Sometimes I read a text and think to myself, "Wow, what a psycho!"
Then I hit send.
*.*
According to U.S. News rankings, Russia is the world’s most corrupt country.
To show you how corrupt they are, they actually finished second in the study, but bribed their way to number one.
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The climate crisis has been getting worse, despite liberal elites' best efforts to fly all over the country in their private jets lecturing everybody about it.
There seemed to be no end in sight until a new tech startup, Hypocri-Fuel, introduced a private jet that runs on liberal hypocrisy.
"We just hook this bad boy up to Leo DiCaprio, Al Gore, Justin Trudeau, or any other of the thousands of progressive elites who refuse to change their lifestyles to match their beliefs, and presto - plenty of fuel to go around," said the startup's CEO, Gus Perder. "One fuel-up can power a jet for over a year."
Perder said he was trying to figure out what resource the earth has that's nearly limitless when it hit him: the hypocrisy of rich lefties. "There is so much liberal hypocrisy to go around that we never have to worry about running out," he said. "Fossil fuels may go away in a few hundred years, and people are scared of nuclear, but we have an inexhaustible supply of liberal hypocrisy."
And every time one of these liberal elites gives a condescending Oscar speech or goes on a world tour in their private jet to tell people how bad they are for flying commercial and not running around in a Flinstones car, they're just generating more energy to power these new airplanes.
"It's a win-win for everybody - liberals can keep lecturing people and actually be useful, and the rest of us can go on ignoring them while the planet cools substantially."
*.*
Oneliners:
The 5-second rule does not apply if you have a 2-second dog.
If you gotta tell them to help carry the bricks, they aren't the ones you should be building with.
All I want is a two-income household and to live alone.
I would have started saving money in kindergarten if I knew life was going to be like this.
It's important to get out of the house every now and then to remind you why you don't go out of the house.
My favorite childhood memory is not paying bills.
If someone from Ziplock could contact literally anyone in the cereal industry, that would be great.
Too old for Snapchat, too young for Life Alert.
I wonder with ESPN now being 44, if its too old for Leonardo DiCaprio.
You are more disappointing than an unsalted pretzel.
*.*
The Rolling Stones have a new album on the way.
As predicted.
By Nostradamus.
Quote of the Times;
“When the bubonic plague struck Geneva in 1530, everything was ready. They even opened a whole hospital for the plague victims. With doctors, paramedics and nurses. The traders contributed, the magistrate gave grants every month. The patients always gave money, and if one of them died alone, all the goods went to the hospital. But then a disaster happened: the plague was dying out, while the subsidies depended on the number of patients. There was no question of right and wrong for the Geneva hospital staff in 1530. If the plague produces money, then the plague is good. And then the doctors got organized. At first, they just poisoned patients to raise the mortality statistics, but they quickly realized that the statistics didn’t have to be just about mortality, but about mortality from plague. So they began to cut the boils from the bodies of the dead, dry them, grind them in a mortar and give them to other patients as medicine.” - François Bonivard
Link of the Times;
Global Economic History in 2.5 Hours:
https://michael-hudson.com/2023/07/global-economic-history-in-2-5-hours/
Issue of the Times;
Apparently, Not All Black Lives Matter by Ann Coulter
Let’s be honest: As far as the media are concerned, most black lives don’t matter. Only in the tiny, infinitesimally small percentage of cases when a black person is killed by a white guy do the media sit up and take notice.
Thus, while there was blanket coverage of a white racist 21-year-old (mentally ill, it hardly needs mentioning) who killed three black people in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday, the families of Khaaliq Williams, 16, Hamza Ali Omar, 18, Allan Howard, 34, Ashuntice Wilburn, 17, RayJohn Harshaw, 14, and Brandon Hatcher Jr., 24, mourned alone.
Those are just some of the black Chicagoans murdered two weekends ago in one single city in an area comprising about 14 square miles.
Am I cherry-picking by going back two weeks? No, I just wanted to wait for more information on some of the murdered black people whose deaths the media weren’t interested in covering.
The wildly atypical killing in Jacksonville has already generated hundreds of thousands of stories on Google. The New York Times alone has run about a dozen stories on those three black victims — with more to come!
If anything, it ought to be the reverse. To paraphrase Jesus, the mentally ill you have with you always; the criminals, you can lock up.
But media coverage that reflected reality wouldn’t keep the nation in a panic over the imaginary scourge of white supremacy. Bashing whites is more soul-satisfying than treating black people like adults. Also, ginning up black hatred of whites helps create more exciting crime stories for journalists to report!
White supremacists are responsible for .001% of all murders each year. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics for 2021, black people are responsible for 60% of all murders in the U.S., and the majority of their victims are other blacks. Those are the many, many black lives that absolutely do not matter to the media.
Nor to Democrats. Predictably, President Joe Biden immediately issued a statement on the Jacksonville shooting decrying “white supremacy.” There will be no denunciations of black criminality, no photos of their victims’ grieving families, no black pastors saying, “We’re burying our future.” It’s doubtful that more than 10 people could name any of the eight black Chicagoans killed between Friday night, Aug. 18, and Sunday, Aug. 21.
Imagine if tomorrow, instead of one white person being killed in Chicago every week, whites suddenly started being killed once a day, Monday through Thursday — and twice on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It would be a national crisis. But that’s what’s happening to blacks. And the media and Democratic Party don’t care. If black people have a disagreement with one another, who are we to interfere?
Here, specifically, are some of the black lives that don’t matter.
On Friday, Aug. 18, at 7:50 p.m., 16-year-old Khaaliq Williams was riddled with bullets as he stood on a sidewalk. There are three brief mentions of Williams on Google, plus one bare-bones Instagram post — by a criminal defense law firm looking for business.
The shooter wasn’t white, so no biggie.
Two hours later, someone fired into a car on West Maypole Avenue, hitting 18-year-old Hamza Ali Omar in the head, cheek and abdomen, killing him. According to his GoFundMe page, Omar was born and raised in Minneapolis, loved basketball and enjoyed traveling.
That’s about it for news on Omar. His friends and family surely took great comfort in the knowledge that at least he wasn’t killed by a white man.
Four hours after Omar’s murder, 34-year-old Allan Howard was killed in a drive-by shooting in the Washington Heights neighborhood of the South Side. That’s the sum total of what we know about Howard.
To give the press the benefit of the doubt, maybe they assumed these three were criminals themselves, involved in retaliatory gang violence.
But being “justice-involved” (copyright: Barack Obama) didn’t tarnish the sainthood of the BLM heroes. All were engaged in criminal behavior — Mike Brown, George Floyd, Daunte Wright and Breonna Taylor. That’s why the police were arresting them.
Luckily, they were part of the 2% of all black homicide victims who were killed by police. That’s the only reason their lives mattered.
What about teenagers Ashuntice Wilburn and RayJohn Harshaw? They were also killed that weekend in Chicago, and they appear to have been as innocent as the Jacksonville victims.
Wilburn was a volunteer for an anti-violence program at Greater St. John Bible Church, along with her grandmother. She planned to be a dental hygienist.
If only — like Breonna Taylor — Wilburn had been the bag woman for a major crack dealer, whose boyfriend was shooting at the police when she was killed, her life might have “mattered.”
Fourteen-year-old Harshaw’s life didn’t “matter” because he wasn’t facing criminal charges for trying to choke a woman to death while robbing her at gunpoint and getting shot trying to flee from the police — like Daunte Wright.
Instead, Harshaw was a “top student” who “was going to be somebody,” as his aunt put it.
Don’t those black lives matter, media? Nope! They weren’t killed by a white person! No harm, no foul.
News of the Times;
They’re Sexualizing Children:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/theyre-sexualizing-children-la-school-district-launches-virtual/
Tucker is Outing Obama as Gay. I’m Obama’s College Classmate:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/wayne-root-tucker-is-outing-obama-as-gay/
Seattle loses last 24-hour drug store amid rising retail theft:
https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-loses-last-24-hour-drug-store-amid-rising-retail-theft
How The Jews Of Weimar Germany Ensured The Rise Of National Socialism:
https://christiansfortruth.com/how-the-jews-of-weimar-germany-ensured-the-rise-of-national-socialism/
Ivermectin Reduces Excess Deaths by 74%, New Study Shows:
https://slaynews.com/news/ivermectin-reduce-excess-deaths-74-percent-new-study/
Pilot of Commercial Flight Incapacitated:
https://wltreport.com/2023/09/08/pilot-commercial-flight-incapacitated/
Masks Are Ruining Children's Lives:
https://vigilantnews.com/post/masks-are-ruining-childrens-lives-dr-makis-uncovers-how-bad-it-is
Teachers Are Being Decimated by Aggressive and Metastatic Cancers After COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates:
https://vigilantnews.com/post/teachers-are-being-decimated-by-aggressive-and-metastatic-cancers-after-covid-19-vaccine-mandates
Authorities seize over $1.5 million in methamphetamine and cocaine from Mexico:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cbp-seizes-1-5-million-meth-cocaine-trafficked-mexico
Harvard named worst school for free speech:
https://notthebee.com/article/harvard-named-worst-school-for-free-speech/
Connecticut school brings in DEI consultant who then 'accidentally' introduced gay porn:
https://lawenforcementtoday.com/connecticut-school-brings-in-dei-consultant-who-then-accidentally-introduced-gay-porn-into-the-presentation
Immigrants could ‘destroy’ New York – mayor:
https://www.rt.com/news/582550-new-york-mayor-migrants/
Left-Wing Organizations to Spend Over $500 Million in Campaign to Influence Local Media:
https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/08/left-wing-organizations-to-spend-over-500-million-in-campaign-to-influence-local-media/
Bill Gates Puts $100M Behind Bud Light After Transphobic Backlash:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/bill-gates-puts-100m-behind-bud-light-after-transphobic-backlash/ar-AA1glgYJ
Tucker Carlson Just Shared Terrifying Information in Exclusive Broadcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_wLaMn64jU&ab_channel=AnonymousOfficial
Matter?
Leaks?
I recently spotted an albino Dalmatian.
It was the least I could do for him.
*.*
A big nose is not an excuse for not wearing a mask.
I mean, I still wear underwear.
*.*
A man stops by his local florist shop to buy flowers for his new girlfriend. He asks the proprietor, "You know the expression, 'You should say it with flowers'?"
"How about three dozen of my finest roses?" the florist asks.
"Make it a half dozen roses," the man answers. "I'm a man of few words."
*.*
Top 5 Pumpkin Spice Products That Should Never Be Made:
Pumpkin Spice Cotton Candy
Pumpkin Spice Vix
Pumpkin Spice Bubblicious
Pumpkin Spice Nachos
Pumpkin Spice Mountain Dew
*.*
What do you call a dog with a hammer?
A Labra-Thor.
Quote of the Times;
“I expect the neocons and their cultural war colleagues will be seen by history as the US equivalent of Rome’s Praetorian Guard, making and unmaking political leaders at will as it profits them to do so. The US is no more capable of surviving its neocons than Rome survived its praetorians.” – Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Parents need to assume they will be deceived by their school:
https://www.wnd.com/2023/08/parents-need-assume-will-deceived-school/
Issue of the Times;
Secret Intelligence Leaks vs. Basic Common Sense by Ron Unz
During 1940 the determined efforts of President Franklin Roosevelt to involve America in the war against Hitler’s Germany were blocked by the overwhelming opposition of the American people, running at 80% according to some polls. A group of young Yale Law School peace activists had launched the America First Committee and it quickly attracted 800,000 members, becoming the largest grassroots political organization in our national history. The leadership of the AFC included many of our most prominent business and journalistic figures, and famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, one of our greatest national heroes, served as its top spokesman.
With American antiwar sentiment so seemingly strong and resolute, various political stratagems were employed to reduce it. In late October 1941, just few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor finally settled the issue, FDR announced in a nationwide radio broadcast that he had obtained a German map that revealed the secret Nazi plans to seize control of Latin America, which Hitler would then use as a base to attack the United States as part of his bold plan of world conquest.
Our President declared:
Hitler has often protested that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean. I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s government – by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it…This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America but against the United States as well.
Probably millions or even tens of millions of Americans believed FDR’s words about that direct threat to our national security and therefore softened their resistance to our country’s involvement in the European war. But as historians have long since acknowledged, the map was a forgery, probably produced by FDR’s own close British collaborators. In an earlier private conversation with the British ambassador, FDR had warned that his secret activities with the British would probably lead to his impeachment if they were revealed.
I think few Americans at the time were willing to publicly accuse our President of such major falsehoods, but from a distance of more than eighty years, what strikes me is the sheer absurdity of FDR’s accusation. Germany had no significant navy and had been stymied for over a year by the barrier of the English Channel, only 18 miles wide. Yet apparently a large majority of the American media and the American public were willing to believe that the Germans could easily cross the thousands of miles of the Atlantic Ocean and gain control of the countries of South America, whose total population was considerably larger than that of Germany itself. So the excitement of being privy to a secret intelligence document seems to have triumphed over rational thought in the minds of many people, including eager journalists.
FDR’s illegal efforts to involve us in a totally unnecessary war outraged many of our Military Intelligence professionals at the time, but they were bound by an oath of secrecy, and their views only became known years or decades later when they published their books and personal memoirs. Extensive archival research by Prof. Joseph Bendersky fully uncovered their extremely bitter contemporaneous sentiments, and he noted the “fierce delight” they took in FDR’s eventual death:
“Finally, the evil man was dead!”
American Pravda: Secrets of Military Intelligence
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 10, 2019 • 12,500 Words
Just after the end of the war, Gen. George Patton, one of our most illustrious military commanders, told his colleagues that he intended to resign his commission so that he could begin a nationwide speaking tour to provide the American public with the true facts about the war that they had just fought. Patton soon died in a highly-suspicious vehicle accident, and decades later his self-confessed American assassin revealed that he had killed Patton under direct orders from top figures in our own government.
American Pravda: Was General Patton Assassinated?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • August 22, 2016 • 2,400 Words
Government officials have long recognized that secret information, even if heavily distorted or completely false, can be used to effectively shape media coverage. Many journalists and pundits are always eager to receive leaks, confidential tidbits that they are willing to make the centerpiece of their one-sided stories, thereby allowing themselves to be manipulated.
A perfect example of this process occurred during the run-up to the Iraq War, when leaks of secret intelligence information from Bush Neocons were widely promoted in such elite media outlets as the New York Times and the New Yorker. This persuaded our gullible citizenry that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons and also planned to attack our country with anthrax and other deadly biological weapons, while seemingly being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden, his regional arch-enemy. As I described a decade ago, most of Congress and the American people fully accepted such obvious nonsense, resulting in our disastrous Iraq War, which began the destruction of much of the Middle East:
The circumstances surrounding our Iraq War demonstrate this, certainly ranking it among the strangest military conflicts of modern times. The 2001 attacks in America were quickly ascribed to the radical Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the Middle East had always been Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleading public statements, false press leaks, and even forged evidence such as the “yellowcake” documents, the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies utilized the compliant American media to persuade our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs posed a deadly national threat and required elimination by war and invasion. Indeed, for several years national polls showed that a large majority of conservatives and Republicans actually believed that Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was being fought as retribution. Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America had attacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.
An even greater absurdity unfolded last year, after a series of mysterious underwater explosions destroyed the $30 billion Russian-German Nord Stream pipelines, probably Europe’s most important civilian energy infrastructure.
Numerous top American officials had publicly threatened to eliminate the pipelines if Russia invaded Ukraine, but after Russia did so and Nord Stream was destroyed, virtually all the mainstream media outlets both in America and in Europe declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin had probably destroyed his own pipelines, thereby further demonstrating his criminal insanity, and scarcely any other possibility was even considered. When Prof. Jeffrey Sachs was interviewed on Bloomberg TV and pointed to the American government as the obvious suspect, his statement was greeted with horror and disbelief and he was quickly yanked off the air.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs [Columbia] on Bloomberg causing chaos saying US was most likely involved in Nordstream leaks according to data & other experts “even reporters tell me …. privately of course …” and that we are on a pretty dangerous path to a nuclear conflict pic.twitter.com/U6FsC2tdp6
— Detty (@0ddette) October 3, 2022
American Pravda: Of Pipelines and Plagues
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • October 3, 2022 • 3,900 Words
Over the last half-century, Seymour Hersh had established himself as our greatest investigative journalist, and a few months after the attacks, he provided a very detailed account of exactly how our own military had destroyed the pipelines under orders from President Joe Biden, but no mainstream outlets reported his bombshell revelations.
However, Hersh had successfully broken many previous government cover-ups, and his blockbuster revelations left the earlier claim that Russia had destroyed the Russian pipelines looking rather threadbare, so various Western Intelligence agencies soon leaked a replacement cover story. The Nord Stream pipeline attacks probably ranked as the greatest act of industrial terrorism in world history, but the media now began reporting that the attacks had probably been carried out by a handful of shadowy Ukrainian activists operating from a rented sailboat. I’m not sure how many gullible Westerners fell for that particular fabrication, but Hersh quickly explained why the technical details of that new scenario were completely impossible.
Seymour Hersh: Standing Tall in a Sea of Lies
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 13, 2023 • 2,000 Words
“But That Newspaper Is Dead”
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 27, 2023 • 2,400 Words
Obviously not all intelligence leaks are false or useless. But we must be very cautious in accepting them, especially if they seem to strongly support the obvious political goals of the leakers.
Covid Origins Leaks
These are some of the points I think we should keep in mind as we consider the recent flurry of discussion regarding the origins of the Covid epidemic.
One of the most important developments may have come in a long Tucker Carlson interview of Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., which according to Twitter might have been watched a couple of million times.
I found myself in strong agreement with most of Kennedy’s views, including his sharp criticism of our Ukraine War policy and the hidden reality of America’s enormous and longstanding biological warfare program. In his #1 Amazon bestseller, Kennedy had devoted a long chapter to that last subject, and he made a good case that after President Richard Nixon had publicly abandoned our biowarfare efforts in 1969, those operations were later reconstituted under the label of “biodefense” and “vaccine development,” while being shifted from the Pentagon to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division at the National Institutes of Health.
Then in 2014, as Kennedy tells the story, several high-profile leaks at American facilities led Congress to force an end to such dangerous biowarfare work on U.S. soil, forcing Fauci to relocate our bioweapons development research to overseas labs. All of this seems quite plausible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKkanHZBTFg&ab_channel=SmartSense
The problem came towards the end of his 8 minute discussion. According to Kennedy, the Pentagon and the CIA funded and controlled Fauci’s biowarfare development research, which obviously constituted one of America’s most advanced and powerful military technologies. But Kennedy then claimed that our government decided to transfer all of that cutting-edge biowarfare technology to the Chinese. So beginning in 2014, America’s future biowarfare development work would be performed at the Wuhan lab, a facility that he describes as being under Chinese military control.
Does this make any sense whatsoever? In 2012, the Obama Administration had announced its “Pivot to East Asia,” declaring that it would refocus American strategic and military resources against China, which was seen as America’s most formidable long-term competitor and rival. But we are to believe that two years later, the Pentagon and the CIA decided to transfer our most powerful biowarfare technologies—producing bioweapons unmatched by those of any other nation—to the Chinese, selecting a Chinese military lab to develop our own bioweapons. We even paid them a few hundred thousand dollars for that privilege, a tiny fraction of one percent of our large biowarfare budget. Compared to that absurdity, the notion of Nazi Germany conquering most of the Western Hemisphere without the benefit of a navy seems far more plausible.
Furthermore, in 2015 Harvard’s Graham Allison had published a very high profile article arguing that the U.S. and China were almost inevitably headed for open warfare, and a couple of years later, his book on the same subject became a national bestseller, widely discussed and accepted in DC political circles. Yet with many top Pentagon and CIA officials being convinced that we would soon be at war with China, Kennedy seems to believe that these same officials nonetheless continued relying upon Chinese military researchers to develop our most powerful biowarfare technology.
None of these astonishing claims had appeared in Kennedy’s previous book and he doesn’t provide any sources for his interview remarks. But based upon some of his details, I think his information probably came from several stories published two months ago by various journalists, all of which were apparently based upon confidential leaks from anonymous sources.
Back in March, President Joseph Biden had ordered the complete declassification within 90 days of all U.S. intelligence information relating to the origins of the Covid virus. With that deadline approaching in late June, there suddenly appeared a flurry of articles based upon anonymous leaks. These claimed that secret evidence proved that three identified researchers at the Wuhan lab had been the earliest infected individuals or even suggested that Covid had been developed as a Chinese bioweapon whose accidental leakage had killed perhaps twenty million people worldwide, including over a million Americans.
Such explosive charges might seem like the sort of wild conspiratorial claims found in dark corners of the Internet, but they instead appeared in such leading mainstream newspapers as the London Sunday Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, or were co-authored by reputable investigative journalists such as Matt Taibbi.
The first of those outlets had published the earliest and most dramatic account, a long investigative piece that relied upon anonymous American sources to claim that Covid was a leaked Chinese bioweapon. Much of Kennedy’s information seems to have been derived from that article.
What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted
However, just a couple of days later, the editor of the Daily Sceptic, another British publication, pointed out some of the serious weaknesses in that reconstruction. He noted that the leadership of the Wuhan lab and the Chinese government hardly reacted as if a dangerous Chinese bioweapon had suddenly begun circulating in a city of 11 million that served as a major national transit hub.
If China Knew COVID-19 Was an Escaped Bioweapon, Why Did it Publish the Genetic Sequence in January 2020?
Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • June 13, 2023 • 1,700 Words
Several other articles appeared over the next couple of weeks, mostly focusing on claims that three specific Wuhan lab researchers had become infected with Covid during November 2019, the earliest such cases anywhere and therefore the likely source of the outbreak. Once again, all these accounts were based upon anonymous government intelligence sources.
First People Sickened By COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists At Wuhan Institute Of Virology, Say US Government Sources
The three scientists were engaged in “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses when they fell ill
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag • Substack • June 13, 2023 • 1,800 Words
Documents Link Potential Covid Patient Zero to U.S.-Funded Research in Wuhan
New reporting, attributed to U.S. government sources, identified a coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in November 2019
Ryan Grim • The Intercept • June 17, 2023 • 800 Words
U.S.-Funded Scientist Among Three Chinese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Early Covid-19 Outbreak
Identification of three who worked at Wuhan Institute of Virology fuels suspicion for proponents of lab-leak theory
Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel • The Wall Street Journal • June 20, 2023 • 1,400 Words
The Government Must Say What It Knows About Covid’s Origins
Zeynep Tufekci • The New York Times • June 21, 2023 • 1,300 Words
The long WSJ article was the weightiest piece, and two years earlier those same reporters had published a previous very high-profile article making similar claims, probably relying upon the same unnamed government sources.
Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin
Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab
Michael R. Gordon, Warren P. Strobel, and Drew Hinshaw • The Wall Street Journal • May 23, 2023 • 1,700 Words
This cascade of articles naturally raised enormous anticipation regarding the intelligence documents about to be released. But the result was a tremendous anticlimax when the declassified DNI report largely refuted all these claims, denying the existence of any solid evidence that Wuhan researchers had been hospitalized with Covid-like symptoms and stating that any reported illness they suffered had not necessarily been suggestive of Covid.
These official DNI conclusions seemed to confirm the personal testimony of the best single Western eyewitness, Australian virologist Danielle Anderson, who had been working at the Wuhan lab during the period in question. In a long 2021 interview, she had told Bloomberg that no one at the lab had become seriously ill with Covid-like symptoms, nor had she heard any rumors of a lab-leak or even any indication that the Covid virus had been developed there.
The Last—And Only—Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out
Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute
Michelle Fay Cortez • Bloomberg • June 27, 2021 • 2,200 Words
So just three days after publishing their explosive article, that same pair of WSJ reporters released a short piece summarizing this new intelligence information, almost amounting to a retraction of their previous story.
Covid Virus Wasn’t at Wuhan Lab Before Pandemic, U.S. Report Says
Spy agencies remain divided on whether the virus passed to humans via an infected animal or laboratory accident
Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel • The Wall Street Journal • June 23, 2023 • 500 Words
And oddly enough, the byline of the second co-author of that controversial earlier article seems to have now been removed, leaving only the name of Michael R. Gordon. Two decades earlier, Gordon had shared numerous bylines with Judith Miller at the New York Times, when the two of them had eagerly promoted the Neocon hoax of Saddam’s WMDs, also based upon anonymous government leaks.
Vanity Fair‘s Katherine Eban had previously published several long articles generally sympathetic to the lab-leak scenario, and she now summarized this confusing situation, including the angry reactions of several U.S. Senators who claimed that our intelligence agencies had failed to comply with the law by refusing to release other documents.
A New Intelligence Report Suggests That the Lab-Leak Wars Will Never End
Given a 90-day deadline to share what they know about COVID’s origins, America’s divided intelligence agencies produced a slim report that leaves both major hypotheses on the table—and raises as many questions as it answers.
Katherine Eban • Vanity Fair • June 28, 2023 • 2,700 Words
Since coming into office, the Biden Administration has become extremely hostile to China, denouncing it at every turn, seeking to choke-off its entire technology industry, and repeatedly violating its “red lines” regarding Taiwan. If any half-plausible evidence existed that Covid had leaked from the Wuhan lab, it’s difficult to understand why our government would be working to keep it secret. Yet the official release of all relevant documents provided no evidence of a lab-leak, and the DNI declared that nearly all of our 17 different Intelligence agencies had taken that same position.
This strongly suggests that the wave of lab-leak stories may have been based upon the very same sort of extremely doubtful or even fraudulent evidence as Saddam’s WMDs two decades ago, possibly peddled by anti-China former officials from the Trump Administration, who had repeatedly made such accusations in the past.
A very long NYT Sunday Magazine article late last month by veteran science writer David Quammen summarized much of this new information. He actually seemed quite impressed with some of these recent media developments and was now far more open to the lab-leak theory than when he had published his own book Breathless last year.
The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Origin
We still don’t know how the pandemic started. Here’s what we do know — and why it matters.
David Quammen • The New York Times Sunday Magazine • July 25, 2023 • 9,300 Words
Over the last couple of years, Sherri Markson has become one of the leading media advocates of the lab-leak theory, writing a 2021 book on the subject, though it hadn’t particularly impressed me. Last month she published a long magazine article in the Australian, summarizing the latest evidence, some of which seemed quite intriguing.
What really happened in Wuhan: new lab leak evidence over the origin of Covid-19
Sharri Markson • The Australian Weekend Magazine • July 28, 2023 • 5,500 Words
Then late last week, she came up with a genuine scoop, revealing on SkyNews and in the Australian that several named Pentagon analysts believed they had found “smoking gun” evidence that Covid had been bioengineered, noting that a particular genetic segment was identical to one found in another Wuhan lab virus, and three other intelligence groups had come to similar conclusions. Moreover, they claimed that their important findings had been excluded from the released intelligence documents in an act of blatant censorship by the Biden Administration:
When the report was published it concluded that most intelligence agencies assessed the virus, even if it had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was natural rather than manipulated in a laboratory.
Sky News can reveal that this was not the assessment made by the four groups within the intelligence agencies that actually engaged in scientific analysis, who concurred that there was either a highly likely or reasonable chance the virus was genetically engineered.
Scientists at the Defence Intelligence Agency’s National Centre for Medical Intelligence (DIA NCMI) had conducted rigorous research on the genomic sequence of the virus and firmly concluded that it was, most likely, a laboratory construct.
In a world exclusive, Sky News can for the first time reveal their story, their research and their discoveries about SARS-CoV-2…
Their internal research at the Pentagon-based agency led to a finding that was described internally as a “smoking gun”.
One of the scientists discovered that the size and location of a fragment of COVID-19 resembled the same fragment in Wuhan Institute of Virology research from more than a decade earlier, in 2008. It was the same technique that the WIV had used in grant applications to make chimeric viruses.
“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct,” a source said.
But their input into the 90-day origins probe was censored…
They [NCMI scientists Robert Greg Cutlip, Jean-Paul Chretien and John Hardham] wrote an unclassified working paper, dated May 26th 2020, titled ‘Critical Analysis of Anderson et al. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2′. Their paper was circulated within the NCMI and among multiple scientists within the intelligence community. It was also intended for wider publication, so that the public could have a greater understanding of the new virus sweeping the globe. But it was never allowed to be disseminated more broadly, in yet another cover-up of scientists who questioned the natural origins narrative perpetuated by senior officials.
The report was scathing of the Proximal Origin authors’ claim that COVID-19 had a natural origin.
“We consider the evidence they present and find that it does not prove that the virus arose naturally. In fact, the features of SARS-CoV-2 noted by Anderson et al. are consistent with another scenario: that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory, by methods that leading coronavirus researchers commonly use to investigate how the viruses infect cells and cause disease, assess the potential for animal coronaviruses to jump to humans, and develop drugs and vaccines.”
Their unclassified working paper from May 2020 is available on the Internet and all this important new information was summarized in an excellent Daily Sceptic article:
Biden Probe Censored Findings of Intelligence Agency Scientists That Covid was Likely Made in Lab
Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • August 25, 2023 • 1,900 Words
Articles that name specific government officials are obviously far more credible than those of the anonymous variety, and I would expect numerous investigative journalists may soon attempt to directly contact and interview those research analysts.
Furthermore, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress can request that they testify under oath regarding their important scientific findings on the true origins of an epidemic that killed more than a million Americans. Given that President Biden had publicly promised to declassify all American intelligence on Covid origins, he could hardly justify blocking such important investigative efforts.
But I suspect that both Markson and nearly all of her readers are missing a crucial aspect of these new revelations. Unlike all those other recent stories, this one focused on the bioengineered aspects of the Covid virus rather than claimed any evidence of a Wuhan lab-leak, two separate issues that have been regularly—and wrongly—conflated by nearly all the journalists covering the story. Last year I reviewed the contradictory evidence and the arguments of the key proponents on both sides, suggesting that an excluded third possibility was the best solution.
I think these exchanges demonstrate that to a considerable extent, the two main camps on the Covid origins debate have been talking past each other.
The testimonies provided by Quammen and Holmes strongly challenged the possibility of any lab-leak at Wuhan, suggesting that this proves the virus must have been natural, even though few arguments on that latter point were ever made; at most, they raised some doubts about the strength of the evidence for bioengineering.
Meanwhile, the articles and papers by Wade, Sachs, Bruttel, and others have provided strong evidence that the virus was artificial. All of this has usually been interpreted as support for the lab-leak hypothesis, even though very little evidence was ever presented that any lab-leak had occurred.
Yet the apparent vector-sum of these conflicting arguments is the conclusion that the Covid virus neither leaked from the Wuhan lab nor was natural, and this suggests that the public debate has been improperly restricted to just those two possibilities.
For more than 30 months I have emphasized that there are actually three perfectly plausible hypotheses for the Covid outbreak. The virus might have been natural, randomly appearing in Wuhan during late 2019; the virus might have been the artificial product of a scientific lab in Wuhan, which accidentally leaked out at that time; or the virus might have been the bioengineered product of America’s hundred-billion-dollar biowarfare program, the oldest and largest in the world, a bioweapon deployed against China and Iran by elements of the Trump Administration at the height of our hostile international confrontation with those countries.
The first two possibilities have been very widely discussed and debated across the Western mainstream and alternative media, while the third has been almost totally ignored, despite top Russian, Iranian, and Chinese government officials having publicly accused America of releasing Covid in a deliberate biowarfare attack.
Indeed, beginning in April 2020 I have published a long series of articles arguing that there is strong perhaps even overwhelming evidence in favor of that third, disregarded possibility.
Last December I had discussed and reviewed several important recent books on the origins of the Covid virus, all advocating the lab-leak hypothesis. I noted that none of the authors—Jasper Becker, Sharri Markson, Alina Chan and Matt Ridley—had dared to even consider the excluded third possibility, perhaps because the realities of the publishing industry required them to apply such Orwellian “crimestop” to their thinking.
Covid/Biowarfare Series
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 2020-December 2021 • 60,000 Words
If Congress can now confirm that several different scientific groups at our intelligence agencies have concluded that the Covid virus probably came from a laboratory, we can then begin asking the far more dangerous question of which laboratory and how and why the virus was released.
News of the Times;
Gold Star Father Blasts "A$$hole" Biden:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-gold-star-father-blasts-asshole-biden#comment-stream
Canadian "health care" is fast-tracking euthanasia:
https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/08/22/canadian-health-care-is-fast-tracking-euthanasia-n572945#google_vignette
Major Trans Activist Walks Right Into Sting Operation:
https://www.westernjournal.com/major-trans-activist-walks-right-sting-operation-arrested-alleged-child-sexual-abuse-attempt/
Top Law Schools Promote Ditching The Constitution:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/top-law-schools-promote-ditching-constitution
Mohamad Barakat could have slaughtered HUNDREDS:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12434149/Mohamad-Bakarat-slaughtered-HUNDREDS-Syrian-north-dakota.html
What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving:
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/what-exactly-are-conservatives-conserving
Boy killed as Haitian national crashes into Ohio school bus:
https://www.lawofficer.com/aiden-clark-killed-haitian-national-hermanio-joseph-crashes-into-ohio-school-bus/
Governor Murphy Refuses to Accept NYC Migrants:
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/governor-murphy-refuses-to-accept-nyc-migrants-after-vowing-to-make-new-jersey-sanctuary-state/
New discovery confirms nightmare scenario:
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/09/01/fbi-dna-revelation-new-discovery-confirms-nightmare-scenario-1392183/
Viganò responds to MediaPressInfo on the request for dissolution:
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/6775-vigano-responds-to-mediapressinfo-on-the-request-for-dissolution-of-civitas
Terrorist convicted of bomb plot handed job as Asda manager after early release:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/terrorist-convicted-bomb-plot-handed-30850905
To call this a celebration of black culture is an insult:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12463059/NANA-AKUA-call-Notting-Hill-Carnival-celebration-black-culture-insult.html
HIMARS missiles:
https://tass.com/defense/1668967
Bike-Riding Arsonist IDENTIFIED:
https://nationalfile.com/bike-riding-arsonist-identified-in-trump-won-yard-sign-burning/
Interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHOYPHJqZq0&ab_channel=PaulJosephWatson
It was the least I could do for him.
*.*
A big nose is not an excuse for not wearing a mask.
I mean, I still wear underwear.
*.*
A man stops by his local florist shop to buy flowers for his new girlfriend. He asks the proprietor, "You know the expression, 'You should say it with flowers'?"
"How about three dozen of my finest roses?" the florist asks.
"Make it a half dozen roses," the man answers. "I'm a man of few words."
*.*
Top 5 Pumpkin Spice Products That Should Never Be Made:
Pumpkin Spice Cotton Candy
Pumpkin Spice Vix
Pumpkin Spice Bubblicious
Pumpkin Spice Nachos
Pumpkin Spice Mountain Dew
*.*
What do you call a dog with a hammer?
A Labra-Thor.
Quote of the Times;
“I expect the neocons and their cultural war colleagues will be seen by history as the US equivalent of Rome’s Praetorian Guard, making and unmaking political leaders at will as it profits them to do so. The US is no more capable of surviving its neocons than Rome survived its praetorians.” – Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Parents need to assume they will be deceived by their school:
https://www.wnd.com/2023/08/parents-need-assume-will-deceived-school/
Issue of the Times;
Secret Intelligence Leaks vs. Basic Common Sense by Ron Unz
During 1940 the determined efforts of President Franklin Roosevelt to involve America in the war against Hitler’s Germany were blocked by the overwhelming opposition of the American people, running at 80% according to some polls. A group of young Yale Law School peace activists had launched the America First Committee and it quickly attracted 800,000 members, becoming the largest grassroots political organization in our national history. The leadership of the AFC included many of our most prominent business and journalistic figures, and famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, one of our greatest national heroes, served as its top spokesman.
With American antiwar sentiment so seemingly strong and resolute, various political stratagems were employed to reduce it. In late October 1941, just few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor finally settled the issue, FDR announced in a nationwide radio broadcast that he had obtained a German map that revealed the secret Nazi plans to seize control of Latin America, which Hitler would then use as a base to attack the United States as part of his bold plan of world conquest.
Our President declared:
Hitler has often protested that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean. I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s government – by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it…This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America but against the United States as well.
Probably millions or even tens of millions of Americans believed FDR’s words about that direct threat to our national security and therefore softened their resistance to our country’s involvement in the European war. But as historians have long since acknowledged, the map was a forgery, probably produced by FDR’s own close British collaborators. In an earlier private conversation with the British ambassador, FDR had warned that his secret activities with the British would probably lead to his impeachment if they were revealed.
I think few Americans at the time were willing to publicly accuse our President of such major falsehoods, but from a distance of more than eighty years, what strikes me is the sheer absurdity of FDR’s accusation. Germany had no significant navy and had been stymied for over a year by the barrier of the English Channel, only 18 miles wide. Yet apparently a large majority of the American media and the American public were willing to believe that the Germans could easily cross the thousands of miles of the Atlantic Ocean and gain control of the countries of South America, whose total population was considerably larger than that of Germany itself. So the excitement of being privy to a secret intelligence document seems to have triumphed over rational thought in the minds of many people, including eager journalists.
FDR’s illegal efforts to involve us in a totally unnecessary war outraged many of our Military Intelligence professionals at the time, but they were bound by an oath of secrecy, and their views only became known years or decades later when they published their books and personal memoirs. Extensive archival research by Prof. Joseph Bendersky fully uncovered their extremely bitter contemporaneous sentiments, and he noted the “fierce delight” they took in FDR’s eventual death:
“Finally, the evil man was dead!”
American Pravda: Secrets of Military Intelligence
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 10, 2019 • 12,500 Words
Just after the end of the war, Gen. George Patton, one of our most illustrious military commanders, told his colleagues that he intended to resign his commission so that he could begin a nationwide speaking tour to provide the American public with the true facts about the war that they had just fought. Patton soon died in a highly-suspicious vehicle accident, and decades later his self-confessed American assassin revealed that he had killed Patton under direct orders from top figures in our own government.
American Pravda: Was General Patton Assassinated?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • August 22, 2016 • 2,400 Words
Government officials have long recognized that secret information, even if heavily distorted or completely false, can be used to effectively shape media coverage. Many journalists and pundits are always eager to receive leaks, confidential tidbits that they are willing to make the centerpiece of their one-sided stories, thereby allowing themselves to be manipulated.
A perfect example of this process occurred during the run-up to the Iraq War, when leaks of secret intelligence information from Bush Neocons were widely promoted in such elite media outlets as the New York Times and the New Yorker. This persuaded our gullible citizenry that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons and also planned to attack our country with anthrax and other deadly biological weapons, while seemingly being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden, his regional arch-enemy. As I described a decade ago, most of Congress and the American people fully accepted such obvious nonsense, resulting in our disastrous Iraq War, which began the destruction of much of the Middle East:
The circumstances surrounding our Iraq War demonstrate this, certainly ranking it among the strangest military conflicts of modern times. The 2001 attacks in America were quickly ascribed to the radical Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the Middle East had always been Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleading public statements, false press leaks, and even forged evidence such as the “yellowcake” documents, the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies utilized the compliant American media to persuade our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs posed a deadly national threat and required elimination by war and invasion. Indeed, for several years national polls showed that a large majority of conservatives and Republicans actually believed that Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was being fought as retribution. Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America had attacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.
An even greater absurdity unfolded last year, after a series of mysterious underwater explosions destroyed the $30 billion Russian-German Nord Stream pipelines, probably Europe’s most important civilian energy infrastructure.
Numerous top American officials had publicly threatened to eliminate the pipelines if Russia invaded Ukraine, but after Russia did so and Nord Stream was destroyed, virtually all the mainstream media outlets both in America and in Europe declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin had probably destroyed his own pipelines, thereby further demonstrating his criminal insanity, and scarcely any other possibility was even considered. When Prof. Jeffrey Sachs was interviewed on Bloomberg TV and pointed to the American government as the obvious suspect, his statement was greeted with horror and disbelief and he was quickly yanked off the air.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs [Columbia] on Bloomberg causing chaos saying US was most likely involved in Nordstream leaks according to data & other experts “even reporters tell me …. privately of course …” and that we are on a pretty dangerous path to a nuclear conflict pic.twitter.com/U6FsC2tdp6
— Detty (@0ddette) October 3, 2022
American Pravda: Of Pipelines and Plagues
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • October 3, 2022 • 3,900 Words
Over the last half-century, Seymour Hersh had established himself as our greatest investigative journalist, and a few months after the attacks, he provided a very detailed account of exactly how our own military had destroyed the pipelines under orders from President Joe Biden, but no mainstream outlets reported his bombshell revelations.
However, Hersh had successfully broken many previous government cover-ups, and his blockbuster revelations left the earlier claim that Russia had destroyed the Russian pipelines looking rather threadbare, so various Western Intelligence agencies soon leaked a replacement cover story. The Nord Stream pipeline attacks probably ranked as the greatest act of industrial terrorism in world history, but the media now began reporting that the attacks had probably been carried out by a handful of shadowy Ukrainian activists operating from a rented sailboat. I’m not sure how many gullible Westerners fell for that particular fabrication, but Hersh quickly explained why the technical details of that new scenario were completely impossible.
Seymour Hersh: Standing Tall in a Sea of Lies
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 13, 2023 • 2,000 Words
“But That Newspaper Is Dead”
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 27, 2023 • 2,400 Words
Obviously not all intelligence leaks are false or useless. But we must be very cautious in accepting them, especially if they seem to strongly support the obvious political goals of the leakers.
Covid Origins Leaks
These are some of the points I think we should keep in mind as we consider the recent flurry of discussion regarding the origins of the Covid epidemic.
One of the most important developments may have come in a long Tucker Carlson interview of Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., which according to Twitter might have been watched a couple of million times.
I found myself in strong agreement with most of Kennedy’s views, including his sharp criticism of our Ukraine War policy and the hidden reality of America’s enormous and longstanding biological warfare program. In his #1 Amazon bestseller, Kennedy had devoted a long chapter to that last subject, and he made a good case that after President Richard Nixon had publicly abandoned our biowarfare efforts in 1969, those operations were later reconstituted under the label of “biodefense” and “vaccine development,” while being shifted from the Pentagon to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division at the National Institutes of Health.
Then in 2014, as Kennedy tells the story, several high-profile leaks at American facilities led Congress to force an end to such dangerous biowarfare work on U.S. soil, forcing Fauci to relocate our bioweapons development research to overseas labs. All of this seems quite plausible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKkanHZBTFg&ab_channel=SmartSense
The problem came towards the end of his 8 minute discussion. According to Kennedy, the Pentagon and the CIA funded and controlled Fauci’s biowarfare development research, which obviously constituted one of America’s most advanced and powerful military technologies. But Kennedy then claimed that our government decided to transfer all of that cutting-edge biowarfare technology to the Chinese. So beginning in 2014, America’s future biowarfare development work would be performed at the Wuhan lab, a facility that he describes as being under Chinese military control.
Does this make any sense whatsoever? In 2012, the Obama Administration had announced its “Pivot to East Asia,” declaring that it would refocus American strategic and military resources against China, which was seen as America’s most formidable long-term competitor and rival. But we are to believe that two years later, the Pentagon and the CIA decided to transfer our most powerful biowarfare technologies—producing bioweapons unmatched by those of any other nation—to the Chinese, selecting a Chinese military lab to develop our own bioweapons. We even paid them a few hundred thousand dollars for that privilege, a tiny fraction of one percent of our large biowarfare budget. Compared to that absurdity, the notion of Nazi Germany conquering most of the Western Hemisphere without the benefit of a navy seems far more plausible.
Furthermore, in 2015 Harvard’s Graham Allison had published a very high profile article arguing that the U.S. and China were almost inevitably headed for open warfare, and a couple of years later, his book on the same subject became a national bestseller, widely discussed and accepted in DC political circles. Yet with many top Pentagon and CIA officials being convinced that we would soon be at war with China, Kennedy seems to believe that these same officials nonetheless continued relying upon Chinese military researchers to develop our most powerful biowarfare technology.
None of these astonishing claims had appeared in Kennedy’s previous book and he doesn’t provide any sources for his interview remarks. But based upon some of his details, I think his information probably came from several stories published two months ago by various journalists, all of which were apparently based upon confidential leaks from anonymous sources.
Back in March, President Joseph Biden had ordered the complete declassification within 90 days of all U.S. intelligence information relating to the origins of the Covid virus. With that deadline approaching in late June, there suddenly appeared a flurry of articles based upon anonymous leaks. These claimed that secret evidence proved that three identified researchers at the Wuhan lab had been the earliest infected individuals or even suggested that Covid had been developed as a Chinese bioweapon whose accidental leakage had killed perhaps twenty million people worldwide, including over a million Americans.
Such explosive charges might seem like the sort of wild conspiratorial claims found in dark corners of the Internet, but they instead appeared in such leading mainstream newspapers as the London Sunday Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, or were co-authored by reputable investigative journalists such as Matt Taibbi.
The first of those outlets had published the earliest and most dramatic account, a long investigative piece that relied upon anonymous American sources to claim that Covid was a leaked Chinese bioweapon. Much of Kennedy’s information seems to have been derived from that article.
What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted
However, just a couple of days later, the editor of the Daily Sceptic, another British publication, pointed out some of the serious weaknesses in that reconstruction. He noted that the leadership of the Wuhan lab and the Chinese government hardly reacted as if a dangerous Chinese bioweapon had suddenly begun circulating in a city of 11 million that served as a major national transit hub.
If China Knew COVID-19 Was an Escaped Bioweapon, Why Did it Publish the Genetic Sequence in January 2020?
Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • June 13, 2023 • 1,700 Words
Several other articles appeared over the next couple of weeks, mostly focusing on claims that three specific Wuhan lab researchers had become infected with Covid during November 2019, the earliest such cases anywhere and therefore the likely source of the outbreak. Once again, all these accounts were based upon anonymous government intelligence sources.
First People Sickened By COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists At Wuhan Institute Of Virology, Say US Government Sources
The three scientists were engaged in “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses when they fell ill
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag • Substack • June 13, 2023 • 1,800 Words
Documents Link Potential Covid Patient Zero to U.S.-Funded Research in Wuhan
New reporting, attributed to U.S. government sources, identified a coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in November 2019
Ryan Grim • The Intercept • June 17, 2023 • 800 Words
U.S.-Funded Scientist Among Three Chinese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Early Covid-19 Outbreak
Identification of three who worked at Wuhan Institute of Virology fuels suspicion for proponents of lab-leak theory
Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel • The Wall Street Journal • June 20, 2023 • 1,400 Words
The Government Must Say What It Knows About Covid’s Origins
Zeynep Tufekci • The New York Times • June 21, 2023 • 1,300 Words
The long WSJ article was the weightiest piece, and two years earlier those same reporters had published a previous very high-profile article making similar claims, probably relying upon the same unnamed government sources.
Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin
Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab
Michael R. Gordon, Warren P. Strobel, and Drew Hinshaw • The Wall Street Journal • May 23, 2023 • 1,700 Words
This cascade of articles naturally raised enormous anticipation regarding the intelligence documents about to be released. But the result was a tremendous anticlimax when the declassified DNI report largely refuted all these claims, denying the existence of any solid evidence that Wuhan researchers had been hospitalized with Covid-like symptoms and stating that any reported illness they suffered had not necessarily been suggestive of Covid.
These official DNI conclusions seemed to confirm the personal testimony of the best single Western eyewitness, Australian virologist Danielle Anderson, who had been working at the Wuhan lab during the period in question. In a long 2021 interview, she had told Bloomberg that no one at the lab had become seriously ill with Covid-like symptoms, nor had she heard any rumors of a lab-leak or even any indication that the Covid virus had been developed there.
The Last—And Only—Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out
Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute
Michelle Fay Cortez • Bloomberg • June 27, 2021 • 2,200 Words
So just three days after publishing their explosive article, that same pair of WSJ reporters released a short piece summarizing this new intelligence information, almost amounting to a retraction of their previous story.
Covid Virus Wasn’t at Wuhan Lab Before Pandemic, U.S. Report Says
Spy agencies remain divided on whether the virus passed to humans via an infected animal or laboratory accident
Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel • The Wall Street Journal • June 23, 2023 • 500 Words
And oddly enough, the byline of the second co-author of that controversial earlier article seems to have now been removed, leaving only the name of Michael R. Gordon. Two decades earlier, Gordon had shared numerous bylines with Judith Miller at the New York Times, when the two of them had eagerly promoted the Neocon hoax of Saddam’s WMDs, also based upon anonymous government leaks.
Vanity Fair‘s Katherine Eban had previously published several long articles generally sympathetic to the lab-leak scenario, and she now summarized this confusing situation, including the angry reactions of several U.S. Senators who claimed that our intelligence agencies had failed to comply with the law by refusing to release other documents.
A New Intelligence Report Suggests That the Lab-Leak Wars Will Never End
Given a 90-day deadline to share what they know about COVID’s origins, America’s divided intelligence agencies produced a slim report that leaves both major hypotheses on the table—and raises as many questions as it answers.
Katherine Eban • Vanity Fair • June 28, 2023 • 2,700 Words
Since coming into office, the Biden Administration has become extremely hostile to China, denouncing it at every turn, seeking to choke-off its entire technology industry, and repeatedly violating its “red lines” regarding Taiwan. If any half-plausible evidence existed that Covid had leaked from the Wuhan lab, it’s difficult to understand why our government would be working to keep it secret. Yet the official release of all relevant documents provided no evidence of a lab-leak, and the DNI declared that nearly all of our 17 different Intelligence agencies had taken that same position.
This strongly suggests that the wave of lab-leak stories may have been based upon the very same sort of extremely doubtful or even fraudulent evidence as Saddam’s WMDs two decades ago, possibly peddled by anti-China former officials from the Trump Administration, who had repeatedly made such accusations in the past.
A very long NYT Sunday Magazine article late last month by veteran science writer David Quammen summarized much of this new information. He actually seemed quite impressed with some of these recent media developments and was now far more open to the lab-leak theory than when he had published his own book Breathless last year.
The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Origin
We still don’t know how the pandemic started. Here’s what we do know — and why it matters.
David Quammen • The New York Times Sunday Magazine • July 25, 2023 • 9,300 Words
Over the last couple of years, Sherri Markson has become one of the leading media advocates of the lab-leak theory, writing a 2021 book on the subject, though it hadn’t particularly impressed me. Last month she published a long magazine article in the Australian, summarizing the latest evidence, some of which seemed quite intriguing.
What really happened in Wuhan: new lab leak evidence over the origin of Covid-19
Sharri Markson • The Australian Weekend Magazine • July 28, 2023 • 5,500 Words
Then late last week, she came up with a genuine scoop, revealing on SkyNews and in the Australian that several named Pentagon analysts believed they had found “smoking gun” evidence that Covid had been bioengineered, noting that a particular genetic segment was identical to one found in another Wuhan lab virus, and three other intelligence groups had come to similar conclusions. Moreover, they claimed that their important findings had been excluded from the released intelligence documents in an act of blatant censorship by the Biden Administration:
When the report was published it concluded that most intelligence agencies assessed the virus, even if it had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was natural rather than manipulated in a laboratory.
Sky News can reveal that this was not the assessment made by the four groups within the intelligence agencies that actually engaged in scientific analysis, who concurred that there was either a highly likely or reasonable chance the virus was genetically engineered.
Scientists at the Defence Intelligence Agency’s National Centre for Medical Intelligence (DIA NCMI) had conducted rigorous research on the genomic sequence of the virus and firmly concluded that it was, most likely, a laboratory construct.
In a world exclusive, Sky News can for the first time reveal their story, their research and their discoveries about SARS-CoV-2…
Their internal research at the Pentagon-based agency led to a finding that was described internally as a “smoking gun”.
One of the scientists discovered that the size and location of a fragment of COVID-19 resembled the same fragment in Wuhan Institute of Virology research from more than a decade earlier, in 2008. It was the same technique that the WIV had used in grant applications to make chimeric viruses.
“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct,” a source said.
But their input into the 90-day origins probe was censored…
They [NCMI scientists Robert Greg Cutlip, Jean-Paul Chretien and John Hardham] wrote an unclassified working paper, dated May 26th 2020, titled ‘Critical Analysis of Anderson et al. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2′. Their paper was circulated within the NCMI and among multiple scientists within the intelligence community. It was also intended for wider publication, so that the public could have a greater understanding of the new virus sweeping the globe. But it was never allowed to be disseminated more broadly, in yet another cover-up of scientists who questioned the natural origins narrative perpetuated by senior officials.
The report was scathing of the Proximal Origin authors’ claim that COVID-19 had a natural origin.
“We consider the evidence they present and find that it does not prove that the virus arose naturally. In fact, the features of SARS-CoV-2 noted by Anderson et al. are consistent with another scenario: that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory, by methods that leading coronavirus researchers commonly use to investigate how the viruses infect cells and cause disease, assess the potential for animal coronaviruses to jump to humans, and develop drugs and vaccines.”
Their unclassified working paper from May 2020 is available on the Internet and all this important new information was summarized in an excellent Daily Sceptic article:
Biden Probe Censored Findings of Intelligence Agency Scientists That Covid was Likely Made in Lab
Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • August 25, 2023 • 1,900 Words
Articles that name specific government officials are obviously far more credible than those of the anonymous variety, and I would expect numerous investigative journalists may soon attempt to directly contact and interview those research analysts.
Furthermore, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress can request that they testify under oath regarding their important scientific findings on the true origins of an epidemic that killed more than a million Americans. Given that President Biden had publicly promised to declassify all American intelligence on Covid origins, he could hardly justify blocking such important investigative efforts.
But I suspect that both Markson and nearly all of her readers are missing a crucial aspect of these new revelations. Unlike all those other recent stories, this one focused on the bioengineered aspects of the Covid virus rather than claimed any evidence of a Wuhan lab-leak, two separate issues that have been regularly—and wrongly—conflated by nearly all the journalists covering the story. Last year I reviewed the contradictory evidence and the arguments of the key proponents on both sides, suggesting that an excluded third possibility was the best solution.
I think these exchanges demonstrate that to a considerable extent, the two main camps on the Covid origins debate have been talking past each other.
The testimonies provided by Quammen and Holmes strongly challenged the possibility of any lab-leak at Wuhan, suggesting that this proves the virus must have been natural, even though few arguments on that latter point were ever made; at most, they raised some doubts about the strength of the evidence for bioengineering.
Meanwhile, the articles and papers by Wade, Sachs, Bruttel, and others have provided strong evidence that the virus was artificial. All of this has usually been interpreted as support for the lab-leak hypothesis, even though very little evidence was ever presented that any lab-leak had occurred.
Yet the apparent vector-sum of these conflicting arguments is the conclusion that the Covid virus neither leaked from the Wuhan lab nor was natural, and this suggests that the public debate has been improperly restricted to just those two possibilities.
For more than 30 months I have emphasized that there are actually three perfectly plausible hypotheses for the Covid outbreak. The virus might have been natural, randomly appearing in Wuhan during late 2019; the virus might have been the artificial product of a scientific lab in Wuhan, which accidentally leaked out at that time; or the virus might have been the bioengineered product of America’s hundred-billion-dollar biowarfare program, the oldest and largest in the world, a bioweapon deployed against China and Iran by elements of the Trump Administration at the height of our hostile international confrontation with those countries.
The first two possibilities have been very widely discussed and debated across the Western mainstream and alternative media, while the third has been almost totally ignored, despite top Russian, Iranian, and Chinese government officials having publicly accused America of releasing Covid in a deliberate biowarfare attack.
Indeed, beginning in April 2020 I have published a long series of articles arguing that there is strong perhaps even overwhelming evidence in favor of that third, disregarded possibility.
Last December I had discussed and reviewed several important recent books on the origins of the Covid virus, all advocating the lab-leak hypothesis. I noted that none of the authors—Jasper Becker, Sharri Markson, Alina Chan and Matt Ridley—had dared to even consider the excluded third possibility, perhaps because the realities of the publishing industry required them to apply such Orwellian “crimestop” to their thinking.
Covid/Biowarfare Series
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 2020-December 2021 • 60,000 Words
If Congress can now confirm that several different scientific groups at our intelligence agencies have concluded that the Covid virus probably came from a laboratory, we can then begin asking the far more dangerous question of which laboratory and how and why the virus was released.
News of the Times;
Gold Star Father Blasts "A$$hole" Biden:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-gold-star-father-blasts-asshole-biden#comment-stream
Canadian "health care" is fast-tracking euthanasia:
https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/08/22/canadian-health-care-is-fast-tracking-euthanasia-n572945#google_vignette
Major Trans Activist Walks Right Into Sting Operation:
https://www.westernjournal.com/major-trans-activist-walks-right-sting-operation-arrested-alleged-child-sexual-abuse-attempt/
Top Law Schools Promote Ditching The Constitution:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/top-law-schools-promote-ditching-constitution
Mohamad Barakat could have slaughtered HUNDREDS:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12434149/Mohamad-Bakarat-slaughtered-HUNDREDS-Syrian-north-dakota.html
What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving:
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/what-exactly-are-conservatives-conserving
Boy killed as Haitian national crashes into Ohio school bus:
https://www.lawofficer.com/aiden-clark-killed-haitian-national-hermanio-joseph-crashes-into-ohio-school-bus/
Governor Murphy Refuses to Accept NYC Migrants:
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/governor-murphy-refuses-to-accept-nyc-migrants-after-vowing-to-make-new-jersey-sanctuary-state/
New discovery confirms nightmare scenario:
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/09/01/fbi-dna-revelation-new-discovery-confirms-nightmare-scenario-1392183/
Viganò responds to MediaPressInfo on the request for dissolution:
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/6775-vigano-responds-to-mediapressinfo-on-the-request-for-dissolution-of-civitas
Terrorist convicted of bomb plot handed job as Asda manager after early release:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/terrorist-convicted-bomb-plot-handed-30850905
To call this a celebration of black culture is an insult:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12463059/NANA-AKUA-call-Notting-Hill-Carnival-celebration-black-culture-insult.html
HIMARS missiles:
https://tass.com/defense/1668967
Bike-Riding Arsonist IDENTIFIED:
https://nationalfile.com/bike-riding-arsonist-identified-in-trump-won-yard-sign-burning/
Interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHOYPHJqZq0&ab_channel=PaulJosephWatson
Retail?
It's Monday.
Or, as I like to call it.
"Day one of the hostage situation."
*.*
Bob Barker, the host of almost 6,000 episodes of The Price Is Right, died of natural causes at his longtime Hollywood Hills home at the age of 99.
Many are quick to point out how he came so close to 100 without going over.
*.*
Oneliners:
I wear a fake ankle monitor to the gym so people won't talk to me.
A lot of damage in Georgia from Hurricane Idalia, but it denies doing anything wrong.
Seriously, if you're home-schooled, do you really need name tags at your reunion?
Here's to all the kids who have never found their name on anything in a souvenir store.
The older I get, the tighter companies are putting lids on their jars.
I wish there was an even lazier way than social media to wish you a happy birthday!
You think you love your family, but then suddenly, there are three of you and only one piece of pizza left.
When a cashier asks if you have a rewards card, look down, sigh, and say, "My wife took everything when she left."
I hate it when I'm singing along and the artist gets the words wrong.
Why do they call it beauty sleep when you wake up looking terrible?
*.*
Russian President Putin is said to have put new security measures in place, just in case anyone else tries a mutiny.
He's added a bodyguard for the food taster of the official car starter.
*.*
Burger King is being sued for showing pictures of Whoppers in their restaurants that are 35% bigger than the actual burger.
What about fishing rules; the actual size of the fish we caught is much smaller, but we still call IT "a whopper!"
Quote of the Times;
“The reason the Founding Fathers specified both “enemies foreign and domestic” is because they were well-read in history and they understood that the enemy within is every bit as dangerous, and quite often more so, than the enemy without.” - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Tucker Blows the Lid Off the Narrative About the War in Ukraine:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/08/22/tucker-interview-ukraine-n2627338
Issue of the Times;
Retail Shrinkage by Stuart Schneiderman
As you know, organized retail theft has become rife across America. More and more young people walk out of stores with whatever they want, not to be caught, not to be prosecuted. The companies tend to absorb the loss through accounting gimmicks. At worst, insurance pays for it.
Now, the Wall Street Journal editorializes this morning, some companies have resorted to euphemism. They refuse to call what is happening by its name; they erase the evidence of the criminal gangs; and they have rebranded it all as… Shrinkage.
One is reminded of the primitive activity known as head shrinking, and of the unflattering term used to describe mental health professionals. Calling it shrinkage means failing to think clearly about the problem.
In the retail world, the word has become ubiquitous:
Foot Locker executives likewise noted on Wednesday that inventory “shrink” has been increasing. Target CEO Brian Cornell last week said that “shrink” remained “well above the sustainable level where we expect to operate over time,” and that the company was facing “an unacceptable amount of retail theft and organized retail crime.” Home Depot execs last week also flagged “pressure from shrink” on earnings. As did Walmart execs. “Shrink has increased a bit this year. It increased last year,” its CFO noted, adding that “shrink” was “uneven” across the country. “There needs to be action taken to help protect people from crime, including theft,” said CEO Doug McMillon.
Calling it shrinkage feels like denial, denial of the reality of what is going on, denial of the damage that this insurrectionary activity is doing to retail establishments, and to everyone else. Because, as you know, someone has to pay for this, and those who are first in line are consumers.
The Journal argues:
Shrink isn’t PC jargon used only by these companies. It’s an industry term that wraps in other losses such as value lost or damaged in transit. But plain language about theft, rather than the euphemism, would help the public better understand how bad criminal theft is and maybe build political support for policies that would do something about it.
Calling it shrink obscures the criminality and makes it seem like something other than an insurrection. Since no one seems to be getting hurt, using a bland term like shrinkage dulls everyone’s moral sense, and excuses local officials from cracking down on it.
For now, as you know, certain officials, like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, have declared it all to be unacceptable. She has rallied a task force to study the problem.
This sounds good, but talk is cheap. The proof lies in whether or not it stops. As of now, optimism is unwarranted.
It’s common in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia where so-called victimless crimes are rarely enforced. Retailers in some cities now lock up items as basic as toothpaste and shampoo to prevent criminals from clearing out shelves.
Progressives ignore theft out of hostility to corporations. But mom-and-pop stores are pillaged too, and the costs of theft are borne by consumers and workers. Modern corporate culture shrinks from saying anything that might offend anyone, apparently including criminals and organized theft rings. Time for CEOs and CFOs to speak plainly.
But, is organized retail theft a victimless crime? Certain public prosecutors do not want to prosecute certain crimes, because they want to say that the crime rate is going down. And, as the Journal points out, we certainly do not want to offend the delicate sensibilities of our criminal underclass.
In the meantime, in New York City, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani got crime under control by enacting a broken windows policy. He decided that failing to prosecute fare jumpers on the subway was creating an environment of disrespect for the law, and was contributing to a crime wave.
It turns out that he was right. It turns out that the current policy, which supposedly ignores victimless crimes, leads to crimes that hurt victims.
News of the Times;
After watching millions die, FDA now admits doctors had every right to prescribe Ivermectin:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-08-13-fda-admits-ivermectin-legitimate-treatment-covid-19.html
Over 25% of elderly residents of a SNF died within a 20-day period after getting jab:
https://kirschsubstack.com/p/breaking-over-25-of-elderly-residents
Starbucks ordered to pay an additional $2.7 million:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/starbucks-settlement-rittenhouse-white-shannon-phillips/
Putin’s attitude to Western sanctions shocked Scholz:
https://www.rt.com/news/582022-putin-scholz-macron-ukraine/
Animal Rights Activist Guilty of Animal Cruelty:
https://humanewatch.org/animal-rights-activist-guilty-of-animal-cruelty/
Elon Musk 'likes' trending #BanTheADL posts:
https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-elon-musk-white-supremacist-ad-ban-adl-hashtag
Mother Desperate For Answers After FBI Busts Down Door, Fatally Shoots Disabled Veteran Son:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/grieving-mother-desperate-answers-after-fbi-busts-down/
Utah and Oregon Now Require GPS Trackers on EVs:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/08/13/techno-hell-utah-and-oregon-now-require-gps-trackers-on-evs-in-lieu-of-registration-fee-tax-drivers-by-the-mile-n1718751
Mercedes disconnects Russian customers:
https://www.rt.com/business/581240-mercedes-disconnects-russian-customers/
What happens after the collapse of a 99-year-old trucking company:
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/what-happens-after-the-collapse-of-a-99-year-old-trucking-company-yellow-bankruptcy-shipping-logistics-supply-chain-consumer-spending-economy-pandemic-loan
Man who killed Texas deputy in traffic stop sentenced to death:
https://thenationaldesk.com/top-videos/man-who-killed-texas-deputy-in-traffic-stop-sentenced-to-death-facundo-chavez-peter-herrera-2019-el-paso-county-socorro-governor-greg-abbott
Private school teacher accused of molesting teen in park:
https://nypost.com/2023/08/22/wisconsin-teacher-accused-of-molesting-teen-gave-him-a-gun/
Finnish Grandmother Is Back In Court:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/11/finnish-grandmother-is-back-in-court-facing-hate-speech-charges-for-tweeting-bible-verses/
79 Arsonists Arrested Amid Deadly Greek Wildfires:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/08/26/79-arsonists-arrested-amid-deadly-greek-wildfires-n1722308
SCARY Message about the 1930's Going viral now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw3C4KxV6xY&ab_channel=BuddyBrown
Or, as I like to call it.
"Day one of the hostage situation."
*.*
Bob Barker, the host of almost 6,000 episodes of The Price Is Right, died of natural causes at his longtime Hollywood Hills home at the age of 99.
Many are quick to point out how he came so close to 100 without going over.
*.*
Oneliners:
I wear a fake ankle monitor to the gym so people won't talk to me.
A lot of damage in Georgia from Hurricane Idalia, but it denies doing anything wrong.
Seriously, if you're home-schooled, do you really need name tags at your reunion?
Here's to all the kids who have never found their name on anything in a souvenir store.
The older I get, the tighter companies are putting lids on their jars.
I wish there was an even lazier way than social media to wish you a happy birthday!
You think you love your family, but then suddenly, there are three of you and only one piece of pizza left.
When a cashier asks if you have a rewards card, look down, sigh, and say, "My wife took everything when she left."
I hate it when I'm singing along and the artist gets the words wrong.
Why do they call it beauty sleep when you wake up looking terrible?
*.*
Russian President Putin is said to have put new security measures in place, just in case anyone else tries a mutiny.
He's added a bodyguard for the food taster of the official car starter.
*.*
Burger King is being sued for showing pictures of Whoppers in their restaurants that are 35% bigger than the actual burger.
What about fishing rules; the actual size of the fish we caught is much smaller, but we still call IT "a whopper!"
Quote of the Times;
“The reason the Founding Fathers specified both “enemies foreign and domestic” is because they were well-read in history and they understood that the enemy within is every bit as dangerous, and quite often more so, than the enemy without.” - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Tucker Blows the Lid Off the Narrative About the War in Ukraine:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/08/22/tucker-interview-ukraine-n2627338
Issue of the Times;
Retail Shrinkage by Stuart Schneiderman
As you know, organized retail theft has become rife across America. More and more young people walk out of stores with whatever they want, not to be caught, not to be prosecuted. The companies tend to absorb the loss through accounting gimmicks. At worst, insurance pays for it.
Now, the Wall Street Journal editorializes this morning, some companies have resorted to euphemism. They refuse to call what is happening by its name; they erase the evidence of the criminal gangs; and they have rebranded it all as… Shrinkage.
One is reminded of the primitive activity known as head shrinking, and of the unflattering term used to describe mental health professionals. Calling it shrinkage means failing to think clearly about the problem.
In the retail world, the word has become ubiquitous:
Foot Locker executives likewise noted on Wednesday that inventory “shrink” has been increasing. Target CEO Brian Cornell last week said that “shrink” remained “well above the sustainable level where we expect to operate over time,” and that the company was facing “an unacceptable amount of retail theft and organized retail crime.” Home Depot execs last week also flagged “pressure from shrink” on earnings. As did Walmart execs. “Shrink has increased a bit this year. It increased last year,” its CFO noted, adding that “shrink” was “uneven” across the country. “There needs to be action taken to help protect people from crime, including theft,” said CEO Doug McMillon.
Calling it shrinkage feels like denial, denial of the reality of what is going on, denial of the damage that this insurrectionary activity is doing to retail establishments, and to everyone else. Because, as you know, someone has to pay for this, and those who are first in line are consumers.
The Journal argues:
Shrink isn’t PC jargon used only by these companies. It’s an industry term that wraps in other losses such as value lost or damaged in transit. But plain language about theft, rather than the euphemism, would help the public better understand how bad criminal theft is and maybe build political support for policies that would do something about it.
Calling it shrink obscures the criminality and makes it seem like something other than an insurrection. Since no one seems to be getting hurt, using a bland term like shrinkage dulls everyone’s moral sense, and excuses local officials from cracking down on it.
For now, as you know, certain officials, like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, have declared it all to be unacceptable. She has rallied a task force to study the problem.
This sounds good, but talk is cheap. The proof lies in whether or not it stops. As of now, optimism is unwarranted.
It’s common in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia where so-called victimless crimes are rarely enforced. Retailers in some cities now lock up items as basic as toothpaste and shampoo to prevent criminals from clearing out shelves.
Progressives ignore theft out of hostility to corporations. But mom-and-pop stores are pillaged too, and the costs of theft are borne by consumers and workers. Modern corporate culture shrinks from saying anything that might offend anyone, apparently including criminals and organized theft rings. Time for CEOs and CFOs to speak plainly.
But, is organized retail theft a victimless crime? Certain public prosecutors do not want to prosecute certain crimes, because they want to say that the crime rate is going down. And, as the Journal points out, we certainly do not want to offend the delicate sensibilities of our criminal underclass.
In the meantime, in New York City, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani got crime under control by enacting a broken windows policy. He decided that failing to prosecute fare jumpers on the subway was creating an environment of disrespect for the law, and was contributing to a crime wave.
It turns out that he was right. It turns out that the current policy, which supposedly ignores victimless crimes, leads to crimes that hurt victims.
News of the Times;
After watching millions die, FDA now admits doctors had every right to prescribe Ivermectin:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-08-13-fda-admits-ivermectin-legitimate-treatment-covid-19.html
Over 25% of elderly residents of a SNF died within a 20-day period after getting jab:
https://kirschsubstack.com/p/breaking-over-25-of-elderly-residents
Starbucks ordered to pay an additional $2.7 million:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/starbucks-settlement-rittenhouse-white-shannon-phillips/
Putin’s attitude to Western sanctions shocked Scholz:
https://www.rt.com/news/582022-putin-scholz-macron-ukraine/
Animal Rights Activist Guilty of Animal Cruelty:
https://humanewatch.org/animal-rights-activist-guilty-of-animal-cruelty/
Elon Musk 'likes' trending #BanTheADL posts:
https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-elon-musk-white-supremacist-ad-ban-adl-hashtag
Mother Desperate For Answers After FBI Busts Down Door, Fatally Shoots Disabled Veteran Son:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/grieving-mother-desperate-answers-after-fbi-busts-down/
Utah and Oregon Now Require GPS Trackers on EVs:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/08/13/techno-hell-utah-and-oregon-now-require-gps-trackers-on-evs-in-lieu-of-registration-fee-tax-drivers-by-the-mile-n1718751
Mercedes disconnects Russian customers:
https://www.rt.com/business/581240-mercedes-disconnects-russian-customers/
What happens after the collapse of a 99-year-old trucking company:
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/what-happens-after-the-collapse-of-a-99-year-old-trucking-company-yellow-bankruptcy-shipping-logistics-supply-chain-consumer-spending-economy-pandemic-loan
Man who killed Texas deputy in traffic stop sentenced to death:
https://thenationaldesk.com/top-videos/man-who-killed-texas-deputy-in-traffic-stop-sentenced-to-death-facundo-chavez-peter-herrera-2019-el-paso-county-socorro-governor-greg-abbott
Private school teacher accused of molesting teen in park:
https://nypost.com/2023/08/22/wisconsin-teacher-accused-of-molesting-teen-gave-him-a-gun/
Finnish Grandmother Is Back In Court:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/11/finnish-grandmother-is-back-in-court-facing-hate-speech-charges-for-tweeting-bible-verses/
79 Arsonists Arrested Amid Deadly Greek Wildfires:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/08/26/79-arsonists-arrested-amid-deadly-greek-wildfires-n1722308
SCARY Message about the 1930's Going viral now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw3C4KxV6xY&ab_channel=BuddyBrown
Straws?
We still don't have a name of the big MegaMillions $1.5-billion jackpot winner from last week.
However I've got my Ancestry.com open and ready to search.
*.*
Alexander Graham Bell: “I invented the telephone!”
His brother, Taco: “I’m working on some pretty big stuff too.”
*.*
Teacher: "Now, Susan, how may fingers have you?"
Susan: "Ten."
Teacher: "Right. Now if you lost four of them, what would you have?"
Susan: "No more piano lessons."
*.*
The average woman will own 111 purses in her lifetime.
The average man will be asked to hold 110 of them.
*.*
98.9% of people use fictitious statistics to back up their claims.
Quote of the Times;
“If liberals wanted their children to have access to gay porn books, they could just buy them on Amazon. They want YOUR children to have access to gay porn books.” - @RevolverNews
Link of the Times;
Guardian Angels Founder Curtis Sliwa Arrested in New York:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/guardian-angels-founder-curtis-sliwa-arrested-new-york/
Issue of the Times;
Study Shows Paper Straws More Harmful to Planet than Plastic by John Nolte
In today’s chapter of… Everything Environmentalists Tell Us Is Wrong … and I do mean … wrong … we will look at how paper straws do more damage to the planet than plastic straws.
Remember all that empty-headed virtue-signaling over freaken straws in 2018?
Paper straws are good!
Paper straws are virtuous!
Unless they are used to suck out the remains of a dead baby after an abortion, plastic straws are eeeevil.
Only Nazis use plastic straws … said celebrities, politicians, and media elites.
Yes, all of a sudden, and from out of nowhere, plastic straws became the Biggest Threat To Mother Earth Ever. This was one of those nonsense narratives schemed over in secret conference calls among the top one percent coordinated to hit America like a Blitzkrieg. No time for debate. No time to use science to justify the New Good Thing. It was this simple: bad people use plastic straws, and good people use paper straws.
President Trump trolls the Left over their obsession to ban plastic straws. pic.twitter.com/VJPVKC6ybu
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) July 19, 2019
Remember how USA Today, CNN, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the New York Times screamed out headlines about how America uses 500 million plastic straws per day—500 million—per day! The source for this number was a literal fourth grader, but let’s not let sourcing get in the way of a good narrative.
Remember how Democrat-run California banned plastic straws and wanted to imprison waiters who offer people plastic straws?
Remember how Her Vice Fraudulency Kamala “DumDum” Harris called for a national ban on plastic straws?
Remember how Democrat-run Washington DC banned plastic straws?
Meanwhile, these same Democrat-run cities have no problem passing out plastic hypodermic needles to junkies.
Anyway, guess what…? Yes, the inevitable has arrived. These fascist liars are wrong again—and I do mean … again.
You’re gonna love this…
“Straws made from plant-based materials, such as paper and bamboo, are often advertised as being more sustainable and eco-friendly than those made from plastic,” Thimo Groffen, PhD, author of the study and an environmental scientist at the University of Antwerp, said in a press release. “However, the presence of PFAS in these straws means that’s not necessarily true.”
Researchers on the study examined 39 brands of straws in Belgium from supermarkets, toy stores, fast-food chains, drug stores, and e-commerce stores. The straws were either made of paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel, or plastic, and the researchers tested each brand for concentrations of PFAS. Sixty-nine percent of the brands contained PFAS, with paper straws more likely to contain the chemicals. The researchers found 90% of paper straws had PFAS, compared to 80% of bamboo straws, 75% of plastic straws, and 40% of glass straws. Further, a paper straw brand was the brand with the highest PFAS concentration.
*throws head back, laughs, burns tire under baby bird nest*
I don’t care about any of this environmental stuff. I don’t litter. I’m kind to animals. I leave things as I found them. Other than that, no.
Recycling? No way. I’m no sucker. Everything comes from the Earth. And despite repeated requests, no one can explain to me how putting back in Mother Earth what came from Mother Earth harms Mother Earth. Recycling is stupid. Sure, you can make the planet less inhabitable for human beings by electing Democrats to run your city or manage your forest, but all these chemicals and whatnot come from the Earth, so what’s the big deal putting them back where they came from?
Back to the straws… How many times will America’s idiots fall for these lies?
These “experts” are 0-53 https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-climate-experts-are-0-41-with-their-doomsday-predictions/ with their predictions.
Who trusts someone who is 0-53, who has been wrong 53 times and correct zero times?
I would never use a paper straw because paper straws are stupid and inconvenient and have a taste. After 2018, I also used plastic straws because it was an easy way to feel like an outlaw.
But now that we’re being told not to use paper straws, I might use them.
You see, I’m an American, and that’s how Americans roll.
News of the Times;
Livid Hawaiians Slam Biden For Cracking Jokes, Lying About Wife:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/children-were-incinerated-ash-livid-hawaiians-slam-biden-cracking-jokes-lying-about-wife
Extent Of De-Banking Revealed:
https://www.technocracy.news/extent-of-de-banking-revealed-nearly-one-million-uk-accounts-shut-in-past-four-years/
Russia Releases 2,000 Page Report Proving Deep State & Big Pharma Manufactured Covid:
https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/russia-releases-2000-page-report-proving-deep-state-big-pharma-manufactured-covid-pandemic/
FLOODED, Just Months After Mocking God:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/los-angeles-dodgers-stadium-gets-flooded-just-months/
Flash mob loots LA Nordstrom in wild smash and grab style robbery:
https://www.outkick.com/flash-mob-loots-los-angeles-nordstrom-in-wild-smash-and-grab-style-robbery/
Russia is Creating a Village for White South African Refugees:
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/russia-is-creating-a-village-for-white-south-african-refugees-to-escape-black-terrorism/
Assault of Asian family investigated as hate crime:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/anti-asian-nyc-subway-attack
Seven officers drag 'autistic' girl, 16, kicking and screaming from Leeds home for committing a 'hate crime':
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12392871/Autistic-girl-16-arrested-dragged-screaming-home-Leeds-12-officers-saying-female-cop-looked-like-lesbian-nana.html
Antifa just “gamed” our crooked justice system and got away with murder:
https://www.revolver.news/2023/08/antifa-just-gamed-our-crooked-justice-system-and-got-away-with-murder-portland-andy-ngo/
Asylum seeker allegedly raped woman in front of 3-year-old:
https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/asylum-seeker-accused-of-raping-woman-in-front-of-3-year-old-in-ny/amp/
Gov. Kim Reynolds deploys Iowa National Guard to border:
https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2023/08/04/gov-kim-reynolds-deploys-iowa-national-guard-to-border-n569185
Organized crime and the homeless:
https://truthonthestreets.substack.com/p/organized-crime-and-the-homeless
Executive warns demise of Oxford Street is fuelling crime including US-style flashmob looting:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12396279/Oxford-Streets-demise-fuelling-rising-crime-M-S-boss-warns.html
Top Conservative Commentator: ‘White People Should Seriously Consider Walking Away from the Military’:
https://www.unz.com/sbpdl/jesse-kelly-top-conservative-commentator-states-white-people-should-seriously-consider-walking-away-from-the-military/
Spain's Women's World Cup controversy explained:
https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/spains-womens-world-cup-controversy-explained-why-coach-jorge-vilda-is-under-fire-despite-winning-title/
However I've got my Ancestry.com open and ready to search.
*.*
Alexander Graham Bell: “I invented the telephone!”
His brother, Taco: “I’m working on some pretty big stuff too.”
*.*
Teacher: "Now, Susan, how may fingers have you?"
Susan: "Ten."
Teacher: "Right. Now if you lost four of them, what would you have?"
Susan: "No more piano lessons."
*.*
The average woman will own 111 purses in her lifetime.
The average man will be asked to hold 110 of them.
*.*
98.9% of people use fictitious statistics to back up their claims.
Quote of the Times;
“If liberals wanted their children to have access to gay porn books, they could just buy them on Amazon. They want YOUR children to have access to gay porn books.” - @RevolverNews
Link of the Times;
Guardian Angels Founder Curtis Sliwa Arrested in New York:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/guardian-angels-founder-curtis-sliwa-arrested-new-york/
Issue of the Times;
Study Shows Paper Straws More Harmful to Planet than Plastic by John Nolte
In today’s chapter of… Everything Environmentalists Tell Us Is Wrong … and I do mean … wrong … we will look at how paper straws do more damage to the planet than plastic straws.
Remember all that empty-headed virtue-signaling over freaken straws in 2018?
Paper straws are good!
Paper straws are virtuous!
Unless they are used to suck out the remains of a dead baby after an abortion, plastic straws are eeeevil.
Only Nazis use plastic straws … said celebrities, politicians, and media elites.
Yes, all of a sudden, and from out of nowhere, plastic straws became the Biggest Threat To Mother Earth Ever. This was one of those nonsense narratives schemed over in secret conference calls among the top one percent coordinated to hit America like a Blitzkrieg. No time for debate. No time to use science to justify the New Good Thing. It was this simple: bad people use plastic straws, and good people use paper straws.
President Trump trolls the Left over their obsession to ban plastic straws. pic.twitter.com/VJPVKC6ybu
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) July 19, 2019
Remember how USA Today, CNN, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the New York Times screamed out headlines about how America uses 500 million plastic straws per day—500 million—per day! The source for this number was a literal fourth grader, but let’s not let sourcing get in the way of a good narrative.
Remember how Democrat-run California banned plastic straws and wanted to imprison waiters who offer people plastic straws?
Remember how Her Vice Fraudulency Kamala “DumDum” Harris called for a national ban on plastic straws?
Remember how Democrat-run Washington DC banned plastic straws?
Meanwhile, these same Democrat-run cities have no problem passing out plastic hypodermic needles to junkies.
Anyway, guess what…? Yes, the inevitable has arrived. These fascist liars are wrong again—and I do mean … again.
You’re gonna love this…
“Straws made from plant-based materials, such as paper and bamboo, are often advertised as being more sustainable and eco-friendly than those made from plastic,” Thimo Groffen, PhD, author of the study and an environmental scientist at the University of Antwerp, said in a press release. “However, the presence of PFAS in these straws means that’s not necessarily true.”
Researchers on the study examined 39 brands of straws in Belgium from supermarkets, toy stores, fast-food chains, drug stores, and e-commerce stores. The straws were either made of paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel, or plastic, and the researchers tested each brand for concentrations of PFAS. Sixty-nine percent of the brands contained PFAS, with paper straws more likely to contain the chemicals. The researchers found 90% of paper straws had PFAS, compared to 80% of bamboo straws, 75% of plastic straws, and 40% of glass straws. Further, a paper straw brand was the brand with the highest PFAS concentration.
*throws head back, laughs, burns tire under baby bird nest*
I don’t care about any of this environmental stuff. I don’t litter. I’m kind to animals. I leave things as I found them. Other than that, no.
Recycling? No way. I’m no sucker. Everything comes from the Earth. And despite repeated requests, no one can explain to me how putting back in Mother Earth what came from Mother Earth harms Mother Earth. Recycling is stupid. Sure, you can make the planet less inhabitable for human beings by electing Democrats to run your city or manage your forest, but all these chemicals and whatnot come from the Earth, so what’s the big deal putting them back where they came from?
Back to the straws… How many times will America’s idiots fall for these lies?
These “experts” are 0-53 https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-climate-experts-are-0-41-with-their-doomsday-predictions/ with their predictions.
Who trusts someone who is 0-53, who has been wrong 53 times and correct zero times?
I would never use a paper straw because paper straws are stupid and inconvenient and have a taste. After 2018, I also used plastic straws because it was an easy way to feel like an outlaw.
But now that we’re being told not to use paper straws, I might use them.
You see, I’m an American, and that’s how Americans roll.
News of the Times;
Livid Hawaiians Slam Biden For Cracking Jokes, Lying About Wife:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/children-were-incinerated-ash-livid-hawaiians-slam-biden-cracking-jokes-lying-about-wife
Extent Of De-Banking Revealed:
https://www.technocracy.news/extent-of-de-banking-revealed-nearly-one-million-uk-accounts-shut-in-past-four-years/
Russia Releases 2,000 Page Report Proving Deep State & Big Pharma Manufactured Covid:
https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/russia-releases-2000-page-report-proving-deep-state-big-pharma-manufactured-covid-pandemic/
FLOODED, Just Months After Mocking God:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/los-angeles-dodgers-stadium-gets-flooded-just-months/
Flash mob loots LA Nordstrom in wild smash and grab style robbery:
https://www.outkick.com/flash-mob-loots-los-angeles-nordstrom-in-wild-smash-and-grab-style-robbery/
Russia is Creating a Village for White South African Refugees:
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/russia-is-creating-a-village-for-white-south-african-refugees-to-escape-black-terrorism/
Assault of Asian family investigated as hate crime:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/anti-asian-nyc-subway-attack
Seven officers drag 'autistic' girl, 16, kicking and screaming from Leeds home for committing a 'hate crime':
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12392871/Autistic-girl-16-arrested-dragged-screaming-home-Leeds-12-officers-saying-female-cop-looked-like-lesbian-nana.html
Antifa just “gamed” our crooked justice system and got away with murder:
https://www.revolver.news/2023/08/antifa-just-gamed-our-crooked-justice-system-and-got-away-with-murder-portland-andy-ngo/
Asylum seeker allegedly raped woman in front of 3-year-old:
https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/asylum-seeker-accused-of-raping-woman-in-front-of-3-year-old-in-ny/amp/
Gov. Kim Reynolds deploys Iowa National Guard to border:
https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2023/08/04/gov-kim-reynolds-deploys-iowa-national-guard-to-border-n569185
Organized crime and the homeless:
https://truthonthestreets.substack.com/p/organized-crime-and-the-homeless
Executive warns demise of Oxford Street is fuelling crime including US-style flashmob looting:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12396279/Oxford-Streets-demise-fuelling-rising-crime-M-S-boss-warns.html
Top Conservative Commentator: ‘White People Should Seriously Consider Walking Away from the Military’:
https://www.unz.com/sbpdl/jesse-kelly-top-conservative-commentator-states-white-people-should-seriously-consider-walking-away-from-the-military/
Spain's Women's World Cup controversy explained:
https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/spains-womens-world-cup-controversy-explained-why-coach-jorge-vilda-is-under-fire-despite-winning-title/
Estate?
Exercise works best first thing in the morning.
Before your brain figures out what you're doing.
*.*
As I get older, I notice that my wife and my hamstrings have a lot in common.
Both inflexible.
*.*
The burgeoning food and grocery delivery market is setting its sights on a lucrative niche as DoorDash has announced its new pickle jar-opening service for single women.
"DoorDash's new JarDash service provides a much-needed solution for women who lack the male spouses required to open jars of pickles, peaches, jams, and more," said a DoorDash spokesman. "With a tap of the app, women are minutes from having a man walk through their door and pop open that jar of hamburger dills with barely a strain."
DoorDash isn't the only company making their foray into helping single women with services typically provided by husbands. In fact, all major food delivery services are diving in:
Uber Prints - Single, female, and can't get your printer to work? Let an Uber Prints-certified man get that printer spitting out those backed-up recipes for one.
Postmates: Trash - As a single woman, drown in heaps of kitchen rubbish no longer and let a Postmates: Trash agent haul it all out for you. (For a nominal fee, he'll even drag the trash bin out to the street for pick up.)
Grub Hub: Basement Noise Check - Did you just wake from your twin bed to a sound that may or may not have come from the basement? Let our masculine Basement Noise Check team check it out for you. (Baseball bat upgrade available.)
*.*
Oneliners:
The only exercise I did this month was running out of money.
I'll be honest, I thought growing older would take longer.
It takes a lot of courage for a man to admit his wife is wrong.
Never trust a Facebook page with only one profile picture.
I don't always have time to study, but when I do, I don't.
The tongue must be heavy indeed, because so few people can't hold it.
Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
Centipede: An ant built to government specifications.
Waiting in the car is a pretty important part of being a Dad.
*.*
I'm actually not funny.
I'm just really mean and people think I'm joking.
Quote of the Times;
"The barbarian will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.” - Hilaire Belloc, This and That and the Other, 1912
Link of the Times;
Photos Leaked of Horrific January 6 Prisoner Abuse:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/national-disgrace-photos-leaked-horrific-january-6-prisoner/
Issue of the Times;
Real Estate Disaster by https://market-ticker.org/
Yeah, it’s coming.
Let's preface a bit: All Real Estate is local.
But -- it got a lot less specifically-local in the last three years, and bifurcated basically two ways: Blue and not-Blue.
The problem is that the dynamic of virus restrictions along with wildly ridiculous fiscal and monetary policy drove a dynamic that was utterly unsustainable and, fundamentally, stupid as a whole although for the people doing it the act looked smart at the time. There were several elements of this:
Work-from-home on a near-universal basis was forced by many employers. This, in high-cost areas, drove employees to think they could arbitrage their higher salary (a result of the high cost of living where they were, such as in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and similar) and keep it while moving somewhere much cheaper, such as Tennessee or Florida. For those who pulled this it was a massive windfall, provided they could sell their home in the high-cost place.
Forced-low interest rates meant mortgages were extraordinarily cheap. The brokers of same -- banks, independent shops and similar -- feasted on the fees, both for purchase money (see above for the flow on that!) and refinances. Many of those refinances were strategically wise, being committed just a few years after origination and not materially-lengthening the amortization clock. All of them wildly increased available consumer funds for spending, however, by reducing the monthly payment amount.
These two dynamics skyrocketed home prices. The All-US index went from ~450 to 625, a roughly 40% increase in two years. That is much greater than the explosion higher during the last couple of years of the housing bubble; that was a mere 14%. There were plenty of areas, including where I live, that prices of "real" (not AirBNB friendly) single-family homes roughly doubled and some of those "short-term rental opportunities" were even more-obscene with some of them tripling in three years time.
All of this was ridiculously stupid. The premise that employees operated on -- that they'd never have to set foot in an office again -- was crap. As the pandemic ended so did the curtailment of occupying office space and the cities could not survive with all that office space empty; the tax revenue plus all the retail business activity associated with those people being in the buildings during the day is utterly essential to their fiscal survivability.
Those who thought they could arbitrage their cost of living while keeping their "bonused up" salary are now getting a rude shock: Come back to the office, which we have leased and have to pay for, or be fired. Except..... those employees now live hundreds or even a couple thousand miles away! Worse, they bought houses on <3% mortgages and spent the rest and, while their "price paid" is what it is nothing is moving.
Around here I looked at recent sales. Among single-family homes there are an effective zero from roughly April forward. The top of the Realtor.com page for this county comes up with sales from March, February, May, a couple the first two weeks of June and a couple of (wildly-overpriced cabins) recently. This is the second week of August and Memorial Day to Labor Day, which is a couple of weeks away, is prime closing season here because the kids are out of school and similar.
The market is basically locked up and the reason is quite-clear: Those who bought at the top can't move; they have 3% mortgages and that $500,000 place has a $2,100 payment. The same $500,000 house at 7% carries a payment of $3,326!
The net present value of that payment on their house today is $316,000, a $184,000 loss!
It would be bad enough if they sold out and made the $180,000 profit, banked it, now have the much lower payment and thus the loss is basically a recapture of the profit they made on the other place. But nobody did that; you've seen the consumer sales figures, never mind truck prices shooting moon yet nobody seems to have trouble buying them. How many of those people spent the entire $180,000 and thus its gone?
Never mind wild increases in property tax that have come with those price increases. Some areas (this being one of them) have had that blunted but not all. Florida is one of the "not all" and on top of it, Florida has been monkey-hammered with insane insurance cost increases as well -- both in car and homeowners. The often-used excuse is "climate" but that's BS; hurricanes are not new, but what is new is taking what was a $500,000 house and turning into a million dollar one, so when it gets destroyed the value of the property destroyed and thus the claim size doubles too. What do you think that does to premiums? Now contemplate what happens when the $40,000 truck costs $80,000 and they get destroyed in storms as well. Why have insurance prices skyrocketed? Uh....... yeah.
If you are stuck you ought to contemplate what happens when the guy down the street is forced to sell. Someone in your area will be. One or more of them will be told "come back to work or be fired" and either have to leave irrespective of the financial damage or get fired, find they can't get a job that pays the mortgage anywhere near where they live now (this is an enormous problem here, for example) and thus be forced to puke up the property.
If you think you're immune from that think again. Once the first person does it all the comps within a few miles immediately fail appraisal if that next person tries to sell. The next person is then forced to lower their price lest the deal collapse -- and remember, they have to sell because they either have to return to their old area or get a new job -- and the cycle repeats.
The unwind on this is going to be ridiculously vicious; if you think 2008/09 was bad go back and look at the top-line changes over the two years .vs. the last two of the bubble again. This distortion was three times as bad on a national average basis and double what we saw in many areas during the 05-07 bubble years.
Everyone always tries to tell themselves "oh that can't happen again."
Well, you're right. It won't happen again.
It'll be three times as bad as it was last time and it is coming whether you like it or not.
News of the Times;
CIA and FBI have been modifying Wikipedia articles since 2007, admits Wiki’s co-founder:
https://tfiglobalnews.com/2023/08/03/cia-and-fbi-have-been-modifying-wikipedia-articles-since-2007-admits-wikis-co-founder/
Report Shows GBI Strategies as Part of Massive Left-Wing Dark Money Voting Operation:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/report-shows-gbi-strategies-as-part-massive-left/
Biden administration has given $2.35 BILLION to the Taliban since the withdrawal:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12386035/Biden-administration-given-2-35-BILLION-Taliban-withdrawal-Damning-report-reveals-huge-wastes-taxpayers-funds-20-years-Afghanistan.html
Soccer Coach Arrested for Drugging and Raping Multiple Children Identified as an Illegal Immigrant:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/07/update-tennessee-soccer-coach-arrested-drugging-raping-multiple/
FBI agent lied under oath about knowledge of Hunter Biden laptop, talks with Facebook
https://nypost.com/2023/08/07/fbi-agent-lied-about-knowledge-of-hunter-biden-laptop-talks-with-facebook/
Hunter Biden tax charges dismissed by federal judge:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/entertainment-celebrity/hunter-biden-tax-charges-dismissed-by-federal-judge-following-plea-deal-breakdown/ar-AA1fq6KU
Ecuadorian Right-Wing Presidential Candidate Fernando Villavicencio Assassinated:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/developing-ecuadorian-presidential-candidate-fernando-villavicencio-assassinated-campaign/
8-year-old arrested in Alabama for stealing car at gunpoint, getting into police chase:
https://nypost.com/2023/07/12/8-year-old-arrested-in-alabama-carjacking-police-chase/
Judge Aileen Cannon “Comes Out Swinging” and Delivers Blow to Jack Smith:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/just-judge-aileen-cannon-comes-swinging-delivers-blow/
The U.S. Has Just 22 EV Charging Points Per 1,000 Road Miles:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-US-Has-Just-22-EV-Charging-Points-Per-1000-Road-Miles.html
China's Economy Is A House Of Cards As Cracks Show In Finance System:
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/news/asia/2023/08/08/chinas-economy-is-a-house-of-cards-as-cracks-show-in-finance-system/
Los Angeles Has a Growing Typhus Problem:
https://gizmodo.com/los-angeles-has-growing-typhus-problem-thanks-to-fleas-1850708660
Radical Group Targeting Conservatives and Their Advertisers Plays Victim:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/imran-ahmed-lawsuit-silence-ccdhate-research/
Harry's Razors just partnered with this trans influencer to sell shaving gear:
https://notthebee.com/article/harrys-razors-partners-with-trans-influencer-to-sell-razors-and-lgbt-propaganda-ceo-refers-to-moms-and-dads-as-birthing-and-non-birthing-parents
This lady says out loud:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/6iDfhJUfEW96/
Before your brain figures out what you're doing.
*.*
As I get older, I notice that my wife and my hamstrings have a lot in common.
Both inflexible.
*.*
The burgeoning food and grocery delivery market is setting its sights on a lucrative niche as DoorDash has announced its new pickle jar-opening service for single women.
"DoorDash's new JarDash service provides a much-needed solution for women who lack the male spouses required to open jars of pickles, peaches, jams, and more," said a DoorDash spokesman. "With a tap of the app, women are minutes from having a man walk through their door and pop open that jar of hamburger dills with barely a strain."
DoorDash isn't the only company making their foray into helping single women with services typically provided by husbands. In fact, all major food delivery services are diving in:
Uber Prints - Single, female, and can't get your printer to work? Let an Uber Prints-certified man get that printer spitting out those backed-up recipes for one.
Postmates: Trash - As a single woman, drown in heaps of kitchen rubbish no longer and let a Postmates: Trash agent haul it all out for you. (For a nominal fee, he'll even drag the trash bin out to the street for pick up.)
Grub Hub: Basement Noise Check - Did you just wake from your twin bed to a sound that may or may not have come from the basement? Let our masculine Basement Noise Check team check it out for you. (Baseball bat upgrade available.)
*.*
Oneliners:
The only exercise I did this month was running out of money.
I'll be honest, I thought growing older would take longer.
It takes a lot of courage for a man to admit his wife is wrong.
Never trust a Facebook page with only one profile picture.
I don't always have time to study, but when I do, I don't.
The tongue must be heavy indeed, because so few people can't hold it.
Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
Centipede: An ant built to government specifications.
Waiting in the car is a pretty important part of being a Dad.
*.*
I'm actually not funny.
I'm just really mean and people think I'm joking.
Quote of the Times;
"The barbarian will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.” - Hilaire Belloc, This and That and the Other, 1912
Link of the Times;
Photos Leaked of Horrific January 6 Prisoner Abuse:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/national-disgrace-photos-leaked-horrific-january-6-prisoner/
Issue of the Times;
Real Estate Disaster by https://market-ticker.org/
Yeah, it’s coming.
Let's preface a bit: All Real Estate is local.
But -- it got a lot less specifically-local in the last three years, and bifurcated basically two ways: Blue and not-Blue.
The problem is that the dynamic of virus restrictions along with wildly ridiculous fiscal and monetary policy drove a dynamic that was utterly unsustainable and, fundamentally, stupid as a whole although for the people doing it the act looked smart at the time. There were several elements of this:
Work-from-home on a near-universal basis was forced by many employers. This, in high-cost areas, drove employees to think they could arbitrage their higher salary (a result of the high cost of living where they were, such as in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and similar) and keep it while moving somewhere much cheaper, such as Tennessee or Florida. For those who pulled this it was a massive windfall, provided they could sell their home in the high-cost place.
Forced-low interest rates meant mortgages were extraordinarily cheap. The brokers of same -- banks, independent shops and similar -- feasted on the fees, both for purchase money (see above for the flow on that!) and refinances. Many of those refinances were strategically wise, being committed just a few years after origination and not materially-lengthening the amortization clock. All of them wildly increased available consumer funds for spending, however, by reducing the monthly payment amount.
These two dynamics skyrocketed home prices. The All-US index went from ~450 to 625, a roughly 40% increase in two years. That is much greater than the explosion higher during the last couple of years of the housing bubble; that was a mere 14%. There were plenty of areas, including where I live, that prices of "real" (not AirBNB friendly) single-family homes roughly doubled and some of those "short-term rental opportunities" were even more-obscene with some of them tripling in three years time.
All of this was ridiculously stupid. The premise that employees operated on -- that they'd never have to set foot in an office again -- was crap. As the pandemic ended so did the curtailment of occupying office space and the cities could not survive with all that office space empty; the tax revenue plus all the retail business activity associated with those people being in the buildings during the day is utterly essential to their fiscal survivability.
Those who thought they could arbitrage their cost of living while keeping their "bonused up" salary are now getting a rude shock: Come back to the office, which we have leased and have to pay for, or be fired. Except..... those employees now live hundreds or even a couple thousand miles away! Worse, they bought houses on <3% mortgages and spent the rest and, while their "price paid" is what it is nothing is moving.
Around here I looked at recent sales. Among single-family homes there are an effective zero from roughly April forward. The top of the Realtor.com page for this county comes up with sales from March, February, May, a couple the first two weeks of June and a couple of (wildly-overpriced cabins) recently. This is the second week of August and Memorial Day to Labor Day, which is a couple of weeks away, is prime closing season here because the kids are out of school and similar.
The market is basically locked up and the reason is quite-clear: Those who bought at the top can't move; they have 3% mortgages and that $500,000 place has a $2,100 payment. The same $500,000 house at 7% carries a payment of $3,326!
The net present value of that payment on their house today is $316,000, a $184,000 loss!
It would be bad enough if they sold out and made the $180,000 profit, banked it, now have the much lower payment and thus the loss is basically a recapture of the profit they made on the other place. But nobody did that; you've seen the consumer sales figures, never mind truck prices shooting moon yet nobody seems to have trouble buying them. How many of those people spent the entire $180,000 and thus its gone?
Never mind wild increases in property tax that have come with those price increases. Some areas (this being one of them) have had that blunted but not all. Florida is one of the "not all" and on top of it, Florida has been monkey-hammered with insane insurance cost increases as well -- both in car and homeowners. The often-used excuse is "climate" but that's BS; hurricanes are not new, but what is new is taking what was a $500,000 house and turning into a million dollar one, so when it gets destroyed the value of the property destroyed and thus the claim size doubles too. What do you think that does to premiums? Now contemplate what happens when the $40,000 truck costs $80,000 and they get destroyed in storms as well. Why have insurance prices skyrocketed? Uh....... yeah.
If you are stuck you ought to contemplate what happens when the guy down the street is forced to sell. Someone in your area will be. One or more of them will be told "come back to work or be fired" and either have to leave irrespective of the financial damage or get fired, find they can't get a job that pays the mortgage anywhere near where they live now (this is an enormous problem here, for example) and thus be forced to puke up the property.
If you think you're immune from that think again. Once the first person does it all the comps within a few miles immediately fail appraisal if that next person tries to sell. The next person is then forced to lower their price lest the deal collapse -- and remember, they have to sell because they either have to return to their old area or get a new job -- and the cycle repeats.
The unwind on this is going to be ridiculously vicious; if you think 2008/09 was bad go back and look at the top-line changes over the two years .vs. the last two of the bubble again. This distortion was three times as bad on a national average basis and double what we saw in many areas during the 05-07 bubble years.
Everyone always tries to tell themselves "oh that can't happen again."
Well, you're right. It won't happen again.
It'll be three times as bad as it was last time and it is coming whether you like it or not.
News of the Times;
CIA and FBI have been modifying Wikipedia articles since 2007, admits Wiki’s co-founder:
https://tfiglobalnews.com/2023/08/03/cia-and-fbi-have-been-modifying-wikipedia-articles-since-2007-admits-wikis-co-founder/
Report Shows GBI Strategies as Part of Massive Left-Wing Dark Money Voting Operation:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/report-shows-gbi-strategies-as-part-massive-left/
Biden administration has given $2.35 BILLION to the Taliban since the withdrawal:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12386035/Biden-administration-given-2-35-BILLION-Taliban-withdrawal-Damning-report-reveals-huge-wastes-taxpayers-funds-20-years-Afghanistan.html
Soccer Coach Arrested for Drugging and Raping Multiple Children Identified as an Illegal Immigrant:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/07/update-tennessee-soccer-coach-arrested-drugging-raping-multiple/
FBI agent lied under oath about knowledge of Hunter Biden laptop, talks with Facebook
https://nypost.com/2023/08/07/fbi-agent-lied-about-knowledge-of-hunter-biden-laptop-talks-with-facebook/
Hunter Biden tax charges dismissed by federal judge:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/entertainment-celebrity/hunter-biden-tax-charges-dismissed-by-federal-judge-following-plea-deal-breakdown/ar-AA1fq6KU
Ecuadorian Right-Wing Presidential Candidate Fernando Villavicencio Assassinated:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/developing-ecuadorian-presidential-candidate-fernando-villavicencio-assassinated-campaign/
8-year-old arrested in Alabama for stealing car at gunpoint, getting into police chase:
https://nypost.com/2023/07/12/8-year-old-arrested-in-alabama-carjacking-police-chase/
Judge Aileen Cannon “Comes Out Swinging” and Delivers Blow to Jack Smith:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/just-judge-aileen-cannon-comes-swinging-delivers-blow/
The U.S. Has Just 22 EV Charging Points Per 1,000 Road Miles:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-US-Has-Just-22-EV-Charging-Points-Per-1000-Road-Miles.html
China's Economy Is A House Of Cards As Cracks Show In Finance System:
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/news/asia/2023/08/08/chinas-economy-is-a-house-of-cards-as-cracks-show-in-finance-system/
Los Angeles Has a Growing Typhus Problem:
https://gizmodo.com/los-angeles-has-growing-typhus-problem-thanks-to-fleas-1850708660
Radical Group Targeting Conservatives and Their Advertisers Plays Victim:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/imran-ahmed-lawsuit-silence-ccdhate-research/
Harry's Razors just partnered with this trans influencer to sell shaving gear:
https://notthebee.com/article/harrys-razors-partners-with-trans-influencer-to-sell-razors-and-lgbt-propaganda-ceo-refers-to-moms-and-dads-as-birthing-and-non-birthing-parents
This lady says out loud:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/6iDfhJUfEW96/
Several animals were savagely beaten in the making of this page, including but not limited to; kittens, rabbits, zebu, skunks, puppies, and platypus. Also several monkeys where force fed crack to improve their typing skills.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.