US Military Suicides Continued To Increase In 2023: Pentagon Report

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Suicides increased among U.S. military service members in 2023, continuing a gradual rise seen over the past decade, according to the Department of Defense’s annual report on suicide in the military.

American flags on display to honor U.S. military veterans in Handy Park, in Orange, Calif., on Nov. 11, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

A total of 523 service members—including active, reserve, and National Guard—died by suicide in 2023, up from 493 in 2022, according to the Pentagon’s report, while the total force rate of suicide deaths per 100,000 service members was 9 percent higher than in 2022, at 25.6 per 100,000.

The Pentagon’s report highlighted an upward trend since 2011 among active-duty military members: A total of 363 active-duty service members died by suicide in 2023, up from 331 in 2022 and 328 in 2021.

The report noted that military suicide rates have been comparable to those seen across the wider U.S. population between 2011 and 2022.

The findings “urgently demonstrate the need for the Department to redouble its work in the complex fields of suicide prevention and postvention. One loss to suicide is one too many,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a Nov. 14 statement.

The defense secretary said the Pentagon is focused on long-term, sustained initiatives to prevent suicide and is taking a “comprehensive” and “integrated” approach to increasing protective factors and decreasing the risk of suicide among service members.

“Our efforts aim to meet the military community where they are in their personal and professional lives—whether through bolstering financial readiness and support, building healthy relationships, improving mental health, or supporting them through life transitions,” Austin said.

The defense secretary noted that there has been a decrease from previous years in the number of military family members (spouses and dependent children combined) who died by suicide.

A total of 146 military family members died by suicide in 2022 compared to 165 in 2021, and 200 in 2020, according to the report. Numbers for 2023 were unavailable due to the time it takes to process data for this category.

The report noted that the complexity of suicidal behavior means it is difficult to identify a single root cause that might explain the trend.

Pentagon Working to Combat Suicide Rates

Overall, in 2023, 158 deaths were attributed to suicide among active-duty Army personnel, according to the report. Another 72 were reported among active-duty members of the Air Force, 70 among Navy members, and 61 among Marine Corps members, while two suicides were reported among members of the Space Force.

Among reserve members, 44 suicides were reported in the Army, 10 in the Marine Corps, eight in the Navy, and seven in the Air Force.

Similar to previous years, the majority of the deaths (around 60 percent) were among males under the age of 30, the Pentagon report found.

Firearms were the primary method of suicide deaths for service members and their families, according to the Pentagon, which noted the importance of promoting awareness regarding safely securing and storing firearms.

Speaking on Thursday, Austin touted the work the Pentagon is doing to tackle rising suicide rates among military personnel, including establishing the Suicide Prevention Response and Independent Review Committee in 2022 to conduct a review of clinical and nonclinical suicide prevention and response programs.

That review has resulted in more than 100 recommendations so far, Austin said.

In 2025, the Department of Defense also plans to invest $250 million in suicide prevention, Austin and other officials noted.

“We are dedicated to fighting for our Service members by fostering supportive team cultures and tackling the stigma of asking for help and other barriers to care,” Austin said.

“We continue working hard to improve the delivery of mental health care, bolster suicide prevention training, and educate people about lethal means safety. There’s still much more work to do, and we won’t let up.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, considering suicide, or engaging in substance abuse, dial or text the U.S. Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 to speak with a counselor. If you’re in the UK, call the Samaritans at 116123.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 06:30

Natural Gas Prices In US Northwest And Western Canada At Record Lows

The prices of natural gas at the key regional hubs in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Western Canada have hit this year the lowest level on record, amid rising production in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) and high inventory levels in these regions.

Monthly average natural gas spot prices at the northwestern U.S. and western Canada border pricing hubs reached historic lows in the first ten months of 2024, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday, citing data from Natural Gas Intelligence.

The Western Canada benchmark, Westcoast Station 2, saw the daily spot natural gas price average $1.04 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) through October, with the lowest monthly average of $0.31 per MMBtu in September.

The Westcoast Station 2 pricing hub is near Fort St. John, British Columbia, close to natural gas production activities in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.

At the key pricing hub for the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Northwest Sumas, the daily spot price averaged $1.87 per MMBtu in 2024 through October and reached its lowest monthly average this year of $0.97 per MMBtu in May. The monthly average price at Northwest Sumas for the first 10 months of this year was the lowest for this period of any year since the EIA began collecting data for this hub in 1998.

As Charles Kennedy writes at OilPrice.com,  the key reasons for the low regional gas prices were the high natural gas production in the WCSB since the end of 2022 and relatively high natural gas exports into the western United States.

To compare, the monthly average of the U.S. benchmark, Henry Hub, daily spot price was at $2.20 per MMBtu in October 2024, the EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) showed earlier this month.

The U.S. administration expects the Henry Hub price to average around $2.90 per MMBtu in 2025, as global demand for U.S. LNG exports, a component of U.S. natural gas demand, continues to increase.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 05:45

Europe Braces For War As Biden Shovels More Fuel On The Fire

Authored by Sam Faddis via AND Magazine,

As the mainstream press in the United States continues to obsess with imaginary threats from Trump’s army of “fascist” supporters, the Europeans are focused on the very real possibility that the Biden–Harris administration is going to start World War III on its way out the door. All over the continent, military and civilian authorities are working hard on civil defense preparations and planning for armed conflict with Russia.

Illustration via LBC

Sweden is sending out five million pamphlets to its citizens telling them how to prepare. The pamphlets include instructions on stockpiling food and finding shelter during a nuclear attack. Excerpts from the document include:

“An insecure world requires preparedness. The military threat to Sweden has increased and we must prepare for the worst - an armed attack.”

“The global security situation increases the risks that nuclear weapons could be used. In the event of an attack with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, take cover in the same way as in an air attack.”

“Shelter provides the best protection. After a couple of days, the radiation has decreased significantly.”

“If Sweden is attacked by another country, we will never give up. All information to the effect that resistance is to cease is false.”

The Swedes are not alone. Norway and Finland are doing the same thing, preparing their populations for nuclear war.

Finland has launched a new website advising people on how to prepare, and the Norwegians recently mailed out their own booklet giving people tips on how to prepare for the end of the world. The Norwegian booklet includes advice on how citizens should prepare themselves to live self-sufficiently for a week, with a list of long-life items to keep such as cans of beans, energy bars and pasta, and medicines in case of a nuclear event.

The Finnish website includes detailed instructions on how Finns should react in the event of war:

“The warning signal is a regularly rising and falling sound that lasts for one minute used to warn people of an immediate outdoor hazard.

In the event of a war, the signal is used to alert people about incidents as well as air strikes, for example.

In case of a military attack, you must immediately seek shelter in the nearest civil defence shelter or the best available shelter.”

The website also provides detailed guidance on how to try to continue to live in an area that has been irradiated.

“Prepare for a radiation hazard as follows:

• Learn the steps to seek shelter indoors and how to carry them out at home. Also learn them together with family members.

• Learn how to switch off ventilation at home.

• Make sure you have durable tape at home that you can use to seal off windows, doors and other areas with air flow.

• Know which communication channels are used: the 112 application, television, radio and the websites of the authorities

• Buy medicine iodine tablets at home according to the recommendation.”

The Germans are making their own preparations for the coming apocalypse. The German military is now advising companies on something called Operations Plan Germany. The paper is a thousand pages long and classified, but details have begun to leak publicly. For example, it lists all buildings and infrastructure facilities to be protected for national security reasons. It also provides significant detail on how Germany will transport hundreds of thousands of soldiers east to engage with Russian forces.

In Prague, a network of Cold War-era bunkers has now seen renewed interest. A spokeswoman from the Czech Republic's Fire Rescue Service told RFE/RL recently that, beginning in 2023, the service began updating "requirements for the shelter system and the shelters themselves." She did not elaborate on what those updates were.

Meanwhile, wasting no time after Biden’s approval of the use of American-made ballistic missiles against targets deep into Russian territory, Ukraine attacked a military installation in Russia’s western Bryansk region. "For the first time, Ukraine's Defense Forces struck Russian territory with ATACMS ballistic missiles." 

Putin, for his part, made good on his pledge to respond. He signed a decree updating and expanding Moscow's nuclear doctrine to allow for the use of atomic weapons in case of an attack on Russia by a nonnuclear actor that is backed by a nuclear power. The updated doctrine says Russia would consider using nuclear weapons after receiving “reliable information about the launching of a massive attack against it and missiles crossing the Russian border."

Lest anyone think that the prospect of a Russian nuclear attack on Europe is purely the stuff of science fiction, we should recall that secret documents obtained earlier this year by the Financial Times revealed an extensive Russian plan to target strategic sites deep inside Europe with nuclear missiles. This plan was part of a broader strategy to overwhelm NATO forces and win a conflict with the alliance. The documents included maps of targets in countries such as the United Kingdom and France.

The Europeans understand exactly what is happening and are bracing for what may now be inevitable. Joe and Kamala, and whoever advises them, are shoveling more fuel on the fire and doing their level best to start a world war as they head for the door.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 05:00

The Link Between Blood Types And Risks of COVID-19, Cancer, And Other Diseases

Authored by Ellen Wan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Blood types play a crucial role not only in ensuring safe blood transfusions but also in influencing various health risks. Numerous studies suggest that genetically determined blood types may increase susceptibility to both infectious and non-infectious diseases, including COVID-19, heart disease, and allergies.

chemical industry/Shutterstock

Blood is categorized into four main types—A, B, AB, or O—based on the types of antigens present on the surface of red blood cells. Antigens are proteins found on red blood cells that trigger an immune response when encountering unfamiliar substances, such as certain bacteria, Dr. Douglas Eric Guggenheim, a physician at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, explained in a 2020 Penn Medicine article.

Increased Risk of Viral Infections

A 2023 study from Harvard Medical School, published in the journal Blood, found that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, preferentially targets type A blood cells.

“We show that the part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that’s key to enabling the virus to invade cells displays affinity for blood group A cells, and the virus in turn also shows a preferential ability to infect blood group A cells,” Dr. Sean R. Stowell, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said in a press release.

Type A blood cells are more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection than type O blood cells, Stowell noted. “Among a group of several thousand people, some studies suggest that those with blood group A may be 20 percent more likely to be infected after exposure to SARS-CoV-2 compared with those who have blood group O.” Subsequent experiments indicated that the Omicron variant demonstrated an even stronger preference for infecting type A blood cells than the original virus.

Other recent studies have explored the mechanisms linking blood type to susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2.  One study showed that levels of ACE2 protein, the receptor that the virus binds to for cell entry, were significantly higher in people with type A blood compared to other blood types. The researchers also found that the binding rate of the spike protein to red blood cells was highest in people with type A blood and lowest in people with type O.

Despite these associations, when assessing a person’s risk of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, factors such as age and pre-existing chronic conditions, like heart disease, tend to have more significant effects on the risk of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection than blood type.

Increased Risk of Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer because it tends to grow quickly, can rapidly invade surrounding organs, and is often difficult to detect early. One study found a statistically significant association between ABO blood group and pancreatic cancer risk. Compared to people with type O blood, those with blood types A, AB, and B had a 32, 51, and 72 percent higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer, respectively.

Additionally, a comprehensive review found that people with type A blood were more susceptible to Helicobacter pylori, a known risk factor for stomach cancer, thus increasing their likelihood of developing the disease. In contrast, type O blood was associated with a lower risk of several cancers, including colorectal, gastric, and breast cancer.

Higher Risk of Other Serious Conditions

Blood type has been found to be associated with an increased risk of other several serious health conditions.

Increased Risk of Heart Disease

Blood type may also be linked to the risk of developing heart disease. A meta-analysis from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, analyzing health data from nearly 90,000 individuals over more than 20 years, found that people with type O blood had the lowest risk of developing coronary heart disease. After adjusting for cardiovascular risk factors, participants with blood types A, B, and AB had an increased risk of coronary heart disease by 6, 15, and 23 percent, respectively, when compared to people with type O blood.

Increased Risk of Allergic Diseases

There is also a clear association between blood type and allergic diseases. A review found that people with type O blood were more prone to allergic rhinitis and asthma compared to those with non-O blood group. In contrast, people with non-O blood types had a higher likelihood of developing atopic dermatitis, with the highest prevalence among those with type B blood, followed by type A.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 22:35

Visualizing The Distribution Of Global Wealth

Wealth distribution varies significantly across the world’s regions, reflecting the economic disparities shaped by differences in development, resource availability, and financial access.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Kayla Zhu, visualizes the share of adults in each global region who fall into four wealth bands (figures in USD):

• Under $10K

• $10K to $100K

• $100K to $1M

• Over $1M

The data comes from the UBS Global Wealth Report 2024 and encompasses 56 markets representing an estimated 92.2% of total global wealth.

The UBS report’s data does not include a majority of African countries.

Global Wealth by Region in 2023

The majority of adults in the lowest wealth bracket (under $10K) are concentrated in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, where nearly 70% of people in this wealth bracket being from the region.

On the other end, the highest wealth bracket (over $1M) is dominated by the Americas along with the grouped region of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

The Americas, which includes North and South America, have the highest share (42.7%) of global adults with wealth over $1 million, showing a concentration of high net worth individuals in this region.

At the country level, the U.S is home to nearly 22 million people with a wealth exceeding one million dollars, the highest number of millionaires in any country according to analysis by UBS.

This means that in 2023, the U.S. hosted 38% of the world’s millionaires.

Mainland China ranked second with just over 6 million millionaires, almost twice the number of the third-ranked country, the United Kingdom.

To see the global distribution of the ultra-wealthy, check out this graphic that visualizes where the 626,619 individuals with a net worth of $30 million or more live.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 22:10

Andrew Jackson In The 21st Century

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Trying to gain a greater understanding of what is happening in the United States today, history provides some guidance.

We can skip most of the presidencies of the 20th century for comparison.

A statue of the seventh President of the US Andrew Jackson is seen in Lafayette Park across from the White House on Oct. 30, 2008. Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images

Ronald Reagan was more in the mold that Donald Trump is breaking.

Richard Nixon was popular but was hamstrung by the Vietnam War and the dollar crisis.

FDR was popular but his sweeping victory in 1936 reflected economic panic. While he had the House and Senate, he faced a hard barrier with the Supreme Court that struck down his beloved legislation.

Woodrow Wilson won in 1912 only because the opposition was split.

There is a greater prospect of fundamental change with the second Trump term than in any living memory.

For an illuminating comparison, let’s return to the year 1824. Andrew Jackson ran for president and won a plurality of the popular and electoral votes. But he did not get the majority. The election was thrown to the House of Representatives, which produced a surprising result: John Quincy Adams became president thanks to the support of Henry Clay who was promised the position of Secretary of State.

That sense of being robbed of the presidency festered deeply among Jackson’s fan base and he came back four years later, more fired up than ever. The election of 1828 was utterly sweeping. He ran an unapologetic populist campaign against the national bank and corrupt insiders in Washington. The turnout broke all records, and so did the results. Jackson won by a landslide, securing 178 electoral votes against John Adams’ 83.

With this mandate, Jackson and his followers utterly destabilized Washington, firing vast numbers of executive bureaucrats who were considered disloyal, and fought the national bank while pushing for gold and silver as money. His hiring of loyalists to top positions was decried as the “spoils system” that was ended fully by the Progressive Era, which amounted to a revenge of the professional bureaucrats.

The policies he pursued–keeping the government mostly constrained by the Constitution, keeping the peoples’ interests front and center, and devolving power to the states–prepared the ground for the United States to rise from a small post-colonial outpost to the world’s greatest economic and military power by century’s end.

There were two major missteps that have ruined his reputation in the history books. Jackson was a states’ right guy on all matters but for matters of the tariffs (he threatened an invasion of South Carolina during the so-called Nullification Crisis) and, in addition, he pursued a cruel policy regarding Native lands, which he ordered to be taken, leading to ghastly humanitarian results including the famous Trail of Tears.

That said, he did return government to the people and his impact on Washington was enormous, especially as regards his fight against the National Bank and paper money.

Murray Rothbard summarizes Jackson’s presidency as follows:

“It is difficult to generalize about Jackson; his fiery temperament, his capacity for bitter personal hatred, his autocratic taste for personal power which blossomed in his early military campaigns, and his weak grasp of political principles led him into many inconsistent and wrong-headed acts. Underneath these weaknesses, petty whims, hatreds, and inconsistencies, however, there is clearly discernible a basic set of political and economic principles. These were, in brief, the principles of pure Jeffersonian Democracy: thorough-going ‘hard money,’ with the eradication of inflationary paper money and reliance on gold and silver; laissez-faire-strict adherence to free enterprise in a market unhampered by government subsidies, tariffs, heavy bureaucratic expenditures, special privileges, or heavy taxation; firm insistence on states’ rights. In foreign policy, the guide is America first, last, and always, with no entangling alliances and an attitude of firmness, cordiality, but profound suspicion toward all foreign countries, particularly Great Britain.”

Rothbard concludes: “Jackson deserves a cherished place in the hearts of all Americans: By the time Jackson left office, for the first time and the last time in the history of America, we had wiped out all of our public debt. Old Hickory’s success in liquidating the national debt is one of the most glorious accomplishments in American annals. And it provides us with a vital clue to the true nature of his political philosophy.”

This is the strongest historical precedent we have for the meaning of what is happening right now. Donald Trump astonished the world with his victory in 2016. His loss four years later followed the calamitous policy response to the arrival of a respiratory virus. Trump initially pushed for lockdowns. Once having changed his mind about the policy, he was unable to restrain the bureaucracies that had been unleashed on the population with the ostensible goal of minimizing infection and then forcing public adoption of an experimental shot.

There was a widespread belief among his supporters that something was sketchy about the 2020 results, which had been unduly influenced by mail-in ballots pushed by the CDC, which had said that standing in voting lines was too dangerous for the spread of the virus. Trump himself never tired of arguing that the election itself was stolen. While that claim was inadmissible in polite society, and never seriously considered by the courts, Trump’s team and his followers were thoroughly convinced that he otherwise would have won.

For four years, Team Trump plotted their return, with an election strategy based on three key pillars. First, they would work to minimize voter fraud and mail-in ballots, urging the passage of voter ID laws and cracking down on possible corruption of the rolls. Second, they would push disenfranchised voter blocs among men under 40 to get themselves registered and vote. Third, they would work to create a mass cultural movement deploying Trump to do what he does best, which is to rally people at mass events.

Later in the campaign, the Trump coalition grew dramatically with the inclusion of a parallel effort by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. A lifetime litigator, RFK had written the most compelling books to explain how it is that Trump’s first term came to be subverted by the pharmaceutical industry in combination with national-security bureaucracies. His broader interests have long concerned health freedom and the elimination of subsidies for big agricultural interests that had driven smaller and organic farmers to the margins of food suppliers.

Kennedy attempted to challenge sitting president Joseph Biden for the nomination but found himself locked out. Next he attempted an independent bid but found himself blocked at every turn, plus worried that his presence in the election would operate as a spoiler bloc that could put Biden back in power.

Once he decided to link up with Trump over issues of food and medical freedom, they both found common interests in battling Big-Tech censorship, which in turn attracted the interests of Elon Musk. This disruptive entrepreneur had purchased Twitter with the goal of turning it into a free-speech platform in defiance of all the throttling and bans of the years prior.

This combination of RFK, Jr., Trump, and Musk amounts to one of the biggest realignments in modern American history. It combines 1990s-era “crunchy liberalism,” with a pro-peace America First foreign policy, with a 2000s-era disruptive tech focus, with a populist push against big everything (media, government, academia, medicine, corporations, finance).

Much of this realignment comes in the wake of the tumultuous years of COVID, in which businesses, schools, churches, and travel were shut in the name of health, with the very opposite result.

The modern incarnation of the Jacksonian movement has embodied itself in a series of popular acronyms that summarize the agenda: MAHA (Make America Healthy Again), MAGA (Make America Great Again), and DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency).

There is simply no chance that even the finest political prognosticator could have anticipated this merger of interests in defiance of all the old categories of left and right. As regards the old categories of race and religion, there has never been a popular political movement to draw from such a wide diversity of people, united more in their celebration of working-class interests than in opposition to professional and overclass hegemony.

Something very similar came together in the coalition that brought Andrew Jackson to power in 1828, complete with a storied past of struggle and triumph and a hard-core promise to return government to the people while taking it away from the privileged special interests. So far Trump’s picks for his cabinet posts seem to be following the Jacksonian script as well: people loved by the base but loathed by the establishment. Jackson got away with the same mainly by leveraging his personal popularity and carefully deploying that political capital against all resistors.

Jackson made some terrible errors but also did good as president. There is much from which the Trump team can learn from this experience. There is every reason to believe that the next four years could be equally as disruptive and leave a permanent mark on the history of this nation.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 21:45

China's Economy Is Larger Than 30 Asian Economies Combined

The world’s second-largest economy sometimes suffers from its own success: it’s hard to comprehend how big it really is.

To help put things in perspective, this map, via Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao, compares China’s economy with East, Southeast, South, and Central Asia: a combined entity of 30 other countries labeled as “Rest of Asia”.

Data is sourced from the UN and the IMF as of 2024. Countries from Western Asia (i.e. the Middle East) and Russia (which spans Europe and Asian continents) haven’t been included, and data was unavailable for North Korea.

How China Stacks Up vs. Asian Economies

With an $18 trillion economic output in 2024, China’s GDP is nearly $2 trillion larger than 30 economies combined: $16.5 trillion.

That list of 30 countries includes other Asian heavyweights like: Japan ($4.1 trillion), India ($3.9 trillion), and South Korea ($1.87 trillion), the world’s 4th, 5th, and 12th largest economies.

More than 2.9 billion people inhabit this bloc of countries, compared to China’s 1.4 billion residents. The per capita GDP reveals the imbalance in productivity: $12,870 for China versus $5,583 for the rest of Asia.

Why the Chinese Economy Slowdown Matters

Now that comprehending the size of China’s economy is somewhat more feasible, it makes more sense why the post-pandemic slowdown has rung alarm bells for economists around the world.

It’s easier to think of it less as one country in an economic slump, and more as, say, 30 countries in a bit of a bother.

Since 2010, China’s economy has added roughly $1 trillion—the size of Saudi Arabia—every single year. From 2012–2021, China contributed nearly 39% to global growth by itself, more than the G7 countries combined.

It’s not an exaggeration to say the world economy would look very different without China—especially for the manufacturing and industrial sectors, where it commands a dominant market position.

Falling Chinese demand hurts all the countries who export to China—and this includes large parts of Asia and Africa.

Meanwhile, in an effort to sell elsewhere, Chinese businesses have shifted focus to international markets, already putting them in confrontational crosshairs with the U.S. and EU over unfair trade practices. More tariffs could raise the cost of goods and services to consumers around the world.

This map is part of a series where we visualize how different countries around the world stack up against their neighbors. Check out how Germany Compares to Half of Europe, or How Africa Can Be Divided into Two Halves for more interesting conversation starters.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 21:20

Musk Goes All In On 'Judge Dredd' Matt Gaetz, Notes 'Douchebag' Garland Never Brought Charges

Elon Musk has come out swinging for Rep. Matt Gaetz, as the Florida lawmaker and President-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general faces scrutiny over sexual misconduct allegations that may throw his Senate confirmation into disarray.

"Matt Gaetz has 3 critical assets that are needed for the AG role: a big brain, a spine of steel and an axe to grind," Musk wrote in a Tuesday post on X. "He is the Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison," Musk continued, adding "Gaetz will be our Hammer of Justice."

Musk also addressed the allegations, saying he considers them "worth less than nothing," as "Under our laws, a man is considered innocent until proven guilty.

"If AG Garland (an unprincipled douchebag) could have secured a conviction against Gaetz, he would have, but he knew he could not.

"Case closed."

As for these accusations against him, I consider them worth less than nothing. Under our laws, a man is considered innocent until proven guilty.

If AG Garland (an unprincipled douchebag) could have secured a conviction against Gaetz, he would have, but he knew he could not.…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024

Senators on both sides of the aisle are requesting more information into a House ethics probe of Gaetz which allegedly contains accusations that Gaetz paid for sex with a woman who was 17 at the time. The DOJ investigated the allegations, but decided in February of 2023 not to file any charges against him. Gaetz has denied the allegations.

 

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 20:45

Russia Crude Exports Tumble To Two Month Low

Russian crude oil shipments dropped to a two-month low as loadings from Russia’s Western ports slumped, tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg showed on Tuesday.

In the four weeks to November 17, Russian crude oil exports by sea dipped to 3.28 million barrels per day (bpd), down by 150,000 bpd compared to the previous four-week average to November 10, according to the data reported by Bloomberg’s Julian Lee. The decline in exports was the biggest since the end of July.  Daily crude flows in the week to Nov. 17 slumped by about 740,000 barrels to 2.83 million, dropping to their lowest since the first seven days of July.

The decline was driven by lower flows from the country’s Baltic, Black Sea and Arctic ports, while shipments from the Pacific remained unchanged.

A total of 26 tankers loaded 19.8 million barrels of Russian crude in the week to Nov. 17, vessel-tracking data and port-agent reports show. The volume was down sharply from a revised 24.98 million barrels on 32 ships the previous week.

The weekly decline was mostly the result of a 30% slump in shipments from Russia’s export terminals on the Baltic and Black Seas. It could have been the result of increased refining rates in the second week of November, which left lower volumes of crude available for exports, according to Bloomberg.

In October, as available refinery capacity in Russia dipped, crude oil shipments hit a four-month high, as heavy domestic refinery maintenance left more crude available for export.

Russia exported on average 3.47 million bpd of crude in the four weeks to October 20, up by 140,000 bpd compared to the four-week average to October 13, Bloomberg data showed at the time.

That was a consequence of refining rates at Russian crude processing facilities dropping to their lowest level for more than two years, since May 2022.

Crude exports from Russia could soon rise again, as some refineries are struggling with losses amid the gasoline export ban, currently in place until December 31, 2024.

Russia’s refineries have reportedly started to reduce run rates and some are considering shutting in operations, as the facilities are struggling with hefty losses amid export restrictions, rising oil prices, sanctions, and Ukrainian drone attacks.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 20:30

Recommending Brig. Gen. Schwalier For The Air Force 'Plucking Board'

Authored by Forrest Marrion via RealClearPolitics,

In the mid-1990s, Brig. Gen. Terryl J. Schwalier “was a rising star in the Air Force,” as Dr. Rebecca Grant wrote in 2006. A decade earlier, in June 1996 he was finishing his one-year tour as a provisional wing commander in Saudi Arabia and was slated for promotion to major general. Then disaster struck. On June 25, 1996, a terrorist truck-bomb – “unprecedentedly large” – exploded outside the building in which his airmen were billeted. Nineteen died. Two hundred forty were wounded. Khobar Towers was among the worst losses of U.S. Air Force life at a deployed location in a single hostile incident in memory. In the investigation that followed, defense secretary William Cohen faced political pressure to assign blame. He buckled, going against his military advisors’ counsel, and, instead, denying Schwalier his second star. The scapegoated general retired.

The decision was unjust in the eyes of many in the know. For starters, Schwalier had not been lax in terms of “force protection (FP).” In fact, he had implemented some one hundred thirty separate FP measures during his deployment and made nearly all the changes recommended by a vulnerability assessment. As the writer recalls, Schwalier’s story and the tragedy of Khobar Towers was part of the assigned readings at the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College the following year. Furthermore, a key part of the Pentagon’s “outside probe” headed by a retired four-star was badly flawed on the size of the bomb used. The actual bomb – containing “at least 20,000 pounds of TNT” according to the Defense Special Weapons Agency – was at least four times larger than stated in the report, skewing further the judgment against Schwalier. In the years after Schwalier’s retirement, several attempts to overturn the denial of his promotion fell short.

In July 1997, days prior to the announcement of Cohen’s decision to deny Schwalier his promotion, Air Force chief of staff General Ron Fogleman resigned. He did so based on principle, stating to Aerospace Power Journal, “I just could not begin to imagine facing the Air Force after Secretary Cohen made the decision to cancel General Schwalier’s promotion.” In another forum, the chief stated, “I simply lost respect and confidence in the leadership that I was supposed to be following.”

For the record, I have zero relationship with the brigadier general. About ten years ago I was privileged to meet General Fogleman – though unplanned – at the top of the escalator outside the Pentagon, as each of us waited to meet someone. We had three minutes together. Even those who have never met General Fogleman hold him in highest regard. He is universally respected and admired. As far as I know, he was the last four-star to resign on principle.

We need more like him. In the last several years, as more and more are realizing – or at least are finding the courage to speak up – the Air Force has lost its way. Despite the Service infamously prioritizing its pilots’ pigmentation over their proficiency – claiming “too many white pilots” – based on leadership’s commitment to a racist ideology (DEI), how many senior officers have resigned as General Fogleman did?

Meanwhile, following President Trump’s reelection, some, like retired one-star and former defense policy senior official Anthony Tata, are reporting, “The Pentagon is hyper politicized and needs a thorough vetting to include senior active duty military personnel” who are participating in discussions on how to undermine the new administration. National security reporter Haley Britzky, warns, “Pentagon officials are having informal conversations about how the [defense department] would respond if Donald Trump issues orders to deploy active-duty troops domestically [or] fire large swaths of apolitical staffers.” This is not news, but common knowledge.

Precedent exists for holding special administrative boards to determine who stays and who goes among Air Force (and all Services’) senior leaders once the new Trump administration takes over. Recently I wrote about General George C. Marshall’s “plucking board” at the outset of World War Two (RealClearDefense, Sep. 26, 2024). As the U.S. Army chief of staff, Marshall was finally in a position to address the seniority system both he and the Army had long suffered under. As the army expanded in 1940 and ‘41 Marshall built a command system “to be able to put my finger on the man I wanted” for particular leadership posts. Marshall biographer Forrest Pogue wrote, “. . . he was preparing an army for war and felt that the selection of those who could lead in battle was a duty he owed the state.”

To ensure impartiality in the process of eliminating unfit senior officers from consideration for higher-level and combat commands, Marshall appointed six retired officers, headed by his predecessor, General Malin Craig. Marshall’s plucking board was “empowered to remove from line promotion any officer for reasons deemed good and sufficient.” Those removed were given one year to retire. As Marshall told the board, “Critical times are upon us.”

We’re in the same boat today. Except that today’s threats come not only from overseas: since the Obama administration, our once-professional military has been politicized, thanks to neo-Marxist ideology, personal enmity, or misguided judgment.

As the above warnings from knowledgeable Pentagon observers indicate, the second Trump administration will need to conduct a thorough house-cleaning of the military officer corps, many of whom wear stars. This is where Brig. Gen. Terry Schwalier comes in. For the Air Force, arguably there are few (if any) retired senior officers as well-suited to join, or lead, a plucking board.

As one lifelong leading aerospace historian and scholar writes:

You want people who can think beyond their service, who don’t have a grudge and “score-settling” attitude . . . who are in their late 60s and 70s to give them detachment, who are recognized stand-outs, and preferably 3 or 4-star so they have “big picture” experience. Finally, and most importantly, all should be combat veterans AND combat commanders.

He adds: Schwalier “meets the criteria.” Should the President decide on that course of action and bring Schwalier back on active duty, promotion to 3-stars is most appropriate.

As in 1940, the United States faces rogue actors abroad, this time led by China and several lesser would-be aggressors. As countless military historians and others observe, leadership remains the key to authentic deterrence based on strength, and, should deterrence fail, to military success. Having decided to prioritize wasteful, degrading, and morale-killing pursuits such as diversity-equity, searching for imagined extremists in the ranks, and identity politics instead of merit-based combat readiness and unit cohesion, the current Air Force and Pentagon senior leadership must be vetted, corrected, or sent into retirement following a professional, impartial, timely evaluation. The clock is ticking before a real fight reveals very quickly that every DEI program and billet was terribly misguided and a waste of money that was needed for combat readiness.

To borrow the term of Marshall’s day, the senior officers complicit in such priorities and activities, are unfit. Whether it’s by a Schwalier-led plucking board or otherwise, they need to go.

Forrest L. Marion is a retired Department of the Air Force military historian. His most recent work is Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation's Sixth Armed Service (Naval Institute Press, 2023).

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 20:05

Biden Rushes $275M More In Weapons To Ukraine Before Trump Enters Office

There are just two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, and Ukraine hawks are feeling the pressure. For them, apparently it's time to flood Zelensky's coffers with as much money as possible ahead of the possibility that Trump may cut off the tap, after having on the campaign trail called Zelensky "the greatest salesman on earth".

"The Pentagon will send Ukraine at least $275 million in new weapons, US officials said Tuesday, as the Biden administration rushes to do as much as it can to help Kyiv fight back against Russia in the remaining two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office," The Associated Press reports Tuesday afternoon.

Via Shutterstock.com

And alarmingly, the same report observes that "In rapid succession this week, President Joe Biden gave Ukraine the authority to fire longer-range missiles deeper into Russia and then Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons."

Contents or details of the new aid package have yet been made public, but there could be more missiles and equipment supporting the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which was used by the Ukrainians Tuesday against Russian territory, marking a new escalation.

The geopolitical analysis blog Moon of Alabama has zeroed in on why US authorization for ATACMS attacks on Russian soil is such a big deal:

We do not know yet if the new authorized use for ATACMS munition on targets within Russia is only relevant for the cluster ammunition missile type or for high explosive ATACMS missiles with a reach of 300 kilometer.

However, the Russian President Vladimir Putin has correctly pointed out that ANY use of ATACMS requires the involvement of NATO (U.S/UK) assets for acquiring the targeting data and for planning and programming the missile's mission.

Any use of ATACMS onto Russian proper is thus an act of war by NATO against the Russian Federation. The Russian response to such will be appropriate but may well surface in a theater far from Ukraine.

Indeed President Putin and Kremlin officials have echoed precisely this point of view of late, which is also why Putin signed into effect a new expansion of Russia's nuclear doctrine.

According to the newly expanded doctrine, in the event Western powers assist another nation in a major attack on Russian soil, those same Western powers will also be held responsible. This can trigger Russian nuclear launch. But so far Russian officials have made it clear that they do not anticipate nuclear war.

Clearly the Kremlin is awaiting patiently the return of Donald Trump to the White House, hoping this will stop NATO's steady escalation of involvement in the war on Ukraine's behalf.

Meanwhile, with all that money for Ukraine floating around, and constant transfers of arms, this exchange is important to recall...

Stewart uses some bad language here, but consider for a moment her attitude. This is what elitism looks like. This is what people on on the left and right are upset about. Elites who laugh at millions of dollars being wasted, precisely because they can't be found... pic.twitter.com/GnBeONkXDC

— Fr. George (@FrGeorgedeIdaho) November 19, 2024

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 19:40

Minnesota Election Judge Faces Felony Charges For Allowing Unregistered People To Vote

Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

An election judge in Minnesota is now facing serious criminal charges after he allowed multiple unregistered residents to cast votes anyway in the recent election.

As reported by Breitbart, Judge Timothy Michael Scouton was responsible for overseeing the election process in Badoura Township, a small town with a population of roughly 100 people.

Hubbard County Auditor Kay Rave filed a complaint after she determined that she could not find completed registration forms among the ballots she received from Scouton’s jurisdiction.

This complaint led to an investigation by the Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office.

Eventually, another judge who worked with Scouton on election night came forward and told police that Scouton explicitly ordered voters to not fill out the Minnesota Voter Registration Application.

A third judge said that Scouton simply told new voters to sign the back of a book rather than fill out any official forms.

At least 11 people voted illegally as a result of Scouton’s actions.

He was arrested last week and faces two felony charges: One count of accepting the vote of an unregistered vote, and one count of neglect of duty by an election official.

In a statement following the arrest, the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office issued a statement.

“These allegations are extremely serious and must be fully and thoroughly investigated,” the statement read.

“Election judges take an oath to administer elections in accordance with the law, a deliberate failure to do so is unlawful and a betrayal of the public trust.”

“Minnesota’s elections rely on the dedication and public service of 30,000 people and they are required to conduct their work fairly, impartially, and within the letter of the law,” the statement added.

“The Hubbard County Auditor took prompt and correct action in notifying local authorities of the uncovered discrepancies so they could investigate.”

Scouton had finished his basic election judge training in July of this year.

Adding to the complications of the case, it was revealed that Scouton’s son worked as an election judge on Election Night as well, and was responsible for registering applications.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 19:15

National Average Fuel Prices Nearing Three Year Low

No sooner did President Trump win the election in a landslide than national average gasoline prices are set to fall below the $3 per gallon mark heading into the holiday season in the U.S.

In fact, national average fuel prices have dropped to their lowest since January, nearing 2021 levels, with further declines likely as West Texas Intermediate crude hovers near its lowest since September, according to Yahoo Finance/Bloomberg.

The Yahoo Finance/Bloomberg article states that AAA predicts 71.7 million people will travel by car for Thanksgiving, the highest since before the pandemic. Gas prices, averaging $3.08 last week, could drop below $3 nationally, with drivers in some states east of the Rockies paying as little as $2.25 to $2.50 per gallon.

Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at fuel tracker GasBuddy, told Yahoo/Bloomberg: “Things at the pump are starting to feel normal for most Americans.”

He added: "In some parts of the deep South, where gasoline taxes are low, we’re seeing gas prices that would be more equivalent of the nostalgia everyone has for the good times.”

“Refineries are struggling under weak crack spreads already, meaning that gasoline demand is anemic, and they’re having a hard time finding a home for all the gasoline they’re producing,” DeHaan concluded. 

Meanwhile Yahoo/Bloomberg notes gasoline demand rebounded above last year’s levels, with nationwide inventories dropping and U.S. refiners producing record amounts to counter a decline in imports. However, the brief Thanksgiving travel surge is unlikely to significantly boost refiners' margins. 

Traffic congestion, unlike gas prices, will soar, with cities like Boston, New York, and Los Angeles experiencing more than double their usual traffic, according to INRIX.

And international travel is booming, with flight bookings up 23% and cruise bookings rising 20% compared to last year. Air travelers are also benefiting from lower costs, with international flight prices down 5%, according to AAA.

While the decline hasn't been attributable to President Trump's re-election just yet, Zero Hedge contributor Quoth the Raven predicted in a note on Monday morning column that Trump in office likely means less geopolitical volatility, and eventually, a continued tailwind for lower gas prices. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 18:50

A Revolutionary Time

Authored by Christopher Roach via American Greatness,

Though it has only been two weeks, it feels like a long time since Trump won the election, not least because of his rapid-fire release of cabinet nominations. The cabinet is important and demonstrates presidential priorities, as well as his judgment.

Trump’s cabinet so far matches the themes he expressed during the campaign. He is prioritizing immigration, dismantling the Deep State, and uprooting the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)” racket. There is also a “national unity” aspect to his picks because of the inclusion of prominent former Democrat supporters like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.

So far, things are also running noticeably smoother than they did in 2016. There was a lot of preliminary planning and organization, and it shows.

The Outsider Cabinet

The biggest sign of significant change is the presence of outsiders. His first cabinet included many Bush-administration retreads, military men whom Trump overestimated, and business associates who had no apparent convictions. There was a lot of disloyalty, which magnified the endemic disloyalty of career civil servants.

Looking over Trump’s picks to date, Pete Hegseth seems tasked with prosecuting Trump’s war on “wokeism” within the military, but I am concerned about his lack of experience in managing large organizations. Affirmative action is a major problem in the military, but so too is the bloated procurement system. It needs to be fixed.

Hegseth seems to be a pure gut pick: Trump thought he sounded sharp on Fox News and was impressed with his military record, so now he wants to put him in charge. I hope he’ll rise to the occasion.

Matt Gaetz at the DOJ and Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence head are there to wage war on the Deep State. Both have been personally affected. Gabbard will be good, as she’s obviously bright, has military experience, good foreign policy instincts, and is skeptical of the incumbent organizations.

As an intelligent critic of our interventionist foreign policy, the lying media naturally defames her as a Russian agent. But, after the false Russian collusion allegations against Trump, no one is really listening to this kind of nonsense anymore.

Gaetz has been a hardcore Trump supporter from the beginning, and he will be a major change agent if he can make it through the nomination process. Many at the DOJ are saying they’ll resign if he is appointed; this kind of internal “self-deportation” is a feature and not a bug of Trump’s election. It means Trump gets to hire more people, deal with fewer fifth columnists, and make more of a mark on these run-amok federal agencies.

RFK Jr. at Health and Human Services is the counterweight to the regulatory capture of the FDA and totalitarian instincts of the public health establishment. RFK Jr. has some peculiar and out-of-mainstream ideas. Alternative medicine is, in fact, full of false and dangerous fads, whether it is colloidal silver or using radio waves to diminish autism.

But these ideas are not much crazier than the mandatory masking, social distance rules, and experimental vaccine mandates during COVID. Most important, he appears to respect patient autonomy and recognizes the primary root of health lies not in medicine, but in a healthier lifestyle.

Even though South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has been nominated to lead the Department of Homeland Security, long-time advisor Steven Miller and proposed immigration Tsar, Tom Homan, are the real capos for the deportation agenda. This seems to be a high priority for the administration.

These are tough, smart, and clear-eyed men who understand the issues well. They inspire confidence.

A Rejection of Managerialism

Each of these nominees is a living refutation of the dominant practices of managerial credentialism. For most of Washington, D.C., a very narrow sense of who is qualified for senior roles ends up doing a lot of work to affect substantive outcomes. This gatekeeping practice looks to credentials and conformity as keys to the realm. Who can forget chubby Alexander Vindman and his praise of the sacred “interagency process?”

Washington’s credentialism is more than a matter of having elite degrees. Critics have mocked Hegseth, even though he is a Princeton and Harvard graduate, reached the rank of major in the National Guard, and is a double Bronze Star winner and combat veteran. But he didn’t follow the usual path and is an unapologetic right-winger, so he is suspect.

Credentialism means one works through the ranks in the same way as everyone currently in authority so that the organization is always replicating itself. An aspirant must be part of the “blob,” wait his turn, learn the acceptable ways to think and talk, and quickly adopt new fads, such as listing pronouns in a LinkedIn bio.

This process yields conformist mediocrities and moral cowards. This includes everyone from the four-star generals who boldly retconned the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan into a success to the current heads of the State Department, CIA, FBI, and DOD. It would be very damaging to this system if outsiders figured out the jobs quickly and were able to achieve better results.

Above all, managerialism is an ideology that empowers credentialed technocrats. It has a strong aversion to anything natural, organic, or unregulated. This is at least one of the roots of the recent obsession with misinformation and disinformation. A raucous, sometimes-wrong, and completely unregulated “marketplace of ideas” is simply too threatening to the managerial class.

Such a freewheeling system risks exposing official lies, such as the outsider-led discovery that COVID was almost certainly a lab leak, which was covered up by lifelong bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci.

New Standards

If the legacy ruling class treated Trump’s first term as an aberration, they seem to understand that 2024 is different. While they seethe, they must also admit that the American people have rejected the left’s extreme social agenda. In response, some good election post-mortems have been written, and it looks like the more extreme manifestations of wokeism are already in retreat from corporate America and the universities.

Under Biden, the Democrats tried to mimic the right’s patriotism with their J6 narrative and defamatory lies about Russian collusion, but their love of country has always been ideological and conditional. This performative patriotism cannot be reconciled with their sustained criticism of America as “systemically racist.” This is why the mask slips so often, and they say things like Trump supporters are “garbage.”

The old system is exemplified by Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris: power-hungry people with only modest talents who worked their way up the ranks but proved incapable of improving anything of importance when given responsibility. They are a reminder that real talent doesn’t always climb through the ranks; it often skips over them or ignores them, sometimes creating whole new organizations.

Under Trump, instead of the “organization kid,” bold and revolutionary outsiders like Elon Musk are providing an alternate model for executive leadership.

Trump was supposed to hire a bunch of outsiders during his first term, and he even created a website to gather resumes from ordinary Americans out in flyover country. But the database and its thousands of resumes were lost, likely sabotaged. He ended up hiring insiders and opportunists provided to him by the RNC.

So far, it appears he has learned from this mistake.

Beauty, Standards, and Excellence

The Democratic Party is lately about ugliness and weirdness. It celebrates the deviant and normalizes it. This makes sense, as beauty, standards, and excellence are all related.

Trump’s team is healthy and attractive. Trump picked those whom he thinks are best for the job, often with diverse views and unorthodox paths to success. So far there is none of the “tokenism” that usually surrounds both Democratic and Republican administrations. He seems indifferent about whether his team “looks like America,” but—like his winning coalition—it will be more representative of the country as a whole than the multi-hued, ideological clones of the Biden administration.

Combined with Trump’s majority, the bold cabinet picks signal a real “vibe shift.” The moment has a revolutionary feel, much more than I expected. It is analogous to the French or, more recently, Reagan revolutions, where styles rapidly changed, along with policies and elites. Short hair and business suits were back in style during the 1980s, after a slacker, self-indulgent decade following the disorders of the 1960s.

If Trump’s support comes from those who are resentful of being ruled over by their inferiors, the left’s core consists of those who are absolutely loyal to this system that artificially elevates them to positions of power and prestige. They are loyal because they know, deep down, in any fair competition, they would lose. This is what is meant by the useful concept of “bioleninism.”

Thus, the Trump revolution is not merely a political one but a cultural and aesthetic one. Things are changing rapidly because the left has lost confidence. They can no longer claim to represent the majority or console themselves that the arc of history is bending toward their eventual triumph.

Long on nostalgia, the Make America Great Again concept is also forward-looking. This is because the greatness of America resides in its optimism, creativity, embrace of technological progress, and because the country has always welcomed and rewarded people of talent, regardless of their pedigree or background.

Even before he has taken the oath for a second time, Trump is exemplifying the MAGA spirit with his extraordinary cabinet of outsiders.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 18:25

Gallup: Public Support For Gun-Bans Craters

According to Gallup’s latest polling, support for a handgun ban has fallen to just 20 percent and support for an “assault weapons” ban has cratered to just 52 percent.

Gun bans were a constant call from both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over the last four years.

President Biden often combined the call with dubious factual, legal, and historical arguments.

Jonathan Turley previously wrote about the failure of politicians to acknowledge the limits posed by the Second Amendment and controlling case law. While there are good-faith objections to how the Second Amendment has been interpreted, the current case law makes such bans very difficult to defend.

In 2008, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as encompassing an individual right to bear arms.

Yet, the 2024 campaign showed a belated recognition that the Administration has failed to galvanize public opinion in support of gun limits and bans.

Harris came under fire during the campaign when she suddenly seemed to embrace one of the very guns that she previously vilified as it became clear that she was too far left from much of the country.

Years ago, Turley wrote that the rise in gun ownership in the United States, including among minority gun owners, was strikingly out of sync with the Democratic talking point.

In 2019, support for an assault weapons ban stood at 61%. It is now barely at a majority.

The drop in support for a handgun ban is notable in that only 33 percent of Democrats support such a ban.

The rise in gun ownership and the drop in polling raise another issue where Democratic candidates seem to be speaking to an increasingly empty room. The gun ownership rates are a problem for the party because most political issues do not involve a large personal investment by citizens. When someone becomes a gun owner, they spend hundreds of dollars on the weapon, ammunition, and other costs. The ban campaigns become more of a personal and financial issue for them.

Harris’s attempt to appeal to gun owners fell flat after years of calling for limits and bans.

The question is whether the party is ready to pivot on this and other issues — and whether it can given its political base.

That 33 percent is the core voting block in primaries even as the rest of the country moves toward the center of the political spectrum.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 18:00

Kim Jong Un Calls for 'Limitless' Nuclear Build-Up In Response To 'Asia NATO'

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivered a fiery speech where he stressed the importance of accelerating the country’s nuclear weapons program in response to Western threats.  

In the address to the North Korean Army issued days ago, Kim said, "The United States has already converted its alliance with the [South Korea] into a nuclear-based one and created an 'Asian NATO' in haste by cementing its military ties with Japan and South Korea."

The North Korean leader stressed that US nuclear deployments to the region, joint war games with South Korea and Japan, and building military blocs aimed at Pyongyang are all intolerable to North Korea. 

Kim stressed the increasing threat from Washington justified accelerating Pyongyang’s nuclear program. "Long ago, the line of building up our nuclear forces became an irreversible policy, so what remains to be done now is for these forces to get more fully ready for action so that they can carry out the mission of deterring war and the second mission at any moment."

He continued, "We will build up our nation’s self-defense forces, the pivot of which is its nuclear capability, limitlessly and endlessly without satisfaction."

In addition to discussing North Korea’s military tensions with the US, Kim also discussed Pyongyang’s position in what he has previously described as a "new Cold War."

"As the US and other Western countries are using Ukraine as a shock force in the war against Russia, we should view it as a maneuver to enrich their real-war experience and expand the scope of military intervention all over the world."

He added, "By sustaining their military assistance to Ukraine and Israel…This aggravates the international security situation, stoking fears of a third world war."

The relationship between Washington and Pyongyang has soured during the Joe Biden administration. At the end of Donald Trump’s first term, North Korea and the US were engaged in some diplomacy, and Pyongyang was largely respecting its self-imposed missile test moratorium. 

Upon resuming the presidency in 2025, Donald Trump will face an emboldened leader in North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who has not only expanded the country’s missile arsenal but also enjoys a much closer relationship with Russia https://t.co/CQypdjSqU6 pic.twitter.com/HMMWKbdT6u

— Reuters (@Reuters) November 7, 2024

However, Biden refused to engage with Kim while increasing the presence of the American military in South Korea. Combined with the administration’s efforts to bring South Korea and Japan into a military pact, Pyongyang views the Biden policy as highly aggressive. 

Kim responded by ramping up the missile tests, conducting war games near the DMZ, and strengthening Pyongyang’s ties with Moscow. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 17:40

Netanyahu Says Israel Offering $1.3 Million Reward For Each Hostage Freed

On Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a rare surprise visit to the Gaza Strip, specifically to the area of the Netzarim Corridor, which runs through the center of the strip.

He was there to deliver a message, showing that Hamas does not and will not rule Gaza. He also issued a warning to those terrorists that are holding Israelis hostage, vowing that they'll pay a heavy price.

He proclaimed that Israel Defense Forces troops in Gaza have "achieved excellent results toward our important goal — that Hamas will not rule in Gaza. We are destroying its military capabilities in a very impressive manner, and we are moving on to its ruling capabilities… Hamas will not be in Gaza."

TOI/GPO: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the Netzarim Corridor in the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

Israeli authorities have in recent months said that over 60 living hostages remain somewhere in Gaza, of the about 100 who were never returned.

Of these, Netanyahu said "we are not letting up" and that Israel "will continue to do so until we reach everyone — both the living and the dead." He also at one point addressed "those who are holding our hostages," saying that "whoever dares to harm our hostages — will bear the responsibility. We will pursue you and we will get you."

He offered a reward of NIS 5 million (or just over $1.3 million) to anyone in Gaza who turns an Israeli captive over the Israel. It's not the first time a monetary reward has been offered, but the money has been greatly increased with this announcement.

"I gave an order to increase the reward for those who bring information about the hostage - NIS 5 million for each hostage instead of NIS 1 million and safe passage for the informant and his family," Netanyahu said.

The Jerusalem Post writes that "In his public comments, he stressed that Israel is willing to do small deals, by which captors would be given monetary rewards and free passage out of Gaza in exchange for releasing the hostages in their custody."

The hope is that which such a large sum, families of Hamas members tasked with hosting and guarding hostages might come forward and free the hostages. Or else, individual Palestinians who might know where hostages are being kept might step forward with the information. It could also entice Hamas members to turn on their leadership.

Defense Minister Israel Katz, IDF chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, accompanied him during the brief tour of the central Gaza area.

"The choice is in your hands, but the result will be the same. We will bring everyone home," Netanyahu said. During a Monday debate in the Knesset, he addressed the outrage by victims' families over his handling of the hostage crisis. 

IDF forces fight in Notzirath, Gaza Strip pic.twitter.com/CD7WEKQEvy

— POV combat footage (@Zoma3mk) November 17, 2024

"Demonstrations by hostage families and civilian protesters inside and outside the Knesset during the debate underscored the turbulence surrounding the several dozen Israelis believed to still be alive in Gaza," one report observed. "Multiple individuals were escorted out of the meeting due to outbursts and disruption."

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 17:20

SpaceX Launches Starship Into Orbit, Lands Successfully But Scraps Plan For "Chopsticks" Booster Catch

Update: Disappointing those who had hoped to see the "chopsticks" catch in action for the second time in a month, the Super Heavy booster instead splashed down in the ocean after it was deemed unsafe to attempt the remarkable midair catch today.

BREAKING: Space X Super Heavy booster makes offshore splashdown after it was deemed unsafe to attempt the "chopstick" catch. pic.twitter.com/h3kTy07mEp

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 19, 2024

To all those who bought the "No" contract on Polymarket for the chopsticks catch, congratulations on your 4x return.

Otherwise, everything was successful, and SpaceX’s gargantuan Starship rocket blasted off from South Texas in a key test attended by President-elect Donald Trump.

SpaceX’s launch system, comprised of its Super Heavy booster and Starship upper spacecraft, cleared the tower shortly after 4 p.m. local time on Tuesday, the start of a roughly hour-long planned mission to space and partially around the world. After Super Heavy landed in the Gulf of Mexico, Starship continued its voyage through space. At one point, it successfully reignited one of its Raptor engines — the first time SpaceX was able to do so during these flight tests. Starship will need to reignite its engines in order to control its descent to Earth and maneuver through space.

Starship then circled most of the globe before plunging through the atmosphere about 45 minutes into the mission, its body engulfed in the reddish orange glow of plasma as its upgraded heat shield endured intense temperatures while hurtling back to Earth.

Starship survived the reentry, moving its exterior flaps to help guide its descent, though some showed signs of burn and slight damage. Then, as Starship fell through clouds, it flipped itself and reignited its engines to turn upright and softly splash into the Indian Ocean shortly after 6 p.m. New York time in what Elon Musk said was a "successful ocean landing."

Successful ocean landing of Starship!

We will do one more ocean landing of the ship. If that goes well, then SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower. https://t.co/osFud7XXPo

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2024

 

* * *

Earlier

The sixth flight test of SpaceX's Starship megarocket is targeted to launch during a 30-minute window that opens at 5 PM EST (2100 GMT; 4 PM local Texas time). 

The next Starship test flight aims to push the envelope of Starship and booster capabilities and prepare the entire launch system for reuse. 

"Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean," SpaceX's website wrote. 

Elon Musk outlined Starship Flight 6's objectives on X:

The objectives for Starship Flight 6 are:

1. Restart of Raptor engines in vacuum.
2. Daylight landing of the ship.
3. Higher peak heating (steeper) reentry.
4. Faster/harder booster catch.

There are thousands of small design changes also being tested.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024

Musk pointed out, "Current Starship is more than twice as powerful as the Saturn V Moon rocket. Starship V3, which hopefully flies in about a year, will be 3X more powerful."

Current Starship is more than twice as powerful as the Saturn V Moon rocket.

Starship V3, which hopefully flies in about a year, will be 3X more powerful. https://t.co/K0p8HuXH3b

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024

Even before the two-stage megarocket — featuring the Starship spacecraft stacked atop the Super Heavy booster — launches late afternoon, prediction market platform Polymarket has allowed users to wager on whether the Mechazilla arms (or chopsticks) at the Starbase launchpad near Brownsville, Texas, will successfully catch the Starship as it returns to Earth.

Last month's Starship Flight 5 marked a historic success.

Starship rocket booster caught by tower pic.twitter.com/aOQmSkt6YE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2024

The Polymarket bet is titled "Will the chopsticks catch SpaceX's Super Heavy?" With about seven hours left before launch, users overwhelmingly bet confidently (about 80%) that chopsticks will successfully catch Starship. About $286k have traded on the contract so far. 

Polymarket has made betting on binary events in the news cycle possible. 

Watch the sixth Starship flight test:

Meanwhile, Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, told investors last Friday that the company plans hundreds of Starship rocket launches during President Trump's second term.

There is a report from Politico that President-elect Trump plans to watch the Starship launch with Musk in Texas.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 17:10

Guess What's Coming To DC?

Authored by El Gato Malo via The Brownstone Institute,

DC is about to experience something entirely new, something absolutely unprecedented in its experience. They think the barbarians are coming. And perhaps they are. But not the kinds of barbarians they suspect. Not this time.

The simple fact is that there exists a very small group of incredibly high-function, insanely productive people. It’s the dirty secret of the world. This tiny tribe conceives, invents, and builds basically everything novel. All of it. They are not normal people. They are the 0.1%.

Unless you have worked with them, around them, or been a part of what they do, you simply lack a reference for what they are like. It’s essentially inconceivable how much such people can get done when they set their minds to it, how many rules they will disprove, break, or ignore, and how many paradigms they will upend.

DC has never seen a mob of high-function autist builders and fin warriors coalesce before. They have no fricking idea what’s coming. They cannot possibly know. But I do.

I know A LOT of these people. This is what most of my friends are like. They learn for a living. They pull systems apart, see them as functional wholes, and work 16-hour days reading arcane 1,000-page descriptions until they understand. Then they pull the underwear of whoever thought they understood this material up over their heads in an atomic wedgie and take over a space. 

It’s just what you do if you’re a person like that. It’s compulsion. It’s like breathing. These are 3 and 4 and 5 standard deviation people who have focus and talent in quantities they do not even have maps of in Washington. I keep hearing about people I know a little getting tapped for transition teams and I’m like “Ooooooh, that guy can read 100 CDS prospectuses in a weekend and remember it all,” or “Yeah, that guy thinks in algorithms and sleeps once a month. He could code when he was 6.”

“Only an insider can tackle the swamp” is dead wrong. It takes someone radically different to make a radical difference. And I am giddy realizing that they are coming. It does not matter that they do not know the terrain yet. They will. They have 3 months to learn. That’s more than enough.

Watch. Moving into novel systems or spaces and becoming better at it than the people currently there is what these people do. It’s ALL they do. It’s who and what they are.

It does not matter if it’s the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the DMV, or NASA. Same game, same result. every time.

The “insiders” are so screwed. DC has no one like this. They have never even met people like this because people like this avoid government like it is a bag of plague rats. Because it is.

But now they are interested and looking to play exterminator because the state strayed too far into our world and so now we are coming for theirs.

And wait until you see what the world’s best builders can tear down. It’s going to be glorious.

These are the same people who in 10 weeks using just sparse public data and Twitter pulled the pants down on the whole edifice of public health and revealed them as fakes, phonies, and charlatans. Then they rewrote the discipline. It will never be the same. Most of us had never even looked at epidemiology before. In a few months the “amateurs” eclipsed the experts and left them for dead.

We did this as outsiders and without any maps and with the very opposite of help.

Imagine what this gang can do with the keys to the kingdom.

It’s going to be nothing but baffled astonishment from the Beltway boffins.

“How in hell have they read and understood everything!?! They are not experts here!” will decry the people who need to pass bills to find out what’s in them. “How the hell are they producing so much output, so much impact? How did they know just where to push?”

They have never seen what 10 of these guys and three pots of coffee can achieve. I have. Mountains get relocated.

The really truly high-functioning have not come to meet the regulatasaurus before. They were busy and had better things to do.

Not anymore. “Dismantle Leviathan” is now a step in everyone’s business plan. Better, it’s public service as it was supposed to be: not a vocation, not a career. Instead, it is a task, a dirty task that needs doing so you go and do it and then you go home once it’s done.

You fricking clowns just cornered Elon and made this election and administration an existential issue for him and his empire. And an awful lot of us feel the same way. You cornered all of us. Go along to get along ended because you guys crossed the line. Welcome to reflexivity.

The pushback is going to be something for the ages.

DC is going to feel like it’s being invaded by an entire bestiary of mythical monsters with magical powers who can see through walls and huck immovable objects over the horizon. They will come from every side at once. They will replace thousands of federal employees right from the start. 

You’ll be fighting against the outside and the inside. They’re going to transfer and move those permanent staters they cannot fire. Have fun in Topeka or Guam. They’re lovely this time of year.

They are not going to play nice or play fair. They are going to get things done. And they are going to clown you while doing it, clown you like “name their agency after a crypto shitcoin that muskrat ran “to the moon” just because they think it’s funny.”

And it will be.

This is a new kind of team, a team that comes from an ethos of “Move fast and break things” and “Ask forgiveness, not permission.” They are not the GOP procedure drones of yesteryear, These are people who just walk in and do stuff and fuck your process. They have made careers of it.

The Dems have long ago figured out the “Just go do it and let the chips fall where they may” model (basically since Obamacare) but they do it stupidly and on topics where the results will be bad. 

This will be like Uber. By the time the regulators woke up and tried to move against it, people loved it too much to let them take it away. There were protests in front of every DMV in Commiefornia.

And so the world progressed. And instead of doing it donkey-style to contravene the Constitution, team effective autists will be doing it to uphold it. Look on my plans ye mighty and wet your pants. This is teed up in a whole new way on a whole new field.

They will have the swamp in knots. DC power is entrenched because it is secret and controls access and channels and promotion and most especially access to media and publicity. That game is over.

Vivek is a seriously effective guy with finance and biotech and founder chops. He speaks well and makes things. And like him or loathe him, Elon is a change (and a chaos) agent. He takes crazy, audacious swings and builds stuff. He’s a rogue and a pirate. It’s why he’s good at what he does. He asks simple questions like “What did you accomplish this week?” that you cannot hide from. But his real superpower is this: there is no human on earth today who can bring the circus like Elon can bring the circus. No one.

The man is a one-man always traveling 11-ring Barnum and Bailey show. And what an astonishing show this is going to be.

Name and shame are incredibly powerful. This will be an unending media event, a drip feed of “Can you believe they spent millions making and studying transgender monkeys?” (this was a real grant BTW) 

It will be relentless, revelatory, and invite the whole of the public to the party. There will be no escape, no off switch, no media gatekeeping: this is direct-to-consumer messaging. And hey, let’s get the Epstein list out in the open while we’re at it. Imagine how much DC cycle time THAT would eat, time in which you can get even more stuff done.

Sunlight is a powerful disinfectant. 

Let’s look at everything with new eyes. Let’s disrupt.

Get the establishment on tilt from day one and never stop pushing. Not from any side, not for a moment. Shut things down. Gut agencies like trout. Invite them to “cry some more” if they don’t like it.

Flood the box so hard that the news cycle cannot even cover it. This technocracy is not used to having to defend ground from this sort of attack. They are used to being the ones making the rules. They will not have any idea what to do.

There are these magical times in human history when the truly smart and talented and effective come together and change everything. American independence. The Manhattan Project. Xerox PARC. Apollo. Silicon Valley in the 80’s and 90’s.

Some vast project captures the imagination and worlds are moved.

I think it’s a bit early to just come out and say “This is that” but I’m here to tell you that the cabinet secretaries and the appointments to run agencies are only a part of the show and maybe not the important part.

The thousands coming with them are NOT more drones from interchangeable bureaucrat collective 2177.

These are the finance and pharma and tech bros. Not the fake ones who wear fleece vests and work in biz dev. The meat eaters. Wave upon wave upon wave of them in their hyper-motivated myriads.

And this is a new-new thing.

In the end, it’s just a gross mismatch for you, DC.

You’re smart enough to be a Washington wonk and run rings around drunk Congresscritters as they insider trade. Neat. What’s coming is smart enough to find edge trading against the Goldman arb desk and produce drugs and catch rockets.

We live where you need results, not a sinecure. And we are well and truly pissed. You people are not even bringing a knife to a gunfight. You’re bringing a dinosaur to a meteor strike.

Say goodbye to the Potomac Country Club. Things are about to change. And pardon me if I am over-effusive and over-optimistic, but if this is even 20% of what it looks like, hot damn this is gonna be fun.

Republished from the author’s Substack 

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 17:00

The Cure For What Ails Us: Market Crash And Mass Defaults

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The system has reached extremes that can no longer be rebalanced by policy tweaks, borrowing another couple trillion dollars or inflating asset bubbles.

There are many possible answers to the question "what ails us?" but they all boil down to one reality: the socio-political-economic system has slowly transmogrified into one that benefits the few at the expense of the many by its very structure. There are many moving parts in this transmogrification, hence the multiplicity of answers to "what ails us?"

The net result is extreme asymmetry in wealth and income, a reality I've often explored, most recently in The Seeds of Social Revolution: Extreme Wealth Inequality. As documented in the data-rich history The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, extreme asymmetries of wealth / income get rebalanced one way or the other, either by policy changes or social upheaval.

Correspondent John recently proposed a third rebalancing mechanism: a crash of The Everything Bubble markets and a mass default by the bottom 90% that erases a major chunk of debt, which as often noted here, is somebody else's asset: default on the debt and the asset is wiped out.

Here are John's comments on this third rebalancing mechanism:

The wealth divide has been my (very) hot button issue for years, overriding all others. I agree with your two options, but you left out door #3.

As for policy change, I think that is fanciful thinking. The top 10% (who think everything is wonderful) will never vote for substantial change, as they'll never vote for anything other than feel-good minor change ...with loopholes, of course.

I think Door #3 will be taken ... which the Deep State will have to allow as they see civil unrest coming ever clearer on the horizon if not. What is Door #3? A Crash of assets, which will flatten the divide. In a credit-based economy, it will be easy to let it all fall. Assets fall everywhere ... including debt (an asset for top 10%) as the bottom 90% just walk away (as there are no debtor prisons). A crash of assets requires no vote ... just The Powers That Be standing back. (Of course, half measures will be taken to show the top 10% we're DOING SOMETHING ... but in reality this only stretches out the collapse).

Thank you, John, for an insightful description of a third option that rebalances extreme wealth inequality by reducing the assets of the top 10% and the liabilities of the bottom 90%. As John noted, this process is easy in a debt-based economy: just reduce the expansion of debt and the asset bubble pops, the economy craters and debtors default en masse, reducing the liabilities side of the ledger.

As John so presciently described, The Powers That Be will oversee this reduction while wringing their hands and promoting their ineffective efforts to stem the collapse as "we're giving it all we got, Captain!"

The asset bubble and debt load are so enormous, tens of trillions of dollars will need to be shaved off both ledgers to rebalance the system. All bubbles pop under their own weight at some point, and bubbles often deflate in a symmetrical fashion, dropping at the same rate as the bubble inflated. This chart of NASDAQ illustrates how bubble symmetry might play out going forward.

Since the top 1% own 50% of all stocks, guess who this drop will hurt the most? The top 90% to 99% own close to 40% of the remaining equities, so the top 10% will absorb roughly 90% of the losses as the stock market bubble pops.

Here is total systemic debt. The federal government debt isn't going away, short of a complete systemic collapse, and the legal pathway of local governments defaulting on their debts is murky, but there are no obstructions to private-sector defaults of all lender-generated debt: commercial real estate mortgages, housing mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, etc. As for student loans, the old phrase you can't get blood from a turnip may describe the futility of trying to collect blood (student loan payments) from turnips (debtors without assets or income.)

We can play the game Japan has played for 35 years, keeping non-performing loans on the books at full (i.e. phantom) value, but look where that artifice got Japan: 35 years of stagnation as everyone knows the "assets" are phantom and so the value can't be discovered by the market. Since accurate valuation is impossible, trust dissipates and the system rots away from within.

As a thought experiment, let's project writing off $50 trillion of debt based on phantom collateral that's evaporated. That is of course a writedown of assets by $50 trillion, too, which would reduce household assets to around $100 trillion--still substantial, just no longer a bubble.

The system has reached extremes that can no longer be rebalanced by policy tweaks, borrowing another couple trillion dollars or inflating asset bubbles. What ails us can be rectified by adjusting (ahem) assets (collateral) and debt to rebalance the extremes that are destabilizing the system from within.

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Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2024 - 16:20