We needed to see neurons in action. (And further, there are lots of non-neuronal cells in the brain such as astrocytes that also affect brain function.) At first we were able to infer what different parts of the brain did by examining people who had damage to one part of the brain. Damage to the left temporal lobe in most people causes language deficits, so this part of the brain must be involved in language processing. We could also do research on animals for all but the highest brain functions. As new techniques were added, our ability to map brain function grew. The brain is essentially an electrical organ, so we could measure that electrical (and later magnetic) activity to see the activity in different parts of the brain in real time. Modern computers allow for very detailed analysis of these electrical signals. We could also electrically stimulate the brain to see what happens – the opposite approach of seeing what damage does. Another approach to imaging brain function was looking at metabolism. Neurons are hungry because doing what they do uses up a lot of energy, so we could look at markers of metabolism to see which clumps of brain cells were active. PET scans and functional MRI scans use this technique. With each new technique, our knowledge of the brains connections and their functions (the connectome) grew. But again – with 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections, it’s clear we are still far from a complete map of the connectome. Further, brain organization and function is extremely complex, challenging even our basic concepts of how it works. For example, can we understand the brain as a series of networks of neurons, or as a combination of modules (nodes) of neurons with a specific function? It seems that the answer is probably both – there are networks of modules, and those modules can serve different functions when participating in different networks. We therefore cannot even answer the question of – what does this bit of the brain do. The real answer is, it depends, on what networks this particular bit of the brain is currently participating in. If we want to fully understand brain function one method would be to detect in real time the full activity of all 86 billion neurons. Another method would be to model the activity of 86 billion neurons in a supercomputer, and these two methods are complementary. But we are nowhere close to being able to image the brain’s activity at this ultimate level of detail. Although advancing all the time, current technology has low resolution compared to the complexity of the brain. Some recent progress shows roughly where we are. A technique known as light beads microscopy has been able (in a mouse) to image the real-time simultaneous activity of one million neurons. That is quite a feat, although still almost four orders of magnitude less than the entire human brain. The new paper is titled: High-speed, cortex-wide volumetric recording of neuroactivity at cellular resolution using light beads microscopy. This builds on a technique of using lasers to activate fluorescent tags in neurons. A laser is fired for a few nanoseconds at a neuron with a fluorescent tag, causing the neuron to light up briefly and in such a way that its current state of activity can be inferred. This technique works in tissue that scatters light, and is therefore non-transparent (like the brain). While powerful, the technique has a significant trade-off in which higher resolution and volume comes at a significant loss of speed. This is there the new advance comes in. The researchers were able to tweak this technique to obtain essentially maximal speed: The technique involves breaking one strong pulse into 30 smaller sub pulses – each at a different strength – that dive into 30 different depths of scattering mouse brain but induce the same amount of fluorescence at each depth. This is accomplished with a cavity of mirrors that staggers the firing of each pulse in time and ensures that they can all reach their target depths via a single microscope focusing lens. With this technique the limiting factor on how fast they can record neuronal activity is the time it takes for the fluorescent tag itself to light up. This is therefore essentially as fast as this technique can get. The researchers were able to demonstrate the technique by visualizing one million neurons simultaneously across the entire mouse brain. There is further good news in that this technique uses the same equipment as two-photon microscopy already in use, to it can be rapidly adopted by neuroscience labs around the world. We still have a long way to go before we can measure and model the simultaneous activity of an entire human brain. But a million neurons is still a powerful tool for understanding brain function. Hopefully we’ll start to see some results from this technique soon. It’s also possible that further incremental advances will make it even more powerful going forward.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/kareem-abdul-jabbar-has-no-time-nba-s-covid-vaccine-ncna1280278

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has no time for NBA's Covid vaccine selfishness

NBA games don’t begin until Oct. 19, but an unhealthy number of the league’s players are already refusing to get a Covid-19 vaccination. And their refusal could sabotage the 2021-22 season. Surprisingly, a small minority of anti-vax players has convinced the players' union that a vaccine mandate during a pandemic should be a “non-starter” for the league. The league cannot give in to this demand. It must instead insist that players be vaccinated, just as it has with referees and other people who will be near the players, such as security guards, bus drivers and massage therapists. The league cannot give in to this demand. It must demand that players be vaccinated, just as it has with referees and other people who will be near the players. At least LeBron James, the sport’s biggest star, is vaccinated. Unfortunately, the four-time NBA champion said hewon’t urge other players to do the same. “That’s not my job,” the Los Angeles Lakers great said. “I think everyone has their own choice to do what they feel is right for themselves and their family.” Media sessions this week highlighted just how embarrassing this debacle could get. Bradley Beal, the Washington Wizards sharpshooting guard, is guaranteed to make around $71 million through 2023. He’s not vaccinated. Asked why, Beal said only that his reason was “personal.” Unvaccinated players like Beal don’t seem to care that they could trigger a Covid outbreak. They also seem blissfully unaware that a pro sports team is a public entity, dependent on consumers buying a product that immediately loses value if players miss games because of Covid. Hence, a player’s “personal” decision can quickly become a lot more public. Kyrie Irving, the Brooklyn Nets superstar guard, did not attend his team’s media day. New York City, home to the Nets and Knicks, requires people ages 12 and older at any large indoor event to be vaccinated. That, of course, includes NBA games. Irving refuses to say if he’s vaccinated, but his absence Monday spoke volumes. If Irving is unvaccinated, he would miss 44 of Brooklyn’s 82 regular-season games (43 in New York, one in San Francisco), even if he stays Covid-free. And that would be the height of selfishness. Rather than take a vaccine, as a reported 90 percent of the approximately 450 NBA players have done, Irving would risk crushing the Nets’ championship dreams because he is “a human being first” — just one of his many nonsensical non-explanations. If unvaccinated, Irving and other unvaccinated players like the Golden State Warriors’ Andrew Wiggins also would not be able to practice with their teams in their home cities. Developing the chemistry and cohesion that create winning teams would be virtually impossible. Both Irving and Wiggins have superstar teammates. What must Kevin Durant and James Harden think of Irving? How must Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green view Wiggins for refusing a vaccine proven over and over to be safe and effective? Also, why should fans of those teams buy tickets if key players would rather sit out home games than get vaccinated? Irving, a seven-time All-Star, spoke with reporters online Monday but refused to say whether he would get vaccinated. “I would love to just keep that private and handle that the right way with my team and go forward with a plan,” he said, cryptically. This is madness. And basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 74, rejected the anti-vax sentiment as if it were a weak attempted layup. Also, why should fans of those teams buy tickets if key players would rather sit out home games than get vaccinated? “The NBA should insist that all players and staff are vaccinated or remove them from the team,” Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer with 38,387 points, told Rolling Stone. “There is no room for players who are willing to risk the health and lives of their teammates, the staff and the fans simply because they are unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation or do the necessary research.” Abdul-Jabbar can still deliver verbal slam dunks. But can he talk sense into the NBA’s unvaccinated 10 percent? If they won’t listen to Abdul-Jabbar, perhaps they should pay heed to their female peers in the WNBA, a league with a 99 percent vaccination rate. How did the WNBA do it? By creating a space for players to ask questions and have their answers heard and respected. “If the league were to mandate it and we didn’t feel like we knew enough about it, I don’t think people would have gotten vaccinated,” Atlanta Dream forward Elizabeth Williams told Sports Illustrated. Williams, a leader among WNBA players, is a voice of reason. Irving, a vice president in the NBA players’ union, seems to crave attention. He once contended the Earth was flat, and Rolling Stone reported he recently liked Instagram posts from a conspiracy theorist who said a secret society is using the vaccine to ensnare Black people in a Satanic plot. It would be one thing if an athlete expressed vaccine hesitancy because of the infamous Tuskegee experiment, which began in 1932 and allowed syphilis to go untreated in Black men for decades. That’s a concern that can be discussed, civilly and respectfully. But an NBA player amplifying talk of a Satanic plot is just plain nuts. Perhaps peer pressure in the locker room will increase the number of vaccinated players. Durant, the Nets’ dynamic forward, gave a firm “no” when asked if he was worried about Irving missing dozens of games. Maybe Durant will persuade his enigmatic teammate. And after Wiggins’ request for a religious exemption from the vaccine was denied, teammate Nemanja Bjelica reportedly urged him to take the shot. Whatever vaccinated NBA players can do to convince their anti-vax teammates should be done. It’s worth a shot.

https://www.newsweek.com/authoritarian-tech-rise-opinion-1586827

Authoritarian Tech Is On the Rise | Opinion

Life in a refugee camp is an unimaginable horror. It's the reality of thousands of people who fled war-torn countries, poverty, hunger and sometimes death. Greek refugee camps are often overpopulated, with scarce access to water, heat, food, or toilets, set up over contaminated soil. They are the closest thing to hell on Earth. The pandemic worsened camps on several fronts. There has been a serious uptick in surveillance technologies administered to refugees since the pandemic started. Not only are refugees detained in inhumane conditions, but they are also subjected to strict surveillance inside and outside the camps, serving as guinea pigs for authoritarian technologies that are then used on the general population. There are plans to increase and implement such invasive and often harmful tech on everyone. From things that seem quite simple, such as forcing refugees to wear electronic ankle monitors in Canada and implementing voice recognition in Germany to discover migrants' origins, to video border surveillance in Greece and invasive uses of contact tracing technology, Big Brother is keeping tabs on refugees in camps worldwide. Other technologies, like body heat scanners, iris scanners and social media scraping was used in refugee camps and on borders for years before the pandemic. They were prototyped then, before moving into mainstream use when the pandemic hit. In January, I interviewed Petra Molnar, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. She spent time visiting refugee camps in Greece, on the island of Lesbos. "The [Greek] government is ... basically weaponizing COVID to use it as an excuse to lock the camps down and make it impossible to do any research," she said. Molnar said the situation was "quite bad in terms of things like access to health care, water, shelter. ... It's far from ideal. The Kara Tepe camp is windy, it gets flooded, [people have] no access to water. It's difficult to wash hands and isolate in any meaningful way." The most invasive and harmful tech available, what Molnar called "sexy tech," was not being used within the camps. She said there are plans to use the tech eventually, which is already in use at the Greek border and in Europe. From drones and cameras to facial recognition and voice recognition, rarely refugees are aware that their data is been collected and freely shared with other countries without their consent, with little care for their privacy and data security. Refugees are often more concerned with survival and making it through the day than caring about how their biometric data is being collected, stored and shared. According to Jan Theurich, a German journalist and member of the DunyaCollective who spent several months in Greece, refugees have more pressing needs, such as being able to drink potable water, not freezing to death in windy and humid camps, or not die in a fire caused by the use of smuggled electric heaters. "This is a political catastrophe and then a humanitarian catastrophe. It's not just the pandemic, but there's a political will behind the situation creating a humanitarian catastrophe," he said. Leaving the camps is not always the best choice as any financial support a refugee gets can run out quickly, causing them to find their own way. In the end, a lot of people decide to stay. "It's like making a decision between getting the pest and cholera," Theurich said. One must remember that inside the camps, refugees "are the last ones to get information from the outside world. You can imagine the effect this all have on them—there's increase in self-harm behavior, domestic violence, rapes and harassment, also stabbings." Countries are using surveillance technology to monitor social distancing and quarantine compliance and the spread of COVID-19, according to Marcus Michaelsen, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. "If these measures are actually necessary and proportionate to confront the pandemic—if they are subject to public oversight and can be rolled back once the pandemic is over," then they should be implemented, he said. We don't know what kind of tech is being used on us at any given moment. But we can guess, investigate and denounce governments and companies alike. One type of tech focuses on contact tracing, with apps installed on our mobile phones to track and limit contagion. "There are still lots of apps that pose a threat to citizens' right to privacy," said Samuel Woodhams, digital tights researcher at internet research firm Top10VPN. At least 19 apps, with 4 million downloads combined, don't have dedicated privacy policies according to Woodhams, meaning that users cannot know for sure how their data is managed—or by whom. Yet here we are discussing the rights of citizens. One can wonder what happens to the data of those who are running for their lives and those living in less-than-democratic countries. But the fact is that even so-called democracies have shady records when it comes to surveillance, which leads many to worry. Contact tracing apps' location data "are not precise enough to track the spreading of the virus but reveal a lot of personal information. The same is true for credit card data, facial recognition and CCTV cameras in public places," said Michaelsen. He questioned who collects the data and where it will all be stored—and if it will be anonymized to protect against data theft and abuse out of potential economic and political interests. The answers are generally far from what most people would expect—at least from those who have full confidence in the democratic ideals of their respective countries. "In authoritarian and illiberal contexts, the pandemic accelerated the decline of internet freedoms, a trend in line with a broader crisis for democracy and shrinking civic space," Michaelsen pointed out. It is not to say that we don't need the means to track and prevent the spreading of diseases, or that we don't need to monitor borders and protect ourselves from terrorism and potential harm. We need better rules in place, transparency and accountability. Otherwise, the same measures used to protect us will end up harming society and create a virtual police state. We must know who is collecting our data and to what purpose. We as a society must be able to set boundaries and limits. Otherwise, little by little, the differences between democratic states and authoritarian or illiberal ones will decrease and we will end up unwillingly giving up on our privacy—which is what is happening with refugees today, all over the world. The pandemic is being used to justify expanding sometimes draconian surveillance. It is interesting that amid such heavy use of authoritarian tech, violation of privacy and 24 hour monitoring, some people prefer to fall for conspiracy theories about microchips in vaccines. Reality in itself is frightening enough. Raphael Tsavkko Garcia is a Brazilian journalist based in Belgium. He holds a PhD in human rights from the University of Deusto (Spain). The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/science-is-not-just-philosophy/

Science is not Just Philosophy

It is not uncommon, if you do not like any particular finding of scientific research, to attack the institutions of science or even the very notion of science itself. These kinds of attacks are now common in the anti-vaccine pushback against common sense public health measures, and often from a religious or ideological perspective. It’s not surprising that the false claim that science is just philosophy has reared its head in such writings. The attack on science also tends to have at least two components. The first is a straw man about how scientists are pretending that science is a monolithic perfect and objective entity. This is then followed by the claim that, rather, science is just opinion, another form of subjective philosophy. This position is entirely wrong on both counts. Here is one example, embedded in a long article loaded with misinformation about vaccines and the COVID pandemic. There is way too much misdirection in this article to tackle in one response, and I only want to focus on the philosophical claims. These are now common within certain religious circles, mostly innovated, at least recently, in the fight against the teaching of evolution. They have already lost this fight, philosophically, scientifically, and (perhaps most importantly) legally, but of course that does not mean they will abandon a bad argument just because its wrong. First the straw man: The second consequence of “following science” is that it reinforces one of modernity’s most enduring myths: that “science” is a consistent, compact, institutionally-guaranteed body of knowledge without interest or agenda. What this myth conceals is the actual operation of the sciences—multiple, messy, contingent, and tentative as they necessarily are. The myth is itself a myth. It exists almost nowhere except in the minds of science deniers and those with an anti-science agenda. Elsewhere the author admits: As a lay person, unqualified to judge the technical issues, I have concluded only that there might be a legitimate question here, and one that must, necessarily, remain open until time and experience can settle it. This is classic FUD (fear, uncertainty, denial) – a “I’m just asking questions” approach that tries to sow doubt about the science without being held accountable for having a scientifically coherent and defensible position oneself. The author is indeed unqualified to judge the technical issues, which renders the rest of his article comfortably ignorable, because it is an attempt at doing just that – substituting his own admittedly unqualified opinions for those of actual experts. I would argue he also appears unqualified in philosophy of science or the institutions of science as well. The first quote is needed to set up the straw man, because he would be unable to argue against how science actually works. Anyone working is science and academia should immediately recognize his statement as nonsense. Science, of course, is messy and tentative. That is practically the theme of this blog and the entire skeptical movement. But it is only half the equation – while science if messy, full of missteps and blind alleys, because it incorporates a process for testing its ideas against reality, it can make objective progress toward ever more refined and accurate models of reality. At some point our models become so accurate and reliable that it is reasonable to base individual decisions and even collective policy on their conclusions. The anti-science perspective also consistently misses the fact that we need to make decisions, even when our knowledge is incomplete and imperfect. Not doing anything is also a decision with its own consequences. A medical perspective is incredibly useful here, because we have to make decisions every day based on imperfect information, often with immediate and objective consequences. Such decisions follow a risk vs benefit and/or cost vs benefit analysis, where all options are compared based on the best existing evidence. Demanding that one option be based upon some arbitrary level of certainty, while treating other options as somehow the default, is not rational. There are legitimate principles of “first do no harm” in the calculation, but that does not mean do nothing unless you have absolute certainty. Where the anti-science crowd goes wrong is in this latter assumption – they assume that deciding to do something must be based on certainty, and therefore if scientists are recommending a specific action they are by necessity also claiming to have certainty. They then proceed to knock down the mythical certainty which never existed in the first place. Also, because they have perpetuated this myth that “science” pretends to be monolithic, all they need to do is present the everyday messiness of actual science as evidence against the alleged certainty. They often do this by quoting scientists engaged in the normal back and forth of debate over how to interpret evidence, and where the balance of evidence lays. See – these scientists are arguing with each other, therefore we don’t have certainty, and therefore we can ignore all of the recommendations of experts and follow our lay gut instincts. (The rest of the linked article is basically a long attempt and doing just this.) The second component of the argument is dragging down science into the realm of mere opinion or philosophy: Modern science during the first half of its four-hundred-year career was called natural philosophy—Michael Faraday, who died in 1867, still called it that—and that is still, in many ways, its proper name. Recognizing science as philosophy allows us to see that, like any knowledge whatever, it is a creature of its tools, its techniques, and its initial assumptions. Einstein’s famous remark—that the most surprising and mysterious feature of the world is that it is “comprehensible” at all—points to the most basic assumption on which physical science rests: that the world corresponds to the concepts which we have available for grasping it. He later also invokes Kuhn and paradigms, mangling what Kuhn said in a typical way that Kuhn himself spent years opposing. The initial semantic argument is simply ridiculous. It is also a genetic fallacy – that because science evolved out of philosophy science is therefore still merely philosophy (I write this not as a criticism or negative statement about philosophy – the “merely” is their assumption). Science is certainly based on a foundation of philosophy, but by definition if involves its own methods that are distinct from philosophy. Science is empirical, it actually tests its ideas systematically against reality in a way specifically designed to prove its claims, predictions, and models wrong. (Again, as an aside, philosophers may also at times empirically test their claims, especially when it involves human behavior, but that is not the core of what philosophers do.) The author is trying to create this sense that science can only have internal consistency, without any connection to external reality. But that is objectively wrong. It is also a fight that happened in the 19th century, with a clear intellectual victor – science is empirical. The last line is very revealing, in that it is very wrong – that science assumes the “world corresponds to the concepts which we have available for grasping it.” If anything the opposite is closer to the truth. Scientists recognize that what we are doing is simply building models that make predictions about how the world behaves. These models may not, in fact, correspond to how the world actually works. We can only ever say how well our models make predictions. In fact, scientists debate to what extent we would even make statements about how reality actually is rather than just how well our models work. The famous quote attributed to Richard Feynman (although the attribution may be in question) is “shut up and calculate” – referring to those who question whether or not our theories of quantum mechanics actually describe how reality works. The quote is meant to convey the notion that this is a hopeless debate, so just run the math and see what it says. So no – in general scientists and the institutions of science do not pretend that science is pristine or monolithic, nor that we have some magical insight into the ultimate nature of reality (another saying is that, there is no teacher’s edition to the universe so we cannot look up the answers in the back). Science is admittedly difficult, messy, always a work in progress, with conclusions that are tentative. It is also operationally a series of refined models for predicting observations or the results of experiments. But, from a practical point of view, those models can be very useful. We can put fuel in a metal tube and ignite it, and based upon our models send the payload on top of that tube across the solar system to take detailed pictures of a distant world. Our models are so precise it is as if scientists sunk a putt from across the country. Likewise we can say with a high degree of confidence that the benefit of getting one of the COVID vaccines far outweighs the risk for most individuals. Cherry picking all the doubt and uncertainty does not change this bottom line, but it does lead to bad decisions.

https://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2017/09/29/the-high-cost-of-academic-reimbursement

The high cost of academic reimbursement

Spring, 2004. I was in the second year of my post-doc, with kids ages 4 and 2. Because I was no longer a student, the full brunt of my student loan payments had hit me, which were collectively almost double the cost of my mortgage. To put it generously, money was tight. Truthfully, we were broke as fuck and struggling each month to stay above water. I'm from a blue-collar background. My dad was a factory worker for 40 years. My mom had a teaching degree, but "paused" her career to have me (followed by my sister and brother), and was then diagnosed with multiple sclerosis shortly after my brother's birth. Hers was rapidly progressive and she was unable to return to teaching--leaving the family with one income and a lot of unexpected medical bills. So when it came to navigating academia, it goes without saying that I was out of my element. But I knew I had 2 years of funding for my fellowship, and that time was quickly coming to an end. I needed to figure out a next step. My PI suggested applying for both additional fellowships as well as professorships--though we figured I wouldn't land the latter, at least the application process and (maybe) interviews would be good practice. At the time I started looking, there was only one assistant professor position in my niche that was advertising (I had missed much of the big interviewing season--also something I didn't understand at the time). I applied, and somehow, a few weeks later I was invited to the University of Iowa for an interview. The departmental secretary emailed me to set up travel. She explained that they had booked a hotel for a 2-night stay, and they'd reimburse me for my airfare--just send her the receipts after the interview. Um. We were barely keeping up on bills as it was, with 2 kids in full-time daycare and my student loans. We had no credit card availability. We had no family we could borrow from--they were all as broke as we were or worse. We couldn't afford date nights out. Hell, we couldn't afford frozen pizza in. Where was I supposed to find $300+ for a flight in two weeks? I almost canceled. "Thanks anyway, but I'm too poor to come out." Luckily, what I did have was my 1996 Dodge Neon, purchased early in my post-doc for $2000 from an elderly woman who was no longer able to drive. It got about 40 miles per gallon on the highway, Iowa City was only about an 8.5-hour drive away, and gas was still under $2/gallon. I told the secretary I'd just drive it instead of fly in. I'm sure she thought I was phobic of flying or something (why drive otherwise??), but she said that was fine and arranged my meetings. When I left for my interview, I packed a sandwich, snacks, and drinks for the drive because stopping places for food added up. All of this to say--I completely agree with Holly Bik's thread on academic reimbursement. https://twitter.com/hollybik/status/913097093165678593 I was able to drive, but what about those who need to travel cross-country or internationally? How to pay for meetings to network and find opportunities when you're barely scraping by between paychecks? To travel for field work necessary for a degree or project? As a professor, I've tried as much as possible to put student travel on my grants, or help them search for university or other funding sources to attend conferences. Sometimes it's only partial coverage, which is better than zero but still is a financial burden on my trainees. We always apply for the travel grants (and have gotten a few). But even when it's paid, it's typically not comped up-front--and can take months to come back. As Bik notes, it's just one more way the system is rigged against those who don't have access to some kind of familial assistance--and that includes a lot of people we're trying to recruit into the field, or retain once they're here. I don't know how to fix it. I know some places are better than others. At least at my current institution, reimbursement tends to be relatively quick (~3-4 weeks or so) and will do direct deposit (some places still, inexplicably, insist on paper checks, which drags out the process even further). I know budgets are tight everywhere. I know that not every professor can afford to pay for all their students up-front either. I sent 5 trainees to the American Society for Microbiology meeting in 2016 in addition to myself, and even after 13 years as a professor, I still can't afford to just pay all of that in advance. Our financial people have often been sympathetic, but tell us their hands are tied due to all sorts of regulations. As with so many areas of academia, we need to do better. From Bik's thread, some places seem to be able to front costs--why can't that be universal? It seems like a small thing when you have money, but for many struggling academics it's the difference between "making it" and leaving the field. If administrators are truly committed to diversity, they'd find some way to make this work more smoothly.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/modern-europe/polish-history/partitions-poland

Partitions Of Poland

POLAND, PARTITIONS OF POLAND, PARTITIONS OF. The partitions of Poland, which ought to be known as the partitions of Poland-Lithuania, saw the removal from the map of one of Europe's largest states at the end of the eighteenth century (1772–1773, 1793, 1795). Executed by the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian monarchies, the causes and dynamics of the partitions have been the subject of debate in both Polish and European historiography. The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania had existed in dynastic union since 1385 under the Union of Krewo and in constitutional union since the Union of Lublin in 1569. However, the eighteenth century had seen the Commonwealth beset by problems, including the Great Northern War with Sweden (1700–1721), the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738), and increasing international intervention in Polish and Lithuanian affairs. After the death of Augustus III (1696–1763; ruled 1734–1763; elected to the Polish-Lithuanian throne at Russian behest), Stanisław Augustus Poniatowski (1732–1798; ruled 1764–1795), the former lover of Empress Catherine the Great (1729–1796; ruled 1762–1796) of Russia, was elected king in September 1764. There are two predominant schools of thought as to the causes of the partitions. The so-called Cracow school saw Poland-Lithuania's fate as inevitable, the result of the factors within the monarchy that had encouraged foreign interference. Debate usually centers around the role of the liberum veto (the need for unanimity when passing legislation in parliament), the preservation of magnatial and noble interests, and the inherent problems of an elective monarchy. In addition there were clearly internal conflicts between the Kingdom of Poland and the Duchy of Lithuania, fueled by the self-interests of their powerful magnates. The Warsaw school views the events as the destruction of a progressive state that was enacting far-reaching social, political, and cultural reforms, which reached its apotheosis with the constitution of 3 May 1791, the first freely adopted constitution in Europe. In the light of the French Revolution, the absolutist monarchs of Prussia, Russia, and Austria were swift to stamp out what they regarded as Jacobin ideas in Poland-Lithuania. Plans to partition Poland-Lithuania had been formulated as early as 1656. Prussia had long wanted to join the territories of Brandenburg and ducal Prussia by obtaining the Polish territory of royal Prussia that lay in between. Russia had long coveted the eastern reaches of the Commonwealth but had contented itself with dominating the Commonwealth's political affairs by a combination of force and bribery. Russia brought its influence to bear upon the Commonwealth's confederate Sejm (parliament) of 1767–1768 to obtain equality for religious dissenters, to retain the liberum veto, and to secure a seat in the senate for the Orthodox bishop of Mohylew. In addition Russia declared itself the protector and guarantor of Poland-Lithuania's constitution and territory. In 1768 this provoked the establishment of the Confederacy of Bar (one of whose leaders was Casimir Pulaski [1747–1779]), which aimed to reverse the religious settlement, overthrow the king, and restore the Saxon Wettin dynasty to the Polish throne. Russia intervened to crush the confederacy, but its four-year struggle inspired civil war and unrest. Fortunately for Poland, the Ottoman Porte declared war against Russia in 1768, which diverted its attention for six years. THE FIRST PARTITION, 1772 – 1773 In the five years preceding the first partition, Empress Maria Theresa (1717–1780) of Austria had annexed Polish towns in the Spisz region along the Carpathian border. In June 1771 the first partition was agreed in principle between Prussia and Russia, with Austria agreeing in Saint Petersburg in 1772. Empress Catherine the Great of Russia took extensive lands along the rivers Dvina and Dnieper, Austria took lands along the rivers Vistula and San, and Frederick II (1712–1786; ruled 1740–1786) of Prussia took the economically and perhaps strategically most important lands of West Prussia without the cities of Danzig (Gdańsk) or Thorn (Torun). In April 1773, Tadeusz Rejtan (1742–1780) blocked access to the parliament's debating chamber in protest as the Commonwealth was forced to ratify the partition (the subject of a famous painting by Jan Matejko in 1886). Three treaties of cession, signed in September 1773, deprived Poland of five million out of its fourteen million inhabitants and one-third of its richest territory. Meanwhile Prussia had made overtures to the Poles and even encouraged them to rebel, promising troops in exchange for Danzig (Gdańsk) and Thorn (Torun). In 1781 Russia had renounced its alliance with Prussia, preferring to elicit the support of Joseph II (ruled 1765–1790) of Austria (Maria Theresa had died in 1780) in the fight against the Ottoman enemy. Russia annexed the Crimea in 1783, the Turks declared war in 1787, and again attention was diverted from the Polish question. By 1786 the Prussian throne had passed to Frederick William II, and in 1787 Poniatowski attempted a last rapprochement with Russia, proposing a Russo-Polish alliance against the Turks. This was refused, and Poniatowski, deprived of an international role, embarked upon a further round of reforms at home. Between 1788 and 1792 Poland-Lithuania convened the Four Year Parliament, which took over the running of the country and repudiated the 1773–1775 settlement. Significantly for its neighbors, it voted to increase the army fivefold. Sweeping reforms were also passed in the areas of administration, taxation, and diplomatic ventures, culminating in the constitution of 3 May 1791, which instituted a hereditary monarchy among other reforms. These achievements contributed to a tendency in Polish historiography toward a glorification of these reforms in the wake of the tragedy of the partitions. This national revival was short-lived, as Russian troops, victorious after their defeat of Turkey, poured into Poland in 1792. Prussia refused to honor its defensive alliance on the pretext that it had brokered an agreement with a monarchy, not a republic. In the Russo-Polish War of 1792–1793 (the War of the Second Partition), Poniatowski, for reasons debated by all parties, ordered his troops to cease their fire against the Russians and declared his support for the Russian-backed Confederacy of Targowica. The army dispersed, and Warsaw was occupied. Popular debate continues as to whether Poniatowski, facing an enemy with a threefold numerical advantage, was acting to save lives or out of cowardice. THE SECOND PARTITION, 1793, AND THE KOSCIUSZKO INSURRECTION With the treaty of the second partition, signed on 4 January 1793, Russia took the remaining part of Lithuania, and Prussia annexed Danzig (Gdańsk), Thorn (Torun), and Wielkopolska (Great Poland). Austria received nothing, and the small part of Poland that remained (with a population of four million) was under Russian protection. As previously, the Sejm was forced to ratify the partition and sign agreements with the partitioning powers. It met between June and October 1793 at Grodno (Hrodna), Lithuania, and enjoyed the distinction of being the last Sejm to meet in the Commonwealth. Under Russian threat, the constitution of 1791 was rescinded, the liberum veto was restored, the partition was approved, and cession treaties were signed. However, the reformers were not yet defeated. There was protest in the military, among local sejmiki (dietines), and in government throughout the winter of 1793–1794. Tadeusz Kosciuszko (1746–1817), who had trained in France and had won fame and glory as a hero of the American War of Independence, declared the fight for Polish independence on Cracow town square in March 1794. At the battle of Raclawice on 4 April 1794 Kosciuszko's forces, with a heavy peasant contingent, defeated the Russian forces under General Alexandr Petrovich Tormasov (1752–1819). Warsaw rose on Easter Thursday and expelled the Russians, and the Lithuanian capital Vilnius followed. An insurrectionary court was established, and collaborators were tried and executed along with those who had led the Confederacy of Targowica. In Warsaw the insurrectionary government took control, and in Vilnius the Act of Insurrection of the Lithuanian Nation was declared. Kosciuszko continued to fight, and on 7 May 1794 he declared the Proclamation of Polaniec, promising to free the peasants in an effort to swell the ranks of the army and also because he was genuinely dedicated to the cause of personal freedom. However, this provoked discontent among the nobility, still committed to protecting its own interests. In anticipation of an attack by the Russian general Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov (1729–1800), Kosciuszko attacked the Russian general Ivan Fersen's (1747–1799) corps at Maciejowice and was defeated. Praga (a suburb of Warsaw) was stormed by the Russians, and up to ten thousand are thought to have been massacred. Cracow and Vilnius were captured, Warsaw fell, and finally Kosciuszko was defeated. The king was captured and deported, and the insurrectionary government was suppressed. THE THIRD PARTITION, 1795 On 3 January 1795 Austria, Russia, and Prussia signed the final partition treaty in Saint Petersburg amid extremely cool relations between Prussia and Austria. Austria occupied a huge area around Cracow, and on 24 October 1795 it received Cracow from Prussia and renamed the area New Galicia. Prussia took over Warsaw, where its army replaced that of the Russians, and called the area New South Prussia. A month later Poniatowski abdicated, and he died in Saint Petersburg in 1798. A tripartite convention between the partitioning powers was signed two years later, and neither Poland nor Lithuania reappeared on the European map until the end of World War I in 1918. See also Poland-Lithuania, Commonwealth of, 1569–1795 ; Polish Succession, War of the (1733–1738) ; Poniatowski, Stanisław II Augustus ; Russo-Polish Wars . BIBLIOGRAPHY Butterwick, Richard, ed. The Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy in European Context, c. 1500–1795. Basingstoke, U.K., 2001. Davies, Norman. God's Playground: A History of Poland. 2 vols. Oxford, 1981. Lukowski, Jerzy. The Partitions of Poland: 1772, 1793, 1795. London, 1999. Wanda Wyporska

https://www.tmz.com/2021/09/29/brian-laundrie-burner-phone-surveillance-video-missing-gabby-petito/

Feds Investigating Brian Laundrie's Alleged Burner Phone Purchased Day He was Last Seen

The feds are on the hunt for a burner phone Brian Laundrie allegedly purchased the day he went missing ... TMZ has learned. Sources connected to the manhunt for Laundrie tell TMZ ... FBI agents recently visited an AT&T store in North Port, FL -- where Laundrie's parents live -- and seized surveillance footage. We're told Brian allegedly went to the store September 14 with an older woman and purchased the phone before they left. The timing is significant because Sept. 14 is the date Laundrie's parents claim they last saw him leaving their home. They say he had his backpack and was going to a nearby nature reserve, but never returned. They reported him missing Sept. 17. We reached out to the North Port AT&T store, where an employee told us she could not confirm or deny Brian was there Sept. 14 and said she was told not to discuss the matter. We also reached out to AT&T corporate, and they told us, "Thanks for contacting us. I have to refer you to law enforcement on this one." We've reached out to law enforcement ... again, they would not confirm or deny. We broke the story ... Dog the Bounty Hunter claims he knows Laundrie is still alive and says he's closing in on him.

https://www.tmz.com/2021/09/29/dog-the-bounty-hunter-brian-laundrie-alive-hiding-capture-gabby-petito/

Dog the Bounty Hunter Says He's Closing in on Brian Laundrie

Dog the Bounty Hunter has only been on the Brian Laundrie case for a few days, but TMZ has learned he now says Laundrie is alive, and Dog feels he's close to capturing him. Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ ... Dog is rolling to a remote site where he says Laundrie is hiding. Dog says he'll be at the site in less than an hour. We're told Dog had obtained information that leads him to believe Laundrie was alive and moving around as of 10 PM on Tuesday. Dog says his latest information -- 12 hours old -- is that Laundrie is alive and evading capture. Dog is working with a team that includes skilled ground and boat crews. Obviously, we cannot confirm Laundrie's location or whether he's even alive, but we're reporting what Dog is saying. We will obviously update once Dog gets to the location.

https://www.tmz.com/2021/09/27/r-kelly-verdict-guilty-federal-sex-crimes-trial-brooklyn/

R. Kelly Found Guilty On All Counts in Federal Sex Crimes Trial

R. Kelly has just been found guilty on all counts in his federal sex crimes trial ... and could be staring down life in prison. The jury started deliberating on Friday afternoon, had the weekend off, and took about half the day on Monday to reach its verdict on 9 federal counts ... including racketeering, sex crimes, human trafficking, obstruction of justice and kidnapping. The trial wrapped a little over a month after it began ... with the prosecution calling far more witnesses than the defense. Kelly's team only called 5 witnesses over a couple of days. Kelly himself never took the stand. Sentencing is scheduled for May 4, and now that Kelly's been convicted on all counts, he could get 10 years to life. Mind you, he's still set to go on a second federal trial in Chicago, and state trials in Illinois and Minnesota. Monday's verdict in federal court in Brooklyn comes just over 2 years after Kelly was arrested in Chicago for multiple federal sex crimes in 2 different states. Kelly's legal team called a handful of ex-Kelly employees and associates to take the stand in an effort to discredit allegations the singer sexually abused women, girls and boys. Some of Kelly's ardent defenders said, under oath, they never saw Kelly abuse anyone. What's more ... some of the defense witnesses went as far as saying that, if anything, Kelly was "chivalrous" to his GFs. Prosecutors, however, called dozens of witnesses to the stand to refute defense testimony and poke holes throughout. Some of the prosecutors' witnesses straight-up said Kelly had a small team made up of managers, bodyguards and assistants who rounded up Kelly's potential victims before the singer groomed them for unwanted sex, among other things. These witnesses also testified saying Kelly's entourage would recruit potential victims ... either at his concerts, malls and even fast-food joints. You'll recall one of the 2 women interviewed by Gayle King back in 2019 also took the witness stand ... and claimed Kelly was controlling them right then and there during the interview.

https://www.tmz.com/categories/fairly-legal/

Fairly Legal

Play video content ABC News Alec Baldwin says he never pulled the trigger on the gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and followed her instructions to point the gun at her, not knowing there was live ammunition in the chamber. Baldwin says he pointed the gun at her as directed ... cocked it and let go of the hammer and that's when the gun went off. He says he never touched the trigger. Assistant Director Dave Halls backed Baldwin up and says Baldwin never had his finger on the trigger. Baldwin says the only issue for him is how live ammunition got into the chamber of the gun. He says he was told it was an "empty gun" -- meaning only dummy bullets. When the gun fired and Halyna fell to the ground, Baldwin says he didn't know for 45 minutes to an hour she was hit by a live round. He thought maybe Halyna got hit by wadding typically found in blanks. Baldwin felt people waited too long to get her to a hospital. A helicopter finally came and took her to a hospital. The Sheriff eventually told Baldwin Halyna had died. The photos of Baldwin outside on the phone are when he called his wife to tell her what happened. Baldwin says George Clooney didn't help the situation by commenting that he always checked a gun that he handled on set. Baldwin was clearly annoyed at Clooney. He says he's always relied on the experts -- like the armorer -- on the set that a gun was safe to handle. Baldwin does not believe the live ammo on the set was an act of sabotage ... something claimed by the lawyer for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. He says this was an accident. Baldwin says he hates that Reed and Halls have been villainized unfairly, he believes. He also doesn't discount his brother Daniel -- who told TMZ he believed Baldwin was targeted for his political beliefs. He mentions Donald Trump, who went after Baldwin. Baldwin said he was not a nuts-and-bolts producer who made hiring decisions ... rather, he says he was a "creative producer" -- meaning his role was more about content. This is significant ... given the allegations, Reed was way too inexperienced to be an armorer and Halls had safety issues on previous sets. He says he was never told by the crew they had safety concerns ... he says the complaints were along the lines of grousing they wanted better hotels.

https://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/fight-back-against-crooks-and-win/

Fight Back Against Crooks - And Win!

FBI statistics show you have a 50 percent chance of falling prey to violent crime — but the BOLO Safety video series can help save your life and the lives of your loved ones, experts said! The BOLO Safety app— which is police shorthand for be on the lookout — features step-by-step instructional videos you can watch on your phone or computer with more than 350 tips designed to reduce your risk of danger. Former Atlanta homicide detective Danny Stephens developed the app using the crime-busting skills honed during a 32-year career nabbing murderers, burglars, thieves and child molesters. “I can tell you from experience the average person doesn’t know how dangerous the world is!” warned Stephens, who’s now a captain with the police department in Cumming, Ga. “Criminals exploit weaknesses and they look for victims that make easy prey on a daily basis. “In your lifetime there is a 50 percent chance of becoming a victim of a violent crime — and the odds are even higher for your children!” Police learn from others’ mistakes, Stephens added, and he’s used that knowledge in creating BOLO Safety. A few of the BOLO Program Safety Tips include: ✚ Secure your home’s rear entrance with a three inch deadbolt lock. Burglars typically knock on the front door to see if anyone is home, and then kick through the back or side door to get inside. If you have a video doorbell, they may go directly to the back or side door. ✚ Never sit near the cash register in a restaurant. That’s where a robber will stand — and if police show up, you can easily be grabbed as a hostage Additional tips you’ll learn when you subscribe to BOLO Safety include: ✚ Tips on how to protect yourself and your property when workmen are at your home ✚ Best places to park in parking lots and garages to avoid being assaulted ✚ How to prevent a carjacking or robbery when getting gas ✚ Tips on how to make yourself less of a target while shopping for groceries or at the mall ✚ Safeguarding your children at school, the bus stop and on field trips ✚ Protecting your children from cyber criminals ✚ What to do in an active shooter situation These essential tips and dozens more are always available to you and your family when you subscribe to BOLO Safety. In addition, BOLO Safety sends you a 60-second “BOLO on the go” video each week to keep personal safety top of mind and help you make these simple-to-learn fundamentals part of your daily routine. This is how police officers teach their own families to help keep themselves safe. You can subscribe to BOLO Safety at www.bolosafety.com for just $4.95 per month and cancel at any time. It’s like having your own personal safety coach to help you and your family be more aware and live safer in your everyday lives.

https://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity-scandals/once-upon-a-time-hero-james-stacy-character-convicted-pedophile/

“Once Upon A Time” Hero Was A Real-Life Bad Guy!

Director Quentin Tarantino is taking heat for basing a character in his flick Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on a convicted pedophile! Timothy Olyphant appears in the film as a co-star of Leo DiCaprio’s fictional character, Rick Dalton, in the real-life ’60s TV Western Lancer. But his character, James Stacy is no piece of fiction! The actor was billed as the next James Dean in his heyday and was riding high until a 1973 motorcycle crash. He made a comeback — but the worst was yet to come. INSTANT ICON! James Dean — Secrets Of Fatal Car Crash Revealed In 1995, Stacy pleaded no contest to a charge of molesting an 11-year-old girl in California. But he failed to appear for sentencing because he’d attempted suicide! He had also been arrested two other times for prowling at the homes of underage girl TRAGIC TRIBUTE! Margot Robbie As Sharon Tate — After Slain Star’s Sister Praised Her ‘Physical Beauty’s. He served six years on the molestation charge and lived the rest of his life in obscurity before dying in 2016 at age 79.

https://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/matthew-perry-health-crisis-rehab-fears/

Matthew Perry Health Crisis As 'Friends' Reportedly Rally

Matthew Perry shocked his fans by going to social media to reveal that he’d spent “three months in a hospital bed” — but insiders had already told The National ENQUIRER about how his former “Friends” co-stars had come together to help the ailing star through his horrific health crisis! Matthew’s rep originally only confirmed to The ENQUIRER that the star “recently underwent surgery in a Los Angeles hospital to repair a gastrointestinal perforation.” Doctors consulted by The ENQUIRER, however, added that the actor’s long history of drug and alcohol abuse was almost certainly to blame for his current medical condition. Dr. Stuart Fischer, who hasn’t treated Matthew, warned that the star was “flirting with death” if he ever returned to popping pills that could further damage his stomach lining. Click the gallery above to get all the details…

https://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/matthew-perry-drug-addiction-rehab/

MATTHEW PERRY'S SAD DRUG HELL

“Friends” star Matthew Perry launched into a suicidal binge of wild drinking and drug taking — spending as much as $1,000 a day on his self-destructive blowout before collapsing and entering rehab. Incredibly, for three exhausting months, the 31-year-old dark-haired actor abused his body relentlessly while managing to keep up a furious pace — constantly traveling between his Los Angeles “Friends” set and a Dallas movie location. “At the height of his partying, Matt was spending up to $1,000 a day on drugs and booze,” revealed a close source. “He was burning the candle at both ends — and he went down in flames!” An intensive ENQUIRER investigation has ripped the lid off the secret nightmare world that engulfed the popular star. During his out-of-control binge, Perry consumed booze, cocaine, Ecstasy (a hallucinogenic), Vicodin (a painkiller), Compazine (an anti-anxiety drug), Neurontin (an antiseizure medication), Zofran (a nausea fighter), and Vioxx (an anti-inflammatory). His headlong rush toward death ended February 23 after he was finally persuaded to get help — and checked himself into a Los Angeles area rehab center. “Matthew had been starring in a movie with Elizabeth Hurley in Dallas, from Saturday through Wednesday every week, then he’d race to Los Angeles to shoot ‘Friends’ on Thursday and Friday,” divulged a friend. Whenever Matt got a break, he went off to the local strip clubs — in search of drugs, booze and sex, disclosed a close source. His favorite Dallas club was a topless bar called The Lodge. “Matt wanted to find girls who had cocaine on them, or who could get cocaine. They were the ones he took back to his hotel,” one of The Lodge dancers told The ENQUIRER. “He was constantly drinking vodka. One night he was so drunk and high, he spread out lines of coke on the table, in front of everyone. He didn’t care who was looking. Matt also liked to take two girls from the club back to the hotel, for threesomes.” FAST FACT In 1993, Matt Perry wrote his own sitcom, called “Maxwell’s House.” But a stripper who went with Matt to his $2,000-a-night suite at the Hotel Crescent Court revealed: “I went with him twice — and both times he passed out before anything happened.” The reckless performer duped doctors into prescribing him drugs, disclosed the close source. “Some of the prescriptions were under his own name, some were under ‘Matt Langford’ — Langford is Matt’s middle name — and some were under the name he used at the hotel, ‘Phil Shubano.’ “Matt was also doing liquid GHB, known as ‘Liquid Ecstasy’ — mixing it with Nestle Strawberry Quik to mask the taste. “Security staff at the Crescent Court hotel were surprised to see a man with dreadlocks going up to the private executive floor. They found out he was a street dealer known as Patience — and Matthew had buzzed him up. “The guy could have had a gun and killed him — but Matt was desperate for drugs. “Matt had been seeing a doctor in Dallas who specializes in treating addictions and had prescribed him two packets of tablets to take at bedtime. The first packet contained Tryptophan, 500 mg. (an amino acid); Inositol, 500 mg. (a B vitamin); and Melatonin, 3 mg. (a sleep-inducing hormone). The second package was Sonata, 10 mg., a sleep aid.” But it didn’t seem to help. Matt hit rock bottom. Turning mean-spirited, he flaunted his power, by ordering hotel employees to constantly light and then relight candles throughout his two-story suite. “And he was so messed up that he burned up three separate covers on his bed,” divulged the close source. “The last time, on February 23, hotel staff found a cover with holes burned all through it. He easily could have set the whole hotel suite on fire.” An actor on the set disclosed: “At one point during that last month, Matt was apparently so desperate to get painkillers, he slammed his foot against a heavy table. “His own doctors wouldn’t give him any more drugs. So then he conned a doctor at the emergency room into giving him painkillers.” As he spiraled lower and lower, Matt began to call Brad Pitt for help. Since Brad married Matt’s “Friends” co-star Jennifer Aniston, he and Brad had become close buddies. Brad could do little from Los Angeles — so he gave his pal pep talks, said the close source. “But when Matt had a week off from ‘Friends’ in February and stayed in Dallas, he went steadily downhill. “He’d been dating Jamie Tarses, former ABC Entertainment president, and she flew in on February 20 to try to help him. “But by Friday, February 23, Matt knew he couldn’t go on. At 10 p.m. that night, a limo pulled up to the Crescent Court hotel, and Matt, Jamie, and Matt’s assistant Shawn climbed in to take a private jet back to Los Angeles.” The next day, Matt — who had been in rehab once before — checked into the rehab center. Concluded the close source: “We’re praying that this time, he’ll succeed.” — ALAN BUTTERFIELD, JOHN SOUTH and JOHN BLOSSER

http://flatearth101.com/fe-proofs-part-1

FE Proofs

1) The horizon always appears perfectly flat 360 degrees around the observer regardless of altitude. All amateur balloon, rocket, plane and drone footage show a completely flat horizon over 20+ miles high. Only NASA and other government “space agencies” show curvature in their fake CGI photos/videos. 2) The horizon always rises to the eye level of the observer as altitude is gained, so you never have to look down to see it. If Earth were in fact a globe, no matter how large, as you ascended the horizon would stay fixed and the observer / camera would have to tilt looking down further and further to see it. 3) The natural physics of water is to find and maintain its level. If Earth were a giant sphere tilted, wobbling and hurdling through infinite space then truly flat, consistently level surfaces would not exist here. But since Earth is in fact an extended flat plane, this fundamental physical property of fluids finding and remaining level is consistent with experience and common sense. 4) Rivers run down to sea-level finding the easiest course, North, South, East, West and all other intermediary directions over the Earth at the same time. If Earth were truly a spinning ball then many of these rivers would be impossibly flowing uphill, for example the Mississippi in its 3000 miles would have to ascend 11 miles before reaching the Gulf of Mexico. 5) One portion of the Nile River flows for a thousand miles with a fall of only one foot. Parts of the West African Congo, according to the supposed inclination and movement of the ball-Earth, would be sometimes running uphill and sometimes down. This would also be the case for the Parana, Paraguay and other long rivers. 6) If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference as NASA and modern astronomy claim, spherical trigonometry dictates the surface of all standing water must curve downward an easily measurable 8 inches per mile multiplied by the square of the distance. This means along a 6 mile channel of standing water, the Earth would dip 6 feet on either end from the central peak. Every time such experiments have been conducted, however, standing water has proven to be perfectly level. 7) Surveyors, engineers and architects are never required to factor the supposed curvature of the Earth into their projects. Canals, railways, bridges and tunnels for example are always cut and laid horizontally, often over hundreds of miles without any allowance for curvature. 8) The Suez Canal connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea is 100 miles long without any locks making the water an uninterrupted continuation of the two seas. When constructed, the Earth’s supposed curvature was not taken into account, it was dug along a horizontal datum line 26 feet below sea-level, passing through several lakes from one sea to the other, with the datum line and water’s surface running perfectly parallel over the 100 miles. 9) Engineer, W. Winckler was published in the Earth Review regarding the Earth’s supposed curvature, stating, “As an engineer of many years standing, I saw that this absurd allowance is only permitted in school books. No engineer would dream of allowing anything of the kind. I have projected many miles of railways and many more of canals and the allowance has not even been thought of, much less allowed for. This allowance for curvature means this – that it is 8” for the first mile of a canal, and increasing at the ratio by the square of the distance in miles; thus a small navigable canal for boats, say 30 miles long, will have, by the above rule an allowance for curvature of 600 feet. Think of that and then please credit engineers as not being quite such fools. Nothing of the sort is allowed. We no more think of allowing 600 feet for a line of 30 miles of railway or canal, than of wasting our time trying to square the circle” 10) The London and Northwestern Railway forms a straight line 180 miles long between London and Liverpool. The railroad’s highest point, midway at Birmingham station, is only 240 feet above sea-level. If the world were actually a globe, however, curving 8 inches per mile squared, the 180 mile stretch of rail would form an arc with the center point at Birmingham raising over a mile, a full 5,400 feet above London and Liverpool. 11) A surveyor and engineer of thirty years published in the Birmingham Weekly Mercury stated, “I am thoroughly acquainted with the theory and practice of civil engineering. However bigoted some of our professors may be in the theory of surveying according to the prescribed rules, yet it is well known amongst us that such theoretical measurements are INCAPABLE OF ANY PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION. All our locomotives are designed to run on what may be regarded as TRUE LEVELS or FLATS. There are, of course, partial inclines or gradients here and there, but they are always accurately defined and must be carefully traversed. But anything approaching to eight inches in the mile, increasing as the square of the distance, COULD NOT BE WORKED BY ANY ENGINE THAT WAS EVER YET CONSTRUCTED. Taking one station with another all over England and Scotland, it may be stated that all the platforms are ON THE SAME RELATIVE LEVEL. The distance between Eastern and Western coasts of England may be set down as 300 miles. If the prescribed curvature was indeed as represented, the central stations at Rugby or Warwick ought to be close upon three miles higher than a chord drawn from the two extremities. If such was the case there is not a driver or stoker within the Kingdom that would be found to take charge of the train. We can only laugh at those of your readers who seriously give us credit for such venturesome exploits, as running trains round spherical curves. Horizontal curves on levels are dangerous enough, vertical curves would be a thousand times worse, and with our rolling stock constructed as at present physically impossible.” 12) The Manchester Ship Canal Company published in the Earth Review stated, “It is customary in Railway and Canal constructions for all levels to be referred to a datum which is nominally horizontal and is so shown on all sections. It is not the practice in laying out Public Works to make allowances for the curvature of the earth 13) In a 19th century French experiment by M. M. Biot and Arago a powerful lamp with good reflectors was placed on the summit of Desierto las Palmas in Spain and able to be seen all the way from Camprey on the Island of Iviza. Since the elevation of the two points were identical and the distance between covered nearly 100 miles, if Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference, the light should have been more than 6600 feet, a mile and a quarter, below the line of sight! 14) The Lieutenant-Colonel Portlock experiment used oxy-hydrogen Drummond’s lights and heliostats to reflect the sun’s rays across stations set up across 108 miles of St. George’s Channel. If the Earth were actually a ball 25,000 miles in circumference, Portlock’s light should have remained hidden under a mile and a half of curvature. 15) If the Earth were truly a sphere 25,000 miles in circumference, airplane pilots would have to constantly correct their altitudes downwards so as to not fly straight off into “outer space;” a pilot wishing to simply maintain their altitude at a typical cruising speed of 500 mph, would have to constantly dip their nose downwards and descend 2,777 feet (over half a mile) every minute! Otherwise, without compensation, in one hour’s time the pilot would find themselves 31.5 miles higher than expected. 16) The experiment known as “Airy’s Failure” proved that the stars move relative to a stationary Earth and not the other way around. By first filling a telescope with water to slow down the speed of light inside, then calculating the tilt necessary to get the starlight directly down the tube, Airy failed to prove the heliocentric theory since the starlight was already coming in the correct angle with no change necessary, and instead proved the geocentric model correct. 17) “Olber’s Paradox” states that if there were billions of stars which are suns the night sky would be filled completely with light. As Edgar Allen Poe said, “Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us a uniform luminosity, since there could exist absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star.” In fact Olber’s “Paradox” is no more a paradox than George Airy’s experiment was a “failure.” Both are actually excellent refutations of the heliocentric spinning ball model. 18) The Michelson-Morley and Sagnac experiments attempted to measure the change in speed of light due to Earth’s assumed motion through space. After measuring in every possible different direction in various locations they failed to detect any significant change whatsoever, again proving the stationary geocentric model. 19) Tycho Brahe famously argued against the heliocentric theory in his time, positing that if the Earth revolved around the Sun, the change in relative position of the stars after 6 months orbital motion could not fail to be seen. He argued that the stars should seem to separate as we approach and come together as we recede. In actual fact, however, after 190,000,000 miles of supposed orbit around the Sun, not a single inch of parallax can be detected in the stars, proving we have not moved at all. 20) If Earth were truly constantly spinning Eastwards at over 1000mph, vertically-fired cannonballs and other projectiles should fall significantly due west. In actual fact, however, whenever this has been tested, vertically-fired cannonballs shoot upwards an average of 14 seconds ascending, 14 seconds descending, and fall back to the ground no more than 2 feet away from the cannon, often directly back into the muzzle. 21) If the Earth were truly constantly spinning Eastwards at over 1000mph, helicopters and hot-air balloons should be able to simply hover over the surface of the Earth and wait for their destinations to come to them! 22) If Earth were truly constantly spinning Eastwards at over 1000mph, during the Red Bull stratosphere dive, Felix Baumgartner, spending 3 hours ascending over New Mexico, should have landed 2500 miles West into the Pacific Ocean but instead landed a few dozen miles East of the take-off point. 23) Ball-believers often claim “gravity” magically and inexplicably drags the entire lower-atmosphere of the Earth in perfect synchronization up to some undetermined height where this progressively faster spinning atmosphere gives way to the non-spinning, non-gravitized, non-atmosphere of infinite vacuum space. Such non-sensical theories are debunked, however, by rain, fireworks, birds, bugs, clouds, smoke, planes and projectiles all of which would behave very differently if both the ball-Earth and its atmosphere were constantly spinning Eastwards at 1000mph. 24) If Earth and its atmosphere were constantly spinning eastwards over 1000mph then North/South facing cannons should establish a control while East-firing cannonballs should fall significantly farther than all others while West-firing cannonballs should fall significantly closer. In actual fact, however, regardless of which direction cannons are fired, the distance covered is always the same. 25) If Earth and its atmosphere were constantly spinning eastwards over 1000mph, then the average commercial airliner traveling 500mph should never be able to reach its Eastward destinations before they come speeding up from behind! Likewise Westward destinations should be arrived at thrice the speed, but this is not the case. 26) Quoting “Heaven and Earth” by Gabrielle Henriet, “If flying had been invented at the time of Copernicus, there is no doubt that he would have soon realized that his contention regarding the rotation of the earth was wrong, on account of the relation existing between the speed of an aircraft and that of the earth’s rotation. If the earth rotates, as it is said, at 1,000 miles an hour, and a plane flies in the same direction at only 500 miles, it is obvious that its place of destination will be farther removed every minute. On the other hand, if flying took place in the direction opposite to that of the rotation, a distance of 1,500 miles would be covered in one hour, instead of 500, since the speed of the rotation is to be added to that of the plane. It could also be pointed out that such a flying speed of 1,000 miles an hour, which is supposed to be that of the earth’s rotation, has recently been achieved, so that an aircraft flying at this rate in the same direction as that of the rotation could not cover any ground at all. It would remain suspended in mid-air over the spot from which it took off, since both speeds are equal.” 27) If Earth and its atmosphere were constantly spinning Eastwards over 1000mph, landing airplanes on such fast-moving runways which face all manner of directions North, South, East, West and otherwise would be practically impossible, yet in reality such fictional concerns are completely negligible. 28) If the Earth and its atmosphere were constantly spinning Eastwards over 1000mph, then clouds, wind and weather patterns could not casually and unpredictably go every which way, with clouds often travelling in opposing directions at varying altitudes simultaneously. 29) If the Earth and its atmosphere were constantly spinning Eastwards over 1000mph, this should somewhere somehow be seen, heard, felt or measured by someone, yet no one in history has ever experienced this alleged Eastward motion; meanwhile, however, we can hear, feel and experimentally measure even the slightest Westward breeze. 30) In his book “South Sea Voyages,” Arctic and Antarctic explorer Sir James Clarke Ross, described his experience on the night of November 27th, 1839 and his conclusion that the Earth must be motionless: “The sky being very clear … it enabled us to observe the higher stratum of clouds to be moving in an exactly opposite direction to that of the wind–a circumstance which is frequently recorded in our meteorological journal both in the north-east and south-east trades, and has also often been observed by former voyagers. Captain Basil Hall witnessed it from the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe; and Count Strzelechi, on ascending the volcanic mountain of Kiranea, in Owhyhee, reached at 4000 feet an elevation above that of the trade wind, and experienced the influence of an opposite current of air of a different hygrometric and thermometric condition … Count Strzelechi further informed me of the following seemingly anomalous circumstance–that at the height of 6000 feet he found the current of air blowing at right angles to both the lower strata, also of a different hygrometric and thermometric condition, but warmer than the inter-stratum. Such a state of the atmosphere is compatible only with the fact which other evidence has demonstrated, that the earth is at rest.” 31) Quoting “Zetetic Cosmogeny” Thomas Winships states: “Let ‘imagination’ picture to the mind what force air would have which was set in motion by a spherical body of 8,000 miles in diameter, which in one hour was spinning round 1,000 mph, rushing through space at 65,000 mph and gyrating across the heavens? Then let ‘conjecture’ endeavor to discover whether the inhabitants on such a globe could keep their hair on? If the earth-globe rotates on its axis at the terrific rate of 1,000 miles an hour, such an immense mass would of necessity cause a tremendous rush of wind in the space it occupied. The wind would go all one way, and anything like clouds which got ‘within the sphere of influence’ of the rotating sphere, would have to go the same way. The fact that the earth is at rest is proved by kite flying.” 32) If “gravity” is credited with being a force strong enough to hold the world’s oceans, buildings, people and atmosphere stuck to the surface of a rapidly spinning ball, then it is impossible for “gravity” to also simultaneously be weak enough to allow little birds, bugs, and planes to take-off and travel freely unabated in any direction. 33) If “gravity” is credited with being a force strong enough to curve the massive expanse of oceans around a globular Earth, it would be impossible for fish and other creatures to swim through such forcefully held water. 34) Ship captains in navigating great distances at sea never need to factor the supposed curvature of the Earth into their calculations. Both Plane Sailing and Great Circle Sailing, the most popular navigation methods, use plane, not spherical trigonometry, making all mathematical calculations on the assumption that the Earth is perfectly flat. If the Earth were in fact a sphere, such an errant assumption would lead to constant glaring inaccuracies. Plane Sailing has worked perfectly fine in both theory and practice for thousands of years, however, and plane trigonometry has time and again proven more accurate than spherical trigonometry in determining distances across the oceans. 35) If the Earth were truly a globe, then every line of latitude south of the equator would have to measure a gradually smaller and smaller circumference the farther South travelled. If, however, the Earth is an extended plane, then every line of latitude south of the equator should measure a gradually larger and larger circumference the farther South travelled. The fact that many captains navigating south of the equator assuming the globular theory have found themselves drastically out of reckoning, moreso the farther South travelled, testifies to the fact that the Earth is not a ball. 36) During Captain James Clark Ross’s voyages around the Antarctic circumference, he often wrote in his journal perplexed at how they routinely found themselves out of accordance with their charts, stating that they found themselves an average of 12-16 miles outside their reckoning every day, later on further south as much as 29 miles. 37) Lieutenant Charles Wilkes commanded a United States Navy exploration expedition to the Antarctic from 1838 to 1842, and in his journals also mentioned being consistently east of his reckoning, sometimes over 20 miles in less than 18 hours. 38) To quote Reverend Thomas Milner, “In the southern hemisphere, navigators to India have often fancied themselves east of the Cape when still west, and have been driven ashore on the African coast, which, according to their reckoning, lay behind them. This misfortune happened to a fine frigate, the Challenger, in 1845. How came Her Majesty’s Ship ‘Conqueror,’ to be lost? How have so many other noble vessels, perfectly sound, perfectly manned, perfectly navigated, been wrecked in calm weather, not only in dark night, or in a fog, but in broad daylight and sunshine – in the former case upon the coasts, in the latter, upon sunken rocks – from being ‘out of reckoning?’” The simple answer is that Earth is not a ball. 39) Practical distance measurements taken from “The Australian Handbook, Almanack, Shippers’ and Importers’ Directory” state that the straight line distance between Sydney and Nelson is 1550 statute miles. Their given difference in longitude is 22 degrees 2’14”. Therefore if 22 degrees 2’14” out of 360 is 1550 miles, the entirety would measure 25,182 miles. This is not only larger than the ball-Earth is said to be at the equator, but a whole 4262 miles greater than it would be at Sydney’s southern latitude on a globe of said proportions. 40) From near Cape Horn, Chile to Port Philip in Melbourne, Australia the distance is 10,500 miles, or 143 degrees of longitude away. Factoring in the remaining degrees to 360 makes for a total distance of 26,430 miles around this particular latitude, which is over 1500 miles wider than Earth is supposed to be at the equator, and many more thousands of miles wider than it is supposed to be at such Southern latitudes. 41) Similar calculations made from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa to Melbourne, Australia at an average latitude of 35.5 degrees South, have given an approximate figure of over 25,000 miles, which is again equal to or greater than the Earth’s supposed greatest circumference at the equator. Calculations from Sydney, Australia to Wellington, New Zealand at an average of 37.5 degrees South have given an approximate circumference of 25,500 miles, greater still! According to the ball-Earth theory, the circumference of the Earth at 37.5 degrees Southern latitude should be only 19,757 statute miles, almost six thousand miles less than such practical measurements. 42) In the ball-Earth model Antarctica is an ice continent which covers the bottom of the ball from 78 degrees South latitude to 90 and is therefore not more than 12,000 miles in circumference. Many early explorers including Captian Cook and James Clark Ross, however, in attempting Antarctic circumnavigation took 3 to 4 years and clocked 50-60,000 miles around. The British ship Challenger also made an indirect but complete circumnavigation of Antarctica traversing 69,000 miles. This is entirely inconsistent with the ball model. 43) If Earth was a ball there are several flights in the Southern hemisphere which would have their quickest, straightest path over the Antarctic continent such as Santiago, Chile to Sydney, Australia. Instead of taking the shortest, quickest route in a straight line over Antarctica, all such flights detour all manner of directions away from Antarctica instead claiming the temperatures too cold for airplane travel! Considering the fact that there are plenty of flights to/from/over Antarctica, and NASA claims to have technology keeping them in conditions far colder (and far hotter) than any experienced on Earth, such an excuse is clearly just an excuse, and these flights aren’t made because they are impossible. 44) If Earth was a ball, and Antarctica was too cold to fly over, the only logical way to fly from Sydney to Santiago would be a straight shot over the Pacific staying in the Southern hemisphere the entire way. Re-fueling could be done in New Zealand or other Southern hemisphere destinations along the way if absolutely necessary. In actual fact, however, Santiago-Sydney flights go into the Northern hemisphere making stop-overs at LAX and other North American airports before continuing back down to the Southern hemisphere. Such ridiculously wayward detours make no sense on the globe but make perfect sense and form nearly straight lines when shown on a flat Earth map. 45) On a ball-Earth, Johannesburg, South Africa to Perth, Australia should be a straight shot over the Indian Ocean with convenient re-fueling possibilities on Mauritus or Madagascar. In actual practice, however, most Johannesburg to Perth flights curiously stop over either in Dubai, Hong Kong or Malaysia all of which make no sense on the ball, but are completely understandable when mapped on a flat Earth. 46) On a ball-Earth Cape Town, South Africa to Buenos Aries, Argentina should be a straight shot over the Atlantic following the same line of latitude across, but instead every flight goes to connecting locations in the Northern hemisphere first, stopping over anywhere from London to Turkey to Dubai. Once again these make absolutely no sense on the globe but are completely understandable options when mapped on a flat Earth. 47) On a ball-Earth Johannesburg, South Africa to Sao Paolo, Brazil should be a quick straight shot along the 25th Southern latitude, but instead nearly every flight makes a re-fueling stop at the 50th degree North latitude in London first! The only reason such a ridiculous stop-over works in reality is because the Earth is flat. 48) On a ball-Earth Santiago, Chile to Johannesburg, South Africa should be an easy flight all taking place below the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern hemisphere, yet every listed flight makes a curious re-fueling stop in Senegal near the Tropic of Cancer in the North hemisphere first! When mapped on a flat Earth the reason why is clear to see, however, Senegal is actually directly in a straight-line path half-way between the two. 49) If Earth were a spinning ball heated by a Sun 93 million miles away, it would be impossible to have simultaneously sweltering summers in Africa while just a few thousand miles away bone-chilling frozen Arctic/Antarctic winters experiencing little to no heat from the Sun whatsoever. If the heat from the Sun traveled 93,000,000 miles to the Sahara desert, it is absurd to assert that another 4,000 miles (0.00004%) further to Antarctica would completely negate such sweltering heat resulting in such drastic differences. 50) If the Earth were truly a globe, the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions and areas of comparable latitude North and South of the equator should share similar conditions and characteristics such as comparable temperatures, seasonal changes, length of daylight, plant and animal life. In reality, however, the Arctic/Antarctic regions and areas of comparable latitude North/South of the equator differ greatly in many ways entirely inconsistent with the ball model and entirely consistent with the flat model.

https://worldtruth.tv/best-flat-earth-video-1000-proof-the-earth-is-flat/

Best Flat Earth Video 1000% Proof The Earth Is Flat

Reddit Telegram More Email 60K Shares Is there proof that Earth moves? How do we know the earth and other planets go around the sun and not the opposite? This is a very good question. For some time after it was accepted that planets (including earth) circle the sun, there was no direct proof that it is earth that moves, and not the sun? The video below shows a technical breakdown of the ISS and how NASA fakes their footage from there. This video is great description of how the fool the masses through technology, specifically called VR or Augmented VR. VR is abbreviation for virtual reality. This video proof and documented record is by Mike Helmick. 1) The horizon always appears completely flat 360 degrees to the observer, regardless of how high you go up. Any curvature you think you see is from curved airplane windows or Go Pro cameras and fisheye lenses (which NASA loves to use). The reality is that the horizon never curves because we are on an endless plane.  On a globe with 25,000 miles in circumference you would see a noticeable disappearance of objects the further they are as they would be leaning away from you and dropping below the constantly curving horizon! Completely flat horizon from the stratosphere: m.airpano.com 2) The horizon always rises to meet your eye level never no matter how high in altitude you go. Even at 20 miles up the horizon rises to meet the observer/camera. This is only physically possible if the earth is a huge “endless” flat plane. If Earth were a globe, no matter how large, as you ascended the horizon would stay fixed and the observer/camera would have to tilt downward, looking down further and further to see it. 3) The natural physics of water is to find and maintain its level. If Earth were a giant spinning sphere tilting and hurling through space then truly flat, consistently level surfaces would not exist here. There would be a massive bulge of water in the oceans because of the curvature of the earth. If earth was curved and spinning the oceans of water would be flowing down to level and covering land. Some rivers would be impossibly flowing uphill. There would massive water chaos and flooding! What we would see and experience would be vastly different! But since Earth is in fact an extended flat plane, this fundamental physical property of fluids finding and remaining level is consistent with experience and common sense. The water remains flat because the earth is flat! 4) If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference as NASA and modern astronomy claim, spherical trigonometry dictates the surface of all standing water must curve downward an easily measurable 8 inches per mile multiplied by the square of the distance. This means along a 6 mile channel of standing water, the Earth would dip 6 feet on either end from the central peak. Every time such experiments have been conducted, however, standing water has proven to be perfectly level. Bedford Level Experiment: Proof of no curvature via:

https://worldtruth.tv/italian-doctor-shocked-the-world-cancer-is-a-fungus-that-can-be-treated-with-baking-soda/

Italian Doctor Shocked The World: Cancer Is A Fungus That Can Be Treated With Baking Soda

According to Italian doctor Tulio Simonchini, cancer is nothing but a fungus which can be eliminated with baking soda. Dr. Simonchini used this method to cure thousands of patients suffering from different types of cancer, and claims that it is 100% effective. The therapy isn’t harmful at all and let’s face it – you’ve got nothing to lose. The painful reality of more and more cancer cases is somehow connected to the failures of oncology. “We have to prove that modern oncology is unable to answer all the questions cancer patients have. It’s our moral and ethical commitment to find the real cure for the hardest and deadliest diseases of our time,” says Dr. Simonchini. Cancer is a fungus! “About a century ago, there was a great theory that cancer is caused by malfunctioning genes, which means that the disease is intracellular. However, in my opinion, cancer is a fungal infection and a special cellular phenomenon,” says Dr. Simonchini, who has sent shockwaves around the medical community with his claim. Candida In the plant world, carcinoma is caused by fungal infections, and the same happens in humans. Fungi always carry a tumor with them – this has been proven in both in vivo and in vitro studies. However, scientists believe that they develop after the disease appeared. Dr. Simonchini believes that they were already there before – fungi create cancer, weaken our immune system and then attack the whole body. Every type of cancer is caused by the Candida fungus, which has been confirmed by several studies, and its histological structure is a result of the defensive measures against the invasion. Over time, our tissues are weakened and tired, and they start producing unidentified cells. According to Dr. Simonchini, cancer is an “ulcer” where deformed cells accumulate and form colonies. Baking soda The usual antifungal drugs are ineffective against cancer as they only attack the surface of the cells. The main infection is more powerful than a single bacterium, which is why fungal infections last for so long. “I have identified the things that can attack these colonies of fungi – for cancer, it’s baking soda, and a iodine tincture is the best substance for skin cancer,” claims Dr. Simonchini. Many studies have confirmed baking soda’s intracellular action against cancer. The treatment “I have used the treatment on my patients for more than 20 years. Many of these patients have completely recovered from the disease, even when doctors gave them no chances. The best way to eliminate a tumor is for it to come in contact with baking soda, which can be applied as an enema for digestive cancers, intravenous injection for brain and lung tumors and inhalation for tumors in the upper respiratory system. Breast, lymph system and subcutaneous tumors can be treated with a local perfusion. Internal organ tumors should be treated with baking soda by applying it directly into the arteries, and it’s also important to treat every type of cancer with the proper dose,” Dr. Simonchini explains, and continues: “For phleboclisis, you’ll need about 500 cm. of 5% or 8.4% solution; in some cases, the mixture only needs to be salty enough. During every treatment, it’s important to know that tumor colonies come back between the 3 and 4 day, and suffer a collapse between the 4 and 5 day, so a minimum of 6 days of treatment is required. The treatment should be repeated for 4 cycles, and has no other side-effects other than thirst and weakness.” “For skin cancer, you should rub a 0.7% iodine tincture on the affected areas 20-30 times a day. Afterwards, the tumor will not return,” Dr. Simonchini says. Here are the main symptoms of Candida infection: Chronic fatigue; Obsessive-compulsive disorder; Anxiety and irritability; Brain fog and nausea; Chronic skin disorders; Chronic digestive disorders; Mood changes; Starch and sugar cravings. If you have notice at least 2 of these symptoms, you may have an advanced stage of candida infections which may result in cancer, so they should never be ignored. Treatment and prevention of candida infections The fungal development must be kept in check. Left untreated, candida can lead to candidiasis which can cause symptoms that mimic other diseases and result in perforation in the intestines and leaky gut syndrome. This will allow protein to attack your blood cells. In order to prevent further problems, we first need to eliminate the foods that feed candida – sugar and starch. This means no bread, candy, fresh fruit, pasta and rice for a while. Focus on eating raw fruit and steamed vegetables, and some people have had great results with grapefruit seeds. Dr. Simonchini recommends using aluminum-free baking soda for the treatment of cancer. It can be found in almost all health stores and pharmacies. How the therapy works Baking soda significantly increases the alkalinity of your blood which destroys the fungi. Due to this, baking soda quickly disintegrates the tumor, leaving it without defense. For stomach, colon, rectal and oral cancer, you need to take 1 teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water every morning and evening for a month. In most cases, this is enough time to eliminate the tumor. The therapy should last 3-4 weeks and not a day more. Dr. Simonchini’s therapy also usually requires intravenous injections as well. For best results, you’ll need 500 ml. of 5% baking soda solution applied in the vein directly every day. Do this for 24 days, then go for a scan. Vaginal fungal infections have become pretty common nowadays and according to Dr. Simonchini, they are the main culprit for cervical cancer and vaginal tumors. In order to treat these problems, you need to wash your vagina with a mixture made of 2 l. of filtered water and 2 tablespoons of baking soda. This will defeat the fungi that are causing the problem and prevent them from coming back in the future.  Also see this YouTube video via: by Eddie Levin

https://worldtruth.tv/u-s-soldier-claims-to-have-shot-killed-a-12-foot-giant-in-afghanistan/

U.S. Soldier Claims To Have Shot & Killed A 12 Foot Giant In Afghanistan

Reddit Telegram More Email 2K Shares In 2002 a U. S. patrol had gone missing in a very remote area of Afghanistan. Another patrol was dispatched on a search and rescue mission, and one soldier on that patrol described what he saw after coming around the side of a mountain: As we bent around this corner you could see the opening of the cave. And then I see a lot of rocks which is another oddity. And then bone matter. I’m not close enough to identify what kind of bones but I did see what I knew to be a piece of our communications equipment. So instantly we’re thinking ‘ambush,’ maybe animal, you know, could be anything. There was enough room in front of the cave, but it had a sheer drop-off; but there was enough room that we got into a decent dispersal in case of ambush. Not long after they had gotten into that dispersal formation, they saw something emerge from the cave that, despite their preparedness, caught them fully off guard. It was a man at least 12 to 15 feet in height. This is a MONSTER. Red beard, with his hair–was longish, past his shoulders, a scarlet red. And Dan runs at him and starts shooting, which broke all of us into the reality–because it was surreal. While Dan is moving at him, another bro of mine is laying down fire and I start firing. He skewers Dan–he’s now got him on this ‘pike.’ It went through him. He’s got him and he’s coming after more. We all just clicked in. I don’t know what it was, but I remember we were all like, ‘Shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face!’ He’s taking multiple hits, and he’s still moving. Eventually, the giant was killed. Dan had been killed as well. And the patrol unit was soon visited by a helicopter that dropped some cargo netting. They were told they had to bundle up the giant in the netting, and soon after they were done, a larger helicopter came by, dropped a hook, and the giant was carried off. The soldier confirmed that the red-haired, fair-skinned giant had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. After they had submitted their after-action report, the soldier recounts that they were told by their top brass to re-write it in a particular fashion, presumably to remove any mention of a giant being. Corroborating Testimony Although not an eyewitness, another special ops soldier in Afghanistan provides the following corroborating testimony: We would come back to the base and started hearing this rumor about a unit that killed this, what they started calling this really tall person. At first I didn’t think anything of it, then come to find out that the person they killed was actually three times the size of a man, had extra digits on their hands, and extra digits on their feet, and had red hair, and a special unit had come in and wanted this target. Well we’d heard that they killed this thing inside a cave, or the mouth of a cave, and there was common knowledge among the military to hear this. When you first hear, you’re thinking like, this has got to be a joke. This has got to be a hoax. Then after things go down a certain way, and you keep hearing it, you start to realize it’s not a joke. They kept telling us to keep our weapons high, which normally means it’s two to the chest, one to the head, but they kept telling us to put it towards a man’s head, and put it higher. So we would question, why would they want us to shoot higher than a man’s head? Recorded Interviews These testimonies are found in the compilation video below, from interviews conducted by L. A. Marzulli with the two soldiers who wanted to remain anonymous. In addition, there is some footage from Coast to Coast with host George Noory featuring a pilot who saw and actually transported the giant. Pilot’s Testimony This pilot had landed at a base in Afghanistan and was told that they had to pick up special cargo and that there were absolutely no cameras allowed. The pilot describes the ‘cargo’: It was basically a dead ‘guy,’ and this guy was extremely large, and when I say large, our pallets are basically, if I remember correctly, about 9 by 12 feet, or so, and this guy was laying in a fetal position, on the pallet, and he filled the pallet. He was around an 1100 pound guy. The pilot corroborated much more of the details given by the other two witnesses, including the fact that this giant was fair-skinned, red-haired, and had extra digits on his hands and feet. Widespread Corroboration As impressive as the consistency of these three separate testimonies is, there is actually much more widespread corroboration about the existence of fair-skinned, red-haired giants with six fingers and toes, and double rows of teeth. Certainly, in Afghanistan, the stories among the natives were rampant about the existence of cannibalistic giants living in caves. The soldiers who could understand the natives’ language tended to refer to these stories as ‘legends’, although a few noted that the presence of bones near cave entrances suggested that humans were killed and eaten by something living in the cave, either by ambush or, according to the natives, by sacrifices they offered the giant. There is plenty of evidence that a cannibalistic, red-haired race of giants once inhabited North America, and menaced several native tribes whose folklore and legends (or for the tribes, history) tell stories similar to the one recounted. After years of strife and numerous casualties on both sides of the fence, the natives decided to end this giant threat for good-by uniting under a single flag. It wasn’t long until the red-haired giants were crippled and forced out of their homes. The giants retreated inside a cave, but were tracked down by the natives, and with a will to avenge their fallen brethren, they set up a considerable fire that had them all burnt or intoxicated. Those who ventured outside to try to escape the putsch were met with retribution to the last one. In reference to red-haired giants, there is a discussion between David Wilcock and Corey Goode where it is said that these giants have been found in stasis, which means in suspended animation, until such a time that they are supposed to return. More than one person within the UFO community has borne witness to these red-haired giants being found in stasis chambers, in full battle regalia and other adornments, seemingly in preparation to resume their role on Earth at the appointed time. Reasons For Non-Disclosure In asking one of the U. S. army witnesses why this information was being kept secret from the world, he said, My personal opinion is, if it points to the Bible’s accurate, they don’t want it. If it goes against Darwinian Evolution, it’s not to be spoken of. This is very much in keeping with previous article on Giants in North America, where it seems that those in power are trying their best to keep everybody from finding out that human history is very different from the neo-Darwinian model in which human evolution has been a slow, unbroken, random pattern without intervention from any other sentient species. It’s likely that just learning of the existence of one different species here on Earth would completely break the spell and have a majority of us ready to demand the truth about our history and our place in this universe alongside other intelligent species. Snopes Weighs In Of course mainstream attempts to dampen the credibility of this type of story starts at the top–the top of a Google search, I mean. A search on ‘Kandahar Giant,’ predictably, has this Snopes article first on the list, to tell us of course that the whole story is false. The proof? A Department of Defense spokesman told us they have no record of such an incident: “We do not have any record or information about a special forces member killed by a giant in Kandahar. If you’ve made it this far in the article, I rather doubt that this ‘proof’ is very compelling to you. Our Role Our role as awakened and awakening citizens in the truth-seeking community is to continue to do our best to bring to light all the evidence of information that has been suppressed, hidden and denied. As more and more eyewitnesses and other whistleblowers gain the courage to come out and talk about what they have experienced, it is becoming easier to start building a bigger picture about our true history and what’s really going on in our world.

https://dailystormer.su/the-lancet-cucks-apologizes-for-referring-to-women-as-bodies-with-vaginas/

The Lancet Cucks, Apologizes for Referring to Women as “Bodies with Vaginas”

The Lancet Cucks, Apologizes for Referring to Women as “Bodies with Vaginas” Dear readers, in response to the Sept 25, 2021 cover of The Lancet, here is a statement from Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief: https://t.co/d47J6v4kSC pic.twitter.com/J73HlJ7w1O — The Lancet (@TheLancet) September 27, 2021 It’s sickening to see science cuck to politics and endorse the false claim that women are human beings, and not simply walking flesh bags with a vagina attached to them. The science says that women are not human, that they are “evil bags of worthless flesh attached to a breeding tube” – but now science journals are so political, they are willing to lie and claim that women are humans. RT: Responding to backlash, the prestigious medical journal’s chief editor triggered another, with a confusing apology bringing up “transgender health” instead. Last week’s cover of the Lancet “conveyed the impression that we have dehumanised and marginalised women,” editor in chief Richard Horton said Monday, adding that regular readers “will understand that this would never have been our intention,” as the journal “strives for maximum inclusivity of all people in its vision for advancing health.” Horton apologized “to our readers who were offended by the cover quote and the use of those same words in the review.” However, he then triggered another round of condemnations by pointing out that “transgender health is an important dimension of modern health care, but one that remains neglected,” and that the article from which the quote was taken was “a compelling call to empower women, together with non-binary, trans, and intersex people who have experienced menstruation.” Yeah, Lancet – trannies also experience menstruation somehow. How do you explain that, then? I know a thing or two about this. I’m the one who had to rescue the trannies of Bengali after a fascist falsely claimed that women are “humans.” The clock is ticking, Lancet. What you wrote is illegal in the European Union. It’s no different than denying the Wall of Eyes. Women believing they are humans doesn’t make it true, any more than a Holocaust denier questioning that the Nazis made a wall of eyes means that there wasn’t a wall of eyes. There was a wall of eyes. There were masturbation machines. Jews were forced to climb trees and pretend to be roosters until they fell out of the trees. There was a roller coaster into an oven. People had their hands chopped off and sewn onto the opposite arm. Steam chambers. Chambers with electric floors. Babies drowned in buckets. Raised by wolves. All facts. And women are not human. These are basic facts, and it’s time for science to catch up with reality.

https://dailystormer.su/tucker-carlson-on-the-adl-fuck-them/

Tucker Carlson on the ADL: “Fuck Them”

Tucker Carlson appeared on the Megyn [sic] Kelly Show on XM Radio and was informed that the Jewish Anti-Defamation League was calling for him to be fired again, and he laughed and said “fuck them.” This is at the beginning of the above clip. The Jew ADL took issue with Tucker saying on his show last Wednesday that the Bidens are trying “to change the racial mix of the country.” He continued: “In political terms, this policy is called ‘the great replacement’, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries.” Jewish ADL leader Jonathan Greenblatt responded, saying, “for Tucker Carlson to spread the toxic, antisemitic and xenophobic ‘great replacement theory’ is a repugnant and dangerous abuse of his platform.” “If it somehow wasn’t clear enough before to the executives at Fox News that Carlson was openly embracing white nationalist talking points, let last night’s episode be case and point,” the starkly odious Jew added. It’s strange that Greenblatt insists on calling this “anti-Semitic.” Tucker doesn’t ever say “the Jews are behind this,” but Greenblatt comes out and says “Tucker shouldn’t be allowed to talk about this because we, the Jews, are behind it, and we, the Jews, are above criticism.” As we know, the claim that they are above criticism is based on the debunked hoax that six million Jews were gassed to death and turned into lampshades by Adolf Hitler during an event called “The Hall of Cost.” The Jewish assertion is that no one can be allowed to criticize them, because if people start talking critically about what the Jews are up to, people will decide they should all be slaughtered. The whole track of reasoning is strange, but that’s what they say. What I don’t understand is why Greenblatt would come out and say “we, the Jews, are behind this plan to replace white people, and that’s why no one can talk about it.” Most Fox News viewers are not thinking very much about the Jews, so for the Jews to come out unprompted and say that they are behind the plan to replace white people doesn’t seem like a great strategy for them. If Fox News boomers start criticizing the Jews, no one is going to be able to stop them. These people still think America is a free country and that they’re allowed to say whatever they want, so if someone comes at them and starts telling them they can’t talk about the Jews, they’re going to flip out. I wrote about all of this earlier this year when Tucker was first criticized by the ADL for being against replacing white people. On the Megyn [sic] show, Tucker goes on to say the standard “it’s not about race” stuff, but then Megyn [sic] plays the Joe Biden clip of him saying that the Democrat Party is purposefully replacing white people. I agree that there is a good argument that the Democrats are trying to replace white people because they want more supporters. But clearly, the issue goes deeper than that. Tucker is being openly accused by the most powerful Jewish organizations in the country of planning to undermine a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white race. When that is happening, I fail to see the purpose of saying “I just believe in MLK’s notion of colorblind meritocracy,” as Tucker often does (and does in the above clip). That is literally the doctrine that was used to bring us to this point, so the idea that that doctrine is going to get us out of this seems faulty. Firstly, I don’t really think we’re being honest about the issues that MLK was addressing. If abuses against black people happened, then I’m against that. I believe that blacks should have legal rights, and should not just be killed at random. However, from my own studies, I’ve not really seen any record of any serious abuses against black people, unless you believe that segregation itself was an abuse (which is a hard sell). If we look to MLK’s personal life, we find that he was obsessed with having sex with white prostitutes, and I don’t think this personal inclination can be separated from his political goals. Worse than being a race-mixer, he was a plagiarist and a communist and just a fraud. What’s more, MLK was being handled by Jews, and his speeches were written by Jews. A right-wing political figure saying “we should just go back to MLK, before we devolved into anti-white identity politics” is like a prostitute saying “we should just go back to when you were jacking off near my face, before you ejaculated all over my face.” It’s not reasonable. If the prostitute didn’t want semen all over her face, then she should not have been a prostitute in the first place. Just so, we should not have embraced the faulty ideology of sacrificing our own racial identity in favor of a shaky deal that the blacks would agree to merit-based representation. The order of nature dictates that a merit-based system is going to be run by white people and Asians. That is going to appear “racist” to anyone who accepts the faulty premise that blacks have the same levels of genetic competence as whites. (As a separate but related issue, allowing “meritocracy” to allow Asians to run white people out of institutions built by and for white people does not seem to serve our national interests in any way.) I don’t see a way out of simply embracing white identity and some form of white nationalism. I don’t think we can round up all of the blacks and ship them back to Africa, but I believe very strongly that when we are being attacked on the basis of our race, we need to defend ourselves on the basis of our race. Much to his credit, Tucker is getting closer to this. But the much bigger issue is indeed these Jews, as they are the ones that have forced all of this gibberish on us in the first place (including by writing the speeches of MLK). There is no actual evidence that blacks have any desire to live in a colorblind meritocracy. In fact, a colorblind meritocracy does not appear to be anything other than, very explicitly, a way for whites to avoid being called “racist” while largely maintaining their culture. Tucker recently played a clip of blacks at some university kicking white people out of their safe space. 🚨 This insanity is happening on college campuses pic.twitter.com/BrVxICZYqP — Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) September 24, 2021 He did the standard routine about “this is just the reverse of racism against blacks from the Jim Crow era.” There are problems with that analogy, most obviously that the black women who kicked these white men out of their safe space couldn’t possibly argue that they were afraid these white men were going to rape them. But the obvious argument, which would go over fine with the boomers, is staring Tucker in his face: if the blacks want to have their safe spaces, that is perfectly reasonable. But obviously, we should also be able to have our own safe spaces, free from racial harassment by the blacks. You don’t have to promote “white supremacy” to say that. It is simply an obvious fact, that I think most people on either side accept at this point, that racial groups are coming into conflict with each other on a regular basis, and that there would be much less racial conflict if each racial group was allowed their own privacy and autonomy. It’s not hard to extend this very simple assertion to the discussion of immigration. We should all be able to accept that white people and black people both have some claim to the United States. These people coming in do not have any claim, at all. What’s more, unlike white and black Americans, these people coming in have their own countries, and the only reason they are coming into our countries is to leech off us for money. There is no possible moral justification for that. (On the individual level, the immigrants who are being offered a chance to come leech off of us have a justification, in that they are simply accepting a deal they were offered. But the offering itself, being made by Democrats and Republicans alike, is unjustifiable. This is our country and we live here.) I think we should be kind. If the people fleeing to our country really do have problems in their own country, then we should listen to their concerns, and try to figure out ways to help them, if we are able to do so. There should be conditions on that, the first of which should be: you can’t keep sending your people to our country to leech off of us. But if there are ways we can help Haiti or Guatemala, I think most Americans would be open to that (as long as it follows the principle of “teaching a man to fish” rather than airdropping him crates of fish). The bottom line is this: the kitchen sink has been thrown at Tucker. Therefore, there is no real reason for him to sugarcoat anything. His viewers are ready to hear the truth, and the truth can be presented without being “hateful.” All of this is very reasonable and logical. There is nothing worse that the Jews can say about him, so he might as well just lay things out the way they are, instead of hiding behind the nice-sounding but totally impossible notion of “colorblind meritocracy.” All this having been said: I’m very happy with what Tucker is doing, and I don’t want to attack him. Most of his viewers likely get the point. But I simply do not see a need to hold onto intellectual dishonesty that is not capable of solving the problems we are facing. Basically, the starting point for any political doctrine should be this: “fuck the ADL.” Everything else should be extrapolated from that initial assertion. As I’ve said every day since the coronavirus hoax began, the Western system is going to collapse. That is not, in my view, up for debate. What we need right now is leaders that are capable of dealing with that collapse, and helping us through it. Tucker is an ideal person to play a role in that process. He is doing so much good, that I feel almost guilty criticizing him, but I do believe that he has some work to do in order to become the man that God intends him to be. We should all pray for God to protect him, and to give him wisdom.

https://dailystormer.su/male-tv-star-man-shamed-for-posting-insta-shot-without-visible-abs-off-steroid-cycle/

Male TV Star Man-Shamed for Posting Instagram Shot Without Visible Abs (Women Expect Roid Body)

Steroid use is ubiquitous among celebrities to the point that women now believe that it’s what a man’s body looks like naturally. All of these actors are going to end up becoming trannies in their fifties like Bruce Jenner because of all of these steroids. Have you seen that we’re now discussing the fact that Tren is turning men gay? That’s like some Kalypso from Twisted Metal type shit – you take roids to get girls and then turn gay. It’s tough. But this is real life, kid. Men’s Health: Stephen Amell posted a shirtless selfie to Instagram over the weekend, showing himself reading Do You Mind If I Cancel? by Gary Janetti in a pair of bright pink swimming shorts. And while plenty of the comments came from fans expressing their unbridled thirst for this kind of content, several others felt the need to share criticisms of the actor’s physique, asking questions like “what happened to the Arrow body?” and “where is Oliver Queen’s physique?” Amell is best known for playing Oliver Queen, the shredded lead in the superhero show Arrow which ran on The CW from 2012 to 2020. Since leaving that network’s “Arrowverse,” Amell has taken on a completely different character, ripped wrestler Jack Spade in the Starz drama series Heels. In both cases, he has maintained a lean, muscular physique—so much so that apparently people are shocked to see him looking anything less than superhuman, even if he is still in great shape by non-Hollywood standards, Irked by these comments, Amell shared his response on Facebook a few days later, stating that one photo does not necessarily speak to a person’s health or fitness. “Public service announcement: I’m 6’1 inches tall and 208 lbs. I’m in tremendous shape and I’m strong as shit,” he wrote. “I’m a 24 hour juice cleanse away from blowing the season 1 poster for Arrow out of the water. We did the photography for that poster a little over 9 years ago. Next time I post a photo in my hot pink skivvies, I’ll try and remember to flex! And if that isn’t good enough, send me your address. I will show up to steal your boyfriend or your girlfriend.” It looks like Oliver Queen has become… a target. Anyway, that’s not the reply I would have given. (Though the “steal your boyfriend” bit speaks to what I’m saying.) He should have just spilled the beans on the fact that the Jew producers of all Hollywood productions force their male stars to take steroids. Actually, just browsing pictures of this guy, I’m not really seeing that he was definitely on steroids. He could be one of only a few guys in Hollywood that is natty. Definitely possible. This one is a bit suspect. (The issue is maintaining mass while not having fat – it’s very difficult to do both at once. But this guy is not outrageous.) I would have to go through and analyze a series of pictures of him and his progress over time to make a sure call. But the point still stands – if he is natty, he’s extremely rare, and it means that he doesn’t party and do drugs and commits his life to fitness. Here’s the deal: these men cycle the roids. When they are filming, the drugs make them look superhuman. But you can’t keep that up 365 days a year, so when they’re not filming, they look like normal people. Related: Steroids and Tranny Connection: Former Pro Wrestler Comes Out as Tranny The media will say things like “he did CrossFit and ate lean chicken breast and transformed his body in six months.” That is not physically possible. If these men want to take these drugs and take the chances associated with turning gay or into an outright tranny, that is their choice, but the Jewish media should not be allowed to collude to cover up the fact that they are all on drugs in order to shame natural men. We need to break the silence. I’ve been telling the truth about this for years, and homosexuals have actually written to me and claimed I’m just jealous. I’m in fact in excellent shape for a natural. I have never and will never do drugs, and I have reached what is probably my physical peak. I could get bigger by eating more, but I don’t see any point to that. And frankly, I do not keep my abs that ripped as a regular thing. I am always six weeks away from ripped abs (without losing weight) or 6 days away from ripped abs (if I’m willing to lose weight), but I have come to not understand the purpose of keeping your body fat this low unless you view your body and your personal health as something that should be managed for the explicit purpose of pleasing women. If Amell is not on roids during filming, he is still cutting in order to make himself look unrealistically good. There is no reason to look like that all the time. Men have value beyond what women think of us. (Note to people who want less comic book references, less comic book imagery, or whatever: no, I’m not doing that. My fixation with comic books has nothing to do with modern comic book movies. Comic books are art and comic books are good and the imagery from comic books is some of the best and most relevant of the modern age.)

https://dailystormer.su/uk-sees-double-the-number-of-boat-people-land-in-first-nine-months-of-2021-compared-to-all-of-2020/

UK Sees Double the Number of Boat People Land in First Nine Months of 2021 Compared to All of 2020

UK Sees Double the Number of Boat People Land in First Nine Months of 2021 Compared to All of 2020 Ah, this takes me back. Remember in 2015, when this so-called “migrant crisis” was in full swing, and we thought these invasions were the worst thing ever? We had no idea how good we had it. I’d kill to go back to a simpler, more care-free time when the biggest thing we had to worry about was our countries being swamped with tens of millions of dark-skinned terrorists. Breitbart: The crisis in the English Channel has seen double the number of illegal boat migrants land in the first nine months of the year as the whole of 2020. Whether through ineptitude, design, or a simple lack of will, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has failed to “take back control” of immigration in the nine months following the UK’s official departure from the European Union. With another 660 illegal migrants landing on British shores on Sunday, the total number for the year was taken to approximately 17,063 known illegals, according to calculations made by the BBC. The latest milestone means that more than twice as many illegals landed so far this year than all of last year’s total of 8,410, which was then an annual record now far surpassed. In September, alone, an estimated 4,638 migrants crossed the English Channel from France in 160 small rubber boats, more than twice the total number of migrant crossings seen in the whole year of 2019. Dan O’Mahoney, Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, said: “The government is determined to tackle the unacceptable rise in dangerous Channel crossings using every tool at our disposal, at every stage in the journey.” “The Channel is one of the most dangerous and busiest shipping lanes in the world. Many migrants come from some of the poorest and most chaotic parts of the world, and many ask to claim asylum once they are picked up by the UK authorities.” Let’s hope this continues forever. If there’s a downside to filling a tiny island nation with infinite brown people, I’ve yet to hear it.

https://dailystormer.su/oklahoma-slut-uprising-as-teen-whores-claim-anyone-distracted-by-their-half-naked-bodies-is-a-pervert/

Oklahoma: Slut Uprising as Teen Whores Claim Anyone Distracted by Their Half-Naked Bodies is a Pervert

If you thought that sluts had so much power that they couldn’t possibly demand more, then you are a dumb retard. Sluts could have you locked in a medieval dungeon being tortured with an iron maiden, and they would still claim you are oppressing them and that you have to make more concessions. The standard female technique of using their sexuality to oppress and exploit men and then claiming that mentioning that they are doing that is oppression against them is still an active tactic used aggressively. Daily Mail: Thirty Oklahoma high school students were suspended Friday after protesting the dress code, claiming it is sexist. Dozens of Mustang High School students held signs reading ‘Dress codes are sexist,’ ‘My body is not a distraction,’ and ‘If teens midriffs distract you, you should not be working with teens’ at the protest. The students complained that teachers – especially male teachers – were hyperaware of female students bodies and often ignored when their male counterparts violated the same rules in the school code. That would imply that those male teachers are heterosexual. TikTok user @777Jade, a student at the school, shared a video that became viral and earned more than 400,000 likes in the platform. The clip shows students holding the signs and taping them to the school’s walls. ‘Our school had a protest against the dress code discrimination and the sexual harassments from the male teachers,’ she wrote in the video. She also accused school officials of taking and ripping their posters after having told students they would return them. ‘You know what, Paige? Shame on you. You know how many times I tried to help you. My mistake,’ a school worker can be heard saying in the video to a student in the principal’s office. Mustang’s dress code prohibits students from showing their cleavage and midriff. Tube tops, halter tops, off the shoulder tops, spaghetti straps or backless tops are also prohibited. The school’s handbook states that the purpose of the dress code is ‘to permit students to dress according to current fashions, and at the same time reinforce district guidelines and restrict disruptions to the learning environment.’ Kirk Wilson, director of communicators at the school, confirmed that ‘a handful of students’ had been sent home with a suspension to The Independent. ‘There was a small protest before school at Mustang High School on Friday, September 10, 2021. When class began, the protest ended and most of the students attended class as normal,’ said the statement from Wilson. ‘There were a handful of students who violated the student code of conduct after class began and those situations were addressed…we remain committed to supporting our students and providing a safe and nurturing learning environment,’ he added. Dumb. The male teachers should have raped these sluts. “If teens midriffs distract you, you should not be working with teens” is the most retarded statement possibly ever made. A 16-year-old girl is fully sexually developed. Any heterosexual male is going to be distracted by a teenage girl showing off her body. This is literally sexual harassment of men. This “age of consent” gibberish is now reaching into mythological realms. The male teacher’s inherent biological drives are supposed to recognize that she hasn’t had her 18th birthday yet, and then stop being distracted by her body based on that? (Also, I think the age of consent is actually 16, but okay – whatever. It doesn’t matter. The point is, if a woman’s body is sexually developed, it is not possible for a man’s sexual system to not be distracted by her partially nude body.) Consent theory is now entering into total voodoo realms. “Age of consent” was sold as a way to protect the chastity of teenage girls after the sexual revolution established that any woman could “consent” to have sex with any man without consequences. To say that the age of consent now determines whether or not a man can be distracted by a half-naked teenager just reveals how stupid this all was to begin with. We NEVER should have allowed the sexual liberation of women. It was STUPID and JEWISH. Related: An Intellectual Argument for Abolishing Age of Consent Laws But hey, here’s a question: if the woman doesn’t desire to purposefully manipulate men, then why is she showing off her body in the first place? Surely, maybe it was an accident the first time and she didn’t think about it, but when men say “you coming to school half-naked is distracting me, because I’m a man and my biology reacts to visuals of women in states of undress,” a polite girl would say “oh, okay – sorry about that, I’ll cover my body in the future.” But no – they demand the right to show off their bodies. What reason could they have for wanting to do this, other than to manipulate men? This is where we get into the total retardation of modern Christian/conservative conceptions of women and sexuality. She is not innocent. She knows what she’s doing. She is able to see that men’s eyes are drawn to her body, she is able to see that it makes them uncomfortable, she is able to see that if she shows off her body, she gets completely different reactions from men. She understands all of that. Female sexual innocence is a stupid myth. There is no such thing as female sexual innocence, because as soon as she goes outside half naked, she immediately understands the reactions she is getting. Women use their sexuality to control and manipulate men. That IS sexual harassment. A woman who refuses to clothe herself in an appropriate way IS engaging in industrial-scale sexual harassment of men. There is one solution to this problem, and it begins with “gang” and ends with “rape.” The other solution is simply to enact strict laws about women’s dress, and then beat them when they start claiming that their victims are actually predators. And yes – there is a difference between a man’s body and a woman’s body. Women’s bodies cause sexual arousal in men. Men’s bodies do not really cause sexual arousal in women, because women have tiny levels of testosterone. This is basic science. Also, men rarely walk around showing off their midriffs in the first place, so the argument doesn’t even reflect the practical reality any more than it reflects the scientific reality. Getting half naked and then saying “stop sexualizing our bodies” is no different than grabbing someone’s arm and slapping them with it and saying “stop hitting yourself!” This is what women do with “liberation.” They use it to sexually harass and exploit men. If you tell a woman “you can be whatever you want to be,” they reply with “I want to dress up like a slut and get all the men to stare at me and then accuse them of being perverts – except for the really handsome ones, who I will then manipulate into thinking I will have sex with them.” If we do not control these sluts then we are utterly doomed. They can use their bodies to accomplish any goal by manipulating weak men. The only men who can resist them are those whose spirits are hardened by the Holy Spirit.

https://dailystormer.su/we-have-to-psychoanalyze-male-feminists/

We Have to Psychoanalyze Male Feminists

Last week, I wrote a very good article once again examining the bizarre phenomenon of “right-wing male feminism.” I explained, once again, the bizarre fact that male feminists will not ever present logical arguments or explanations for their revolutionary doctrines, and instead rely purely on the claim that anyone who disagrees with them is a pathetic loser who “can’t get laid.” In the replies section on The Gamer Uprising, I noted that I made a point in the article not to psychoanalyze male feminists, given that their entire attack strategy is based on psychoanalyzing their opposition. However, the reality is that male feminists refuse to present any form of an argument in support of their positions, so you are left without any ability to understand what they are trying to communicate beyond the fact that they must be promoting these ideas for personal reasons. For a period of years, I have asked my feminist critics for an explanation for their belief in the value of women’s liberation, and none of them have ever tried to give an explanation. A reader wrote: There really are limits to logical arguments beyond which you have to have a discussion of the Other persons biography. E. Michael Jones has talked about this lately. In his book about the degenerate moderns, he gets into the fact that you don’t go straight for a psycho analysis or biographical ad hominem at the beginning of a debate about an issue. Hear the other person out. Bear with them and give them a chance to show you if they are arguing in good faith, and if their ideas make some kind of basic sense. If so, both you and the other men can probably learn from each other. Jones Gives the example of Thomas Aquinas. As he says, the arguments of Aquinas speak for themselves. There’s nothing wacky or strange that makes you say wait a minute, was this guy some kind of drug addict or looking for a way to justify his desire to do prostitution or pedophilia? No there’s nothing like that present in the writing, so you just take them at their word. But when you get into a character such as John Paul Sartre or Michael Foucault or some of these people who have these insane points of view that just make no sense coherently, you can argue with them for a bit and eventually you have to go and ask what has your life been like up till now. In the case of Sartre he was a drug addict, something that wasn’t well known until well after his death and which Jones deals with. In the case of Foucault his father was a surgeon who forced his son to be an eyewitness to all kinds of strange surgeries and body dissection’s or something. This massively traumatized little Michelle and goes along way to explaining his future sodomy and career of trying to justify his degeneracy with books of bizarre philosophy. And so as it turns out ad hominem is a fallacy, and you pointed out that all of the responses to your criticism of feminism always boils down to some form of dismissing what you’re saying with a flimsy accusation of sour grapes or being an InCell. At that point the person is doing an ad hominem fallacy and refusing to confront the argument. But on the other hand if one person in the debate is trying in good faith to dwell on the facts, but the other person keeps ignoring what’s being said or moving the goalposts, it’s absolutely necessary to stop the argument and ask what is going on in the other guys mind and what might’ve happened to him to make him so infantile. This is a perfect explanation of what goes on in almost every political debate in our era if someone in the conversation is making traditional arguments. The arguments will just be dismissed on a very silly level as coming from the person’s childhood or something, and it turns out this is actually just a projection of what the liberal wishes to do with adult conversations. It’s a valid explanation of their procedure and they projected on any adult they encounter, never realizing that the other person was charitably assuming that the person had a real argument to make but was actually a child disguised in an adult body I replied: It’s a strange thing, because they (many of my critics or ideological opponents) will always go straight for the psychoanalysis, and the instinct then is to avoid doing that, but when they literally give you nothing you are able to attach to and reply to, but just keep on going – usually it turns into a circle, as I pointed out recently with the guy who believes in the virus/vaccine and says I’m a conspiracy theorist for “thinking everyone in the government is bad” – you just don’t really have anything left but to say “this person must have some personal problem.” In some cases of course, the person is just stupid and doesn’t understand the basic concept of argument/debate. But if a person is going on and on, and then is clearly being purposefully dishonest – usually by pretending to have forgotten your argument, and then starting over again at the beginning – you can only conclude that there is some other motive. On the internet, we do know that the government and various Jewish groups literally pay people to go around spreading bullshit on purpose. We know that as a matter of fact, and their budgets are not getting smaller. There are also people on the internet just trolling, having fun trying to get a rise out of people. And of course you don’t know. So it’s a little bit different. But if there is a guy who is putting his name and face on articles claiming that anyone who is opposed to women’s liberation is just a beta male whose ugly and mad he can’t get laid, and outright refuses, under any circumstance, to present something other than that, then you must assume this person is trapped in an eternal mommy psychological situation. Another reader wrote: Any argument that rests on “all you have to do to get a decent woman is out alpha and out status Kanye West and Brad Pitt” is so breathtakingly stupid that it actually kind of leaves you not knowing what to say. Also we “already are doing women rights and liberation so we just have to make it work” is self evidently liberal. You can’t want to go back to tradition, hierarchy or any kind of stable order while simultaneously doing women’s liberation from heiarchy and tradition. You just have to pick one. You literally can’t believe in hierarchy and order and women’s liberation. At best you want feminism but without the fruits and fall out of feminisms. This just isn’t serious. And I replied again: It’s not serious and not honest. They start out with this small dick shit, then move to “it’s too late, we have to be practical.” It’s more than moving the goal posts, it’s changing the entire foundation of the argument. It’s like “okay well, you called my bluff, so let me tell you what I actually believe.” And it’s like bro why were you lying about your beliefs on the internet? It’s just a fallback to another meaningless fake line of reasoning that is also just a coverup for some kind of personal thing that these people have going on. It is a mommy defense system. I don’t know if these people even know how dishonest they are being, or if it is all subconscious, where they just know that they have to defend the supremacy of women, and it doesn’t really matter how they do it. But obviously, they can’t do it with some kind of well thought-through and reasonable point-by-point apologetic. No such thing exists. Obviously, these people have no problem borrowing leftist arguments. But the leftists don’t have any arguments for feminism either. Leftists all talk about “equality,” while refusing to acknowledge that what they are endorsing is a ridiculous power imbalance, where women control all social situations and interpersonal dynamics, across the board. Just to go back to basics here: equality cannot exist because it doesn’t exist. Women are not physically, emotionally, or intellectually equal to men. So to create that illusion, you necessarily have to create a massive power imbalance favoring women. That then becomes a runaway train, where you have the establishment claiming that women are capable of matching men in the military, but also if a woman goes to a man’s room and he tells her he’s going to have sex with her, she is too weak to scream or even tell him “no” because of his physical superiority. In the latter situation, they will now start talking about how she can’t scream because of thousands of years of oppression or whatever – it just devolves into complete gibberish. Somehow, 3000 years ago, a woman was able to scream when a man tried to rape her (and was relieved of guilt of illicit sex if she did scream), but now, in a system where women are favored over men in every single area of society, a woman is too oppressed to scream. Ultimately, this is the deal: these people hate nature because they hate God. Anyone who denies nature is not going to come up with a logical explanation, and will be forced to resort to nonsense, gibberish, and lies. I would even go so far as to say that any honest argument is about getting to the core of the natural order, which is synonymous with “God” and “Truth.” Obviously, copying comments to the front page is a way for me to post something long on the front page without having to do any extra work, because it is Sunday and I want to go relax and drink wine on my porch. However, I do think these are important ideas, which deserve further exposure on the front page here. Also, I write a lot of long stuff on The Gamer Uprising that probably needs more exposure. Because this issue of “right-wing male feminism” appears to be making a comeback in various quarters, it is something that I will probably be discussing more in the future. This will likely involve primarily going through and repeating a bunch of stuff I already wrote years ago, but I’m feeling up to doing that, and often the rewrites are better than the originals. Next, I think it will be necessary to establish the fact that “feminism” is always “rule by women.” As stated, women are in control of all social situations and interpersonal dynamics in this society, and toxic femininity is at the core of the Western moral order. Explaining that we are all held hostage to a matriarchy, a brutal mommy tyranny, is a prerequisite to understanding just why feminism has been so destructive to civilization, and to understanding why nothing is going to be fixed in society until the patriarchy is reestablished. To fix the problem of modernity, all of these Jewish revolutions must be overturned. We cannot pick and choose which ones we want to keep. We have to go back to the way things were.

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/ron-desantis-biggest-worry-florida-not

DeSantis' Biggest Worry For Florida: 'Critical Race Theory'

In the midst of a COVID surge in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis once again found the time to go on Fox News. Because kow-towing to the Fox News zombies IS his "job." And he's there to deny he's running for president and explain what's most important to him moving forward. Sean Hannity attacked the media for always asking DeSantis if he's running for president... and then he asked Ron if he was going to run for president. "I'm not considering anything beyond my job. We've got a lot of stuff going on in Florida," DeSantis said. Again, his job is to go on Fox. What's most important to DeSantis while his state sinks deeper into a Delta variant explosion of infections? "We got school board races, Sean," DeSantis said. He continued, "Wanna make sure people are not supporting critical race theory. Making sure parents have the ability to send their kids to school the way they want to." Say, what? Making believe CRT is being taught in Florida schools is more important than the lives of Floridians during a pandemic? Maybe DeathSantis should do a little actual research and read something other than 4 Chan message boards. How Florida fell so far behind California in battling the coronavirus A Los Angeles Times analysis found that of the nation’s 50 states, Florida had the worst COVID-19 death and coronavirus case rate for the summer. California’s summer death rate was about one-sixth of Florida’s, and its coronavirus case rate was about two-thirds lower. Florida recorded 14,334 COVID-19 deaths in the summer, or 70 fatalities per every 100,000 residents — the worst tally of any state. California saw 4,874 deaths during the same period, according to Johns Hopkins University, equaling 12 per every 100,000 residents. Of the nation’s 10 most populous states, Florida now has the second worst cumulative COVID-19 death rate since the pandemic began, with 262 deaths for every 100,000 residents DeSantis presidential slogan for 2024: Owning the libs on Fox News only cost Florida 15,000 deaths!

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/ron-desantis-biggest-worry-florida-not

DeSantis' Biggest Worry For Florida: 'Critical Race Theory'

In the midst of a COVID surge in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis once again found the time to go on Fox News. Because kow-towing to the Fox News zombies IS his "job." And he's there to deny he's running for president and explain what's most important to him moving forward. Sean Hannity attacked the media for always asking DeSantis if he's running for president... and then he asked Ron if he was going to run for president. "I'm not considering anything beyond my job. We've got a lot of stuff going on in Florida," DeSantis said. Again, his job is to go on Fox. What's most important to DeSantis while his state sinks deeper into a Delta variant explosion of infections? "We got school board races, Sean," DeSantis said. He continued, "Wanna make sure people are not supporting critical race theory. Making sure parents have the ability to send their kids to school the way they want to." Say, what? Making believe CRT is being taught in Florida schools is more important than the lives of Floridians during a pandemic? Maybe DeathSantis should do a little actual research and read something other than 4 Chan message boards. How Florida fell so far behind California in battling the coronavirus A Los Angeles Times analysis found that of the nation’s 50 states, Florida had the worst COVID-19 death and coronavirus case rate for the summer. California’s summer death rate was about one-sixth of Florida’s, and its coronavirus case rate was about two-thirds lower. Florida recorded 14,334 COVID-19 deaths in the summer, or 70 fatalities per every 100,000 residents — the worst tally of any state. California saw 4,874 deaths during the same period, according to Johns Hopkins University, equaling 12 per every 100,000 residents. Of the nation’s 10 most populous states, Florida now has the second worst cumulative COVID-19 death rate since the pandemic began, with 262 deaths for every 100,000 residents DeSantis presidential slogan for 2024: Owning the libs on Fox News only cost Florida 15,000 deaths!

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/ron-desantis-biggest-worry-florida-not

DeSantis' Biggest Worry For Florida: 'Critical Race Theory'

In the midst of a COVID surge in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis once again found the time to go on Fox News. Because kow-towing to the Fox News zombies IS his "job." And he's there to deny he's running for president and explain what's most important to him moving forward. Sean Hannity attacked the media for always asking DeSantis if he's running for president... and then he asked Ron if he was going to run for president. "I'm not considering anything beyond my job. We've got a lot of stuff going on in Florida," DeSantis said. Again, his job is to go on Fox. What's most important to DeSantis while his state sinks deeper into a Delta variant explosion of infections? "We got school board races, Sean," DeSantis said. He continued, "Wanna make sure people are not supporting critical race theory. Making sure parents have the ability to send their kids to school the way they want to." Say, what? Making believe CRT is being taught in Florida schools is more important than the lives of Floridians during a pandemic? Maybe DeathSantis should do a little actual research and read something other than 4 Chan message boards. How Florida fell so far behind California in battling the coronavirus A Los Angeles Times analysis found that of the nation’s 50 states, Florida had the worst COVID-19 death and coronavirus case rate for the summer. California’s summer death rate was about one-sixth of Florida’s, and its coronavirus case rate was about two-thirds lower. Florida recorded 14,334 COVID-19 deaths in the summer, or 70 fatalities per every 100,000 residents — the worst tally of any state. California saw 4,874 deaths during the same period, according to Johns Hopkins University, equaling 12 per every 100,000 residents. Of the nation’s 10 most populous states, Florida now has the second worst cumulative COVID-19 death rate since the pandemic began, with 262 deaths for every 100,000 residents DeSantis presidential slogan for 2024: Owning the libs on Fox News only cost Florida 15,000 deaths!

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/ron-desantis-biggest-worry-florida-not

DeSantis' Biggest Worry For Florida: 'Critical Race Theory'

In the midst of a COVID surge in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis once again found the time to go on Fox News. Because kow-towing to the Fox News zombies IS his "job." And he's there to deny he's running for president and explain what's most important to him moving forward. Sean Hannity attacked the media for always asking DeSantis if he's running for president... and then he asked Ron if he was going to run for president. "I'm not considering anything beyond my job. We've got a lot of stuff going on in Florida," DeSantis said. Again, his job is to go on Fox. What's most important to DeSantis while his state sinks deeper into a Delta variant explosion of infections? "We got school board races, Sean," DeSantis said. He continued, "Wanna make sure people are not supporting critical race theory. Making sure parents have the ability to send their kids to school the way they want to." Say, what? Making believe CRT is being taught in Florida schools is more important than the lives of Floridians during a pandemic? Maybe DeathSantis should do a little actual research and read something other than 4 Chan message boards. How Florida fell so far behind California in battling the coronavirus A Los Angeles Times analysis found that of the nation’s 50 states, Florida had the worst COVID-19 death and coronavirus case rate for the summer. California’s summer death rate was about one-sixth of Florida’s, and its coronavirus case rate was about two-thirds lower. Florida recorded 14,334 COVID-19 deaths in the summer, or 70 fatalities per every 100,000 residents — the worst tally of any state. California saw 4,874 deaths during the same period, according to Johns Hopkins University, equaling 12 per every 100,000 residents. Of the nation’s 10 most populous states, Florida now has the second worst cumulative COVID-19 death rate since the pandemic began, with 262 deaths for every 100,000 residents DeSantis presidential slogan for 2024: Owning the libs on Fox News only cost Florida 15,000 deaths!

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/finally-youtube-take-down-prominent-anti

FINALLY: YouTube To Take Down Prominent Anti-Vax Channels

YouTube is taking down several video channels belonging to high-profile antivaxxers, including Joseph Mercola and Bobby Kennedy Jr., who have raised the vaccine skepticism that’s has slowed vaccination rates across the country. Via the Washington Post: As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous. The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox. Misinformation researchers have for years said the popularity of anti-vaccine content on YouTube was contributing to growing skepticism of lifesaving vaccines in the United States and around the world. Vaccination rates have slowed and about 56 percent of the U.S. population has had two shots, compared with 71 percent in Canada and 67 percent in the United Kingdom. In July, President Biden said social media companies were partially responsible for spreading misinformation about the vaccines, and need to do more to address the issue. The change marks a shift for the social media giant, which streams more than 1 billion hours’ worth of content every day. Like its peers Facebook and Twitter, the company has long resisted policing content too heavily, arguing maintaining an open platform is critical to free speech. But as the companies increasingly come under fire from regulators, lawmakers and regular users for contributing to social ills — including vaccine skepticism — YouTube is again changing policies that it has held onto for months.

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/madison-cawthorn-spiritual-battle

Hitler-Loving Cawthorn Promises He's Up For 'Spiritual Battle' In DC

If you need someone to wage a "spiritual battle" on your behalf, would you choose alleged serial sexual harasser Rep. Madison Cawthorn for the job? If your answer is "Yes!" then fear not! He has volunteered! At the North Carolina Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Salt & Light Conference," Rep. Cawthorn addressed the crowd to reassure them that while Speaker Nancy Pelosi's eyes were indeed "cold" and "evil," he was just the man to look into them to square off against her in that vile pit of hell, Capitol Hill. And he would know! He visits Hitler's house for fun! "When I’m in Washington, D.C., I know a lot of you consider the place to be evil and vile, and I am here to tell you with first-hand knowledge, it is evil and vile. But I will tell you when I’m there, I don’t feel an overwhelming sense of darkness as if the devil has complete dominion of that area because I feel a spiritual battle going on on Capitol Hill. And patriots like all of you in this room, on your knees, praying that we have the cover within the spiritual fight is what it will take to save this country,” sayeth he. So hopeful! So encouraging! All southern white folks need do is to pray, and the devil shall be defeated! ON YOUR KNEES, PATRIOTS! Cawthorn fabricated hyperbolic and overwrought descriptions of mUrDeRiNg bAbIeS as evidence of Pelosi's evil. In reality, she heads the caucus that passed a bill protecting women's right to reproductive health care, including abortion, after Texas nullified Roe v. Wade, but who needs accuracy and context when we're dealing with these idiots? He went on, "She just passed a bill yesterday trying to say that we can abort babies on demand all the way up until right before the day of birth. When we hear this, when we hear the fact that if a baby comes through a botched abortion alive, sitting there on the table, they then still have the right to murder that child, we realize that when I quip and say, ‘I look her in her cold, evil eyes,’ it’s not a joke." "These people hate us," he goaded, somehow making a bunch of white Christians the aggrieved party in the nation where 45 of 46 presidents have been white Christian males. Then came the kicker. “I will tell you, the only way that we take our country back is when strong, God-fearing patriots decide it is time for us to stand up and say, ‘No’ to your tyranny,” Cawthorn urged. “It is time for the American Christian church to come out of the shadows, to say no longer are we going to allow our culture to be determined by people who hate the things that we believe in." I'm sorry, what? Time for WHOM to come out of WHAT shadows? Since when was the Christian church in America ever in the damn shadows? If this is the church in the SHADOWS, I shudder to think what it's like fully emerged and visible...we live in a goddamned theocracy. In my county in Maryland, no one can buy a frikkin CAR on a Sunday because we still have Blue Laws on the books — in 2021! Cawthorn's not worried about being in the shadows. He's worried about not being allowed to crack a whip from the driver's seat. And you know that, because he issues dire warnings about what might happen if they don't wield power. "We are going to stand valiantly for God’s incredible, inerrant truths that predate any version of government. Because my friends, if we lose this country today, if we bend the knee to the Democrats today, our country will be lost forever, and our children will never know what freedom is. It’s our duty to stand up. I encourage you—let us stand united as men and women of faith to fight for our country!” Bend the knee??? Where are we, in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros? Cawthorn is every high school drama teacher's worst nightmare. He's every high school girl's worst nightmare. Hell, the list is too long. Let's just say he's everyone's worst nightmare.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/gop-lawmaker-isis-bomber-that-killed-13-u-s-soldiers-escaped-from-u-s-base-during-afghanistan-withdrawal

GOP Lawmaker: ISIS Bomber That Killed 13 U.S. Soldiers Escaped From U.S. Base During Afghanistan Withdrawal

GOP Rep. Ken Calvert said on Tuesday that an ISIS-K terrorist was released from a U.S. airbase before killing 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghan civilians in a terror attack on Kabul’s airport in August. Calvert put out a statement claiming that U.S. national security officials have confirmed to him that Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri was locked up at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, was set free during the U.S. withdrawal, and went on to detonate a suicide bomb outside of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport in the final days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. “National security officials have confirmed to Congressman Ken Calvert (CA-42) that the ISIS-K bomber responsible for the August 26, 2021 terror attack at Kabul airport was carried out by an individual who was released from the Bagram prison shortly after the Taliban seized control of the facility on August 15, 2021. The U.S. military abruptly abandoned the facility in July of 2021,” Calvert’s office said in a press release. Calvert said in a statement: U.S. national security officials have now confirmed to me the reports that the August 26th Kabul bomber was a known ISIS-K terrorist that was previously detained at the Bagram prison and was released along with thousands of others just days before the deadly attack. President Biden’s disastrous handling of our withdrawal from Afghanistan led to a series of events that culminated with the tragic loss of life on August 26th outside of the Kabul airport. Thirteen Americans, including one of my constituents, were killed because of the poor judgement and execution of our troop withdrawal. The Biden Administration needs to explain why these prisoners were not transferred and secured at another location. Those responsible for these grave errors not only put our brave service members in harm’s way but have now – by our military’s own admission – placed Americans in greater danger than they were before. The Taliban took over Bagram Air Base in August after the U.S. turned it over to Afghan security forces the month prior. The Taliban reportedly released “thousands” of prisoners, many considered to be “high-value.” As The Daily Wire reported at the time: The Taliban took control of Bagram Air Base on Sunday, a former American airbase that the U.S turned over to the Afghanistan government last month. The Taliban have reportedly released thousands of prisoners that were held at Bagram, including members of al Qaeda, the terror group that carried out the 9-11 attacks and prompted the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Bagram was under control of the U.S. military for roughly two decades before leaving it in control of the Afghan military in July as the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan. “The Taliban claims it overran Bagram Air Base and freed prisoners. Many high-value detainees were located there, including members of Al Qaeda. This will reverberate for years to come,” said Bill Roggio, Long War Journal editor, and terror analyst. U.S. and Afghan officials confirmed reports of the Taliban takeover at Bagram. “Senior US official tells @cbsnews Bagram has fallen w/prisoners released,” CBS senior investigative reporter Catherine Herridge said. “NOTE: Historically these prison releases have been catastrophic, strengthening al Qaeda + associated groups + touted in propaganda as major victories.” The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/pelosi-takes-one-two-punch-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal-3-5t-spending-bill-both-likely-dead

Pelosi Takes One-Two Punch: Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, $3.5T Spending Bill Both Stalled As Democrats Bicker

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is facing a double loss Thursday, with both the trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure deal — or “BIF” — and the White House’s massive $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” spending package, are both set to meet failure in the House, with the progressives intent on killing the BIF and Senate mavericks, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) looking to derail the Biden administration’s pet “human infrastructure” package. Pelosi insisted, as late as Thursday morning, that she intends to hold a vote on the BIF and then a vote on the “reconciliation” bill — a bill she’s pushed as a “zero cost” measure, despite its $3.5 trillion price tag. “Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday morning said she still is planning to have the U.S. House of Representatives vote later in the day on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, even as her progressive Democratic colleagues appeared set to block this key part of President Joe Biden’s agenda,” Marketwatch reported. “We’re on a path to win the vote,” Pelosi insisted. The “BIF,” as it’s known, was inked weeks ago in the Senate, but is meeting resistance from progressive Democrats in the House who want a much larger infrastructure package that includes provisions for pet progressive projects, and who believe the massive “reconciliation” bill, may never pass, particularly if Manchin and Sinema maintain their stand against the measure. “We have said clearly, and we reiterated this again for the speaker and we’re in the same place that we will not be able to vote for the… infrastructure bill until the reconciliation bill has passed,” progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) told Fox News on Thursday. “The speaker understands that it isn’t about the speaker’s word,” Jayapal added, referencing Pelosi’s commitment to the BIF. The moderates, Jayapal said, is the “group we’re concerned about. So this isn’t about trusting the speaker, it’s not about trusting the president. It’s really about the vote as an ironclad assurance in the Senate.” “We will have a reconciliation bill. That is for sure,” Pelosi assured reporters. She later admitted, however, that the BIF is in jeopardy because of the Senate chaos. “It’s impossible, though, to persuade people to vote for the BIF, without the reassurances that the reconciliation bill will occur,” she said, adding that, to alleviate her colleagues’ anxiety, that “there needs to be agreed-upon legislative text for the $3.5 trillion package in order for there to be support among progressives for the smaller measure,” because progressives are concerned that the package could change between a vote approving the BIF and a Senate vote on the reconciliation bill. But Sinema and Manchin are still on the fence. Manchin wants a $1.5 trillion cap on spending on a bill slated to pass through reconciliation — a process by which pure spending and budget bills can become law by a simple majority, rather than a super-majority vote. And despite claims to the contrary, it appears Manchin presented a specific plan for his $1.5 trillion spending cap to the White House and Democratic leadership in July, leaving Democratic leadership struggling to explain why negotiations are coming down to the wire. A senate aide confirms authenticity of this document from July, reported by Politico – that Manchin proposed to Schumer a topline $1.5T reconciliation bill, with debate to begin no later than 10/1/2021. Says Manchin does not guarantee vote for reconciliation if it exceeds $1.5T pic.twitter.com/JMX7SXxXyS — Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) September 30, 2021 Sinema, likewise, said Thursday that she agreed with Manchin’s spending cap, presented months ago. Statement on Budget Reconciliation Negotiations pic.twitter.com/QZpaMXxm7q — Kyrsten Sinema (@SenatorSinema) September 30, 2021 Pelosi does appear to have scored at least one win: Republicans have tentatively agreed to a stopgap spending package designed to avoid a government shutdown, also slated to happen on Thursday. The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/mlb-blue-jays-beat-yankees-after-blowing-early-lead-keep-al-wild-card-race-tight

MLB: Blue Jays Beat Yankees After Blowing Early Lead, Keep AL Wild Card Race Tight

Just when you thought the Yankees were tightening their grasp on a playoff spot, Bo Bichette and the Toronto Blue Jays put a halt to their hot streak. Toronto ended the Yankees’ seven-game winning streak Wednesday behind two home runs from Bichette — including a go-ahead solo shot in the eighth — beating New York 6-5 and crept closer in the AL Wild Card race. For Toronto, the win puts them one-game back of Boston for the second Wild Card spot, the Yankees remain one up on the Red Sox for the first Wild Card. The Blue Jays jumped on Yankees ace Gerrit Cole early, getting out to a 4-0 lead after four innings. Marcus Semien hit a two-run shot in the first, and Toronto was able to tack on a run in both the second and third innings. Bichette launched the first of his two solo home runs in the third inning with a 412-foot shot to right. The Yankees were able to claw back, tying the game at 5-5 on a two-run single by Kyle Higashioka in the seventh inning. But Bichette wasn’t going to allow Toronto to blow their early lead, hitting a go-ahead solo shot off of Yankees reliever Clay Holmes to lead off the bottom of the eighth inning. “I still really haven’t calmed down yet,” Bichette said. “Just a lot of excitement. Big spot and I got the job done, so it felt good.” For New York, the start by Cole was a major disappointment. Cole had an opportunity to put some distance between the Yankees and Blue Jays and failed. Five earned runs in six innings isn’t what the Yankees pay him $36 million a year for. “I think we’re running into some really tough teams,” Cole told reporters. “I just was not quite sharp enough today. That’s just the bottom line. I think that I certainly showed the ability to make the pitches that we needed to over the course of the game. I just didn’t make enough of them.” Cole may be available to pitch against the Tampa Bay Rays if needed in game 162 on three-day rest, but Cole has a 6.15 ERA in his last five starts and has faltered when the Yankees have needed him most. “Physically, I think the velocity is in a good spot,” Cole told MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch after the game. “Things have rebounded well since a couple of those injury mishaps. I’m in a good enough spot to make enough good pitches. I’ve just got to make those pitches at the right times.” Toronto and New York conclude their three-game series Thursday night, with Corey Kluber [5-3, 3.82 ERA] on the bump for the Yankees and AL Cy Young candidate Robbie Ray [13-6, 2.68 ERA] getting the start for Toronto. The Yankees magic number to clinch a playoff spot is three, with Thursday’s game against Toronto and a three-game series against AL East division winner Tampa Bay left on the schedule. Toronto will host the last-place Orioles to end the year and Boston finishes their season against the Washington Nationals. The Seattle Mariners — 0.5 games back of the second Wild Card spot — end the regular season with a three-game series against the Angels. Joe Morgan is the Sports Reporter for The Daily Wire. Most recently, Morgan covered the Clippers, Lakers, and the NBA for Sporting News. Send your sports questions to sports@dailywire.com. The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire. The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/brian-laundrie-possibly-spotted-in-neighboring-campers-selfie

Brian Laundrie Possibly Spotted In Neighboring Campers’ Selfie

A family who went camping mere yards away from the Laundrie family at Fort De Soto Park might have captured an image of fugitive Brian Laundrie in a selfie they took during their stay. Marci Newsom and some of her extended family checked into Fort De Soto Park on September 6, the same day Brian’s mother Roberta Laundrie checked into the park, Pinellas County documents show, NBC2 reported. The Laundries via their attorney have admitted to staying at the park from September 6-7, but records show that Roberta checked out on the 8th. After browsing the park documents, NBC2 reached out to the Newsoms. “They looked back on their photos and found a red truck with a camper attached to it,” the report detailed. “They are similar to the truck and camper that has been parked in front of the Laundrie family home for the past two weeks.” One of the people camping with the Newsom couple found a selfie they took. In the background of the photo, there appears to be a man who seemingly matches the description of Brian (see video, below). Brian went missing earlier this month as the search intensified for his 22-year-old girlfriend Gabby Petito, who later turned up dead. An autopsy showed homicide as Petito’s cause of death. Brian was named a “person of interest” in the case and his family home was raided by the FBI and reportedly declared a “crime scene.” An arrest warrant was issued for Brian on September 23, but the 23-year-old remains missing. As highlighted by The Daily Wire, reports surfaced this week suggesting Brian was spotted buying a cell phone the same day he was allegedly last seen by his family. “FBI agents visited an AT&T store near Laundrie’s family home in North Port, Florida, to look at any surveillance footage,” Deseret News reported Wednesday. Sources told TMZ that Brian was spotted entering the store on September 14 and was accompanied by an older woman. Laundrie family lawyer Steven Bertolino told TMZ that a new phone was bought at the store, Deseret News noted. “But, he said, the phone is reportedly the same one that the FBI already has in its possession.” Outside of the FBI, Duane “Dog” Chapman, better known as “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” is also pursuing his own search for Brian. Chapman has reportedly come across a “fresh campsite” while tracking Brian, finding a can of Monster Energy Ultra Gold in a Florida park, a report said Wednesday. Fox News reported: Chapman discovered a campsite and fresh Monster can deep in the woods while searching Shell Island off the coast of Florida for Brian Laundrie Wednesday. The Monster can showed no rust or faded colors, according to a Fox News Digital reporter on the scene with Chapman. But Chapman and his team found no conclusive evidence that Laundrie was still on Egmont Key. WATCH: Related: Dog the Bounty Hunter Finds ‘Fresh’ Campsite While Tracking Brian Laundrie The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/09/30/greta-thunberg-brands-britain-one-of-the-biggest-climate-villains/

Greta Thunberg Brands Britain as One of the Biggest 'Climate Villains’

Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg branded the British government as one of the chief “climate villains” in the world, despite the UK only accounting for around one per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Appearing at the Youth4Climate summit in Milan, Greta Thunberg cast her ire towards Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, which is set to host the COP 26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow next month. Speaking to Sky News, the 18-year-old radical green activist claimed that Britain uses “creative carbon accounting” by not counting international shipping, air travel, or exported fossil fuels in its emissions reports. “I find it very strange that they’re like, they are the ones who we’re supposed to look up to now, but they are objectively one of the biggest climate villains, which I find very strange,” she said. “Of course, the climate crisis .. more or less it started in the UK since that’s where the industrial revolution started, we started to burn coal there, so of course the UK has an enormous historical responsibility when it comes to historic emissions since the climate crisis is a cumulative crisis,” Thunberg added. The Sweedish teenager went on to chastise the British government for recently approving licenses for new oil and gas drilling operations in the North Sea ahead of the climate summit in November, saying: “That’s a textbook example of hypocrisy, alongside many other countries as well.” Greta Thunberg says world leaders have spoken "words that sound great but have led to no action" on climate change, dismissing their green-financing pledges as all "blah blah blah".https://t.co/bCEetUYWEU pic.twitter.com/szgJPkzihW — Sky News (@SkyNews) September 28, 2021 In a speech to the Youth4Climate summit on Tuesday, Thunberg went on to mock climate change proposals from world leaders, including the Great Reset mantra “Build Back Batter” favoured by American President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has pledged to reduce carbon emissions to net-zero by the year 2050. “Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah blah blah. Net-zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah,” she said. “This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action. Our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.” “Of course we need constructive dialogue. But they’ve now had 30 years of blah, blah, blah and where has that led us? We can still turn this around – it is entirely possible. “It will take immediate, drastic annual emission reductions. But not if things go on like today. Our leaders’ intentional lack of action is a betrayal toward all present and future generations.” The world’s largest polluter, Communist China, was notably absent from Thunberg’s remarks. The authoritarian regime emitted more than the entire developed world combined in 2019, according to a study from the Rhodium Group, which found that China accounted for 27 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gasses. In comparison, the United States was responsible for 11 per cent and India at 6.6 per cent. The UK, for its part, accounts for around 1.1 per cent of global emissions. In response to the remarks from Thunberg, a British government spokesman said: “Given the UK has cut emissions faster than any other major economy over the past three decades, and that we are the first country to legislate to reach net-zero by 2050, we stand by our assertion that we are leading the way in the fight against climate change.” Delingpole: ‘God Has Raised Up a Prophet In Greta Thunberg’, Claims Ex-Archbishop https://t.co/Vm5gbfyvWD — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 9, 2021 Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

https://www.breitbart.com/news/slower-usps-mail-service-to-begin-friday-as-part-of-cost-cutting-plan/

Slower USPS mail service to begin Friday as part of cost-cutting plan

Sept. 30 (UPI) — Post offices nationwide will begin to see some delays in mail service beginning on Friday as part of the postmaster general’s new plan to cut costs and save money. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced the 10-year plan in the spring, which outlined new investments in technology, training and fleets of delivery vehicles. The USPS will implement the new service standards Friday, which could lead to longer transit times for some long-distance first-class mail and first-class packages. Shorter post office hours will also affect delivery times under the new plan. The changes are not expected to affect better than 90% of periodicals and 60% of first-class mail, USPS spokesperson Kim Frum told NPR. Postal service fees for commercial and retail packages will also increase over the holiday season, between Oct. 3 and Dec. 26. The USPS reported a $3 billion loss in the second quarter of 2021. DeJoy, postmaster general since June 2020, has been criticized since taking the post for being a donor for former President Donald Trump and is being investigated by the FBI over an alleged campaign finance scheme in which he’s accused of pressuring employees to donate to Republican candidates while he was head of North Carolina-based New Breed Logistics.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/09/29/milley-admits-telling-chinese-counterpart-hed-probably-call-him-if-attack-was-coming/

Milley Admits Telling Chinese He'd 'Probably' Call Before an Attack

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley admitted Wednesday during a hearing that he told his Chinese counterpart he would give him a call if the United States were about to attack. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) grilled Milley during the House Armed Services Committee hearing on whether allegations in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book were true that Milley had told his Chinese counterpart that he would notify him if the U.S. were about to attack ahead of the 2020 presidential election. According to the book, Milley told Gen. Li Zuocheng, whom he had known for five years, during a “top secret, back-channel” phone call on October 30, 2020, to allay China’s alleged fears that Trump would attack China: General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise. It’s not going to be a bolt out of the blue. Milley admitted to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Tuesday that he spoke to Woodward for the book, as well as other journalists for their books, to make sure things were accurate. Hartzler asked Milley had he really told his Chinese counterpart that he would be notified. Milley responded: So this is a longer conversation. It’s a VTC [ video teleconference ] with General Li, and there’s a body of intelligence that leads up to this that was persuasive to Secretary Esper, myself, and many, many others that the Chinese thought wrongly that the United States is going to attack them. I am certain, guaranteed certain, that President Trump had no intent to attack and it was my task to make sure I communicated that. … As part of that conversation, I said, “General Li, there’s not going to be a war. There is not going to be an attack between great powers. And if there was, the tensions would build up. There’d be calls going back and forth from all kinds of senior officials.” I said, “Hey, General Li, I’ll probably give you a call, but we’re not going to attack you. Trust me, we’re not going to attack you.” These are two great powers and I am doing my best to transmit the president’s intent, President Trump’s intent, to ensure that the American people are protected from an incident that could escalate. Hartzler told Milley, “I understand your intent, but I think you are articulating that — that you would tell him you would give him a call, I think, is worthy of your resignation. I just think that’s against our country that you would give our No. 1 adversary that information and tell him that.” Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on Twitter or on Facebook.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/09/29/biden-booed-as-he-attends-congressional-baseball-game-before-critical-infrastructure-vote/

Biden Booed at Congressional Baseball Game Before Critical Vote

President Joe Biden made a surprise trip to attend the Congressional baseball game on Wednesday night, even as his $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill hangs in balance. Republicans could be heard audibly booing in the stadium while Democrats cheered as the president arrived at Nationals Stadium. The annual game played by members of Congress is traditionally attended by staff of both parties. Both cheers (from Dem side) and boos (from GOP side) as @potus introduced at Nationals ballpark at Congressional ballgame. pic.twitter.com/40RZvPH5hj — Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 29, 2021 JUST IN 🚨 Joe Biden greeted with ‘boos’ from Republican side at Nationals stadium when he arrived for congressional baseball game pic.twitter.com/oKvplDPVhP — Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) September 29, 2021 President Biden makes a surprise appearance at the annual Congressional Baseball Game. He played during his years in the Senate and was inducted into the game’s Hall of Fame earlier tonight. #NexstarDC pic.twitter.com/CfpU7AloeM — Jessi Turnure (@JessiTurnure) September 29, 2021 Biden entered the stadium during the second inning with the racing president mascots and embraced Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The 'racing presidents' and President Biden at the Congressional baseball game. pic.twitter.com/DvZysm0lWi — ShirtyandSniffy (@ShirtyandSniffy) September 29, 2021 The president handed out ice cream bars during the game with the presidential seal. Biden is handing out ice cream bars to ballplayers from both congressional teams. Dove bars with a presidential seal. pic.twitter.com/i3E4ikTxyl — Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 30, 2021 Prior to the game, Biden met with Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in the Oval Office to discuss the future of his agenda. Pelosi scheduled a vote on the president’s $1.5 trillion infrastructure package for Thursday, even though the far-left wing of the Democrat party has threatened to boycott if it isn’t accompanied by a $3.5 trillion entitlement and tax hike package. Biden continues meeting with Sens. Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) in an effort to break the logjam on the $3.5 trillion package, but so far they have resisted making a deal. “While I am hopeful that common ground can be found that would result in another historic investment in our nation, I cannot – and will not – support trillions in spending or an all or nothing approach that ignores the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces,” Manchin wrote in a statement on Wednesday night.

https://bestreviews.com/best-lawn-mowers

Best Lawn Mowers

Buying guide for best lawn mowers Whether you’ve got a trim little square of grass in front of your house or acres of sprawling pasture behind your barn, your lawn mower plays a huge role in the landscaping of your property. As such, you undoubtedly want a machine that gives the best performance possible. In fact, during certain times of the year, you may use your lawn mower more than once per week. The ideal lawn mower is a durable, high-quality machine that will serve you for many years without fail. How do you decide which lawn mower to buy? The market offers so many choices, from rotary mowers that cost under $100 to robotic lawn mowers that cost upwards of $1,000. If you’re thinking of getting a new lawn mower, there are a few things you'll want to consider in order to make an informed decision. Can't decide between a push mower and a riding mower? Luke, our professional landscaping consultant, offers this advice: Why buy a walk-behind lawn mower? If you’re considering a walk-behind lawn mower, chances are high that you don’t have acres of grass to contend with on a weekly basis. If you did, you’d probably be seriously considering a riding lawn mower instead. But riding lawn mowers can be pricey, and they consume lots of storage space. If your yard is small, investing in such a large machine could be overkill. A walk-behind mower is a great choice for homes with small- and medium-sized yards. Walk-behind lawn mowers also offer more precision than riding mowers, as they are easier to manipulate in small spaces. Types of lawn mowers There are several types of walk-behind lawn mowers. Each has its own unique set of characteristics. Push mowers A push mower’s engine powers the blade. In turn, the blade rotates and cuts the lawn. All of the “forward drive” is human-powered; you rely on your own muscle to propel the machine. If you have a small, even lot — or if you just like the exercise — a push mower could be the right choice for you. Self-propelled mowers A self-propelled lawn mower uses energy from the engine to power the wheels. Sometimes, just the front or back wheels receive power; other times, the lawn mower has all-wheel drive. These mowers are wonderful for lots of reasons. If you have a large lot, need to mow rough terrain, or suffer from physical weakness or fatigue, a self-propelled mower could be your best bet. Gas lawn mowers If you own a gas-powered lawn mower, you must refill the gas tank periodically. This costs money, and as the gas combusts, it releases emissions into the air that aren’t great for the environment. But gas mowers tend to wield more power, so if you’ve got a large lawn or thick patches of grass or other tough growth to tackle, a gas-powered machine could be the better choice. Did you know? While it’s true they require maintenance and tune-ups, you’re not tethered to extension cord or limited battery life when using a gas-powered motor. Some people swear by them; it’s the only type of mower they’ll use in spite of the noise and extra expense. STAFF BestReviews Electric lawn mowers Electric mowers come with a battery that you must charge. The battery powers the blade’s rotation. This is a more environmentally friendly option than a traditional gas-powered motor. Gas-powered lawn mowers employ the same internal combustion engine technology that most cars use to run. Electric mowers don’t require engine maintenance, but they have their downsides. Some are less powerful than gas mowers, and some have a limited battery life, which can be frustrating. And electric lawn mowers that tether you to a cord while mowing can be very inconvenient. When assembling a shortlist of the top lawn mowers, we consider which sizes would be most useful for owners of small plots or large green spaces. Digging deeply into available lawn mowers has yielded a variety of effective choices with gas, electric, or manual operation. Our research has turned up a wide selection of compact, efficient models as well as high-speed mulching mowers. In our search for the best lawn mowers, we’re careful to recommend only models that are highly durable and easy to use. When looking for the best lawn mowers for in-depth review, we include some cordless electric models that can help cut emissions and save on gas. We started our search with well-known brands, because you’re more likely to be happy with a purchase from a major manufacturer with a good reputation. Topping our list of best lawn mowers is a handful of models with ergonomic designs meant to minimize strain. Our in-depth investigation helped us understand the refinements and improvements made to gas mowers in recent years. With so many lawn mowers to choose from, we’ve done the legwork for you and evaluated which are the most powerful, cost-effective, and easy to use. We looked for the best compact lawn mowers for people who don’t have much ground to cover. Features to consider Do you want an entry-level lawn mower or a more advanced model? The answer to that question depends on your budget as well as your personal preferences. Below are some of the more notable lawn mower features to consider when you’re shopping. Mulching capabilities Still other lawn mowers include mulching capabilities. These machines hold on to the clippings and cut them into smaller bits before depositing them back onto the lawn. Did you know? A lawn mower takes in grass, and it must dispose of it somehow. Many lawn mowers have a simple side-discharge feature for clippings; the clipped grass goes right back onto the lawn. But some lawn mowers have a bagging and/or mulching system for clippings. STAFF BestReviews Self-propelling system Powered by a drive system, the wheels of a self-propelled lawn mower turn automatically. Some people prefer a self-propelled mower because it requires less physical effort from them. However, some people like the exercise they get when using a push mower. Self-propelled lawn mowers are typically controlled in one of four ways: squeezing a bail, pushing a lever, squeezing a lever, or pushing a handle to increase/decrease speed. Clippings collection Some walk-behind lawn mowers come with a bagging system that collects clippings. The bag typically hangs under the steering handle of the mower. If you’re an active gardener, this option is a must-have. You may also want this feature if you have to clean up clippings due to thick or coarse grass in your yard. Bear in mind, however, that you’ll have to empty the bag of clippings periodically with this feature. Push-button start Many lawn mower models no longer have the traditional pull cord start mechanism. Instead, they have a push-button start. So if you’re sick of wrenching your arm every time you want to start the lawn mower, consider a machine that activates with the push of a button. Electric mowers start like this, as do some gas models. "On today’s market, you can find both electric and gas-powered lawn mowers with push-button starting mechanisms." STAFF BestReviews How to make your lawn mower last A lawn mower that’s well-maintained can last 10 years or more. But neglecting to properly care for your lawn mower can easily cut that time in half. Some manufacturers rate their lawn mowers based on how many hours the machines will supposedly last. Cheaper lawn mowers may be rated to last 200 hours or less. High-end models can be rated for 500 hours or more. From these figures, you could deduce that a larger yard reduces the lifespan of a lawn mower. But there are steps you can take to make your lawn mower last as long as possible. Change your gas-powered lawn mower’s oil regularly Just like a car, a gas-powered lawn mower needs regular oil maintenance. Check the oil after every eight hours of use. The darker the oil, the more urgently it needs a change. Fresh oil is amber. If your lawn mower has an air filter, change it every 25 hours Periodically check your lawn mower’s fuel filter It should be clean. If it’s not, replace it, as cleaning it yourself may damage it. Conduct a regular check on the mower’s spark plugs If you’re unsure how to do this, consider purchasing a lawn mower tune-up kit from your local lawn and garden store. Or, take your machine to a professional. Examine the blade for damage Power down your mower and let it cool off before you do this. If it’s electric, unplug it first. Then, examine the blade for nicks, dents, and other types of damage. The manufacturer may recommend blade sharpening or even blade replacement. "If you have a lots of precision work to do with your mower (mowing around trees, circling garden areas), consider a machine with four same-sized wheels, as those handle turns better." STAFF BestReviews Lawn mower prices $80 to $150 In this price range, you will find smaller corded electric lawn mowers and basic gas-powered push mowers. If your mowing chores are few, this could be all you need. $150 to $250 In this price range, you’ll find lawn mowers with clipping collection mechanisms and more powerful engines. You may even find a cordless, battery-powered push mower on sale. $250 and up In this bracket, you’ll find more powerful electric lawn mowers with 18- to 58-volt electric batteries. Gas-powered push mowers with high-powered engines also sit in this price range, as do some self-propelled mowers. Tips Some lawn mowers have a port that allows a hose plug-in. That hose rinses out clippings under the mower deck. This is convenient because you don’t have to tip the machine to wash the clippings out of the mower. Many electric mowers come with a removable battery option. This is helpful, as you can store the battery where temperatures aren’t as extreme. Some mowers have a blade-brake clutch feature that allows you to stop the blade but not the engine. This feature is good for picking up debris in your way while mowing. Notably, you should always exercise caution when picking up debris around a lawn mower. The batteries on some electric lawn mowers may also charge other equipment, such as leaf blowers and trimmers. Some gas-powered lawn mowers have a no-prime feature that allows for quicker starts. Engines come in different power ranges, usually from 140cc to 190cc. If you’re dealing with crabgrass or tend to cut taller, wetter grass, we recommend a lawn mower with a more powerful engine. Some lawn mowers come with a folding handle that takes less space to store. Wheel size can vary from one lawn mower to the next. Larger back wheels are commonly found on self-propelled lawn mowers; they help move the mower over rough terrain. If you need to mow in tight spaces, however, consider a lawn mower with uniform wheel sizes. FAQ Q. What type of lawn mower is best for which terrain? A. If your lawn is rough or has many slopes to it, we recommend a machine with large back wheels. For many folks, the ideal product in this scenario would be a self-propelled lawn mower, since that leads to less physical exertion. However, if you’re able-bodied and have a smaller yard with more even terrain, you could easily get by with a push mower. Q. What type of upkeep does a lawn mower need? A. A gas-powered mower needs the same type of upkeep that a car does: oil changes, air filter changes, new spark plugs. An electric mower doesn’t have these needs, but you might have to eventually replace the battery. Q. Aren’t electric mowers considered the weaker choice? A. Not as much by today’s standards. Thanks to advanced lithium-ion technology, batteries are more powerful and hold charges much better than they used to. Some electric lawn mowers can even match gas-powered mowers in terms of sheer power.

https://bestreviews.com/best-invisible-braces

Best Invisible Braces

Buying guide for best invisible braces Flash a winning smile, and nearly 60% of Americans will immediately regard you as successful. Not everyone is born with perfectly straight teeth, however. Braces for straightening teeth have been around for centuries. Perhaps you or someone you know endured months of discomfort and middle-school taunting while wearing metal braces. Today, there are other options, including invisible braces. Compared to metal braces, invisible braces are a less painful option that produces the same results. Lots of foods get stuck in metal braces, but if you choose invisible braces, you can still eat popcorn, crunch hard pretzels, enjoy fruit leather, bite into corn on the cob, and chew gum. In this article, we break down the essentials, such as how invisible braces work, what they cost, and how to wear them. We also offer some useful tips to help you have the best experience with your treatment and spotlight some of the best invisible braces on the market. If you're ready to make an even better first impression than you already do, keep reading. Although invisible braces have become quite popular in the past few years, the treatment option has been available for over two decades. Key considerations How they work Although the treatment for every individual will vary slightly, there are four basic elements that remain the same. When purchasing invisible braces (also called aligners) you have an initial consultation, develop a treatment plan with your orthodontist, wear the invisible braces as instructed, and engage in regular checkups with your care provider. Consultation: The first step in purchasing invisible braces is determining if they will work for you. Often, you’re required to visit an orthodontist's office to have an in-person consultation. Alternatively, you can visit a website and answer a few brief questions to determine if you’re a candidate for invisible braces. Treatment plan: First, an accurate 3D representation of your bite is created. At an in-person visit, you may receive a high-definition scan that creates a virtual 3D model of your mouth. Alternatively, your orthodontist may take an impression that is used to make a physical mold of your bite. If you’re receiving remote care, you would receive the materials needed to make the impression of your bite. Using the mold, a personalized treatment plan is devised and a number of progressive invisible braces are created and delivered to you. You then have either an in-person or remote fitting session to make sure everything is as it should be. Treatment: Now that you have the invisible braces, it’s up to you to wear them no fewer than 22 hours each day. Properly caring for your teeth and your invisible braces is vital to achieving a timely and successful result. Checkups: In order to make sure that your treatment is proceeding according to plan, patients have regular checkups with their orthodontist. Again, depending on your choice of invisible braces, these either happen at an office or online. Features Success with invisible braces depends on a number of elements. The following are the key factors to keep in mind when considering this type of treatment. In-person visits If you desire an initial in-person consultation as well as follow-up visits, you'll need to look for a treatment plan that offers this as an option. If you prefer the convenience of not needing to leave your home for care, look for invisible braces that offer this as an option. Mold vs. scan Most treatment plans for invisible braces involve taking a physical mold of your bite. This can be done in the comfort of your home or in an office, depending on your preference. If you'd like a high-tech, 3D scan of your mouth, you need to find an orthodontist with the necessary equipment. Materials The key terminology to look for when purchasing invisible braces is "FDA-approved." This means that the Food and Drug Administration has determined that the benefits of using this particular brand of invisible braces outweighs any known risks. Additionally, you want to search for invisible braces that are BPA-, BPS-, latex-, and gluten-free. Comfort When you get your invisible braces, they should be relatively thin and provide a snug fit. There should be no discomfort from the material, which means the plastic shouldn't cut into your gums. However, you may experience mild discomfort from the pressure exerted on your teeth by the invisible braces. This is normal and to be expected. Wear indicators Since success with this product depends on compliance, some invisible braces feature wear indicators that allow you to see if you’re wearing them long enough each day. "Obviously, invisible braces aren't truly invisible, but they are clear, which makes them less noticeable or, as some like to say, "virtually invisible."" STAFF BestReviews Invisible braces prices While there are a number of factors, such as insurance, that contribute to what you end up paying out of pocket for invisible braces, it’s possible to provide some general parameters as well as the two ways that payments can be made. Installments: For individuals who desire to use an installment plan, a deposit of between $200 and $400 is usually required. After that, the payments can range from $75 to $100 per month, typically for a period of 24 months. Single payment: Alternatively, you can save a few hundred dollars by paying for the entire treatment up front. In general, this payment method costs about $1,900. If you find a service that is considerably more, make sure you’re benefiting in some way from that higher cost. If you have dental insurance, the two questions to ask are 1) Does my dental plan cover adult orthodontia? and 2) Are invisible braces a covered orthodontia expense? Regardless of coverage with your dental insurer, those with a flexible spending account (FSA) can check with their plan to see if invisible braces can be considered for reimbursement. Tips Compared to wearing metal braces, aligning your teeth using invisible braces is remarkably easy. However, it’s important to remember that you must still be diligent about your care. The following are a few tips to help you have the best, most pleasant, and shortest experience possible. Wear your aligners. In order for invisible braces to work, they must be worn a minimum of 22 hours every day. Falling short of that goal may extend your treatment period. In order for invisible braces to work, they must be worn a minimum of 22 hours every day. Falling short of that goal may extend your treatment period. Remove your aligners before eating or drinking. Your invisible braces are not designed to be worn while chewing. Also, drinking may stain your invisible braces. You must remove your aligners whenever you drink anything except water. Your invisible braces are not designed to be worn while chewing. Also, drinking may stain your invisible braces. You must remove your aligners whenever you drink anything except water. Clean your teeth. Whether you have an entire meal or a single bite of chocolate or a swig of milk, you must thoroughly clean your teeth before putting your aligners back on. If you don't, your risk of tooth decay may increase substantially. Whether you have an entire meal or a single bite of chocolate or a swig of milk, you must thoroughly clean your teeth before putting your aligners back on. If you don't, your risk of tooth decay may increase substantially. Clean your invisible braces regularly. Just as important as properly cleaning your teeth is properly cleaning your invisible braces. Just as important as properly cleaning your teeth is properly cleaning your invisible braces. Be patient. Some invisible braces may need to be worn for 36 months or more, depending on your alignment needs. Some invisible braces may need to be worn for 36 months or more, depending on your alignment needs. Keep track of the time you wear your aligners. Removing your invisible braces to eat and brush your teeth can easily take 30 minutes. If you add a snack or two to that total, you may have already exceeded your braces-off time limit for the day. Keep close track of precisely how long you wear your braces each day. Removing your invisible braces to eat and brush your teeth can easily take 30 minutes. If you add a snack or two to that total, you may have already exceeded your braces-off time limit for the day. Keep close track of precisely how long you wear your braces each day. Wear the retainer. No matter what type of braces you use for alignment, if you fail to wear a retainer at night after the treatment has concluded, your alignment problem may return. In most instances, individuals overcome any speech difficulties that may arise from wearing aligners within a few days. FAQ Q. Are invisible braces the right choice for me? A. Typically, invisible braces work best for mild to moderate treatment. In some instances, invisible braces might be a viable option for more severe cases. Besides straightening your teeth, invisible braces have been shown to help relax and reprogram the muscles in your jaw, which can help reduce teeth grinding (bruxism), as well as reduce jaw, face, and neck pain. The first step in getting invisible braces, however, is a consultation to determine if this is the best course of treatment for your particular needs. Q. Are invisible braces painful? A. Roughly a third of the individuals who wear invisible braces say that there is no discomfort during the treatment. Half of users experience mild discomfort, which typically only occurs for a few days after using a new set of aligners. Any pain or discomfort that is felt during treatment tends to happen when the pressure on the teeth is greatest and they begin to shift. Q. How long will it take for my treatment to work? A. There are many factors that ultimately determine the length of time needed for treatment, and it differs from individual to individual. In general, the more severe the problem, the longer an individual will need to wear invisible braces. Additionally, noncompliance (removing the braces for longer than 2 hours total over a 24-hour period) will extend the treatment time. The average length of time required to correct most alignment issues is between 12 and 36 months.

https://bestreviews.com/best-office-chairs

Best Office Chairs

Buying guide for best office chairs If you’re a white collar professional, you likely spend most of your day sitting in a chair. Assuming a sedentary pose for long stretches of time is neither comfortable nor conducive to productivity. As such, it’s critical that you find the right chair. A quality-made, ergonomically designed chair can enhance your wellbeing, productivity, and overall satisfaction. If you’d like to learn more about our testing process and office chairs in general, please continue reading this shopping guide. Why use an office chair? As the name suggests, office chairs are traditionally seen in a workplace environment. However, they're also great for home use if you sit at a desk to use your computer. But why should you use an office chair rather than any old dining chair or folding chair you can find? Let's find out. Office chairs are padded and therefore more comfortable This is especially important if you’ll be sitting in the chair for extended periods of time. An office chair supports your back in a way that encourages good posture This lessens your chance of developing back pain from sitting all day. Many office chairs offer height adjustability This allows both taller and shorter users to sit at the correct height, thereby increasing comfort and decreasing the chance of developing carpal tunnel syndrome or other types of repetitive strain injury (RSI). A comfortable office chair can help enhance your productivity and wellbeing People tend to be work more efficiently when they're sitting comfortably. And because you’re sitting with good posture and not straining your back or joints, your sense of wellbeing is enhanced. A good office chair is more than just a comfortable seat. With the right chair, you can prevent back problems, promote good posture, and work better all day long. Choosing your upholstery Which type of upholstery would you like your office chair to have? Let’s take a look at the options. Some office chairs have “traditional” upholstery consisting of cloth or leather (or synthetic leather) stretched over foam padding. Some office chairs feature a stretched synthetic mesh material over a rigid frame. Some office chairs split the difference between these two styles with an upholstered seat and mesh back. Benefits of traditional upholstery Over the course of a long work day, you may find the extra padding on a traditionally upholstered chair to be comforting. You might also prefer a traditionally upholstered chair because you like the adhesive qualities of cloth or leather. Benefits of mesh Mesh chairs deliver two notable benefits: improved airflow and durability. You won't overheat or sweat excessively in a mesh chair. Furthermore, the material is thought to withstand constant use better than the traditional foam inserts found in upholstery. Nice-to-have office chair features Adjustability Some office chairs include a significant number of adjustable features; others assume a “bare bones” style with no adjustable features whatsoever. You may be content with a simpler chair, but then again, you may wish to optimize the ergonomics of your workspace. Adjustable features that some workers find particularly comfortable include the following: Mobile armrests Seat slide Seat tilt Adjustable lumbar support Neck rest Chair height But it’s not just about the number of features a chair has. Customers tend to prefer features that are easy to use, and we don’t blame them. Ease of assembly Although assembly isn’t usually the top concern when it comes to choosing an office chair, it’s still something to consider. Some chairs arrive fully assembled and can be used immediately. Others require more than an hour to put together. Eco-friendliness In this day and age, more people are becoming concerned with the "green" credentials of the products they buy. If sustainability is important to you, you should consider products that disclose the origin of their materials and where they will go after you're done with them. A note about comfort Some office chair features are negotiable, but at BestReviews, we don’t believe that comfort should be one of them. You could buy a chair with an abundance of exciting attachments, but if it’s not comfortable, those attachments won't matter. Comfort can be subjective, however. Some people like a firm chair, whereas others like to sink in as far as possible. Therefore, it can take a degree of trial and error to find the most comfortable chair for you. Think about what comfort means to you, and check out manufacturer specifications and customer reviews to see if the office chair you're considering matches your idea of what's comfortable. Office chair prices Office chairs range in price from under one hundred dollars to over one thousand dollars. But does a higher price equal higher quality? Budget At the lower end of the spectrum, you can find comfortable, well-made office chairs between $150 and $200. These basic chairs usually don't offer the bells and whistles that some other products do. Mid-range Mid-range office chairs sell for anywhere from $300 to $500. In this price range, expect a chair with easier and more comprehensive adjustment, better lumbar support, and increased comfort overall. High-end Expect to pay $800 to $1,000 for a high-end office chair with a large number of features affecting comfort, support, and adjustability, as well as exceptional build quality. Postural tips To maximize comfort while sitting in an office chair, follow these postural tips: Make sure you're positioned properly and your chair is adjusted correctly. Sit as close to your desk as you can with your hands resting on your work surface and your upper arms in line with your spine. Your elbows should be at a 90-degree angle, as should your knees with your feet on the floor. If they're not, make the necessary adjustments. Use a footstool to keep your knees at the correct angle if your seat or desk are too high. Try to keep the angle between your back and thighs at 95 to 105 degrees. That way, you're not compressing your abdomen. Office chair tips Having adjustable armrests can greatly improve the comfort of your office chair, especially if you're taller or shorter than average. Serious injuries could occur without warning if a chair manufacturer’s stated height and weight limits are disregarded. If you're going for a high-tech theme in your workspace, mesh tends to be the favored choice. However, traditional padded chairs are just as comfortable as mesh, if not more so. Some people prefer no-frills chairs that don't require much — if any — adjusting, but we think having at least a few points of adjustability can greatly increase comfort. Most office chairs come with all the tools you need to assemble them, but it's worth checking to make sure you have what you need before you get started putting your chair together. Lovers of the traditionally upholstered chair are generally not as concerned about breathability as they are the feeling of comfort and security they experience while sitting. If you'll be using your office chair eight or more hours a day, five days a week, it's worth splurging to get one that will be extra comfy and provide proper back support. FAQ Q. Are there office chairs available for people who are shorter, taller, or heavier than average? A. Yes. Office furniture manufacturers frequently offer special models designed specifically for petite and/or larger users. However, you might need to consult a catalog or online store to find them. The office chairs displayed in brick-and-mortar stores typically conform to the “average” consumer who stands between 5’1” and 6’1” and weighs no more than 250 pounds. Q. My office floor is covered with plush carpeting from wall to wall. My chair sinks into that carpeting all the time, making it nearly impossible for me to move freely in my cubicle. What are my options? A. Many office chairs feature omnidirectional caster wheels for improved mobility, but these wheels are designed primarily for bare floors or low-pile carpeting. Thick, padded carpeting or shag carpeting can bog down the wheels, impeding mobility. If you work on thick carpeting, consider a glider chair with smooth metal feet for added mobility. You may not be able to push away from your desk and coast to the copy machine with a glider, but a glider won’t dig into your plush or padded carpeting, either. Q. Do I really need all of those adjustment knobs and other controls on my office chair? A. The answer to that question is, “It depends.” The default height and recline settings on a new office chair may serve your needs adequately. But workers who spend countless hours in front of a computer screen often appreciate the freedom to adjust their seating. You might not think about how often you lean back in your office chair, for example. But if the chair’s recline angle were too steep for comfort, you’d definitely notice it. Q. I’m an office manager, and I need to order an entire set of office chairs for our new branch. Should I order a dozen of the same model or discuss this with our employees first? A. This is a challenging situation, since each approach has both advantages and disadvantages. You might be able to get a discount on a bulk order of the same chair model, but then again, office chairs aren’t “one-size-fits-all” products. Some employees may have special needs that a standard office chair does not address, such as increased lumbar support or weight capacity. One possible solution: you could order a complete set of highly rated office chairs at a bulk discount but then swap them out for alternatives upon request.

https://gizmodo.com/the-best-worst-product-reviews-on-amazon-1648733527

The Best Worst Product Reviews on Amazon

Last week, we asked you to hunt down some of the most absurd, least helpful, and (consequently) absolutely wonderful product reviews that Amazon has to offer. And we are proud to say that you, dear readers, delivered in droves. Advertisement Some reviews were intentionally insane (the best) and some, well—some were obliviously absurd in earnest (the best worst). So naturally, we've included both. Here are nine of the best reviews you were able to dig up. And just remember, the next time you decide it might be a good idea to crowdsource a response—this is who's coming to answer your call. Best Worst Reviews Umagabooa Stiraccitmline Postuma de arseo; 5 stars Why don't people just go to the Dr. and get them removed or what ever you have to do But my goodness reading some of these letters and I just wonder ...Why don't you just go to the Doctor if it hurts so much! via justdroppingby accident order movie; 1 star JJust don't care for sci fi cartoons. I didn't order movie I accident clicked on it when dropped remote so tried to watch it and only made first 5 min. so take this review like a grain of salt amazon asked me to reveiew it so here it is. G/O Media may get a commission 43% off 75" TCL Mini LED TV Normally $2,300, the TCL 6-Series boasts a 4K QLED screen with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ and access to thousands of apps on Google TV. $1300 at Best Buy via Luxbot Bad Item To Buy.; 1 star I wanted to buy the Will & Grace DVD Series. Well, I decided to buy this Box Set. This item was not even shipped from the Store, if you will, when I was sent an E-mail that this was about the set. It was not a region 1 set. the region 0 was a bit iffy and one of the disc sets, I think it was season 6 that was said that had Asian characters on the DVD or Incorporated into the DVDs some how. I did not want these. As they very well could be pirated DVDs and I am not buying Pirated anything. For fear of the Law. Advertisement Target Practice; 1 star Heyyyy I had to read this book for school and it was the worst thing I ever read. A worthless good for nothing piece of junk! Actually it is good for something. I took this book with me to rifle practice and i shot at this instead of the target. I got busted but hey it was worth it. Mail me if you want a picture of my shooting. Advertisement good but nooooooo; 1 star good movie but not that goodddddddddd. jamie lee curtis is good in this movieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.i guess see it not scary. Advertisement via L. Wintrich Best Reviews These sandals rescue me from my folly!; 5 stars When I was little, my father and I would stroll through the fields in all the lands surrounding our manor, wishing a good harvest and fine tidings to the peasants who worked the soil. He never meant those words, of course. My father could be a cruel, capricious landlord. One winter, when the driving rains turned the soil to mush, and the mung-beans and wheat-stalks lay rotten in the waterlogged earth, the peasants cried out in starvation and cursed the gods for their ruin. .... I awoke one morning to find our castle engulfed in flames, my father screaming for his life and fleeing on horseback, abandoning me to whatever cruel fate the revolutionaries had in store for me. And so I grabbed what little I could, including these fine sandals by Adidas, and I ran out into the dusty streets, beating a hasty escape from the life I had known and all it entailed. I know not where the road ahead will take me. But I do know that I will walk that road in comfort and style, with these reasonably priced and durable Adidas Duramo Slide Sandals in Navy and White, Size 12M. Advertisement via MR_Gatze Surprising Results; 5 stars I tried to file my nails, but in the process I accidentally fixed a small engine that was near by. Which was nice Advertisement via Sketcher0204 To be right.; 5 stars 30 years ago, Anchorage, Alaska. I was situating myself in an Inuit dive bar and knew it was going to be one of those nights. It was cold, wet, and dark, and I had no intention of going back out until I had reached a satisfactory level of inebriation. Over the din of the natives sucking down whale blubber, I heard a distinct hum that steadily increased in volume. There was no mistaking it. It was the sound of a Tupolev's turboprop engines, challenging the sovereignty of my great nation. As if on queue and to add insult to my attempt to relax and unwind, a massive bear of a man crashes into the bar, causing every head to turn, like a pack of lemurs. He zeroed in on me. "Another blue eye! I sit here now, comrade. I get vodak, da?". I said nothing and looked the man in the eyes, getting a sense of his soul. "By all means, friend", I cooly reply, never averting my gaze, as I unzipped my Member's Only jacket, revealing my Reagan Bush '84 shirt underneath. A deafening silence filled the air and the Russian peered down at it, struggling to read with his beady, prole eyes. It was at this point that he could no longer meet my gaze and a tremor filled his leg. He promptly stood up and walked back out the door, into the night, never to be seen. I looked at the dive's proprietor, who gave me a nod of knowing and with that, the slurping sounds recommenced and I could finally finish my beer. Lifting my chalice to my lips, I paused and quietly whispered "thank you, Reagan." Many years later I am finding that the nights are again growing cold with the threat of communism. This shirt had helped me in the past and I know I can count on it again. Advertisement via Mifune I haven't pooed for three days since first listening to this record I was persuaded to purchase this record by my best friend Abdullah on the basis that it had cured his asthma. The story went that Abdullah had become more and more breathless as the album raged on, until finally during the penultimate track 'I've Had The Time Of My Life' Abdullah quite involuntarily let out a harrowing scream of pleasure and collapsed in a frenzy of fluid. From the moment Abdullah awoke in hospital it was discovered that his chronic asthma had completely subsided, leaving him with lungs 'comparible to that of a 2 year old dolphin' according to the duty nurse. On listening to the album myself, I am inclined to believe Abdullah's story. I had barely made it through the intitial 30 seconds of 'a Whole new World' before I was forced to pause the record and take a shower. I had sweated so much that my many tattoos had faded to nothing and my hair had bleached itself white. The impact this record will have on our world is comparible only to penicillin. Katie has the voice of a young Marvin Gaye, whilst Peter sounds like the smell of a new born baby. Separately, they are peerless - together, they are what an orgasm would look like if it were human. If you are yet to listen to this record, you may as well be dead. via kernow

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/how-to-refresh-reset-or-restore-your-pc-51391d9a-eb0a-84a7-69e4-c2c1fbceb8dd

How to refresh, reset, or restore your PC

If you want to back up and restore your personal files using File History, see Set up a drive for File History . If you're having trouble starting (booting) your PC, see Windows Startup Settings (including safe mode) , and go to the “Get to Windows Startup Settings in the Windows Recovery Environment” section. You can refresh, reset, or restore your PC from the Windows Recovery Environment. Reset your PC to reinstall Windows but delete your files, settings, and apps—except for the apps that came with your PC. Refresh your PC to reinstall Windows and keep your personal files and settings. Refresh also keeps the apps that came with your PC and the apps you installed from the Microsoft Store. Before you start to refresh or reset your PC In most cases, once you start to refresh or reset your PC, it’ll finish on its own. However, if Windows needs missing files, you’ll be asked to insert recovery media, which is typically on a DVD disc or thumb drive. If that happens, what you’ll need depends on your PC. If your PC came with Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1, you’ll need the discs or thumb drive that came with your PC. Check the info that came with your PC to see if your PC manufacturer provided these discs or media. In some cases, you might have created them when you first set up your PC. If you don’t have either of those, you can make them if you have a USB thumb drive of 16 GB or larger. Having a recovery drive can help you troubleshoot and fix problems with your PC, even if it won’t start. For more info, see Create a USB recovery drive. If you upgraded your PC to Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1 with a DVD, use that disc. If you don’t have Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1 media, contact Microsoft Support.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/09/29/did-anyone-notice-the-glaring-conflict-of-interest-during-virginias-second-gubernatorial-debate-n2596667

The Glaring Conflict of Interest Seen During Virginia's Second Gubernatorial Debate Is Nothing New

They’re all in bed with one another. We all know this regarding the media and the Democratic Party. It’s a massive complex. They scratch each other’s backs. They pick sides. There is bias in the media coverage as a result. You all know this, but NBC News’ Chuck Todd has insisted it doesn’t exist. Right, and Antifa doesn’t exist either, right? Well, Todd should know better than to dole out that rather bold and false statement and then did what he did last night which speaks to the whole bias that’s manufactured daily by the Democrat-media complex. He moderated the second gubernatorial debate in Virginia last night and as Tim Graham of Newsbusters noted—there’s a ‘glaring’ conflict of interest. Namely, his wife advising and donating to Democrats in Virginia for years. And this has been known for years as Graham could not get an on-the-record comment from Todd on this matter dating back to 2016: The Virginia gubernatorial candidates engage in their second debate … on WRC, the local NBC station in Washington. The moderator is Chuck Todd. That’s an interesting choice, since Chuck’s wife Kristian Denny has been active in advising and donating to Democratic candidates in Virginia. In the 2020 election cycle, Denny’s political consulting firm Maverick Strategies & Mail once again helped the Bernie Sanders for President campaign, earning $919,680 in the process. The Bernie campaign dropped almost $2 million with that firm in the 2016 cycle. […] Most recently in Virginia, Denny donated $500 in 2019 to Energized for Change PAC, formed by Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn “to protect our Democratic majority in the Virginia House of Delegates.” She donated $100 to Filler-Corn in 2010. In the 2018 cycle, Denny contributed the maximum of $5,400 to Sen.Tim Kaine's re-election campaign. She's best known as a strategist that helped Sen. Jim Webb beat incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen in 2006. She also worked briefly on Webb's presidential exploratory committee in 2014. Mr. and Mrs. Todd hosted a dinner party in 2015 honoring Hillary Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri. Guys, I know you already know this and if you didn’t, well—not too hard to connect the dots concerning this machine liberal America has built here. If the scripts were flipped and Todd and his wife were Republicans—you bet, there would be an outcry. It must be nice to be a Democrat. Yet, we’ve seen that this machine, as powerful as it is, does have limits. It cannot polish everything Joe Biden is doing which is why President Brain Worm’s approval ratings are sinking faster than the Titanic right now. Joey is trash in the numbers concerning his handling of the economy and COVID. He’s underwater here in deep blue Virginia and we’re not even a year into this presidency. Yes, the 2022 midterms could be great for Republicans but before that happens—there’s plenty of time for this president and his party to do damage—irreparable damage.

https://mises.org/wire/why-natural-immunity-political-problem-regime

Why "Natural Immunity" Is a Political Problem for the Regime

Since 2020, public health technocrats and their allies among elected officials have clung to the position that absolutely every person who can possibly get a covid vaccine should get one. Both the Mayo Clinic website and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, for example, insist that “research has not yet shown” that people who have recovered from covid have any sort of reliable protection. Moreover, the CDC page points to a single study from Kentucky claiming that people with natural immunity are more than twice as likely to contract covid again, compared to people who have been vaccinated. This narrative is reflected in the fact that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates are a one-size-fits-all policy insisting that virtually all adults, regardless of whether or not they’ve already had the disease, receive a covid vaccine. The official position is apparently this: nothing except the vaccine can provide any sort of resistance or immunity. So get a vaccine. No exceptions! Health technocrats have repeatedly insisted that “the science” points unambiguously toward everyone receiving a vaccine, even to the point of pushing vaccines for children. All this in spite of the fact the risk to children from covid is far less than the risk a dozen common daily risks, such as riding in an automobile. The regime has attached itself closely to a vaccinate-everybody-no-matter-what policy, and a sudden u-turn would be politically problematic. So it's no wonder there's so little interest in the topic. Indeed, in a September 10 interview, senior covid technocrat Anthony Fauci claimed that the matter of natural immunity was not even being discussed at government health agencies. Fauci’s response suggested that the facts of natural immunity warranted discussion at some point in the future. But the comment certainly fit the dominant regime narrative nonetheless: the facts of natural immunity don’t matter for now. Everyone should just get vaccinated: CNN's Sanjay Gupta asked if people who have already recovered from COVID-19 should still be required to get the vaccine. "I don't have a really firm answer for you on that," [Fauci] said Thursday on CNN. "I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously." Maybe someday they’ll get to talking about it . But some physicians aren’t as obsessed with pushing vaccine mandates as Anthony Fauci, and the evidence in favor of natural immunity is becoming so undeniable that even mainstream publications are starting to admit it. In an op-ed for the Washington Post last week, Marty Makary of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine argues that the medical profession has hurt its credibility in pretending that natural immunity is virtually irrelevant to the covid equation. Moreover, the dogmatic "get vaccinated" position constitutes a lack of honesty about the data. Rather, Makary concludes: [W]e can encourage all Americans to get vaccinated while still being honest about the data. In my clinical experience, I have found patients to be extremely forgiving with evolving data if you are honest and transparent with them. Yet, when asked the common question, “I’ve recovered from covid, is it absolutely essential that I get vaccinated?” many public health officials have put aside the data and responded with a synchronized “yes,” even as studies have shown that reinfections are rare and often asymptomatic or mild when they do occur. And what are these studies? Makary continues: More than 15 studies have demonstrated the power of immunity acquired by previously having the virus. A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic covid infection than those who were vaccinated. This affirmed a June Cleveland Clinic study of health-care workers (who are often exposed to the virus), in which none who had previously tested positive for the coronavirus got reinfected. The study authors concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from covid-19 vaccination.” And in May, a Washington University study found that even a mild covid infection resulted in long-lasting immunity. The policy bias in favor of vaccines ignores many other facts as well, such as the relative risks of vaccines, especially for the young: The current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention position about vaccinating children also dismisses the benefits of natural immunity. The Los Angeles County School District recently mandated vaccines for students ages 12 and up who want to learn in person. But young people are less likely to suffer severe or long-lasting symptoms from covid-19 than adults, and have experienced rare heart complications from the vaccines. In Israel, heart inflammation has been observed in between 1 in 3,000 and 1 in 6,000 males age 16 to 24; the CDC has confirmed 854 reports nationally in people age 30 and younger who got the vaccine. A second dose of the two-shot mRNA vaccine like that produced by Pfizer and Moderna may not even be necessary in children who had covid. Since February, Israel’s Health Ministry has been recommending that anyone, adult or adolescent, who has recovered from covid-19 receive a only single mRNA vaccine dose, instead of two. Even though the risk of severe illness during a reinfection is exceedingly low, some data has demonstrated a slight benefit to one dose in this situation. Other countries use a similar approach. The United States could adopt this strategy now as a reasonable next step in transitioning from an overly rigid to a more flexible vaccine requirement policy. For comparison, the CDC has long recommended that kids do not get the chickenpox vaccine if they had chickenpox infection in the past. The nonscientific, ideology-induced blind spot for natural immunity also prompted The BMJ (the journal of the British Medical Association) to note that "[w]hen the vaccine rollout began in mid-December 2020, more than one quarter of Americans—91 million—had been infected with SARS-CoV-2…. As of this May, that proportion had risen to more than a third of the population, including 44% of adults aged 18–59." And yet, the authors note this fact doesn't appear to be a part of any policy discussion at all: The substantial number of infections, coupled with the increasing scientific evidence that natural immunity was durable, led some medical observers to ask why natural immunity didn’t seem to be factored into decisions about prioritising vaccination. This problem is reflected in the Biden administration’s drive for booster shots—announced in mid-August—even before there was any clinical research on booster shots at all. Even by mid-September, as one hospital’s chief medical officer put it, “the data is not compelling one way or another.” But those sorts of details don’t trouble federal “public health” officials, and the Biden administration quickly moved toward pushing booster shots for everyone. This Is Why There Should Be No Mandatory Medical Treatment Of course, mandating vaccines—like mandating any medical treatment—would still be immoral even if we could list a dozen studies suggesting boosters are a boon and that natural immunity is no good. What if there were twenty-five studies "proving" vaccines are better than natural immunity, but only twenty studies "proving" natural immunity is better? Would coercive vaccine mandates then suddenly be justified? Unfortunately, that's exactly how many advocates for repressive covid policies think the world should work. For these people, policy is just a matter of adding up the number of studies "proving" their side is right, and then claiming this justifies forcing mandatory medications on millions of human beings. (It never works in reverse, of course. The fact that there's a lot of evidence—as Makary points out—against vaccines for those who have natural immunity, the dominant narrative is nonetheless that vaccines are “necessary” and “worth it” for everybody, always and everywhere.) In the real world, however, many medications—including these new vaccines—come with risks that must be weighed against potential benefits. These decisions can only be made at the individual level, where patients must make their own decisions about what substances to put into their own bodies. In other words, blanket policies proclaiming "everyone must receive this medical treatment immediately, or else" contradicts the realities of the uncertainties and varying risk levels that affect individuals. The facts of uncertainty and informed consent were once considered a mainstay of medical ethics—and of any political ideology that actually respects self-determination and basic human rights. Unfortunately, the philosophy of "public health" appears to be uninterested in such trivialities. At this point, it would be embarrassing for the regime to admit what actual scientific inquiry has shown: that natural immunity is generally superior to receiving the vaccine. The regime doesn't like to be embarrassed, and neither do the countless doctors and nurses who have long toed the regime's political line. So expect more of the same. [Read More: "Debunking Biden's Claim We Must 'Protect the Vaccinated from the Unvaccinated'" by Ryan McMaken]

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/building-back-america/how-democrats-can-pass-entire-reconciliation-bill/

How the Democrats Can Pass the Entire Reconciliation Bill

× Expand Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP J.P. Mejia of Miami high-fives Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) after she spoke to young Americans at a sit-in at the U.S. Capitol hosted by Our Revolution, September 27, 2021. This week, Democrats face some excruciating choices. They have to find a consensus across almost their entire caucus to pass the most comprehensive and long-overdue provision of socially and economically necessary public programs since the New Deal. Senators like Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have balked at the topline spending number of $3.5 trillion, though progressives have called this the bare minimum needed for their constituents on health care, climate, education, child poverty, affordable housing, and a host of other priorities that have been delayed for far too long. It’s a choice that my colleague David Dayen has labeled a “Sophie’s Choice”: In order to reduce a $3.5 trillion package to, say, $2 trillion (or whatever the negotiations between the party and its center-right outliers yield), should Democrats preserve every program at a half-funded level, or fully fund some programs while dumping the others? The former option leaves open the possibility that they could more adequately fund all those programs, once established, in future Congresses, though the public benefits of those half-fundees may be so scattershot that they don’t gain much public support. The latter option will produce some programs that do indeed satisfy public needs, while putting the rest on indefinite, perhaps decades-long, hold. × Expand Infrastructure Endless banner But at least in theory, there’s a third option: Fully funding every program in the $3.5 trillion package—not for the next decade, as the package proposes, but just for the next four years, at a considerable reduction in price. The advantages that accrue to this course are social, economic, and, most pointedly, political. It would make the 2024 election a referendum on whether the public wishes to continue those programs by further funding them, or prefers to end them. Democrats would run on preserving the programs and re-upping their funding. That would compel Republicans to run against what should be widely popular policies, whether or not they nominate Donald Trump for president (but especially if they did, as Trump, even more than his GOP underlings, opposes everything Joe Biden supports). The point here is that, once the public receives steady and reliable services to meet their individual needs—affordable child care, universal pre-K, Medicare coverage of vision and hearing and dental care, paid sick leave, child tax credits, tuition-free community college, significant climate mitigation—it won’t want to have them terminated. More from Harold Meyerson Indeed, that was the argument forcefully and effectively made by then-neoconservative Bill Kristol in 1993, in a memo he addressed to “Republican Leaders” on behalf of the Project for a Republican Future. His advice was they should not seek simply to water down then-President Clinton’s proposal for universal health coverage, because once enacted, the public wouldn’t cotton to having it taken away. Rather, they had to kill it before it could become law. “Any Republican urge to negotiate a ‘least bad’ compromise with the Democrats, and thereby gain momentary public credit for helping the president ‘do something’ about health care, should also be resisted,” Kristol wrote. “Passage of the Clinton health care plan, in any form, would guarantee and likely make permanent [italics added] an unprecedented federal intrusion into and disruption of the American economy—and the establishment of the largest federal entitlement program since Social Security … It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for ‘security’ on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.” Keep this site free and open for all to read... SUPPORT THE PROSPECT Republicans ended up heeding Kristol’s counsel, killing Clintoncare while still in utero. Today, 28 years later, Kristol’s argument is a pretty fair statement not only of the political effects of the reconciliation bill should it be enacted, but also of the difficulty of dumping the programs contained therein even if they’re only enacted for several years. We have an example of this of very recent vintage. The Affordable Care Act wasn’t a particularly popular program when enacted. But seven years later, when Republicans tried to repeal it, the public rallied against their effort to take away its improvements. In the end, Republicans couldn’t repeal the ACA, despite full control of the government. That fear of losing something already granted to the public transformed the perception of the ACA, and aided the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. Once the public receives steady and reliable services to meet their individual needs, it won’t want to have them terminated. In my “Prospects” column in the forthcoming September/October issue of our print magazine, I raised the metric of timeliness in judging the merits of government programs. In it, I related how Franklin Roosevelt took some funds appropriated for his massive public-works program, which encompassed such long-term projects as building dams, aircraft carriers, and the Triborough Bridge, and gave them to less capital-intensive and quicker-to-start-up programs like paving roads and building post offices—projects able to give work to millions of unemployed Americans in a matter of weeks. Roosevelt’s keen sense of the ticking clock was no small part of his political brilliance, of the Democrats’ ability to win vast public support for his New Deal. Democrats are already trying to save money on the public-spending package by delaying the start date of some programs; the dental benefit in Medicare wouldn’t start until 2028 under the Democratic proposal, for example. This gets things completely backwards. The way to obtain maximum policy and political benefit comes from making programs tangible in people’s lives as soon as possible. There is certainly risk in sunsetting these extremely vital programs in 2025. What if Democrats lose, and Republicans get to shrink the welfare state, end efforts to fix the climate crisis, and make the lives of the poor and the middle class more precarious without having to pass anything or even lift a finger? But, as with their attempts to repeal the ACA, Republicans would be taking a huge risk if they pursued that option. As for the Democrats, they find themselves in a bind just now, as the few holdouts whose votes are needed for passage apparently won’t let them make everything permanent. Therefore, in dealing with this most transformative package of bills since the New Deal, the second-best option is for Democrats to front-load all its elements. Get child care and sick leave and the Medicare expansions up and running within the next year or two. To afford those and the other elements in the bill, fund them for just four years. That may not halve the dollar total that the Manchin-Sinema-Gottheimer gang objects to, but it moves in that direction, and gives the Democrats some very tangible achievements that will enhance most Americans’ lives, on which the Dems can run and quite possibly win in 2022 and 2024. Keep this site free and open for all to read... SUPPORT THE PROSPECT Do I hear a second?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/united-airlines-fire-600-employees-covid-vaccine

United Airlines to fire almost 600 employees who refused COVID-19 vaccination

Nearly 600 United Airlines employees will be fired for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Monday was the deadline for meeting United’s vaccine mandate, and the company announced Tuesday that it had begun the process of terminating the 593 employees who did not comply and did not request medical or religious exemptions. About 96% of the carrier’s 67,000 employees have been vaccinated, and about 3% have requested an exemption. United CEO Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart wrote in a memo to employees that the carrier's high vaccination rate was “a historic achievement for our airline and our employees as well as for the customers and communities we serve." NORTH CAROLINA HOSPITAL SYSTEM FIRES ABOUT 175 UNVACCINATED EMPLOYEES Hawaiian Airlines also has a vaccine mandate that employees must comply with beginning on Nov. 1. Beginning Friday, Frontier Airlines will require employees to either get the shot or show proof of a negative COVID-19 test on a regular basis. Other airlines have been experimenting with incentive programs. Southwest Airlines employees who show the company proof of vaccination by Nov. 15 will receive a bonus of two days' pay. Starting on Nov. 16, employees who are not vaccinated and become infected with the coronavirus will not receive quarantine pay. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Delta Air Lines will require unvaccinated employees to pay a monthly $200 health insurance surcharge beginning on Nov. 1. According to the Washington Post, 82% of Delta employees are vaccinated, up from 75% in late August.