Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClearPolitics,

On an Oct. 13 MSNBC broadcast with anchor Jen Psaki, Democratic strategist – and former political advisor to President Bill Clinton – James Carville denounced Donald Trump for putting “the entire Constitution in jeopardy.” Carville offered a concrete example of the right’s subversion of American freedom and democracy: “The Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas have totally greenlighted the idea that you could round up, use the military to round up your political enemies.” A former political advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Psaki replied with a smile, “We love the truth telling.”

Carville and Psaki are typical. The left often portrays itself as the rigorous defender of truth against relentless right-wing disinformation while resolutely promoting progressive disinformation, including the falsehood that disinformation is a distinctively right-wing phenomenon.

Small wonder that Carville did not elaborate on his extraordinary accusation, and that Psaki did not ask why he singled out Justice Thomas or how the Supreme Court authorized the rounding up of political enemies. Perhaps Carville had in mind the court’s holding last July in Trump v. United States “that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” But the Constitution does not give the president authority to round up political enemies.

Did Carville glibly attack Trump and did Psaki politely play along? Did partisan rage distort Carville’s judgment as well as Psaki’s? Did Carville resolve to assert – and Psaki to endorse – whatever it takes, including nightmare scenarios, to protect democracy from Trump?

It is hard to read hearts and minds. But one can confidently affirm that deceiving about politics is as old as politics.

Circumstances change. Regimes come and go. Empires rise and fall. Parties win and lose. Yet even as modernization and technology revolutionize human affairs by generating material abundance, destabilizing settled expectations, and eroding inherited understandings, human beings remain social and political animals. Individuals need one another’s company and cooperation while – given diverse backgrounds, disposition, abilities, and interests – differing over what is useful, just, and good. Some strive to exercise power over others while most try to minimize the power that others exercise over them. Through it all, passion and prejudice constantly buffet everyone’s reasoning, and auspicious opportunities and dire predicaments tempt even the virtuous to portray the facts as other than they are.

No doubt novel opportunities abound today for promulgating lies and disseminating the family of departures from the truth that human beings routinely produce, distribute, consume, and rail against. In particular, the Internet, digital communications, and social media have facilitated the acquisition and transmission of immense amounts of information. This has greatly increased the quantity and accelerated the velocity of casual errors, self-deceptions, well-meaning half-truths, fraudulently marketed opinions and ideas, and outright lies that swirl through political culture.

Both right and left in America partake of the free-for-all of duplicity – often crude, occasionally artful – that plagues American politics. There is, however, an asymmetry.

Both sides insist that the other is exclusively at fault for the decay of public discourse. But the left controls the commanding heights of education, mainstream and social media, and government bureaucracy.

The left’s false contention that the right exercises a monopoly on manipulation, deceit, and falsehood is particularly damaging because the left amplifies its accusation through domination of the nation’s communication, elite opinion formation, and rule-making and law-enforcement institutions. This substantial advantage in the struggle to shape public opinion encourages the left’s sense of superiority while blinding progressives to their own intellectual subterfuges and ideological swindles. It also foments outrage on the right. Conservatives justify their extreme statements and outrageous claims as playing by progressives’ rules.

Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel recently illustrated the left’s propensity to wrongly present disinformation as a specifically right-wing pathology. Author of “Galaxy Brain,” The Atlantic’s newsletter “about technology, media, and big ideas,” Warzel argues in “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is” that an unprecedented assault on truth has “been building for more than a decade.” The crisis stems, he maintains, from a calamitous combination of right-wing extremism and digital technology that breaks reality into two – a world of truth inhabited by the left and a world of “dark” falsehoods that the right creates, outfits, and calls home.

“This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creation opportunity,” writes Warzel. “This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world.”

Warzel would have placed his analysis of just how badly political discourse in America has deteriorated on much sounder footing if he had recognized that the left also employs digital technology to fabricate and maintain a separate world. In the left’s alternative reality, the remorseless siege of systemic racism, sexism, and other sinister forms of oppression obliges progressives to abandon basic requirements of evidence and argument to rally the faithful and save the nation and the world.

Responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, maintains Warzel, have set a new low. “Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories,” he writes, “the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism.” He gives chilling examples careening around the Internet of harebrained conspiracy theories about government malfeasance and implausible stories of official neglect, or deliberate disregard, of storm victims that have delayed the delivery of essential government services. These remind that people can easily dupe others and be duped, especially when hurricane season coincides with election season, and individuals are armed with smart phones and social media accounts, and distrust elite institutions.

Warzel is rightly alarmed that “Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality – or desire one at all.” But his one-sided analysis inadvertently underscores that fault for the splintering of America does not lie solely with Trump and his backers.

Or even primarily.

Yes, Jan. 6, 2021, was a disgrace. Yes, right-wing rhetoric can be ridiculous, ominous, and vile. And yes, right-wing activists also exploit the Internet to stoke grievance and stir up resentment and rage.

Still, progressives tend to neglect that Trump and his voters have reasons, accumulating for decades, for distrusting institutions fundamental to the nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom and dominated by progressives: universities, the mainstream media and social media, and the federal bureaucracy.

Contrary to the common view on the left that Trump inaugurated a war on truth, our universities have for at least two generations sought to emancipate students from the traditional understanding that higher education’s purpose is to pursue knowledge and cultivate independent minds. Instead, through a succession of intellectual fashions and fads – including positivism, relativism, postmodernism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, identity politics, and intersectionality – universities have fostered the incoherent and partisan belief that since moral values are socially constructed, progressive policies must prevail.

Meanwhile, our progressive media – mainstream and social – and our progressive federal bureaucracy have collaborated to promote progressive national narratives by censoring opinions that challenge the progressive perspective and weaponizing the law against those who oppose progressivism’s hegemony.

The most egregious such collaboration revolved around the charge – widely presented as established fact by the press, defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, and elected Democratic officials and progressive intellectuals – that Donald Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election. This weighed down President Trump and hampered his administration. Yet after a two-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose team contained several experienced and high-powered Democratic lawyers, issued a lengthy report stating that the investigation “did not establish that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Another disreputable collaboration to advance progressive ends sought to push Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden over the finish line in November 2020. A few weeks before the election, the New York Post accurately reported that a laptop containing incriminating evidence belonged to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The mainstream media, social media, and the FBI censored the Post’s reporting while disseminating the falsehood that the computer was a product of Russian disinformation.

A third major collaboration occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The New York Times and the Washington Post derided the notion that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab, which it likely did, and government officials, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, suppressed the lab-leak hypothesis. In addition, the mainstream media, social media, and federal government teamed up to discredit and silence those who raised questions about the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines.

To do their share to arrest the splintering of America, progressives must do more than profess their love of the truth. They must act like they mean it.

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter.

Authored by Ryan Bonifay via RealClearPolitics,

Hurricane Helene devastated large swaths of western North Carolina, with entire towns wiped away or forever altered. The human disaster will be felt for decades. But there’s another impending disaster no one is talking about – a political one.

North Carolina is a perennial swing state with a penchant for split-ticket voting. In 2020, Donald Trump won the state by less than 1.5 percentage points. In 2008, Barack Obama clinched the state for the Democrats by a mere 14,000 votes out of 4.3 million votes. This year, North Carolina is once again a battleground state, with both political parties spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and both presidential nominees are spending significant time here. In the Tar Heel State, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are literally fighting for every single vote.

But Hurricane Helene didn’t just wipe out towns. It may also wipe out people’s right to vote. Tens of thousands of voters are homeless or temporarily camped out far from their homes. While the North Carolina Board of Elections is tweaking rules to make it easier to vote, residents in the most severely damaged areas probably have other, bigger problems on their minds – like missing relatives, lost livelihoods, children who can’t go to school, filing insurance claims, just to name a few. The last thing on their to-do lists is remembering to reregister to vote at their new address before Oct. 6, which has since come and gone. 

There is an unspoken question that needs to be voiced: What happens if hundreds of thousands of voters in western North Carolina can’t vote in the 2024 election?

The disaster declaration in western North Carolina encompasses 25 counties, comprising 1.3 million registered voters, of which 974,514 voted for president in 2020.

Currently, registered Republicans make up 37.9% of western North Carolina voters compared to 28.2% in the rest of the state. Registered Democrats make up only 22.8% of western North Carolina voters compared to 33.2% in the rest of the state. In 2020, Trump won 604,119 votes to Joe Biden’s 356,902 votes in those 25 counties. 

In other words, western North Carolina is Republican country, even with deep blue Asheville sitting in the heart of the mountains. In the closest election in recent history, Republicans don’t have 600,000 votes to spare.

In order for a Republican candidate to have a fighting chance of winning statewide in North Carolina, they have to drive up their margin of victory in the western part of the state. Since 2016, Republican presidential and Senate candidates have won by a margin of 23.4% to 27.9% in western North Carolina. In those same elections, all Republicans (Trump, Tillis, Budd), except former Sen. Richard Burr, also lost the rest of the state.

Compare those margins to losing Republican candidates. In 2016, the incumbent governor, Pat McCrory, won western North Carolina by 19.3%. Four years later, Republican Dan Forest only eked out an 18.7% margin in the west. McCrory lost the rest of the state by 4.4%, and Forest lost it by 9.5%.

In other words, statewide Republicans can’t win North Carolina without soaking up every red vote to the west.

As of Oct. 7, absentee ballot requests in western North Carolina totaled 46,094, accounting for 15.7% of statewide requests. Some of those ballots will never reach their intended recipients. That is concerning, but the bigger impact will come from in-person early voting, slated to begin October 17. In 2020, 70% of Trump’s vote in western North Carolina came from in-person early voting sites. It is not yet clear how many early voting sites are damaged, but the wide expanse of Helene’s damage suggests it will be significant. According to Axios, “infrastructure, accessibility to voting sites, and postal services remain severely disrupted” in 13 counties, accounting for 552,514 registered voters.

With North Carolina growing increasingly close, hundreds of thousands of Tar Heel voters who are unable to vote could doom Republicans chances here – and nationwide – over the next 27 days. While it is possible for Trump to win 270 electoral votes while losing North Carolina, it makes a narrow path to the White House that much narrower.

Playing around with the electoral map produces a number of scenarios in which Trump comes short of 270 electoral votes without North Carolina. One scenario gives Trump Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania while losing Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. He loses that election 265 to 273.

Getting western North Carolina back on its feet has to be the priority for the federal and state governments. However, with such an important election at our doorstep, it would be irresponsible to ignore the political implications of this historic disaster. It’s not just about disenfranchising voters – which is important enough.

Imagine for a moment that this election comes down to a razor-thin margin in storm-torn North Carolina. Allegations start flying – about lost ballots, late ballots, ballots sent to the wrong precincts, etc. It will be Florida circa 2000 on steroids, and nobody wants to go through that again. Our country is already fraying at the seams with little trust in our democratic institutions. Talk about throwing a match into a powder keg.

To prevent this election outcome from being dictated by a 100-year storm, it is incumbent on the Board of Elections to do absolutely everything in its power to make sure western North Carolinians, especially those in rural and most isolated parts of the impacted area, have every opportunity to cast their ballots. It’s also incumbent on Republicans to start tackling this problem now. Don’t wait until Nov. 6 to sound the alarm.

No one wants to politicize a storm that has destroyed so many lives, but that’s exactly what will happen if we don’t get this right.

Ryan Bonifay is the director of data & analytics at ColdSpark and lives in Lexington, North Carolina. Bonifay has worked and served as data director for several campaigns and organizations across the southeast, including the Republican National Committee, Engage Texas, Texans for Greg Abbott, and former U.S. Senator David Perdue.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The House task force investigating the July 13 assassination attempt targeting former President Donald Trump concluded that the incident was “preventable,” releasing new testimony from local law enforcement officials who provided accounts of communications and operational failures at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Released on Monday, the report concluded that there was a “lack of planning and coordination” between the U.S. Secret Service and its local law enforcement partners during the Trump rally.

The Secret Service, it found, “did not give clear guidance to the relevant state and local agencies about managing areas outside the secure event perimeter, and there was no joint meeting on the day of the rally between [the Secret Service] and all state and local law enforcement agencies assisting” the federal agency.

Monday’s House task force report mostly echoes findings made by the Senate Homeland Security panel report and an internal Secret Service report, both of which were released in September.

The report included findings that were already publicly released. But the report contained new interviews with local law enforcement officials in Butler County on how the Secret Service failed to perform on July 13.

Unnamed officials in Butler provided more details on how the gunman was first spotted by law enforcement and that nothing was done until he opened fire upon the rally, clipping Trump’s right ear with a bullet while killing a rally-goer and severely injuring two others.

As one example, one emergency services official told the panel that he sent a text message to his colleague that the shooter was seen with a rangefinder at around 5:17 p.m. However, the colleague did not see the message until more than 20 minutes later, at around 5:40 p.m.

The report also included new testimony from the officer who attempted to climb on the roof of the building where the gunman had perched before he opened fire. Days after the shooting, local officials confirmed that an officer tried to get on the roof but that the shooter pointed his weapon at him, forcing the officer to back down.

Police body-camera footage was also released of the incident, showing the officer getting a boost from another law enforcement official in a bid to climb on the roof. The shooter could not be seen in that clip.

That unnamed official told the panel that as he attempted to move his way onto the roof, the gunman “slowly turned on his waist” and “slowly turned around.”

“And as I came up, that’s when he pointed his firearm in my face,” the official said. “And at that time, I could see, you know, he had a bookbag with him, I could see mags (gun magazines).

“I knew he had a long gun, like an AR-platform. And as I’m coming up and he’s got the gun pointed at me, I don’t know if I reach for my gun, if I slip, but all I know from that point is I’m looking at him, and all my weight is on my, like, arms, my hands, and I don’t have a grip.”

The officer added, “The next thing I know, I smack against the ground and fall.”

“I just start yelling out to the guys that are there, I yell on the radio right away,” the official added. “I start saying, you know, South end, He’s got a long gun. Male on the roof. I just kept repeating, He’s got a gun. He’s got a long gun. I’m telling the guys that are around, like, he’s right up there, guns up, eyes up, still screaming on the radio.”

Overall, local and state law enforcement officials who spoke to the House panel were largely critical of the lack of a unified command and communications post to oversee security at the Trump event.

They also said that there was no unified briefing between the federal and local partners that could “have led to gaps in awareness among state and local law enforcement partners as to who was stationed where, spheres of responsibility, and expectations regarding communications during the day,” according to the report.

The Secret Service has not issued a comment on the House panel’s report. The Epoch Times contacted the agency but received no response by publication time.

The acting director of the Secret Service in August conceded that the agency failed in its mission to protect Trump during the rally, did not properly secure the rally site, and that several agency staffers would face punishment over the incident.

Two months later, federal law enforcement officials said that Trump was the target of a second assassination attempt, this time at his Florida golf course while he was golfing. The Secret Service said that an agent who was protecting Trump saw the barrel of a rifle sticking out of a perimeter fence on Sept. 15 before he engaged with the suspect and opened fire, prompting him to flee.

Ryan Wesley Routh was later arrested and charged with multiple felony counts in connection to the incident and has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say that Routh had authored a note that indicated he wanted to assassinate the former president.

Bacterial infections are becoming more dangerous.

When you’re fighting a bacterial infection, a doctor will typically prescribe you an antibiotic to help you recover. Unfortunately, rising antibiotic resistance means these drugs are becoming less effective.

In part one of this series on antimicrobial resistance, Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross partnered with the MSCI Sustainability Institute to highlight the increase in bacteria’s resistance to antibiotics.

What is Antibiotic Resistance?

Antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria evolve and become resistant to the drugs used to treat them. To some extent, this occurs naturally due to genetic changes in pathogens. 

However, people have misused and overused drugs to prevent, control, and treat infections in humans, animals, and plants. This is the primary cause of more resistant bacteria.

Resistance Rates Over Time

Based on the latest available data, the resistance rates of key antibiotics increased from about 16% in 2001 to 44% in 2020. In other words, nearly half of infections are not responsive to the antibiotics typically used to treat them. 

Unfortunately, the majority of experts believe that some of these key antibiotics—including amoxicillin and cephalexin, some of the most prescribed drugs in the U.S.—will very likely be lost to resistance within the next 15 years.

The Impact of Antibiotic Resistance

With treatments no longer working for illnesses like pneumonia or urinary tract infections in some cases, the risk of disease and death increases. Every year, antibiotic resistance directly leads to nearly 1.3 million deaths.

On top of this, rising resistance creates investment threats. For instance, companies failing to address antimicrobial resistance might face reputational damage. However, there are also opportunities for investors when it comes to the development of new antibiotics and alternative treatments.

In the second part of this series, we highlight the gap between infection-related deaths and research efforts. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

X owner Elon Musk says he is increasing his security after receiving “vitriolic” threats for endorsing president Trump.

Appearing at a town hall event in Pittsburgh Sunday, Musk told the crowd about being pictured on the cover of Der Spiegel magazine, which labeled him ‘Public Enemy No. 2’ – behind Trump.

German SPIEGEL hates freedom.

Mainstream journalism is a complete joke – citizen journalism is the future. Thank god, Elon Musk bought Twitter and made it X. pic.twitter.com/NE3nZcMJSd

— Miró (@unblogd) October 20, 2024

“I’m like, enemy number 2 of what? Uh, democracy?” Musk told the crowd, adding “I mean I’m pro-democracy. I’m literally trying to uphold the Constitution and ensure we have a free and fair election.”

Musk added, “I’m definitely upgrading my security,” quipping “Guess I better cancel that open-car parade.”

The Tesla CEO admitted that he is a “little shook” by the “level of vitriolic hatred on the left.”

??ELON MUSK: "I hope I don't get shot. I was just on a German magazine saying I was 'enemy number two.' Enemy number two of what? I'm definitely upgrading my security. Maybe I should put an inflatable dummy of me in a motorcade. Just troll them." ???? pic.twitter.com/bxocA7K5Mt

— Autism Capital ?? (@AutismCapital) October 20, 2024

“They claim they’re tolerant. And yet, they’re incredibly intolerant and spewing hate,”Musk said, adding “Whereas on the right I see people who tend to regard people on the left as, well, misguided. But they don’t hate them.”

“But the amount of hate coming from the left is like, wow, next level,” he continued.

Here’s the full event:

Musk is no stranger to threats since taking over Twitter in an effort to preserve free speech.

Musk has come under sustained attack since coming out for Trump.

Deranged leftists, such as Mark Cuban, are openly advocating sanctioning Musk’s companies because of his political opinions.

This is insane. Joe Scarborough and Mark Cuban are openly arguing that Elon Musk deserves to have his businesses punished because of his political opinions.

It really is Donald Trump or communism. pic.twitter.com/ezTRIBJVFF

— ????Travis???? (@Travis_4_Trump) October 19, 2024

Musk has repeatedly warned that if Trump doesn’t win the election, it could be the last and that civilisation is on the line.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

CBS’s iconic 60 Minutes has had plenty of scandals and embarrassments in its long 57-year history, most notably the fake-but-accurate Dan Rather mess. Yet never has it found itself in greater disrepute than in 2024.

Donald Trump, for good reason, recently declined to join 60 Minutes for its traditional election-year in-depth interviews of the two presidential candidates. Why?

Last time he consented in 2020, anchor and interviewer Leslie Stahl attacked Trump’s accurate assertion that the Hunter Biden laptop (then in the possession of the FBI) was authentic—and authentically damning to Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy.

Stahl falsely claimed the laptop “can’t be verified.” She further incorrectly asserted, “So this story about Hunter and his laptop, some repair shop found it; the source is Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani.” The New York Post, in fact, reported the story. The FBI did not deny it.

Yet old Twitter and Facebook, under collaborating FBI tutelage and pressure, suppressed dissemination of the truth. Joe Biden’s then-advisor and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in conjunction with former interim CIA Director Michael Morrel, helped round up “51 former intelligence authorities” (among them Leon Panetta and both John Brennan and James Clapper, who had admitted previously of lying under oath to Congress) to claim falsely that the laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian information gambit to warp the election.

Joe Biden used the “expert” consensus to further lie in the last Biden-Trump debate that the laptop was cooked up by the Russians. And neither CBS, the “intelligence authorities,” nor any of the Bidens have ever since apologized.

More recently, CBS got caught selectively editing the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, cutting and pasting an incoherent Harris response to lessen her embarrassing word salad. And in a subsequent interview with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the network once again edited and pruned his answers, but in contrast, on this occasion, to make him seem far less persuasive.

In yet another current CBS interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, network host Tony Dokoupil honestly questioned Coates about his new, one-sided, anti-Israeli book The Message. The result was that the left-wing icon Coates was almost immediately revealed to be abjectly ignorant of the Middle East, unapologetically biased, and completely uninterested in any viewpoint other than his own partisan prejudices.

Yet what followed proved yet another network embarrassment. An internal CBS division with the eerie Orwellian title of “CBS News Race and Culture Unit” attacked Dokoupil for not providing “context” for Coates’s self-condemnatory and embarrassing interview. The subtext was that CBS, under pressure from woke zealots, simply disowned Dokoupil and sought to subject him to correct thought training. His apparent crime was not insisting on different—softball—journalistic standards for woke black authors like Coates. In other words, CBS blamed Dokoupil for revealing Coates to be a fool on the air.

The network further diminished its eroding reputation yet again through the unprofessional conduct of recent moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan during the J.D. Vance/Tim Walz vice presidential debate.

After the earlier ABC-sponsored debate between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, in which the moderators became partisan fact-checkers (and often wrongly so) of Trump alone and drilled him on follow-up questions in a way not accorded Harris, CBS promised not to repeat such a network embarrassment. So, it pledged not to fact-check the two vice presidential candidates and instead to present a “fair” moderation of the event.

Instead, the CBS moderators were even more patently one-sided than the prior disastrous ABC performance. The two broke their own pre-debate rules by indeed fact-checking. But, even worse, they fact-checked Vance alone. And, once again, did so erroneously in a way that only exposed their unprofessional partiality.

Given the prior ABC debate sham, CBS was supposedly determined not to turn off the public with more moderator partisan distortions. Instead, the network proved that if it was a question of further eroding its professional brand or helping elect the Harris/Walz progressive ticket, then CBS would predictably choose to jettison its reputation to further the progressive cause.

Just as CBS is no longer the network television standard, so too has the current generation of partisans done their best to sully the New York Times. Within just a few days, the Times embarrassed itself in ways similar to the partisanship so toxic at CBS.

The Times just published an op-ed, “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.” What followed were testimonials from medical officials and doctors in Gaza with truly harrowing stories of Israel’s collateral damage and the shooting of civilians, accompanied by X-ray photos of small children with IDF bullets allegedly lodged in their bodies and heads.

But even if one was not aware of the fables promulgated by Hamas and the history of propagandistic attacks on Israel, and even if there was no corroboration of how the victims died and under what conditions, a novice might have sensed that something was not quite right with the evidentiary X-rays.

Experts pointed out that the embedded bullets in the scans appeared pristine, without any fragmentation after entering skulls or midriff sections. There were no apparent entry and exit wounds on the images—suggesting either that it was unlikely the bullets came from IDF-issued high-velocity weapons or that the X-rays might simply have been rephotographed with IDF bullets placed beneath them. In any case, the New York Times did not cite any expert outside reviewer to authenticate the scans.

Recently, the New York Times again rushed to partisan judgment to persuade the public that current charges of abject plagiarism by presidential candidate Vice President Harris were baseless. Accusations arose that Harris and her coauthor in a past book on crime had plagiarized a number of sources multiple times.

Yet the Times claimed the copying was minor and did not rise to the level of actionable plagiarism. It “proved” this by quoting a plagiarism “expert,” Jonathan Bailey, who, it implied, had consulted all the alleged plagiarism passages.

But once the public saw just a few of the passages in question, almost immediately it concluded otherwise: that Harris and her co-author were indeed plagiarists. That forced Bailey, the original Times expert, to reconsider his initial opinion: “At the time, I was unaware of a full dossier with additional allegations, which led some to accuse the New York Times of withholding that information from me. However, the article clearly stated that it was my ‘initial reaction’ to those allegations, not a complete analysis.”

Bailey then concluded that Harris had indeed committed plagiarism but not “maliciously” so. Once again, the Times had not verified its assertions before publication, and once again it had erred on the side of its known partisanship.

The Times and CBS are just a small example of current once-prestige outlets—such as ABC (cf. its moderators during the Harris-Trump presidential debate) and NPR (that just retracted its scurrilous charges against journalist Rich Lowry)—who have consistently abused the public’s trust for the partisan benefit of progressives or their causes.

In sum, the trust and prestige that took prior generations of journalists decades to earn have been thrown away in just a few years by incompetents and partisans—on the ancient, flawed principle that the supposedly superior moral ends justify any means necessary to achieve them.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week conference, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said he was "fairly bullish" on China's oil demand, especially after Beijing rolled out a series of stimulus measures to revive the world's second-largest economy.

"We see more demand for jet fuel and naphtha, especially for liquid-to-chemical projects," Nasser said on the sidelines, adding, "A lot of it is happening in China mainly because of the growth in chemical needs. Especially for the transition, for the electric vehicles, for the solar panels, they need more chemicals. So that's huge growth there."

China, the world's largest crude oil importer and second-largest oil consumer, is Aramco's largest crude oil customer. Nasser noted that Aramco plans to increase liquids-to-chemical capacity to 4 million barrels a day, with most of the increase directed at Chinese markets. 

"China is a great market. We are investing with our partners," he said, adding his firm has increased investments in China. 

He also noted that the demand for aviation fuel has been a "bright spot" in the country.

In markets, Brent crude prices were up nearly 2% to the mid-point of the $74 handle on mounting risks that Israel launches a counterattack on Iran. Last week, prices fell 7% as China's slowdown dominated themes.

Nasser pointed out that Asia's energy transition is occurring much slower than initially anticipated. He said that over decades, the Global South will increase oil demand as living standards rise—and this will eventually be followed by a long plateau.

"Most analysts agree that even when the growth in global oil demand stops at some point, no abrupt drop in overall demand is anticipated, and that stage is likely to be followed by a long plateau," he said, adding, "Rather than an energy transition, we are really talking about energy addition."

"If so, more than 100 million barrels per day would realistically still be required by 2050," he said at the conference. 

"This is a stark contrast with those predicting that oil will, or must, fall to just 25 million barrels per day by then. Being short 75 million barrels every day would be devastating for energy security and affordability," Nasser warned.

He said countries should use a mix of energy sources that push them closer to their climate ambitions, adding, "Our main focus should be on the levers available now."

In a recent report, the IEA wrote that crude oil demand could slide by the end of the decade because of the "Age of Electricity."

Despite forecasts of a sharp and sudden plunge in global crude oil demand, that's not what's happening. In fact, fossil fuels, particularly natural gas, will continue to power the global economy for decades to come.

Authored by Jane Yang via The Epoch Times,

How many people in the United States are moving to the Golden State and how many are moving to other states? Newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2023 provides a glimpse into these numbers.

The statistics released Oct. 17 showed that an estimated 422,000 people moved to California from other states and an estimated 690,000 moved to other states in 2023. This resulted in a net negative domestic migration of 268,000.

The top five destination states for Californians were Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, and Florida, with people moving to these states making up around 39 percent of the domestic migration out of California.

The top five states people left behind when moving to California were Texas, New York, Washington, Nevada, and Oregon.

The data also showed that of the other three most populated states in the U.S., New York state also had a net loss in domestic migration, while Florida and Texas both had gains in domestic migration.

In comparison, for the year 2022, census data showed around 475,800 people moved to California from other states, while 817,700 people moved out of state, indicating that domestic migration into and out of the Golden State slowed slightly since the previous year.

In 2021, California saw 433,400 move into the state, while around 841,000 people moved to another state.

Immigration Data

The census bureau data also show that although California lost more people to other states in 2023, it had a higher number of immigrants—an estimated 315,700 people from foreign countries—moving in last year, legally or illegally.

More than a million people moved from abroad into the four states with the highest population in the U.S. in 2023, including California.

In 2022, 303,100 people moved to California from abroad, and 188,700 people moved to the state from other countries in 2021.

California leaders earlier this year pointed to immigration as an important factor in California’s population growth.

The California Department of Finance reported in April, “For the first time since 2020, California has once again experienced positive population growth in 2023,” and one reason was the rebound of “foreign legal immigration.”

California’s population grew by more than 67,000 in 2023 to 39.1 million and the rebound of foreign legal immigration brought California “a net gain of 114,200 persons in 2023 compared to 90,300 in 2022.”

The department cautioned against comparing its numbers to those of the Census Bureau, since they refer to different points in time.

The state Department of Finance also stated, “Net domestic migration no longer offsets the population gains from natural increase and international migration.”

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Philip Zimbardo, the renowned psychologist whose controversial Stanford Prison Experiment explored how social situations influence individual behavior, has died at the age of 91.

Stanford University, where Zimbardo was a professor emeritus of psychology, announced his death on Oct. 18. An obituary on his personal website stated that he died peacefully at his San Francisco home on Oct. 14, surrounded by his wife and children.

During a career spanning more than five decades, Zimbardo researched a wide range of topics including why people are shy, why people choose to be bystanders in the face of wrongdoing, and how cult leaders exert mind-control over followers.

However, his Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 was the one that brought him the most attention—and enduring scrutiny.

For $15 a day, 19 male college students were recruited to role-play as either guards or prisoners in a mock prison set up in the basement of Stanford psychology department building. Zimbardo, acting as the “prison superintendent,” and his team observed the interactions, with minimal instructions given to the participants.

Initially, the participants were expected to interact peacefully. Yet, to the shock of Zimbardo and his team, the “guards” quickly began acting in a tyrannical manner and abusing their power. “Our guards became sadistic, and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress,” Zimbardo recalled.

The experiment, intended to last two full weeks, was called off after six days and, over the decades since, has drawn strong criticism.

Critics have questioned many aspects of Zimbardo’s stories, noting that only a third of the “guards” exhibited sadistic behavior, and that some “prisoners” might have faked their mental breakdowns to secure early release because Zimbardo failed to make it clear that they were free to quit at any time. Zimbardo’s dual role as the “prison superintendent” and head researcher, siding with the guards, also fueled ethical concerns.

Zimbardo defended his work, which was frequently cited by scholars seeking to understand the psychology behind atrocities including the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the abuse of prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. In 2018, he emphasized that the experiment should be viewed as a “cautionary tale” about “what might happen to any of us if we underestimate the extent to which the power of social roles and external pressures can influence our actions.”

While recognizing that ordinary people have the potential to commit evil that would otherwise be unthinkable, Zimbardo nevertheless proposed the opposite: that everyone has the capacity to do unthinkable good. He termed this the “banality of heroism,” a concept suggesting that we are all potential heroes, simply awaiting the moment in life when we are called upon to perform a heroic act.

“The decision to act heroically is a choice that many of us will be called upon to make at some point in time,” Zimbardo wrote in 2006. “By conceiving of heroism as a universal attribute of human nature, not as a rare feature of the few ‘heroic elect,’ heroism becomes something that seems in the range of possibilities for every person, perhaps inspiring more of us to answer that call.”

In 2010, Zimbardo established the Heroic Imagination Project, a nonprofit organization that seeks to prepare everyday people for a moment to help others in a time of need.

“If we lose the ability to imagine ourselves as heroes, and to understand the meaning of true heroism, our society will be poorer for it,” he wrote. “But if we can reconnect with these ancient ideals, and make them fresh again, we can create a connection with the hero in ourselves.”

Born on March 23, 1933, in New York City, Zimbardo grew up in poverty in the Bronx. In high school, he developed a lifelong friendship with fellow classmate Stanley Milgram, who went on to become a psychologist and conduct the famous Milgram obedience experiments, a direct inspiration of the 1971 experiment.

Zimbardo joined Stanford’s faculty in 1968 after teaching at New York University and Columbia University. He retired in 2003.

Zimbardo is survived by his wife of 52 years, Christina Maslach Zimbardo, a former graduate of his who famously persuaded him to shut down the Stanford experiment early after witnessing its disturbing effects firsthand. He is also survived by his son Adam, from his first marriage to the late Rose Zimbardo, and daughters Zara and Tanya.

Via SchiffGold.com,

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill this week that could force local refineries to stockpile fuel, a move he believes will smooth long-term gasoline prices.

“Price spikes have cost Californians billions of dollars over the years, and we’re not waiting around for the industry to do the right thing,” Newsom said.

“We’re taking action to prevent these price spikes and save consumers money at the pump.”

Once the California Energy Commission outlines the new set of rules, refineries could be fined as much as $1 million per day for non-compliance. That massive figure doesn’t alarm Newsom, who says it’s time justice is done.

“They’re screwing you; they’ve been screwing you for years,” he said of oil companies.

But, as critics have been quick to point out, forcing suppliers to hold inventory could dramatically raise operating costs. Even if the new legislation does prevent price spikes—an outcome that’s far from certain, given the unpredictability of economic shocks—consumers will pay for future lower prices with higher prices now. That’s if producers don’t simply pack up and leave.

“The uniqueness [of California regulations] on top of uniqueness on top of uniqueness has made this not the kind of environment that refiners want to continue to invest in,” said Eloy Garcia, lobbyist for industry group WSPA.

“You are further and further making this a unique refining environment when you need refiners to stay in California.”

Consistently high prices are a bigger problem than spikes, many say. Even in its ideal form, the new legislation only aggravates this immediate problem.

“Even if, in theory, it stops price spikes, it still doesn’t bring them down,” said Nicolaus Assemblyman James Gallagher.

“And the problem is the price is too damn high, right now.”

Experts estimate that creating the storage tanks required to meet the new requirements could take nearly a decade and cost “tens of millions of dollars.” That stockpile will be costly to maintain and comes with its own host of problems.

“Once you have inventory like this, it is going to be very tempting for whoever has political power to try to release that inventory when it is helpful to them to push down gasoline prices,” UC Berkeley economist Severin Borenstein said in a recent hearing.

Others have pointed out that worker safety and jobs could be at risk from the legislation. Cost-cutting measures to pay for new construction would likely involve layoffs and job cuts. Workers who are unfamiliar with the maintenance procedures and dangers of massive storage tanks could be thrown into an on-the-job crash course, leading to cut corners and errors due to inexperience.

It’s an open secret that oil stockpiling to prevent supply disruptions “works,” at least for policy purposes, on a national level. The federal government manages the world’s largest emergency petroleum reserve, commonly known as the SPR. But there’s a critical difference between that national plan and the California legislation, and that’s how much competition the rules allow. The U.S. government purchases oil from suppliers and undertakes its own inventory management and storage procedures. Newsom shifts that burden onto suppliers, forcing them to hold reserves they would prefer to sell immediately, penalizing noncompliance with fines rather than incentivizing compliance with payment.

Both policies raise oil prices for consumers, but likely by different amounts, and certainly in different ways.

The national stockpile raises prices by reducing supply, a feature of a competitive market whenever a large buyer is involved. The California stockpile raises prices by forcing operating costs to rise, a feature of a regulated market where producers are required to perform at reduced efficiency.

Hence the age-old question of economics, which so many well-meaning politicians forget to ask: Is the tradeoff worthwhile? What kind of precedent does this local regulation set for the economy as a whole?

For Newsom, the move is an unequivocal win for consumers—and it’s only the beginning of a larger plan for government intervention to force prices down, despite the best efforts of profit-seeking suppliers.

“[Gas companies] continue to lie, and they continue to manipulate,” Newsom said. “They have been raking in unprecedented profits because they can.”

In his preview of the next few days, DB's Jim Reid has some good news for those who feel like it's already Friday: "It doesn't feel like its going to be the most exciting week ahead of us" although with earnings season now in full throttle and with a seemingly extremely tight US election just two weeks tomorrow there is undoubtedly plenty to think about and react to.

Having said the election is tight, Reid notes that over the last two weeks the probability markets have been shifting back towards Trump. At the start of October a Republicans sweep was a 28% probability on Polymarket.com but that's now shifted to a 42% chance. A Democrats sweep has fallen from 21% to 14%.

Outside of the tax and spending implications, Trump last week said that "the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff". So that should have reminded markets that he is serious on this matter if he gets elected. In terms of fiscal, Deutsche Bank economists believe that the deficit will be between around 7 to 9% from 2026-2028 whatever political configuration we have in the White House.

Staying on debt we do have the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Washington from today and across the rest of the week. There is expected to be a focus on the unsustainability of global debt in these meetings but that is probably more of a medium-term concern rather than anything markets will latch on to this week. There are plenty of central bankers speaking at the various Washington events but in particular watch out for ECB President Lagarde and BoE's Governor Bailey (both tomorrow). Ahead of that, today sees quite a bit of Fedspeak. There is also the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia from tomorrow to Thursday hosted by Putin. China's President Xi and India's Prime Minister Modi are expected to attend.

In terms of data, the main highlight is probably the round of global flash PMIs (Thursday). Walking through the data day-by-day, the other highlights are German PPI, French retail sales and the US leading index today, the US Phili Fed tomorrow, US existing home sales, the Beige book, Eurozone consumer confidence and the Bank of Canada meeting on Wednesday, US initial jobless claims on Thursday, and US durable goods, Tokyo CPI, and the German Ifo on Friday. Recent strikes and storms will likely distort US claims and durable goods so it will be tough to get a clean data read at the moment. The Beige book may give us a bit more insight into current economic momentum.

In corporate earnings, the main highlights are SAP (today), Texas Instruments, GE, and GM (tomorrow), and Tesla, IBM, and Boeing (Wednesday). We list others in the day-by-day calendar at the end.

Courtesy of DB, here is a Day-by-day calendar of events

Monday October 21

• Data: US September leading index, China 1-yr and 5-yr loan prime rates, Germany September PPI, France September retail sales
• Central banks: Fed's Logan, Kashkari and Schmid speak, ECB's Simkus speaks
• Earnings: SAP

Tuesday October 22

• Data: US October Philadelphia Fed non-manufacturing activity, Richmond Fed manufacturing index, business conditions, UK September public finances, EU27 September new car registrations, Canada September industrial product price index, raw materials price index
• Central banks: Fed's Harker speaks, ECB's Centeno, Knot, Holzmann, Villeroy and Rehn speak, BoE's Bailey, Greene and Breeden speak
• Earnings: General Electric, Danaher, Texas Instruments, Philip Morris, Verizon, RTX, Lockheed Martin, Fiserv, Moody's, Freeport-McMoRan, General Motors, Deutsche Boerse

Wednesday October 23

• Data: US September existing home sales, Eurozone October consumer confidence
• Central banks: Fed's Beige Book, Bowman and Barkin speak, BoC decision, ECB's Lagarde, Lane, Cipollone, Escriva, Knot and Centeno speak, BoE's Bailey and Breeden speak
• Earnings: Tesla, Coca-Cola, T-Mobile US, Thermo Fisher Scientific, IBM, ServiceNow, NextEra Energy, AT&T, Boston Scientific, Lam Research, Iberdrola, Boeing, Atlas Copco, Amphenol, CME, GE Vernova, Newmont, Hilton, Heineken
• Auctions: US 20-yr Bond (reopening, $13bn)

Thursday October 24

• Data: US, UK, Japan, Germany, France and Eurozone October flash PMIs, US September Chicago Fed national activity index, new home sales, October Kansas City Fed manufacturing activity, initial jobless claims, France October manufacturing confidence
• Central banks: Fed's Hammack speaks, ECB's Kazaks and Lane speak, BoE's Mann speaks
• Earnings: S&P Global, Union Pacific, Honeywell, KKR, UPS, SK Hynix, Equinor, Dassault Systemes, Keurig Dr Pepper, Nasdaq, Dow, Evolution AB, Neste Oyj, Norsk Hydro
• Auctions: US 5-yr TIPS ($24bn)

Friday October 25

• Data: US September durable goods orders, October Kansas City Fed services activity, UK October GfK consumer confidence, Japan October Tokyo CPI, September PPI services, Germany October Ifo survey, France October consumer confidence, Q3 total job seekers, Italy October consumer confidence index, manufacturing confidence, economic sentiment, Eurozone September M3, Canada August retail sales
• Central banks: ECB consumer expectations survey
• Earnings: Sanofi, HCA Healthcare, Colgate-Palmolive, Mercedes-Benz, Eni, Sika, Centene

* * *

Finally, turning to the US, Goldman writes that the key economic data release this week is the durable goods report on Friday. There are several speaking engagements from Fed officials this week.

Monday, October 21

• There are no major economic data releases scheduled.
• 08:55 AM Dallas Fed President Logan (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan will deliver remarks at the 2024 Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) Annual Meeting. Text and moderated Q&A are expected.
• 01:00 PM Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari will take part in a townhall hosted by the Chippewa Falls Chamber of Commerce in Wisconsin. Audience and moderated Q&A are expected. On October 14th, Kashkari noted that “further modest reductions” in the fed funds rate were likely appropriate in coming quarters. Kashkari also said that “a rapid labor weakening does not appear to be imminent” and stressed that “the path ahead for policy will be driven by the actual economic, inflation, and labor market data.”
• 05:05 PM Kansas City Fed President Schmid (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid will deliver remarks on the economic and monetary policy outlook to the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Society in Kansas City. Text and audience Q&A are expected.
• 06:40 PM San Francisco Fed President Daly (FOMC voter) speaks: San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly will take part in a moderated discussion at a Wall Street Journal Live event in California. Moderated and audience Q&A are expected. On October 15th, Daly said that “one or two cuts [this year] was a reasonable” baseline if the economy performs as expected and noted that “it’s clear … the direction of change is down.”

Tuesday, October 22

• 10:00 AM Richmond Fed manufacturing index, October (consensus -17, last -21)
• 10:00 AM Philadelphia Fed President Harker (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker will speak at the 8th Annual Fintech Conference, hosted by the Philly Fed. Text is expected.

Wednesday, October 23

• 09:00 AM Fed Governor Bowman speaks: Fed Governor Michelle Bowman will deliver opening remarks at the Philly Fed’s Fintech Conference.
• 10:00 AM Existing home sales, September (GS +2.1%, consensus +1.0%, last -2.5%)
• 12:00 PM Richmond Fed President Barkin (FOMC voter) speaks: Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin will deliver a speech about community colleges at the 2024 Virginia Education and Workforce Conference. Text is expected. On October 10th, Barkin noted that, while he “wouldn’t declare victory” on inflation, he thought it was “definitely headed in the right direction.” Barkin said that the FOMC’s 50bp cut in September was “a recalibration toward a somewhat less restrictive stance” and noted that he “didn’t have a lot of heartburn about whether you got there in three steps or four steps or two and then one.” Barkin noted that the recent labor market data “confirms what I’m hearing … We’re in a low hiring, low firing environment.”
• 02:00 PM Beige Book, November meeting period

Thursday, October 24

• 08:30 AM Initial jobless claims, week ended October 19 (GS 245k, consensus 240k, last 241k); Continuing jobless claims, week ended October 12 (consensus 1,876k, last 1,867k): We estimate that initial claims increased to 245k in the week ended October 19th, reflecting a 5-10k incremental boost from hurricane-related filings on the back of Hurricane Milton but a slight headwind from residual seasonality.
• 08:45 AM Cleveland Fed President Hammack (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack will deliver welcoming remarks at an event hosted by the Cleveland Fed’s Center for Inflation Research.
• 09:45 AM S&P Global US manufacturing PMI, October preliminary (consensus 47.5, last 47.2); S&P Global US services PMI, October preliminary (consensus 55.0, last 55.2)
• 10:00 AM New home sales, September (GS -0.5%, consensus +0.6%, last -4.7%)
• 11:00 AM Kansas City Fed manufacturing index, October (consensus -5, last -8)

Friday, October 25

• 08:30 AM Durable goods orders, September preliminary (GS -2.0%, consensus -1.0%, last flat); Durable goods orders ex-transportation, September preliminary (GS +0.1%, consensus -0.1%, last +0.5%); Core capital goods orders, September preliminary (GS +0.1%, consensus +0.1%, last +0.3%); Core capital goods shipments, September preliminary (GS +0.1%, consensus flat, last -0.1%): We estimate that durable goods orders declined 2.0% in the preliminary September report (month-over-month, seasonally adjusted), reflecting a decline in commercial aircraft orders. We forecast 0.1% increases in core capital goods orders and shipments, reflecting mixed global manufacturing data.
• 10:00 AM University of Michigan consumer sentiment, October final (GS 68.8, consensus 69.5, last 68.9): University of Michigan 5-10-year inflation expectations, October final (GS 3.1%, last 3.0%)

Source: DB, Goldman

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report, financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), gives her take on gold, Kamala, Trump, control, cash, murder and water. 

On gold’s rocket rise, CAF says, “Gold is very important..."

"We divide gold into two positions:  Your ‘core’ position and your ‘investment’ position... Right now, gold looks phenomenally attractive as a core position.  It is also attractive as an investment position.”

Why the big move up now? 

CAF says, “Part of it is the incredible monetary policies and the monetary inflation coming from the central banks. "

"The other is too many people are watching government implode in a variety of different ways, and people are saying I want a core position in gold...

We are also seeing the BRICs . . . and seeing states in the US move to put gold and silver in a position to be used as a currency. 

So, we are watching people put monetary reserves in gold and monetary liquidity in gold. 

That is happening steadily, and more and more people are saying they need a percentage of their assets in gold. . . . We are in a long-term bull market in gold.”

On Kamala Harris, the operative word is “meltdown.”  CAF says:

“Kamala is in, what we call in a campaign, a ‘meltdown.’  If you look at the current meltdown, I am baffled because why would somebody with her characteristics be made the nominee? 

You are talking about major donors putting major money behind her.  Why would they spend that much money if there were serious holes in her vetting and she is inclined to melt down this way?  It’s kind of baffling.”

On Trump, what is the first thing he should do if re-elected?  CAF says:

“He should stop the poisoning of the American people. 

This is one of the reasons we did this issue on water.  The American people are being poisoned...I travel a lot by car.  I see deterioration in the air, in the water, in the food–they are being poisoned.  And, of course, the big one is the CV19 vaccines.  Vaccines are poisoning Americans. 

There was just a big ruling against putting fluoride poison being added to municipal water supplies.  One of the things you can do is to march down to your city or county and tell them to stop wasting money on putting poison in your water.  If you reverse that, it is one important action you can take.”

The Deep State and central bankers want total control of your money and your life.  Fitts says this is why she started pushing the use of cash instead of digital transactions. 

She calls it “Make Cash Great Again.”

"If we don’t fix the finances from an actuarial standpoint, they are going to continue to delay benefits or lower life expectancy, and that is what they are doing.  They are balancing the books by lowering life expectancy.”

One way to lower life expectancy is to inject people with a so-called vaccine that is really a bioweapon that murders and disables people. 

That is exactly what happened with the CV19 vax, and the deaths or murders are still piling up.  CAF says,

“You can cut back on the fraudulent rackets, or you can cut back on the people.” 

They are cutting back on the people by any measure.

There is much more in the 54-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with the Publisher of The Solari Report, Catherine Austin Fitts, for 10.19.24.

*  *  *

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

There is a lot of free information on Solari.com.

With 98.42% of votes counted as this is written, Moldova's Sunday referendum on whether the country should join the European Union teeters at a near-tie, with 50.08% voting Yes and 49.92% voting No -- a difference of just 2,285 votes out of 1.46 million cast. The exceedingly close count defies polling that raised expectations for a comfortable win for Yes, and has the incumbent president -- who herself is headed for a surprise runoff for her own job -- accusing Russia of interfering in the election.  

With a population of about 3 million, the republic of Moldova is wedged between Romania and Ukraine. Most citizens speak Romanian, but there's a significant Russian-speaking minority. Consistent with that combination of location and demographics, the country's sentiments and policies have swung back and forth between pro-Russian and pro-Western. Since 2020 -- which brought the election of current President Maia Sandu -- a decidedly pro-Western slant has prevailed. 

Complicating the geopolitical picture is the slender breakaway republic of Transnistria, which lies along the east bank of the Dniester River, wedged between Ukraine and Moldova. While not recognized by any other state, it enjoys the economic and political support of Russia, along with the presence of some 1,500 Russian soldiers.  

Sunday's razor-close EU referendum and lackluster showing by Sandu seemingly signal the country's political pendulum is swinging again. Sandu only received 41% of the vote, while her principal opponent, former Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo, scored 27%. With opposition expected to consolidate in the Nov. 3 runoff, Sandu appears to be in serious jeopardy of losing the presidency.   

Sandu responded to the results with accusations of an “unprecedented assault on our country’s freedom and democracy,” blaming Russia for working to rally opposition to EU membership.  The also claimed there had been "a fraud of unprecedented scale,” in the form of an alleged scheme to buy 300,000 No votes.  

As the election approached, Sandu's government accused Israeli-born, fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor of meddling in the election. Convicted of fraud and theft over a scam that drained $1 billion from Moldovan banks, Shor was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison in absentia. Moldova is now accusing the 37-year-old of funneling money from Russia into a vote-buying effort. When accused of his financial crimes, Shor first fled to and lived in Israel before moving to Russia.

The BBC said it had observed an apparent indication of just such a vote-buying effort: 

A BBC producer heard a woman who had just dropped her ballot in the transparent box ask an election monitor where she would get paid. Outside, we asked directly whether she had been offered cash to vote and she admitted it without qualms. She was angry that a man who had sent her to the polling station was no longer answering her calls. “He tricked me!” she said. She would not reply when asked who she had voted for.

A Yes victory on the referendum wouldn't immediately put Moldova in the EU. Rather, it would amend the country's constitution to declare EU membership is a goal of the republic, which declared its independence in 1991 in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. Sandu has set 2030 as a goal for accession to the EU. 

The set of dynamics in play -- election results that defy expectations of an establishment victory, followed by accusations of Russian interference -- echoes what's been repeatedly been observed both in the United States and Western Europe in recent years. On top of that, Moldovan authorities also censored online content that they characterized as disinformation.

That's not the only similarity: The referendum count had No with a narrow lead down the stretch, only to see Yes pull ahead as absentee ballots were tallied -- many cast by pro-EU "diaspora" Moldovans who don't even live in the country. 

Everywhere the same.

Moldova finally did the democracy trick at 97,66% counted. ??

The longest counting stations always ends up in the desired results. This could be surprisingly int. observed in many elections since few years. #Moldova #MoldovaElections pic.twitter.com/V6VoKwCyez

— Gemüsegurke (@gemusegurke) October 21, 2024

More than ever, attending an NFL game is becoming a luxury commodity.

In 2023 alone, average ticket prices jumped 8.6% to $120. Driving up costs are new stadiums, which are being built with fewer seats as luxury boxes and premium seats take up more space. The newly-built Allegiant Stadium, for instance, which hosted last year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas, has 65,000 seats—one of the lowest in the league.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the rising cost of attending an NFL game, based on data from Team Marketing Report via FinanceBuzz.

How Much Have NFL Game Costs Increased?

Below, we show the cost increase of an average NFL ticket, parking, beer, and hot dog since 2013:

Over the last decade, NFL game costs have risen by 39%, surpassing the rate of inflation.

The Las Vegas Raiders, with their new stadium and relocation, have experienced the most significant price hikes. Compared to 2013, attending a game is $103 more expensive. The Allegiant Stadium, costing a staggering $1.9 billion to build, is one of the most expensive in the world.

Meanwhile, attending a Cleveland Browns game is nearly double the cost compared to 2013.

The Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victories have contributed to higher ticket costs in particular, rising 103% over the past decade. On the resale market, Chiefs tickets were the second-highest in the league in 2023, with home tickets costing $468, on average.

In stark contrast, Dallas Cowboys game costs declined 1% compared to a decade ago. Despite being the world’s most valuable sports team, game costs remain fairly stable, at $160 in 2023 versus $162 in 2013. For context, the Cowboys had the highest game costs in 2013, while costs are slightly above the NFL average today.

Like the Cowboys, the New York Jets and New England Patriots have seen among the lowest price hikes overall.

To learn more about this topic from an earnings perspective, check out this graphic on the top NFL teams by revenue.