Posted originally on the CTH on December 14, 2022 | sundance
The logic within the research outline is silly. Unvaccinated people have a 72% higher rate of severe vehicle accidents than vaccinated drivers according to the study.
Could it be the difference between rural vs metropolitan populations; one drives frequently, for longer durations and distances, while the other does not?
Apparently, that type of commonsense possibility did not make it into the analysis. However, the authors of the study do suggest insurance companies should start considering insurance risk hikes based on vaccination status.
(Via Yahoo) – If you passed on getting the COVID vaccine, you might be a lot more likely to get into a car crash.
Or at least those are the findings of a new study published this month in The American Journal of Medicine. During the summer of 2021, Canadian researchers examined the encrypted government-held records of more than 11 million adults, 16% of whom hadn’t received the COVID vaccine.
They found that the unvaccinated people were 72% more likely to be involved in a severe traffic crash—in which at least one person was transported to the hospital—than those who were vaccinated. That’s similar to the increased risk of car crashes for people with sleep apnea, though only about half that of people who abuse alcohol, researchers found.
The excess risk of car crash posed by unvaccinated drivers “exceeds the safety gains from modern automobile engineering advances and also imposes risks on other road users,” the authors wrote.
Of course, skipping a COVID vaccine does not mean that someone will get into a car crash. Instead, the authors theorize that people who resist public health recommendations might also “neglect basic road safety guidelines.”
Why would they ignore the rules of the road? Distrust of the government, a belief in freedom, misconceptions of daily risks, “faith in natural protection,” “antipathy toward regulation,” poverty, misinformation, a lack of resources, and personal beliefs are potential reasons proposed by the authors.
The findings are significant enough that primary care doctors should consider counseling unvaccinated patients on traffic safety—and insurance companies might base changes to insurance policies on vaccination data, the authors suggest. (read more)
Posted originally on the CTH on December 14, 2022 | sundance
As we have often discussed on these pages, inflation would ultimately moderate and plateau not because prices were dropping but rather because of the calendar cycle.
As the economy cycles through a year of large price increases, the current inflation rate cycles through to the period when prices first increased. This calendar cycle means continued price increases are lower as a percentage and thus the inflation rate appears to modify despite prices continuing to rise. [BLS Report]
This scenario, prices remaining high and continuing to climb – yet lower as a percentage, now provides the justification for the federal reserve to state inflation is moderating.
(Via NBC) – Amid signs that price growth in the U.S. economy is rapidly cooling, the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it was slowing the pace of its rate-hiking program designed to tackle inflation — but that more hikes were still on the table.
The Federal Open Market Committee said it was increasing its key federal funds rate by 0.5%, after announcing four-straight 0.75% hikes at its most recent meetings. In its Wednesday statement, the Fed said it continues to target an inflation rate of 2% over the long term and would continue to increase the federal funds rate to do so.
“Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices, and broader price pressures,” the committee said.
But bringing down inflation is likely to come at the cost of higher unemployment in the short term: The Fed said it now projects the 2023 unemployment rate to average 4.6%, equating to hundreds of thousands of more jobless workers compared with the current rate of 3.7%.
The Labor Department on Tuesday reported that annual inflation clocked in at 7.1% in November — the lowest reading in more than a year. While it is still high compared to the 2% level at which the Federal Reserve typically seeks to hold down inflation, the most recent number signals that the galloping price growth earlier this year is fading. (read more)
Prices will never drop because the supply side pressure from a new energy policy remains as the driving factor.
Demand has dropped throughout 2022 as the U.S. economy, gauged in units of product sold, has contracted. Consumers are not buying non-essential goods or services as the costs of housing, fuel, heating, electricity, overall energy and food prices continue rising.
Despite the economic contraction that is lowering energy use, rapidly increasing energy costs continue to be the driving force of inflation.
This period of depressed economic activity will continue as unemployment begins to become problematic. As a nation we will remain in this economic malaise as long as Green New Deal, Build Back Better, energy policy is maintained.
On the positive side the economic shrinking is reversable with new energy policy; however, the opportunity to make that change is several years away. In the interim, the cost of living will remain the biggest challenge for the foreseeable future, and the inbound open-border migration will keep wages depressed.
Under the economic program of Joe Biden wages must be depressed in order to avoid production inflation (higher labor costs) from piling atop the energy policy inflation. Thus, the border influx will continue.
The gap between the haves and have nots is also going to explode in the next five years.
Armstrong Economics Blog/Interest Rates Re-Posted Dec 14, 2022 by Martin Armstrongpread the love
The Central Bank Dilemma has become a major crisis in and of itself. I have been warning these past years that the ONLY tool a central bank has is manipulating the interest rates. Quantitative Easing was primarily to influence long-term rates indirectly since the Fed can only set short-term rates. During the past nine months, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has raised interest rates at the fastest pace of any Federal Reserve chair since the 1980s. While some complain that this has triggered a stock market rout, and caused the housing market to come to a standstill, others argue that he has increased the fears of an imminent recession.
That was the domestic part. The Fed’s raising of interest rates has impacted the emerging markets including contributing to the chaos in the financial markets in China since many banks and provinces borrowed in dollars to save interest rates – or so they thought. It has forced the European Central Bank to raise interest rates and the net result was to unleash a crisis in long-term debt where life companies and pension funds cannot continue to buy the long-term with rates rising and bonds declining the day after you just bought a traunch.
Janet Yellen, who wants to hunt down everyone who sold a used bike on eBay for $600, understands the crisis we have erupting in debt because of rising interest rates and investors are afraid of the long end. Her proposal to buy in the long-term and swap it for the short-term recognizes the fact that we have a major debt crisis unfolding and she has come up with another scheme to keep kicking the can down the road.
Consequently, with inflation hitting 40-year highs, the warning signs are there that the central banks cannot do anything to address the economic crisis. Hence, initially, Fed officials were unanimous that rates needed to rise aggressively. Now, however, there are cracks in that view. These cracks will become fissures over how this type of inflation is NOT speculative but shortages set in motion by COVID and then accelerated by this drive for war with Russia and the insane sanctions they imposed on even private citizens.
While some expect inflation to cool steadily next year and want to stop raising rates soon, the problem is that inflation driven by shortages will not subside with a reduction in demand. Even real estate replacement costs have risen despite the fact that the market has started to pause. The cost to build a home in many areas is already higher than existing homes, which tends to create a floor before prices. Others worry inflation won’t ease enough next year in the face of a war that is escalating, and they defer to the old standard of raising interest rates to temper inflation.
That leaves Chairman Powell struggling in the eternal seas of politics lost in the middle as the arguments get louder on both sides. Powell will be challenged trying to chart a course through war, stagflations, and complete fiscal mismanagement by our politicians. The next stage of interest-rate policy presents very difficult questions concerning how high to raise rates from here, and how long to hold them at that level in this Pyhric War against Inflation.
Posted originally on the CTH on December 13, 2022 | Sundance
Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard had an interesting discussion on her podcast today [LINK] which included Carlson retelling the story of the NSA conducting surveillance on him during a prior attempt to gain an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After recounting the NSA story, Tucker then went on to outline a conversation with representative Mike McCaul after the Texas republican and incoming Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee described Carlson as an agent of Russia. When Carlson got into an argument with McCaul over the accusation, McCaul went on to tell Carlson his intelligence community briefers were the ones who provided the information.
Overall, if you have an understanding of our prior CTH outline of The Fourth Branch of Government, this interview fits into that aspect perfectly. Additionally, expand your perspective as you listen to Carlson outline the details; remind yourself of the stakes within the domestic surveillance network from their perspective; then overlay the current headlines surrounding Twitter. Tucker Carlson is coming darn close to the center of the target. WATCH (prompted to 40:05):
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The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) has a vested interest in keeping the public unaware of the details behind the U.S. surveillance state. All of the institutions that were created after 9/11/01, specifically including the Dept of Homeland Security, the DOJ National Security Division and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), would go to extreme lengths -under the auspices of national security- to maintain the framework of the surveillance state they represent.
Penetrating this matrix is almost impossible as you are seeing from the Executive Branch (DOJ) and Judicial Branch (federal courts), as the institutions have an umbrella of protection by shouting for a ‘national security’ shield. There are trillions at stake, and the system of utilizing social media to conduct internal domestic surveillance is part of the process.
Barack Obama specifically enveloped the social media sphere by recruiting Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, Microsoft and Apple into the DHS system. Essentially what formed as an outcome of the mutually beneficial agreements was a Big Tech oligarchy (a monopoly of sorts). The construct was intentional, because within an oligarchical system no rogue oligarch will be permitted to put the group at risk.
Knowing the same DHS systems are all operating within Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, Microsoft, Apple etc., you can see how a risk vector is presented to the group if any individual partner were to go rogue. This reality forms the baseline to understand that Elon Musk would never be permitted to put the larger DHS surveillance system agreement at risk.
No matter how much people might advocate for Elon Musk’s purity of motive, the one motive that does not exist is the motive to expose the government link to the all-inclusive DHS/FBI surveillance state using social media platforms. The peer group, essentially fellow tech oligarchs, and the U.S. government would simply not allow it.
This reality is why there is a disconnect between what has been released in the Twitter Files and the absence of evidence/information specific to the DHS/FBI portal. The government side of the network will always be protected under the guise of ‘national security.’ Elon Musk, who is not directly in control of the data being released to show bias within the platform, is never going to be permitted to show how the DHS/FBI surveillance operation is conducted. It’s just not going to happen.
The Twitter Files represent a gateway of discovery into how government assisted creating “Oligarchical Systems.” Surveillance systems delivering mutual benefits called public-private partnerships were formed. Readers here are months ahead of where the arc of this story is destined. However, oligarchical beneficiaries will always defend the system against rogue oligarchs who become a threat. There will never be an end that includes the national security state being exposed.
Surveillance of domestic communication, to include surveillance of all social media platforms, is now the primary mission of DHS. The information is gathered by social media, funneled by direct portals into the DHS network then distributed to DOJ-NSD and FBI officials as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
This communication surveillance & information control network is the primary mission of DHS. They are not going to let Elon Musk put that at risk. That is why the focus of any Twitter File release can only be Twitter internally. Musk is not in control of these decisions. The DHS national security apparatus is in control.
The four pillars of the Fourth Branch of Government are: DHS, ODNI, DOJ-NSD and the revised/political FBI. All four pillars were created as an outcome of the Patriot Act. These institutions – as specifically named – represent the domestic surveillance state. The subsidiary institutions like TSA etc, exist under their authority.
There is no oversight or counterbalance to this created system. The Fourth Branch exists using the shield of “national intelligence” to hide their activity. Domestic surveillance is done by the intelligence apparatus under one big connected system, operated by the ODNI and DHS.
Put simply, DHS stakeholders, to include the DOJ, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), are mitigating any consequential public exposure of their domestic surveillance activity by controlling and feeding Mr. Musk selected information about their prior Twitter operations.
If TikTok is a national security threat, then TikTok is to Beijing as Twitter is to Washington DC.
The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, and then ultimately controlling and influencing public opinion.
Everything we are watching unfold is a DHS controlled, and FBI mitigated, release of information.
Posted originally on the CTH on December 13, 2022 | Sundance
Arguably, Glenn Greenwald has been the most critical voice about the rise of the U.S. surveillance state and generational shift of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to conduct domestic surveillance on American citizens. There’s a reason Greenwald lives in Brazil where no extradition treaties with the U.S. government exist.
Curiously, when it came time to release information about DHS connections to Twitter, Glenn Greenwald was not considered as an acceptable outlet for the information. Instead, Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss were selected by Elon Musk to represent his sunlight and transparency interests. However, in this brief video Greenwald gets to interview Taibbi about his findings. {Direct Rumble Link}
Interested viewers will note Taibbi’s #1 takeaway from his review of the Twitter Files data is that evidence of the DHS connection to Twitter exists. Taibbi speaks of the “instructions” coming into Twitter from U.S. government officials. Yet, curiously missing from the documented evidence provided by Taibbi was anything showing a paper trail of this instruction pathway he is describing. WATCH:
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Greenwald is smart, strategically smart; Greenwald also knows why he was not selected to review the files. Glenn artfully guides Taibbi to discuss elements of the story that perhaps Taibbi himself doesn’t recognize are being shaped for his reporting. Note: “we don’t know how the ‘ask’ works yet.”
Full Video Below (segment begins at 33:00-minute mark)
Posted originally on the CTH on December 13, 2022 | Sundance
Earlier today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell discussed the greatest problem for the Republican Party as it exists with voters. Allowing people to vote is not in the best interests of the Republican Party. If the politicians could just devise a government system that didn’t need voters to support it, things would be much better.
As noted by Mitch McConnell, “Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in 2022 because of the support of the former president. Hopefully in the next cycle, we’ll have quality candidates everywhere.” Unless and until the Republican Party can figure out how to get around the voting, installing the correct type of Republicans will always be problematic.
The ability of the American people to vote is THE major hurdle for the Republican Senate leadership to overcome. WATCH:
COMMENT: Am I just outright stupid, or is something seriously wrong with the majority of people? Bill Gates had his summit on overpopulation and how this is a serious crisis. Yet then he claims he can reduce disease and save the population with vaccines. Gates especially seems to want to save humanity which he on the other hand says is the problem. Something is just not right.
HK
REPLY: Look, the real problem is the media. We no longer have media organizations willing to actually report the truth on any of these political issues or ever do any serious investigation. Gates held a secret gathering to sell his agenda to reduce the world’s population. The Guardian reported that they are known as the “Good Club” which seems to be the same marketing ploy used for ensuring your death which they call life insurance. Fire, theft, and accident insurance are called by their proper name.
They could never sell “Death insurance” so they inverted the name by calling it life insurance and then everyone was willing to buy it. They have done the same thing with ABORTION. They flipped it from the extermination of a child arguing it has no human right until it is born, and they championed it as a Woman’s Right to decide her own body. Justice Ginsberg made it clear that it was NEVER about woman’s rights, it was all about reducing the population of minorities that Gates’ father championed Planned Parenthood and stuck his clinics in minority areas.
Here, they market themselves as the “Good Club” which can only mean one thing – this is the evil meeting that is more akin to a war room. The Guardian wrote:
The names of some of the members are familiar figures: Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, David Rockefeller and Ted Turner. But there are others, too, like business giants Eli and Edythe Broad, who are equally wealthy but less well known. All told, its members are worth $125bn. The meeting – called by Gates, Buffett and Rockefeller – was held in response to the global economic downturn and the numerous health and environmental crises that are plaguing the globe. It was, in some ways, a summit to save the world.
It was at this meeting that Gates sought to get others to join him and his real goal of reducing the population using the 2007-2009 financial crisis as an excuse to get together despite the fact it was caused by overleveraged mortgages. Instead, Gates cleverly steered the meeting to his real objective global health issues such he blended with overpopulation and disease.
I find it unimaginable how you can be so obsessed with overpopulation and then want to create vaccines to increase the population. Worst still, not a single mainstream media has the guts to ever be a real media organization anymore.
I pointed out at the WEC that all my efforts to try to defeat my own model have failed mainly because in our Republics, which are not Democracies, no politicians care about the future – only the next election, Whenever I would be in meetings and warn that we cannot keep borrowing indefinitely with no intention of paying anything off, the response was always twofold (1) they won’t be there in 20 years, it will be someone else’s problem, and (2) we are the government so we are the exception.
The Crisis in the London debt market was profound. The institutions no longer wanted the long-term debt for (1) interest rates were rising, and (2) pouring money into Ukraine for a proxy war with Russia always undermines the currency and leads to inflation. With the expectation of rising interest rates, whatever you buy in the long-term today is worth less tomorrow. It is like trying to buy stocks in the middle of a crash. Of course, those in government are indeed ignorant of how the economy functions in addition to science.
We lack expertise in government and the very structure of our governments being Republics dominated by Socialism, means that politicians are always only interested in the next election and constantly run for election with promises of free giveaways like they use to do 30 years ago – open a new bank account and get a free toaster.
There is simply no possible way to prevent the collapse of our Republican forms of government. But since the media promotes always one-sided leftist fake news, they will be leading us down the path of authoritarianism for the cancel culture is all about silencing any opposition. As Sagan points out, without skepticism we are doomed. What we must start planning for is the reconstruction of a new form of government post-2032 when this one collapses like Communism from its own corruption and weight. No revolution will be even needed.
Sam Bankman-Fried of cryptocurrency giant FTX and trading firm Alameda Research, has been arrested in the Bahamas on criminal charges, the Bahamas Attorney General’s Office announced Monday. The arrest “followed receipt of formal notification from the United States that it has filed criminal charges against SBF and is likely to request his extradition,” the office said.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.”
He will be held at MCC, the same dungeon in which Jeffrey Epstein supposedly committed suicide. WIth his connections with all the Democrats, this is going to be interesting to see if he too suddenly commits suicide.
Posted originally on the CTH on December 12, 2022 | Sundance
CTH took considerable flak for reporting on the uniparty system of Georgia politics prior to the 2020 midterms. With the election in the rearview mirror, the Georgia Secretary of State is now proposing to permanently codify Democrat control of the state.
(Via Reason) […] Speaking to The New York Times last week, Raffensperger said he would petition the state legislature with three separate proposals. One would force large counties to open more locations for voting early. Another would lower the vote total needed to avoid a runoff from 50 percent to 45.
The third proposal is the most consequential, and the most interesting. Raffensperger will also state lawmakers to consider switching to a ranked choice ballot for future elections. (read more)
Ranked Choice Voting is a particularly insidious way for party control officers to stop unapproved candidates, it also provides the opposition party with a tool to defeat specifically targeted opponents. As we saw in the Alaska midterm race, it was the second-choice votes of democrats that pushed Senator Lisa Murkowski to victory.
Hopefully the people of Georgia will tell their legislature this is not a workable solution.
Meanwhile Ronna McDaniel is promoting herself for RNC reelection and urging republican voters to unify.
(NY Post) […] “The RNC, we don’t pick the candidates. The voters do. We don’t do the messaging. That’s up to the campaigns. But we do do turnout. The one thing we’re seeing right now is that turnout was sky high, but Republicans didn’t vote for every Republican candidate,” [McDaniel] said.
Which, as customary, provides the opening for the insufferable Karl Rove to define acceptable republicans.
“We had a lot of candidates, who, at the end of the day, Republicans … couldn’t vote for. … The reason was we ended up with some knuckleheads who were endorsed by President Trump without proper vetting,” Rove told Catsimatidis.
“Quality of candidates matters. What we saw in this election was the return of the ticket-splitters. It was a bunch of Republicans who said, ‘I can’t bring myself to [vote for] somebody who is subpar or unqualified for office,’” he said. (more)
Emperor Rove always pretends not to notice that perhaps election outcomes are the result of a base of the party not enthusiastic with his “acceptable republican,” and the establishment base not supporting the primary victor.
According to the professionally republican voices, the base must support the party candidate if it is an establishment victor; however, if the non-approved party candidate gains victory in the primary, the establishment voters are under no such expectation…. Nothing has changed in GOPe politics.
The base of the GOP needs a strategic alliance with U.S. trade unions.
The trade unions need to get rid of the communists in their leadership and join in unity withe the MAGA middle-class. The rank-and-file trade union membership is already in alliance with the MAGA movement, but the leadership needs to be removed and replaced by more floor votes.
If MAGA and the Trade Unions can unite, we have the foundation to reframe the entire political dynamic.
This is where the U.S. Potato Rebellion needs to follow the model of the Polish Solidarity movement.
The potato rebellion grows underground, when it strategically surfaces it has the ability to grow more eyes.
Trade unions, farmers, yellow vests and the MAGA working class have a unified interest….
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