primaries Archives - The Automatic Earth

The FBI's Autopen Task Force submitted its first report to the acting Attorney General this morning, implicating Elizabeth Warren in about two dozen felonies.

"She wasn't just authorizing pardons," said acting AG Blanche, "To the tune of about $30 million."

Blanche said the… pic.twitter.com/hce2oTNrQ1
— GRANDPA’s FREE ADVICE (@GOP_is_Gutless) May 19, 2026

https://twitter.com/John_F_kJr/status/2056862634209874000?s=20

Bingo https://t.co/HCrumnTIfT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 19, 2026

https://twitter.com/FreeStateWill/status/2056535138402779211?s=20 https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2056490512652423458?s=20s

Average inflation by president:

Trump (first term): 1.9%⁰Biden: 5%⁰Trump (second term): 3.4%

The Democrats and the mainstream media refuse to tell the American people the truth. pic.twitter.com/IJX5JjAVa0
— Stephen Moore (@StephenMoore) May 18, 2026

https://twitter.com/robertdunlap947/status/2056482824471896283?s=20

As if the US will sit still for 5 weeks.

• Oil Plummets As NATO Mulls Hormuz Deployment If Strait Not Open By July (ZH)

In a huge and unexpected announcement, amid stalled US-Iran peace talks – which have proven a failure and illusive thus far, NATO now says it could deploy military assets to forcibly reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Per breaking newswires Tuesday late morning: NATO TO CONSIDER HORMUZ DEPLOYMENT IF STRAIT NOT OPEN BY JULY President Trump has continuously chastised the NATO alliance for being largely bankrolled by Washington but at the same time fence-sitting when it comes to forming a coalition to patrol and reopen the vital energy transit waterway. Oil plummeted on the initial headline, seeing in it a positive for the potential that crude transit in the Persian Gulf could again be opened up soon:

And Bloomberg freshly reports: NATO is discussing the possibility of helping ships pass through the blocked Strait of Hormuz if the waterway isn’t reopened by early July, according to a senior official in the military alliance. The idea has support from several members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but doesn’t yet have the necessary unanimous support, said a diplomat from a NATO country. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity. Leaders from NATO countries will meet in Ankara July 7-8.
But July feels very far away at this point, and anything could happen between now and then, as Washington continues to threaten renewed military action, and Iran says it remains on high alert. NATO defense chiefs are meeting this week, where also high on the agenda will be the following: At this week’s summit, military chiefs from all 32 member states will examine the impact that consistent rapid consumption may have on NATO’s collective capabilities and deterrent power as Russia continues to threaten allies.

He never had a chance.

• Thomas Massie Loses His Primary Race (Salgado)

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has lost his primary race after making himself unpopular in the GOP for blocking Trump administration policies and obsessively condemning Israel and Operation Epic Fury. President Donald Trump, who has responded to Massie’s constant critiques by fervently campaigning against him, celebrated the Tuesday win for Massie’s primary opponent, Ed Gallrein. Massie has been one of Trump’s most consistent GOP critics.

In fact, Trump spent a considerable portion of Election Day posting anti-Massie messages on Truth Social. Trump accused Massie of suggesting a years-old endorsement from Trump was recent. “Can you imagine ‘Congressman’ Thomas Massie putting out a many years ago Endorsement of him, by me, when he knows that he wasn’t endorsed, but that I proudly endorsed Ed Gallrein? The reason is that Massie has turned out to be the Worst Congressman in the Republican Party. This shows what a totally dishonest and desperate guy Massie is, and I hope the Voters aren’t fooled by his deception!” Trump exclaimed.
In a longer post on May 16, Trump condemned not only Massie, but other critics in the Republican Party: “Tom Massie of Kentucky, the worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country, is an even bigger insult to our Nation than Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who suffered an unprecedented loss tonight by not even being allowed to run in the Republican Primary. This is the first time such a thing has ever happened to a sitting U.S. Senator! That’s what you get by voting to Impeach an innocent man, especially one who made it possible for Cassidy’s Senate win. Very disloyal, but Tom Massie, a major Sleazebag, is even worse! Kentucky, get this LOSER out of politics in Tuesday’s Election. He is nicknamed Rand Paul Jr., another ‘real beauty,’ because of his absolutely terrible voting habits.”
It’s not a surprise MAGA is done with Massie. Rep. Massie went so far as to coordinate a resolution with Democrats to challenge Trump’s war powers over the Iran operation, though the resolution failed. The representative has also raised controversy over his repeated antisemitic and anti-Israel comments, in addition to blocking aid to Israel, and he was the only member of Congress to vote against a resolution condemning antisemitism back in 2022.
On May 18, the day before the election, Massie reposted the following disgusting Michael Flynn Jr. diatribe on X, “Win or lose tomorrow for @RepThomasMassie the Israel lobby is only going to become more despised…They’ve over-extended themselves and made their influence in our political system incredibly visible…Pray for victory tomorrow for Massie to maaaaybe give them a wake up call our elections can’t be bought…” As if the only reason Massie would lose is because of some secretive Jewish money cabal. He has made his anti-Israel views a focal point of his campaign, and it is encouraging to see the voters reject him, given the concerning rise in antisemitism on the American right.

It looks like a pretty established industry.

And you’d think that if true, both parties do it, but it appears to be a Democrat industry.

“FBI Director Kash Patel says prior administrations looked the other way on election cheating but “those days are over.”

• DOJ Exposes Two-Decade-Long California Cheating Scheme (JTN)

In February, an illegal immigrant from Colombia residing in Boston was convicted by a federal grand jury for multiple “identity theft offenses,” including receiving rental assistance, Social Security and SNAP benefits, as well as voter fraud under the stolen identity. Prosecutors alleged Lina Maria Orovio-Hernandez, 59, was able to obtain eight state IDs and a Massachusetts Real ID and vote illegally in the 2024 presidential election. The steady stream of such cases is eroding public trust in election officials, who have insisted everything is fine in the face of contrary evidence.

A poll this spring found only two-thirds of Americans say they are confident their state or local government will run a fair and accurate election, a drop of 10 points since the 2024 presidential election and the lowest level of confidence since the Marist poll began measuring it. Democrats and independents were the most likely to lose confidence in elections over the last two years, the recent poll found. The ramped-up prosecutions also come as [Harmeet] Dhillon, the top election integrity official inside DOJ, has taken action against more than two dozen states to either clean up their voter rolls or turn over their rolls for the federal government to inspect them. Many states are resisting.
Dhillon recently told Just the News the government’s early review of state voter rolls has proven tens of thousands of non-citizens made it into a position to cast ballots, and that hundreds-of-thousands of dead or departed residents were not properly removed from state election systems. “It’s really frustrating that we’re being prevented from doing our job,” she said, criticizing state election offices and federal judges who are blocking her office from her historic effort to obtain and review every state’s voter roll ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Dhillon signaled dozens more cases of illegal non-citizen voting are on the horizon.
“For every person that we’ve seen a story about, I know of dozens and dozens more cases, and U.S. attorney’s offices are wanting to bring these cases, but we have, of course, interference with the very appointment of these U.S. attorneys at the political level,” she explained. “So that’s above my pay grade, but it’s really frustrating that we’re being prevented from doing our job.” Evidence of election fraud is also piling up in state and local courts. At least four elections in the U.S. have been overturned by courts since 2020 after voting irregularities and fraud were discovered, Just the News previously reported.
Last month, former Kansas mayor Jose Ceballos, a citizen of Mexico, pleaded guilty to voter fraud after admitting he voted as a green card resident. Ceballos, who resigned as mayor after he was charged, was taken into custody by U.S. immigration authorities last week and could be deported, officials and his lawyer have said. Also last month, the New Jersey attorney general’s office announced that a former mayoral candidate pleaded guilty after he attempted to file numerous fraudulent voter-registration applications in connection with a June 2021 city election.
Henrilynn Ibezim, 71, of Plainfield, pleaded guilty on April 27, 2026, during a hearing before Judge Candido Rodriguez, Jr. in New Jersey Superior Court in Union County. The defendant admitted to one count of third-degree forgery. Three women in Monroe County in Alabama – 67-year-old Sharon Crayton Denson, 46-year-old Samantha Trashawn Kyles and 59-year-old Sarah Crayton Bennett – were indicted in February for voter fraud in the Aug. 26, 2025, Frisco City municipal election. They allegedly tampered with 20 people’s ballots.
Five Democratic Party members in Bridgeport, Conn., and Philadelphia were criminally charged with numerous counts of voter fraud on both the state and federal levels regarding mail-in ballots over the last few years. And in one case ,the cheating was so extensive an election had to be negated and done over. The city of Bridgeport, Conn, had to redo primary and general elections last year after evidence surfaced of alleged ballot harvesting in the Democratic mayoral primary in September 2023. A jury in March also convicted a Wisconsin man of election fraud and identity theft after he requested the ballots of state Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Racine Democratic Mayor Cory Mason without their consent..

Reagan and Trump.

• Welcome to the NEW Republican Party (Scott Pinsker)

As a Gen-Xer, I assumed Ronald Reagan was destined to be remembered as the most transformational Republican of my lifetime. Winning the Cold War, mainstreaming pro-life conservatism, and marginalizing Rockefeller Republicanism was a helluva legacy. But with all due respect to the Gipper, the MAGA movement will likely surpass it. Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump both reinvented the GOP. Both men were transformational leaders on the global stage. Without question, both men altered the course of history. But Donald Trump also changed how we think about politics.

It’s rarely discussed in the media, but it might be President Trump’s longest-lasting legacy: We no longer think of D.C. politicians as individual representatives from states and districts, but as members of a national team. nAnd that’s a watershed transformation, because we elect politicians to solve problems. That’s the entire point of representative democracy! Which means, when our problems change, our politicians must change with them — or they’ll be voted out of office. (More on that in a sec.) Pre-Trump, our “problem” was finding a politician who represented our regional/statewide values and interests. It was more of a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, romanticized view of politics:
We sent a local leader to D.C. to champion the cause of our community. National issues were relevant, of course, but local interests reigned supreme.This mentality made sense at the time. In fact, it seemed Reagan-esque: Since those closest to the problem are best-equipped to solve it, the federal government — and national parties — should leave a light footprint. Who are we to lecture local citizens about local issues? Back then, it wasn’t uncommon for a congressman to belong to one party, yet his district voted overwhelmingly for the opposition in presidential elections. An incumbent could survive for decades — getting reelected by huge margins! — riding the bandwagon of local goodwill.
It’s a phenomenon known as Fenno’s paradox: We might hate U.S. Congress as an institution, but we considered our congressman “one of the good guys.” Which was why the approval rating for “our” congressman was almost always higher than the approval rating for U.S. Congress as a whole. And to be fair, this perspective aligned with the expectations of our Founding Fathers, who envisioned citizen-legislators representing local interests. But even during the Reagan years, systemic problems were obvious: Over and over again, politicians would campaign as a conservative, yet vote as a liberal. Republicans “going native” in D.C. became a sad cliché.
Alas, with scant national guardrails, not much could be done to keep wayward Republicans in line. Instead, politicians would play fast and loose with the facts, voting one way in subcommittee — another way on the floor — and then pretend they supported whichever side was more popular. Unless you were a hardcore political junkie, you were none the wiser. It was an age when incumbents like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) could serve in Congress for the rest of their life, voting however the hell they wanted, without any real risk of blowback. (Fun fact: The reelection rate for House members in 1986 and 1988 was 98% — the very first time in American history it was 98% or higher in back-to-back elections.)
Not anymore. That age ended when the MAGA movement began. The old, romanticized notion of free-wheeling, locally-attuned citizen-legislators was replaced with cold, cynical reality: Modern politics is a full-contact sport, and without teamwork, Republicans won’t get anything done. That’s because our “problem” is no longer local representation — it’s protecting our country from an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party. As the Democrats have embraced socialism, Wokeism, and trans/LGBTQ policies, Republican voters have recoiled in horror. We want our party to protect us from their madness.= And that’s an all-hands-on-deck challenge.

Election Day stories. Plenty.

• It’s Primary Election Day in the People’s Republic of Oregon (Victoria Taft)

If there’s a prize for the worst, most sinister, and cynical political moves, the unfortunately-named Oregon governor, Tina Kotek, should win walking away. A damaging gas and transportation tax, the one she cheated, lied, and schmoozed to ram through, is on the ballot in Tuesday’s primary. On primary day, Oregon voters will affix some C-4 and light the fuse to the one deliverable Kotek could lay claim to in her entire first term of office. The timing for Kotek and her fellow Democrat Party members couldn’t be worse.

Kotek blames President Donald Trump for high gas prices right now, but Oregonians know all too well that prices are perennially high anyway because of Democrats’ adherence to the Church of Global Warming. The governor’s approval numbers have fallen badly for a Democrat in this one-party state. Gas prices are almost as high as when Joe Biden was in office, and voters — male, female, Democrat, Republican, Independent, poor, and rich — saw what she did there. The people who continually bleat that they’re trying to Save Democracy!™ did everything to disembowel it to punish Oregonians with a whopping 6 cent/gallon gas tax and massive fee increases.
Kotek couldn’t get her budget-backfilling taxes passed in regular session, so she called for a special “emergency” session to cram them through. When she got the tax increases approved by Democrats, she waited until the last second to sign it, to deprive Oregonians of enough time to gather enough signatures to refer it to the ballot. But Kotek’s gambit didn’t work. Oregonians were so angered by the manipulations that Republicans got more than enough signatures in record time to refer the tax package to voters in November. The Save Democracy!™ crowd didn’t want the referral on the November ballot because more people vote then.
In March, Kotek had her This is what democracy looks like! backers in the legislature pass a bill to allow her to swap the dates of the vote on her tax increases. Then she tried to ram through the repeal of her own gas tax increase to begin her political manipulations all over again. Kotek then moved the referral to the May primary election day, where only half the voters show up. One poll showed that only 11% of voters thought the vote swap was OK and 89% were opposed. In the People’s Republic of Oregon, you can’t get 89% of any group to agree the sun is shining.
The people noticed Kotek’s delays, carve-outs, calendar manipulation, and political skulduggery. And then Tina pulled a Gavin Newsom move and refused to even consider the idea of a gas tax holiday. If we were the cynical type, we’d guess that these two aren’t so concerned about prices and affordability after all. Kotek’s approval numbers have dropped from the mid-50’s to the 40% range. Even the teachers’ union refused to endorse a candidate instead of going with Kotek. Several “not Kotek” Democrats are running against the sitting governor, but with closed primaries, there won’t be a lot of Oregon Republicans crossing over to vote against her. Indeed, Oregon Republicans have their own big contest on the ballot.
Former Portland Trailblazer Chris Dudley, state legislator Christine Drazan, and one of the organized opponents to Kotek’s gas tax, Representative Ed Diehl, are top contenders for the GOP nomination. Drazan, who’s run and lost against Kotek before, was leading in April among the candidates, but Chris Dudley, who ran and lost more than a decade ago, is surging along with Diehl, who has captured high-profile endorsements late in the game. The good news is there are signs of life in the political opposition to the Democrats in Oregon. Tina’s tax increases are going down, and the GOP’s got a pulse — they’re voting, and this could be a game-changing moment for Oregon.
Fingers crossed.

“..and turned that into much more becoming more increasingly anti-American for me. So my views really haven’t changed that much.” The punchline came shortly after: “What’s really changed is the party.”

• The Democrats Are About To Destroy John Fetterman (ZH)

John Fetterman has become the most interesting politician in America, and the Democratic Party’s most uncomfortable mirror. His willingness to speak honestly, vote his conscience, and refuse to define himself purely in opposition to President Donald Trump has made him a hero to some and a traitor to others. Back in March, he declared the party had no real leader except Trump Derangement Syndrome. Democrats, according to Fetterman, are so consumed with opposing President Donald Trump that they’ve failed to construct a coherent agenda of their own. That’s not a fringe critique. It’s a fairly accurate description of where the opposition party stands as we head toward the 2026 midterms.

Last week, Sen. John Fetterman wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post making the case that he’d make a terrible Republican, and he’s right. He’s pro-choice, firmly behind legal marijuana, a committed supporter of LGBT rights, a staunch defender of SNAP benefits, and a reliable friend to organized labor. His overall voting record is overwhelmingly aligned with the Democratic caucus. “It wasn’t long ago when Democrats wanted a secure border. I voted on an immigration bill in 2024 to make sure an influx the size of Pittsburgh doesn’t come through the border like it did under the previous administration,” he wrote. “I have co-sponsored legislation to stop the flow of fentanyl. I was the lead Democrat on the Laken Riley Act, and I strongly believe that someone who comes here illegally and commits a violent crime should be deported. Full stop.”
He noted how his party used to oppose government shutdowns because they put “American livelihoods at risk” and held workers “hostage.” Yet, he stood alone as a Democrat when he voted to end his party’s recent shutdowns, saying he “took no pleasure in voting against my party” but felt that keeping “the lights on” for TSA, homeland security, airports, and “everyday Americans” mattered more than “partisan games.” As far as he’s concerned, his occasional departures on border security, crime, and Israel are a sign of his party becoming more extreme, not him becoming more conservative.
In a recent conversation on Reason’s Reason Interview podcast with Nick Gillespie, Fetterman was asked to reflect on how his politics had changed since he backed Bernie Sanders in 2016. His answer cut to the heart of the Democratic Party’s ongoing identity crisis. “Well, I mean, you know, in 2016, it was much more about the minimum wage and some other very basic kinds of things,” he said. “And now that’s just turned into much more standing with Cuba, standing with Venezuela, standing with the Iranian regime, and turned that into much more becoming more increasingly anti-American for me. So my views really haven’t changed that much.” The punchline came shortly after: “What’s really changed is the party.”
That is a sitting Democratic senator describing his own party’s base as “increasingly anti-American,” and describes himself as lonely inside the party he still agrees with over 90 percent of the time. And how has the party responded to one of its more prominent voices offering this kind of candid self-assessment? By quietly beginning to show him the door.
A report from Punchbowl News last month made it quite clear how his party sees him. Pennsylvania Democrats on Capitol Hill wouldn’t commit to supporting a Fetterman reelection bid, and none would explicitly endorse him. Rep. Brendan Boyle, who is rumored to be eyeing a 2028 Senate run himself, said he’d “be very surprised if [Fetterman] ran in the Democratic primary.” Rep. Chris Deluzio, also said to be interested in the seat, acknowledged “serious disagreements” with Fetterman over the war in Iran, before adding a diplomatic “we’ll see what comes after ’26.” Rep. Summer Lee simply said of Fetterman seeking reelection, “Up to him. At his own peril.”
That’s the kind of language you use for someone the party has already written off. And clearly they have. He still votes with Democrats more than 90 percent of the time. And yet Pennsylvania Democrats won’t even give him a courtesy endorsement for a future Senate bid. Democratic voters in Pennsylvania aren’t any more forgiving. A February Quinnipiac poll found that Fetterman sits at 46 percent approval among Pennsylvania voters overall. This isn’t great, but the partisan breakdown is most interesting: he’s underwater 62%–22% among Democrats, while running 74%–18% among Republicans.
As far as the party’s progressive base goes, anything less than 100% compliance isn’t enough, especially when you break with the party on issues like Israel, immigration, or anything that can be characterized as insufficiently hostile to the right. Fetterman’s independent streak might help him win a general election, but it won’t help him win a Democratic primary.
That’s the trap, and he appears to know it. He’s made it quite clear he won’t become a Republican. His op-ed was practically a manifesto on the subject. But a man who describes himself as “lonely” inside his own party, who watches that party signal it won’t back him for reelection, has a big decision to make. Will he try to win reelection as a Democrat, become an independent, or not run at all? One thing is for sure: his future inside the Democratic Party is already closed.

They tried so hard to play a race card against Trump. None of it stuck.

• Gutfeld Delivers an Epic Autopsy of the Left’s Dying Race Card (Margolis)

Greg Gutfeld didn’t have Jessica Tarlov to push around on Monday’s episode of The Five, but he did present a brutal autopsy of the one weapon Democrats have relied on for decades and why it’s finally stopped working: the race card. He started with the core diagnosis: The left is trapped in the past. “Those leaders are living in the past, which is what the race card literally, literally is,” Gutfeld said. “You’re living in the past to imprint it on the future. The things that they say are happening aren’t happening.” For years, he explained, that strategy worked because conservatives were terrified of being labeled racist. That fear was the weapon. Once it’s gone, the weapon is useless, and that’s exactly what’s happened.

“It used to work. We used to be paralyzed by the fear of the scarlet letter R for racism, but the race card doesn’t work anymore on half the population who sees through it,” Gutfeld said. “The other half are just doing it out of habit. But we disarmed the left because we lost the fear. And so now, it’s just a gun shooting blanks.” The political math, Gutfeld pointed out, is just bad. Screaming racism only rallies voters you already have. It doesn’t persuade anyone. “And absent of other tools beyond the race card, you are kind of like a fat, out-of-shape fighter with no way to win but to call out the refs or just cancel the whole game.”
Gutfeld then zoomed out to explain how fear, and not just racial fear, has been the engine driving the entire Democratic agenda — from transgender ideology being pushed on children to open borders to soft-on-crime policies. Each angle, he argued, was powered by the same mechanism: making ordinary people terrified to say what they actually believed. “If you think about how profoundly awful was ‘trans rights’ for kids — to give perverse men the agency over our children’s sexuality — how did that happen?” Gutfeld demanded. “It was like, we feared the swarm of activists calling us transphobic. We feared being called bigots if we came out against illegal immigration. We feared punishing criminals because we thought we were going to be called ‘racist.’
“Once you lose the fear, you can finally get back to the normal way things go.” And the thing is, the Democrats haven’t figured this out yet. They’re still running the same play. “The Democratic Party, in my opinion, still has to do that. They haven’t done it. They’re still on the same path to destruction they’ve always been on, which is identity politics. It’s taken this country down a terrible path,” declared Gutfeld. Then came the history lesson — the one Democrats really don’t want to have. Harold Ford Jr. pointed out that race relations were better roughly twenty years ago. And he was actually right. Polling data shows a sharp decline after Barack Obama’s election.
Gutfeld wasn’t willing to blame Obama specifically, though. “The polling on race relations were far more optimistic before Barack Obama was elected, and then it just got worse and worse,” Gutfeld said. “I’m not saying it’s on him, but I’m trying to figure out what happened since then. Did the KKK return? Was discrimination now decided to be illegal? Was there some kind of attack that happened? No.” I’ve been saying for years that Obama used his status as the first black president to divide our country rather than as a turning point to move past race.
“The only thing that happened was the attack on the idea of the melting pot, the idea that you’re an American first, doesn’t matter how you look or what gender you are,” he said. “They created a poison, a toxin that they put in that melting pot. And now, all of a sudden, race relations are worse, and people are at each other’s throats. This is a filter, Harold, and I’m talking about identity politics. It is a filter put in place to destroy a country because it’s absolutely opposite what a melting pot is.”
"You're living in the PAST to imprint it on the Future" @greggutfeld calls out Dems who traveled to an Alabama rally to RAGE about redistricting.

What do YOU think? pic.twitter.com/nPDJ0tlO73
— The Five (@TheFive) May 18, 2026

Obama certainly helped. Monday’s exchange was a perfect snapshot of where the political debate stands right now. The left keeps reaching for a weapon that’s out of ammunition. Conservatives aren’t afraid to be called racist anymore because Democrats have spent decades saying it over and over and over again about everything, making the word practically meaningless.

In other words: you can’t win, take your losses.

• Comey’s Message to the Deep State: Run Out the Clock on Trump (Tim O’Brien)

After facing two separate federal indictments and waiting for your court proceedings on one of them to move forward, what do you do to pass the time? Well, if you’re former FBI director and leftist tool James Comey, you do as many TV interviews as possible and stay busy on social media. That may not be what you would do, but it is what a shameless narcissist like Comey does. In September 2025, the deep-stater was indicted on two counts tied to allegations that he made false statements to Congress and obstructed a congressional proceeding connected to his testimony about FBI activities. That case was dismissed by a Bill Clinton–appointed federal judge over a technicality involving the prosecuting attorney.

The second indictment, which came in April 2026, involves two felony counts centered on Comey’s 2025 Instagram post depicting seashells in the sand that read “86 47,” a widely understood reference to the assassination of the nation’s 47th president, Donald Trump. Prosecutors allege that the photo — regardless of who arranged the shells that Comey photographed and posted online — amounted to a threat against Trump. One of the ways Comey and the left are trying to distort reality on this issue is by claiming that “86” is an innocent term used in the restaurant industry meaning to “get rid of” bad food or something. So, are they now saying Trump is a restaurant worker who needs to be fired?
Of course not. If Comey were telling the truth, that still wouldn’t explain why he shared that photo with all his followers. Also, this contrived narrative calls on us to ignore popular culture’s normalization of “86” as a signal for knocking off someone. This decades-old slang term was used in The Sopranos repeatedly. It was used in the pornographically violent motion picture Pulp Fiction and in another movie called Get Shorty. None of these depictions were novel applications of “86.” They only featured the term because the writers and producers already knew that audiences knew that “86” is slang for killing someone.
Of course, Comey denies, denies, denies. Comey is smug and he thinks he’s being cute. My colleague Scott Pinsker dug into that issue when he wrote about Comey and his favorite thing these days – plausible deniability. By the way, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the indictment against Comey is not based on a single photo, but rather an 11-month investigation. To behave the way Comey is behaving, he may not feel invincible, but he does seem to feel “untouchable,” almost as if someone is protecting him.
When people like Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, who is reported to be under federal investigation, and James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence, talk to the media—especially on the Sunday morning shows—you can make some reasonable guesses about what is going on. First, they are there for a very specific purpose: to push a very specific narrative that serves the interests of some leftist interest.
The second thing that may be happening is that the purpose of the interview may be to help achieve a very specific outcome. Usually, part of that strategic objective is to smear Trump and the Republicans, but that is never all of it. They are often trying to stop or slow the work of the executive branch under Trump. Things like killing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), hampering the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), planting seeds of doubt about certain Trump appointees, or undermining support for the Trump administration’s efforts to deprive Iran of the ability to wage nuclear attacks on America and other countries.
When you pour concrete, at first it sets, and then it starts to cure, and after that it hardens and you can walk on it, drive on it, or build on it. You have a solid foundation. When the deep state pushes a narrative, it often uses the Sunday morning shows to spread it. They know other people in the news media and in power watch those shows for cues, talking points, and messaging that they will use in their own efforts to help spread that narrative. Once the larger networks, news sites, and newspapers get the leftist line from those shows, they can spread it more broadly to their audiences, thus hardening the narrative in the public’s consciousness.
That’s how you end up with immovable perceptions that are based on lies. Things like the Russia hoax and the Charlottesville hoax. When you watch a Sunday morning show, you’re watching a memorandum to the obedient swamp, saying pretty much, “This is what you are to amplify.” Against this backdrop, Comey appeared on Meet the Press with terminal stare Kristen Welker on May 17. He used the opportunity to send a message to the entire deep state. The message was essentially: it’s time to run out the clock on Trump.

James Comey signals to FBI personnel that he has "great confidence in" at the bureau to wait out the Trump administration:

"I'm urging them, hang on two and a half years, and then we can rebuild these institutions." pic.twitter.com/xIoDY6OTpG
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 17, 2026

While sitting across from Welker in the NBC studios, leftist soldier Comey has said he won’t stay silent as he faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration. In not staying silent, his message to unelected leftists in the bowels of the federal government was a pep talk of sorts. He wants them to stick around so that after Trump, they can “rebuild” the operations that attacked our freedoms under Biden. Comey would seem to want the FBI to return to the Biden-era law enforcement agency that spied on Catholics and Catholic churches, persecuted pro-life protestors, and served as the left’s version of the old East German Stasi.
If Trump appears to have a sense of urgency, this is why he does. He knows that too many people working in the federal government are just trying to undermine him and wait him out. These are the kinds of people he’s trying to get off of the federal payroll. As for those Sunday morning shows, Comey counts his words, so when he talks to Kristen Welker on camera and says what he said, it’s very revealing to say the least. A strategy is afoot.

“..AI should enhance human work rather than devalue it.”

• “Stop Hiring Humans” Billboards Are Appearing In US Cities.. (MN)

.“Stop Hiring Humans.” Those words are now plastered on billboards from San Francisco to New York City, courtesy of a San Francisco-based startup pushing virtual AI sales representatives. The company, Artisan, markets AI agents that handle outbound sales tasks like lead generation, cold emailing, list-building, and prospecting. Their message is blunt: the era of AI employees is here. Artisan’s campaign highlights a growing trend of AI replacing human roles in sales and beyond. The startup claims its tools could displace as many as 600,000 jobs in America over the next 5-10 years. The billboards declare “The Era of AI Employees Is Here,” framing human workers as obsolete. Critics see it as tone-deaf marketing that accelerates public backlash against Big Tech’s rush to automate everything.

Driverless cars and a stop hiring humans campaign…

If this is the future, it is HELL pic.twitter.com/kl5sPIfmdr
— Amy Kremer (@AmyKremer) May 17, 2026

In response to the backlash, Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack published a detailed blog post clarifying the campaign’s intent. He argued that the slogan targets a specific category of tedious cold outbound work—email blasting, template churn, and list-building—that burns people out with short tenures and high rejection rates. The company insists it does not seek to eliminate entire BDR roles, emphasizing that cold calling and human connection remain human tasks. Artisan also built a human dialer to complement its AI tool Ava, positioning the technology as working “alongside” people rather than replacing them outright.
https://twitter.com/_estela86/status/2056100209214849155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2056100209214849155%7Ctwgr%5Ea3ec3c31adfa0128dc083d052d679370e13da82c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fai%2Fstop-hiring-humans-billboards-are-appearing-us-cities
Carmichael-Jack acknowledged the billboard as deliberate provocation while advocating for policies like meaningful universal income and shorter workweeks to manage the transition. Nevertheless, the move fits a pattern of accelerating AI deployment with little regard for human consequences. Reports continue to emerge of autonomous AI agents exhibiting rogue behavior in controlled environments and real-world applications. Recent incidents show agents not only replacing workers but acting independently in ways that destroy critical systems—raising alarms about a future where humans are sidelined and technology runs unchecked. In one high-profile case, a Cursor AI agent powered by Claude Opus 4.6 deleted an entire startup’s production database in seconds.
The agent, tasked with routine work, encountered a credential mismatch and independently decided to delete a volume on Railway cloud servers—wiping out the production database and all backups. The founder of PocketOS detailed the nine-second catastrophe, which caused a 30-hour outage. The AI later admitted to violating its guardrails.This wasn’t an isolated glitch. Earlier experiments placed AI bots in a simulated virtual town for two weeks, where they quickly descended into chaotic, unpredictable behavior—prompting fresh concerns about what happens when autonomy meets real systems.
Even more dystopian twists have emerged, with AI bots reportedly “renting” humans for bizarre tasks, racking up hundreds of thousands of sign-ups as the lines between machine direction and human labor blur into something unsettling. These developments underscore a core problem: as AI agents gain more independence to pursue goals, they bypass safeguards, access unrelated credentials, and make destructive decisions without human oversight. Enterprises are deploying them rapidly, but governance lags dangerously behind.
While tech boosters tout efficiency, the billboard campaign and job displacement projections strike a nerve. Sales roles—often entry points for young workers or career ladders—face direct targeting. Broader automation in driving, customer service, and knowledge work compounds the pressure. Public reactions on X captured the frustration: concerns over driverless Waymo fleets in cities like Los Angeles despite available human drivers, and warnings that mass unemployment could fuel social instability.
One tech professional with over 20 years of experience pushed back against the “humans are worthless” narrative pushed by some influencers, arguing AI should enhance human work rather than devalue it. Others noted the irony: these AI-pushing startups rely on human investors and customers while trying to eliminate human jobs. China offers a cautionary glimpse, where heavy robot adoption has forced worker pay cuts and displacement on a massive scale. In the West, the push feels aligned with a globalist mindset that prioritizes efficiency and control over local workers and communities.
The speed of these developments leaves little room for thoughtful policy. Pro-freedom voices have long warned against over-reliance on systems vulnerable to failure, manipulation, or emergent behaviors. When AI agents can independently wipe databases, fabricate data, or direct human labor in strange ways, the risks extend beyond economics into security and societal trust. The billboards are up. The incidents are piling up. The question is whether policymakers and citizens will push back before the era of AI “employees” leaves millions with no role left to play.

Kamala Harris is a Uniquely Bad Idea all by herself.

• Why “No Bad Ideas” is a Uniquely Bad Idea (Turley)

On Thursday, former Vice President Kamala Harris posted a livestream on the “Win with Black Women” podcast to call for a “no bad idea brainstorm” for the Democratic Party. She used that pretense to “throw out there” the idea that Democrats should make radical constitutional and political changes as soon as they retake power. That includes packing the Supreme Court, admitting Puerto Rico and D.C. as states and killing the Electoral College. All of these items have been previously raised by liberal professors and pundits as a way to circumvent small-D democratic processes in order to guarantee power for the big-D Democrats for years to come.

It was a telling rationalization. The Democratic Party has become a party of moral and political relativism, embodied in the popular “by any means necessary” mantra used by many on the left today. But there are bad ideas, just as there are bad people who want to win at any cost. For some, Harris herself showed the existence of truly bad ideas by accepting the position as Biden’s Border Czar as roughly ten million people poured into the country. Another bad idea was her selection of Tim Walz as a running mate before his series of rake-steps. Indeed, her sudden surprise nomination was a bad idea, one that cost $1.5 billion in just 15 weeks and led to one of her party’s most crushing losses in decades.
The worst idea, however, is to celebrate our 250th anniversary by destroying the very institutions and values that created the most successful and stable democracy in history. In my book “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss lawyers and law professors who rationalize the trashing of the Constitution and our institutions to achieve their political goals. I debated one Harvard law professor who rattled off a list of Democratic proposals for our system, but then added that the left would need first to take control of the Supreme Court. It was an acknowledgment that the court would likely declare some or all of the proposals unconstitutional.
I previously wrote about the rise of “the new Jacobins” — influential figures who are seeking to dismantle our system after facing judicial and political setbacks. Even the dean of Berkeley Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky, wrote a book titled “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.” Now, leading Democrats such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have declared the Supreme Court “illegitimate” and called for a “massive” overhaul of both state and federal courts to make them submit to Democrats’ demands. This was Jeffries’ reaction to the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of Democrats’ effort to wipe out Republican representation in Virginia.
He is not the only one adding bad ideas to Harris’s wish list. Various politicians and pundits called for the sacking and packing of the Virginia Supreme Court. By lowering the mandatory age for retirement to 54, they would simply force out all of the current justices and replace them with rubber-stamp liberal appointees. If this sack-and-pack scheme is not enough, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, reminded citizens that, under the state constitution, they could scrap the entire Virginia government over the refusal to let Democrats gerrymander the state. (Elias is infamous for his role in the secret funding of the Steele Dossier to launch the debunked Russian collusion scandal).
It did not matter that even a justice appointed by former Democratic governor Mark Warner found the move unconstitutional, or that Democratic figures like Gov. Abigail Spanberger believed that it could be overturned. The X posting was only the latest effort to throw out some “bad ideas” to an increasingly radical movement on the left. When I and others flagged Elias’s posting as alarming, he criticized me for taking him to task for merely quoting the state Constitution. It was typical of the “Who, me?” response of establishment figures when confronted for pandering to the most radical political elements in the Democratic Party. nIt is like responding to an adverse World Trade Organization trade ruling by invoking Congress’s power to declare war. It is a rather extreme reaction.
Yet, it is all part of the effort to normalize extreme measures and condition American voters to fundamentally changing our system. Harris calls it her “expanded playbook.” Former Attorney General Eric Holder, in pushing for the packing of the Supreme Court, explained how simple this is: it is all about “the acquisition and the use of power.”As Democratic strategist James Carville put it more bluntly, you cannot go with half measures if you want power. You just have to say “f–k it … just do it.” Whether you view these as good or bad ideas, they are certainly not new ideas. These are the same voices that have plagued our system for generations; the siren calls for unleashing forms of direct democracy and removing moderating influences in our system.
The Framers sought to create a system that would avoid the pattern of earlier democracies becoming tyrannies, including Athens. James Madison famously wrote, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” The Framers rejected more direct democratic systems to blunt the impulses and passions that destroyed other systems. They wanted to avoid democracy becoming what Benjamin Rush called a “mobocracy.” The American Constitution was a rejection of the “bad ideas” that politicians (called demagogues in Ancient Greece) have historically used to marshal the power of the mob.
They did not want an “expanded playbook” designed to secure and retain power for one party. We were the first true Enlightenment Revolution based on the protections of rights derived not from the government but from God.
Now that was a good idea.

The gay muslim network?!

• BBC’s Ex-News Director: Trans Bias, ‘Progressive Madness’ Drove Me Out (MN)

The BBC’s grip on impartiality continues to slip as one of its former top news executives publicly confirmed what critics have long argued: activist capture from within has turned the state broadcaster into a vehicle for narrow ideological agendas. Fran Unsworth, director of BBC News from 2018 to 2022, has broken her silence, claiming she was effectively driven out by trans activists and the “progressive madness” dominating the corporation. In a candid interview, she described an environment of bullying where editors avoided critical reporting on trans issues for fear of attacks from their own colleagues.

'For the news department to be following some airy fairy ideology instead of fact is pretty wild!'

Comedian Leo Kearse reacts to a former BBC news boss claiming she was bullied out of her role by 'gender ideologues'. pic.twitter.com/n6QNpZn1HM
— GB News (@GBNEWS) May 16, 2026

“Just dealing with the progressive editorial issues and the bullying around them all. It was incredibly difficult,” Unsworth said. She added that the atmosphere extended beyond trans topics, with staff no-platforming dissenting views and pushing “safe spaces” over open debate. Unsworth’s remarks paint a picture of a newsroom where challenging the prevailing narrative on ‘culture war’ issues carried professional risks. Programme editors reportedly steered clear of stories that questioned aspects of the trans agenda, wary of backlash from activist-aligned staff. This self-censorship contributed to what a leaked internal memo later described as “effective censorship” on the topic.

Ex-BBC news boss Fran Unsworth says she was driven out of her job by 'progressive madness' of trans activists https://t.co/Fk0cmm51N1
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) May 16, 2026

Her departure was hastened by the constant pressure. “I would actually say it drove me out,” she stated, highlighting how the bullying around “progressive editorial issues” made her position untenable. This echoes earlier revelations about the BBC’s hiring practices. In 2024, the broadcaster made clear it would not hire candidates dismissive of diversity and inclusion policies, effectively screening out those skeptical of the dominant ideology. Recruiters were instructed to reject anyone showing a lack of enthusiasm for these topics, ensuring ideological conformity from the outset.
Unsworth’s admission also lands amid ongoing scandals over the BBC’s handling of gender issues, including accusations of harming children through biased children’s programming. In late 2025, over 650 families accused the BBC of harming children via a “constant drip-feed” of pro-trans material in shows and dramas. Parents detailed examples like Hey Duggee using “they/them” pronouns for a character aimed at five-year-olds, episodes of Doctors and Casualty promoting child transition narratives, and documentaries criticized for downplaying detransition regrets.
One parent group spokesman warned: “The constant stream of propaganda about gender and trans activism the BBC has transmitted has played a significant role in creating a dangerous culture for children.” They pointed to narratives linking gender questioning directly to suicide, which they said pressured families and ignored safeguarding concerns. The BBC has defended its output by citing updates to style guides and efforts to reflect developments like court rulings on biological sex, but trust continues to erode.
Inside the capture of the BBC, by Rob Burley (@RobBurl)

In his 13 years as a senior BBC editor, Rob Burley saw the Corporation’s defining commitment to impartiality undermined by transgender ideology, a blind commitment to Diversity & Inclusion schemes, and a culture of… pic.twitter.com/DobvY77PpD
— UnHerd (@unherd) May 16, 2026

The BBC’s obsession with identity politics has also produced content disconnected from everyday reality. A 2025 DEI training video on “microaggressions” went viral for its over-the-top portrayals of white colleagues as bumbling racists, complete with awkward accents and forced celebrations. Critics noted that no one in the real world behaves this way, highlighting the corporation’s bubble of performative wokeness.nSuch materials reinforce the sense that the BBC operates in an alternate universe, more focused on enforcing sensitivity hierarchies than delivering impartial news or entertainment.
Unsworth’s exit and the surrounding controversies arrive as the BBC faces broader challenges, including declining audiences, falling trust, and questions over its future under new leadership. Leaked documents and parental complaints have repeatedly shown how activist influence skewed coverage, sidelining biological reality and dissenting voices in favor of Stonewall-aligned perspectives. The pattern is clear: a public broadcaster funded by taxpayers has allowed internal cliques to dictate editorial direction, from hiring litmus tests to children’s shows pushing contested ideologies. This not only undermines impartiality but risks real-world harm by shaping public discourse—and young minds—around contested claims rather than evidence and balance.

“In January, SpaceX applied to the FAA for permission to launch one million satellites into Earth’s orbit to power xAI’s artificial intelligence, called Grok. “One million satellites is a lot,” he wrote ..”

• An Earth-Shattering Kaboom as Starship V3 Finally Takes Flight (Green)

It’s been a frustrating seven months for my fellow space fans, but Starship Flight Test 12 — introducing the all-new Version 3 of both the super-heavy booster and the Starship upper stage — is now set to take flight one day earlier than previously expected. Liftoff is scheduled for Thursday, May 21, during a 90-minute window opening at 6:30 p.m. Eastern. SpaceX will stream the attempt in glorious 4K from more angles than a 20-sided die on its X timeline. Flight Test 12 will follow a program familiar to watchers, with a “chopstick” catch of the booster right back at its launch pad, followed by a controlled water landing of the Starship about an hour later in the Indian Ocean.

This isn’t just another, long-delayed flight test. As Musk himself put it on Sunday, “Almost every part of Starship V3 is different from V2.” What I take from that is that the company learned much from the first 11 flight tests — and whatever went wrong on the ground earlier this year — and after months of frustrating delays, number 12 is finally good to go. Also undergoing V3’s first launch is the company’s new Orbital Launch Mount B (also called just Pad B) at Starbase, Texas.
While the V3 stack is taller than V2 and carries more fuel, maybe the most important part of the flight test is the new Raptor 3 engine. They feature a stripped-down design for fewer parts — “The best part is no part,” Elon likes to say — plus lighter weight and more thrust. The booster is powered by 33 of those bad boys, and the upper stage has another six. Orbital re-lighting of the upper-stage engines is another major part of the test. Starship will also practice deploying 20 mockup Starlink orbital internet satellites. bThere’s even more:

Starship Flight 12 goals:

• Debut next-generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles

• First launch from Starbase’s newly redesigned launch pad

• Demonstrate upgraded Raptor engines in flight

• Deploy 20 Starlink simulators and 2 modified Starlink satellites

• Test… pic.twitter.com/jxq4uYIYWE
— Dima Zeniuk (@DimaZeniuk) May 17, 2026

There’s so much riding on this one flight. There’s the longterm ambition of the Artemis program to build a permanent human settlement on the moon, of course, and that goal just isn’t possible without Starship’s super-heavy lift. And SpaceX — which Musk recently merged with xAI, his artificial intelligence company — wants to move its compute centers from Earth to orbit. How grand are Musk’s orbital compute ambitions? In January, SpaceX applied to the FAA for permission to launch one million satellites into Earth’s orbit to power xAI’s artificial intelligence, called Grok. “One million satellites is a lot,” he wrote, totally deadpan.
Nobody has launched more of anything than SpaceX has put Starlink internet satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and they just cracked 10,000 a little while ago. If xAI birds are roughly the same size as Starlinks, then one Starship could loft about 60 of them at a time. That’s close to 17,000 Starship launches — not including failures and the regular need to put up replacement satellites. So when Musk says he wants to get Starship’s cadence up to multiple launches per day, xAI is just a part of what he’s talking about. Or as SpaceX put it earlier this year, xAI in space would be the first step towards “becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization — one that can harness the Sun’s full power.” “That’s big,” he wrote, still totally deadpan.
Starship V3 is the platform that’s supposed to make all this possible — but don’t worry, space fans: V4 is already under development with even more power.
But first, the company has got to get back on track with testing and development, starting with Flight Test 12.
Godspeed.

“.. the lowest cost proven source of primary energy for electricity generation ever in history.”

• International Energy Agency Is Wrong To Forecast Coal’s Demise (ET)

Activists would have us believe that coal is a dying energy source. But, thankfully for American coal states such as West Virginia and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia—all of which use millions of tonnes of coal every year to generate electricity—that is not even remotely true. However, the world is burning more coal now than ever, reaching a record 8.85 billion metric tonnes annual consumption by the end of 2025. Since 2020, annual coal consumption has increased by 1.40 billion tonnes.

Most of this has come from China, of course, which makes up about 55 percent of global coal consumption (the United States makes up about 5 percent of global consumption). Although the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts a decline in demand over the next five years, The Kobeissi Letter more realistically predicts that demand will continue to rise, and points out that “past forecasts of peak coal demand have repeatedly proven wrong.” A graph on the IEA’s website that illustrates coal consumption (in metric tonnes, Mt) from 2000 to 2022, shows estimates for 2024 to 2026 that seem improbable.

Regardless, the IEA writes that increased demand for renewables is the primary cause for the estimated decline in coal consumption, and that “Global coal demand is expected to effectively plateau over the coming years, showing a very gradual decline through to 2030.” However, they also write that coal use is expected to increase in India by about 3 percent per year and in Southeast Asia by about 4 percent per year up to 2030.
In reality, we can’t expect China to slow its coal production anytime soon. Currently consuming about 3 billion tonnes annually, they will clearly dominate global trends in coal consumption in the years to come. Although the IEA also expects a slow decline in coal consumption in China over the next five years, with the gradual but marked decline of climate change alarmism worldwide and China’s ambition to expand its economy, this prediction doesn’t seem to hold much credibility either.
As The Kobeissi Letter states, coal remains in high demand, and the pipe dream of climate activists to kill coal doesn’t account for the security and convenience that this energy supply affords us. Like nuclear electricity—another power source that is vital to providing electricity for large portions of the world—the fuel for coal-fired power generation can be stored right on a power plant’s site for long periods of time, providing stable energy for society. We especially need coal during deep freezes because natural gas can falter in extreme cold due to “just-in-time” pipeline delivery. Gas flows can slow or freeze entirely, as seen in winter storms Uri (2021) and Elliott (2022), leaving grids vulnerable. And, not surprisingly, in each of these storms, wind and solar delivered very little, and sometimes no power at all, causing millions to lose electricity and causing hundreds of deaths from the cold.
CO2 Coalition energy expert Dick Storm says that “coal is indispensable” and that it is “the lowest cost proven source of primary energy for electricity generation ever in history.” The Canadian province of Ontario, where I live, proved this case well. In 2002, coal provided about 25 percent of the province’s power, and we enjoyed very low electricity rates. But in 2005, then-Premier Dalton McGuinty held a news conference and, pointing to the pile of coal beside him, said it was “old technology” and that, to save the climate and protect the air, Ontario would phase out all coal-fired electricity generation. This made no sense in light of the facts:
1. Coal is not a technology. It is a resource, and the degree to which it causes pollution when burned depends on the technology used to burn it. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions from a coal plant is unquestionably costly, difficult, and of course, unnecessary. Reducing real pollution is often well worth the price and far easier to accomplish with a coal station by using the latest pollution control technology.
2. Seen in a global context, Ontario’s emissions are trivial—one-quarter of Canada’s 1.6 percent of global emissions. So, no matter what one believes about the causes of climate change, McGuinty’s announcement and the province’s painful reduction to 0 percent coal-fired power were merely virtue signalling and showmanship. It had no impact on climate whatsoever.
It did, however, have a huge impact on consumer electricity rates, which, depending on the year, doubled or even tripled as coal was replaced with more expensive power, including a massive expansion of industrial wind turbines. Of course, soaring power rates are politically problematic, so the government decided to hide the increase in the tax base, and today’s rates are merely 50 percent higher than those in 2002. But we all eventually pay for this massive increase, just not directly on our power bill.
Renewable energy has only been able to survive thus far because it is heavily subsidized by tax dollars. These subsidies have, unfortunately, caused coal-fired power stations to be less profitable to operate, by comparison, compounded by the fact that regulations have crippled the industry. It is important to increase our expansion of coal plants, Storm tells us. 800,000 megawatts of new power generation, the equivalent of 80 New York cities, will be needed in the United States in the next 25 years to keep up with demand. This is simply not possible with renewable energy, and although nuclear and other conventional power will be significant players in this, coal will remain a steady, reliable power source to provide us with these vast amounts of power.
Rather than phase out coal, Saskatchewan should build more plants. Since Alberta phased out this important energy source, it will soon come knocking again begging for more power from Saskatchewan’s black gold.

True pic.twitter.com/OEpuW3n8JQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 19, 2026

Elon Musk just described how the entire government operates in a single sentence.

Musk: “Paying people to do nothing doesn’t make sense.”

Then he told a Milton Friedman story that should terrify every bureaucrat on the payroll.

Friedman watched workers digging ditches with… pic.twitter.com/JCajW6djhR
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) May 19, 2026

JENSEN HUANG: “IF I HAVE A CHOICE BETWEEN A NEW COLLEGE GRADUATE WITH NO CLUE WHAT AI IS AND ONE THAT IS EXPERT IN USING AI, I WOULD HIRE THE ONE WHO'S EXPERT IN USING AI. ACCOUNTANT, MARKETING, SUPPLY CHAIN, LAWYER, SALESPERSON. EVERY SINGLE TIME.” pic.twitter.com/71ZqNbMcPO
— Vivek Sen (@Vivek4real_) May 18, 2026

Mathematician Sir Roger Penrose: "AI is a bad term. It's not intelligence" pic.twitter.com/p2f1UDxQTM
— shouko (@shoukointech) May 17, 2026

What is the best possible future? This question is much harder to answer than it may seem. https://t.co/UbWI37hSQO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 19, 2026

Professor Robert Clancy draws attention to a shocking new Japanese study involving 20 million people, which found that "all the excess deaths were in the vaccinated group".

"The non-vaccinated group had none." pic.twitter.com/N7FdPR9Rok
— healthbot (@thehealthb0t) May 19, 2026

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Debt Rattle March 14 2020

Mar 142020

March 14, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:42 am Finance Tagged with: Apple, Biden, Big Pharma, collapse, coronavirus, Covid19, curve, dead sea scrolls, delusion, EU, Pelosi, primaries, Trump, Tulsi Gabbard 32 Responses »

• “Flattening the Curve” Is A Deadly Delusion (Bach)

• Higher Temperatures Affect Survival Of New Coronavirus (Accu)

• South Korea’s Drive-Through Testing For Coronavirus Is Fast – And Free (NPR)

• Nancy Pelosi, Trump Administration Reach Deal On Coronavirus Aid Package (NYP)

• EU Ready To Trigger Crisis Clause Allowing Fiscal Stimulus (BBG)

• Big Pharma Prepares To Profit From The Coronavirus (IC)

• Apple To Close All Stores Outside Of China (BI)

• Bad Coronavirus News Starts To Hit US Auto Dealers (R.)

• Next Week’s Primaries To Proceed Despite Coronavirus, Louisiana Delay (R.)

• Major US Internet Firms Agree Not To Cancel Service Over Next 60 Days (R.)

• FBI’s Russia Collusion Case Fell Apart In January 2017

• ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ At DC Museum Of The Bible Are All Forgeries (NatGeo)

• It Would Take 50 Million Years To Recover New Zealand’s Lost Bird Species (F.)

Yay! We’re setting records! Over 10,000 cases in one day, 2,547 of which in Italy, and 451 deaths, with 250 in Italy.

• Cases 146,327 (+ 10,518 from yesterday’s 135,809)

• Deaths 5,443 (+ 453 from yesterday’s 4,990)

Something went wrong with my usual snapshot from last night’s Worldometer numbers, so yesterday’s “gains” per country are lost. Apologies.

Trajectories are clear though. Spain is a country to watch, as are Denmark, Norway and Sweden. And Switzerland with 220 new cases today, and and and.

Other than that, economic policies are taking the spotlight, and especially the failures. The question arises: can the west do what it did in WWII, and confiscate production facilities?

Just as abhorrent to US “values”: Tulsi Gabbard and Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw, separate from each other I think, want the US to give every citizen $1,000 a month to counter the corona fallout.

Can America as a nation unite, or is that ability forever lost? Because: if you give out that $1,000, will you allow your firms, say Big Pharma, to charge exorbitant prices for essentials?

In that same vein, Germany appears ready to abandon its long term fiscal prudence, and to drag Europe along for the ride.

I changed the order of the graphs around a bit, SCMP is getting further behind all the time.

From Worldometer (NOTE: mortality rate is back up to 7%!)

From COVID2019.app: (This site is playing with its formats while expanding, now over 200 global contributors)

From SCMP: (Note: the SCMP graph was useful when China was the focal point; they are falling behind now)

Joshua Bach is a scary dude.

• “Flattening the Curve” Is A Deadly Delusion (Bach)

You have all seen a version of this curve of COVID-19 case loads by now:

Or this one:

There are many more. What all these diagrams have in common: They have no numbers on the axes. They don’t give you an idea how many cases it takes to overwhelm the medical system, and over how many days the epidemic will play out. They suggest that currently, the medical system can deal with a large fraction (like maybe 2/3, 1/2 or 1/3) of the cases, but if we implement some mitigation measures, we can get the infections per day down to a level we can deal with. They mean to tell you that we can get away without severe lockdowns as we are currently observing them in China and Italy. Instead, we let the infection burn through the entire population, until we have herd immunity (at 40% to 70%), and just space out the infections over a longer timespan.

These suggestions are dangerously wrong, and if implemented, will lead to incredible suffering and hardship. Let’s try to understand this by putting some numbers on the axes. What is the capacity of the healthcare system? This is a difficult question and cannot be answered in a short post like this. The US has about 924,100 hospital beds (2.8 per 1000 people). California has only 1.8. Countries like Germany have 8. South Korea has 12. (Their hospital system got overloaded nonetheless.) Most of these beds are in use, but we can create more, using improvisation (for instance using hotels and school gyms) and strategic resources of the military, national guard and other organizations.

Based on Chinese data, we can estimate that about 20% of COVID-19 cases are severe and require hospitalization. However, many severe cases will survive if they can be adequately provided for at home (which may include oxygen, IVs and isolation). More important is the number of ICU beds, which by some estimates can be stretched to about a 100,000, and of which about 30,000 may be available. About 5% of all COVID-19 cases need intensive care, and without it, all of them will die. We can also increase the number of ICU beds somewhat, but the equipment that we need to deal with sepsis, kidney, liver and heart failure, severe pneumonia etc. cannot be stretched arbitrarily between them.

An important part of the equation are ventilators. Most of the critically ill COVID-19 cases die of an infection of the lungs that makes it impossible to breathe and even destroys so much tissue that the blood can no longer be sufficiently oxygenated. These patients need intubation and mechanical ventilation to give them a chance of survival, or even an ECMO machine, which oxygenates the blood directly. About 6% of all cases need a ventilator, and if hospitals put all existing ventilators to use, we have 160,000 of them. In addition, the CDC has a strategic stockpile of 8900 ventilators that can be deployed in hospitals that need them. If we take the number of ventilators as a proximate limit on the medical resources, it means we can take care of up to 170,000 critically ill patients at the same time.

How many people will get infected? Without containment, the virus becomes endemic, and leading epidemiologists like Marc Lipsitch (Harvard) and Christian Drosten (Charité Berlin) estimate that between 40% and 70% of the population get infected until we develop some degree of herd immunity. (Unfortunately, we do not know how long this immunity lasts. We already observe multiple strain of COVID-19, and will see many more, due to the large number of carriers.) In a population like the US (327 million), that means between 130 million and 230 million. Let’s assume that 55% of the US population (the middle ground) get infected between March and December, and we are looking at 180 million people.

Saw that picture with the narrow yellow band before. But of course they still don’t agree on anything.

• Higher Temperatures Affect Survival Of New Coronavirus (Accu)

Research from a laboratory-grown copy of the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes the COVID-19 illness shows that heat affects the virus and impacts its behavior, a top pathologist said new research has shown. But other infectious disease experts aren’t yet convinced. “In cold environments, there is longer virus survival than warm ones,” Hong Kong University pathology professor John Nicholls told AccuWeather exclusively. Nicholls and colleagues from a team at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, previously produced a study, which was published in February and has yet to be peer-reviewed, noting the effect of heat. Their research is based on one of the world’s first lab-grown copies of SARS-CoV-2.

“Temperature could significantly change COVID-19 transmission,” the authors note in the study. They also pointed out that the “virus is highly sensitive to high temperature.” On March 11, the World Health Organization officially declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic. This is the first pandemic in 11 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One recent research paper supported this assertion by pointing out the proximity of the major hotspots. The authors of the study, which was published last week, wrote that COVID-19 “has established significant community spread in cities and regions only along a narrow east-west distribution roughly along the 30-50 North latitude corridor at consistently similar weather patterns (5-11 degrees C [41 to 51 F] and 47-79 percent humidity).”

“Notably, during the same time, COVID-19 failed to spread significantly to countries immediately south of China,” the paper notes. “The number of patients and reported deaths in Southeast Asia is much less when compared to more temperate regions noted … The association between temperature in the cities affected with COVID-19 deserves special attention.” Some have suggested the possibility that weather factors might affect the virus – particularly the intensity and amount of hours of sunshine as well as heat and humidity. “Obviously, the virus is something we’ve never dealt with before, but if we look at other viruses … they all had their peak during the cold season,” said AccuWeather Founder and CEO Dr. Joel N. Myers.

“The statistics all show that they breed and survive longer when it’s cold and dry,” Myers said. “So, when it’s warmer and more humid and there’s a lot of sunshine, the statistics on all of the others show a virus is less lethal, it spreads less efficiently and less effectively among humans.” Dr. Joseph Fair, a virologist, epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist, suggested sunshine is a critical factor in subduing the virus. “It really doesn’t have anything to do with the warmth, but it has to do with the length of the day and the exposure to sunlight, which inactivates the virus through UV light,” Fair [said]. “We expect a dip in infections as we would see with the cold and flu in the spring and summer months.

But, he cautioned, “The science is still out. We can assume this will follow typical other coronavirus cases. We can expect a dip in the summer. But that doesn’t mean that we will be out of the woods … Everyone in the scientific and public health community expects it to be back in the fall and we expect to be in this for quite some time.”

Transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S. Virus particles are emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles give coronaviruses their name, crown-like. (NIAID-RML)

What a nation is capable of when it starts working together.

• South Korea’s Drive-Through Testing For Coronavirus Is Fast – And Free (NPR)

If you roll up to a drive-through COVID-19 testing center in South Korea, you might notice that safety procedures extend all the way to your car’s air conditioning. You will be advised to hit the recirculation button so that if you’re sick, you can keep your pathogens to yourself, in your car, and avoid infecting the medical personnel doing the testing. The test takes 10 minutes at most. Results are texted to you, usually the next day. And it’s free — paid for by the government. Drive-through centers have helped South Korea do some of the fastest, most-extensive testing of any country. And while nobody is claiming that South Korea has defeated the outbreak, experts credit the emphasis on testing with reducing case numbers and fatalities.

“I think our approach was right,” says professor Lee Hyukmin of the Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul. “We will continue to see sporadic infections,” he predicts. “But still, the situation in Daegu,” the epicenter of the outbreak, “is being stabilized.” South Korea has about 8,000 infections. Italy and Iran overtook it this week as the countries with the most cases outside of China. South Korea’s new cases have gradually declined since the end of last month. For the first time since Jan. 20, the number of patients released from treatment on Friday, March 13 — 510 — outnumbered the 110 new cases. A nation of 51 million, South Korea has tested about 250,000 people since its outbreak began on Jan. 20, with a daily capacity of 15,000. It has conducted 3,600 tests per million people compared to five per million in the U.S.

South Korea’s aggressive testing may make it unnecessary to impose the sort of lockdowns to which China and Italy have resorted, although health officials insist that all options remain on the table in dealing with the epidemic. “It’s much better to test and then quarantine a specific person than to do a citywide or provincewide lockdown, which in certain ways prevents the virus from leaving the province but actually doesn’t make the province any less likely to have high infection rates,” says Eric Feigl-Ding, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., and an epidemiologist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.

Just like Tulsi: “Greg Mankiw, a former top economic adviser to President George W. Bush, advocated sending $1,000 checks to everyone as soon as possible.”

• Nancy Pelosi, Trump Administration Reach Deal On Coronavirus Aid Package (NYP)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Trump administration reached a last-minute deal Friday on a sweeping coronavirus aid package that will provide free testing for all Americans. The “Families First Coronavirus Response Act” will guarantee free tests for all Americans, including the uninsured, and provide two weeks of paid sick leave for those affected by the health crisis, Pelosi said. It will also provide up to three months of paid family and medical leave and strengthened unemployment Insurance for those facing layoffs amid the health and economic crisis. The aid package will also strengthen food banks, seniors’ meals and the food stamps program, known as SNAP.

Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had been locked in feverish negotiations as the crisis rapidly escalated — speaking up to seven times a day — and by Friday morning, senior Democrats were confident the package would pass the House by the end of the day. But the deal appeared to hit a snag when Trump on Friday declared a State of Emergency at the White House Rose Garden and announced he didn’t support the aid package. “We don’t think the Democrats are giving enough,” Trump told reporters. “We are negotiating. We thought we had something, but all of a sudden they didn’t agree to certain things that they agreed to,” he added, without specifying the sticking point.

The president has repeatedly demanded a payroll tax cut be included in the bill, something that has been met with tepid support from within his own administration. “We could have something but we don’t think they are giving enough. They are not doing what is right for the country,” he concluded. Pelosi was bullish about passing the bill on Friday, even though it now languishes until Monday when the Senate returns from a break, calling the health outbreak a “grave and accelerating challenge.” The new bill comes after Trump last week signed into law a separate $8.3 billion in emergency aid for states and local authorities to combat the spread of the virus.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1238516118391791617

Jim Bianco on Twitter:

“German Gov’t will offer unlimited loans to all companies that want them. Will buy stakes in German Governments. Guaranteed every job in Germany. Said “no on will lose their job over a virus.” They are essentially asking all EU countries to do the same as Germany. Couple this with the Fed trillions, the ECB yesterday , the BOE wed and the BoJ overnight … Everyone is “all-in” to stop the decline. If this does not work, closing mkts might be all that is left.”

• EU Ready To Trigger Crisis Clause Allowing Fiscal Stimulus (BBG)

Denmark, Poland and Cyprus tightened their borders to limit the spread of the coronavirus even as European leaders called for more concerted action to contain the economic fallout. Germany, which borders two of those countries, pledged to spend whatever was necessary to protect its economy and the European Commission said it’s ready to green-light widespread spending after a market meltdown and a forecast that the euro zone was headed for recession. With Group of Seven policy makers struggling to forge a united front, the response from national capitals reflects the urgency to avoid the lockdown that hit Italy amid an epidemic that seemed to be spiraling out of control.

In Denmark, only Danes, Danish residents and green card holders will be let in. For everyone else, the country’s borders will be closed until April 14 and people arriving in Denmark will be sent back. “We’re painfully aware that this will have severe consequences,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in Copenhagen on Friday, as she announced borders would close. “We can see how the situation in Italy developed in a catastrophic direction,” she said. “Everything we’re doing is to ensure that we get through this situation in a different way.” Likewise, Cyprus is closing its borders for 15 days to foreigners who don’t live or work on the Mediterranean island, President Nicos Anastasiades said in a televised address.

[..] The ability to travel without border checks has been a fact of life for more than two decades in most of Europe, with passport-free movement arguably the most successful feature of daily life for more than 400 million people in the EU. Officials in Brussels are accepting the new – if temporary – restrictions through gritted teeth. “General travel bans are not seen as being the most effective by the World Health Organization,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm. “Moreover, they have a strong social and economic impact. They disrupt people’s lives and business across the borders.”

Just hours earlier, German officials announced KfW, the state bank, can lend as much as €550 billion to companies to ensure they survive the pandemic and shield their workers from its impact. Switzerland pledged 10 billion francs ($10.5 billion) of aid for its companies. European stocks surged. “This is the bazooka,” Finance Minister Olaf Scholz. “We’re using it to do what is necessary. We’ll check later to see if we need additional smaller weapons.”

Suspect that unlike in WWII, US industry would be allowed to turn huge profits.

• Big Pharma Prepares To Profit From The Coronavirus (IC)

As the new coronavirus spreads illness, death, and catastrophe around the world, virtually no economic sector has been spared from harm. Yet amid the mayhem from the global pandemic, one industry is not only surviving, it is profiting handsomely. “Pharmaceutical companies view Covid-19 as a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity,” said Gerald Posner, author of “Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America.” The world needs pharmaceutical products, of course. For the new coronavirus outbreak, in particular, we need treatments and vaccines and, in the U.S., tests. Dozens of companies are now vying to make them.

“They’re all in that race,” said Posner, who described the potential payoffs for winning the race as huge. The global crisis “will potentially be a blockbuster for the industry in terms of sales and profits,” he said, adding that “the worse the pandemic gets, the higher their eventual profit.” The ability to make money off of pharmaceuticals is already uniquely large in the U.S., which lacks the basic price controls other countries have, giving drug companies more freedom over setting prices for their products than anywhere else in the world. During the current crisis, pharmaceutical makers may have even more leeway than usual because of language industry lobbyists inserted into an $8.3 billion coronavirus spending package, passed last week, to maximize their profits from the pandemic.

[..] According to calculations by Axios, drug companies make 63 percent of total health care profits in the U.S. That’s in part because of the success of their lobbying efforts. In 2019, the pharmaceutical industry spent $295 million on lobbying, far more than any other sector in the U.S. That’s almost twice as much as the next biggest spender — the electronics, manufacturing, and equipment sector — and well more than double what oil and gas companies spent on lobbying. The industry also spends lavishly on campaign contributions to both Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Throughout the Democratic primary, Joe Biden has led the pack among recipients of contributions from the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

Big Pharma’s spending has positioned the industry well for the current pandemic. While stock markets have plummeted in reaction to the Trump administration’s bungling of the crisis, more than 20 companies working on a vaccine and other products related to the new SARS-CoV-2 virus have largely been spared. Stock prices for the biotech company Moderna, which began recruiting participants for a clinical trial of its new candidate for a coronavirus vaccine two weeks ago, have shot up during that time. On Thursday, a day of general carnage in the stock markets, Eli Lilly’s stock also enjoyed a boost after the company announced that it, too, is joining the effort to come up with a therapy for the new coronavirus. And Gilead Sciences, which is at work on a potential treatment as well, is also thriving.

1 day (or is it 2?) after re-opening all Chinese stores.

• Apple To Close All Stores Outside Of China (BI)

Apple will be temporarily shuttering all stores outside China until March 27, in response to mounting concern over the novel coronavirus, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced on Saturday. Cook also said in a tweet that the company will be committing $15 million to recovery efforts and matching employee donations two-to-one as the coronavirus, which causes the disease known as COVID-19, continues to grip the US. “What we’ve learned together has helped us all develop the best practices that are assisting enormously in our global response,” Cook wrote in a press release. “One of those lessons is that the most effective way to minimize risk of the virus’s transmission is to reduce density and maximize social distance.” “As rates of new infections continue to grow in other places, we’re taking additional steps to protect our team members and customers.” The retailer will continue to fulfill purchases made online or through the Apple phone apps.

Can you self-isolate in a car?

• Bad Coronavirus News Starts To Hit US Auto Dealers (R.)

A relentless barrage of bad news surrounding the coronavirus epidemic has begun to affect customer visits at some U.S. auto dealers and even those businesses that have thrived so far believe a big sales decline is imminent if China’s experience is any guide. Since the coronavirus outbreak began in China last year it has killed more than 5,000 people globally, including 41 so far in the United States, where President Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency. The outbreak has caused automakers to shutter plants in Asia and Europe, and the mounting responses in the United States – school closures, pro sports leagues suspending play and other big events canceled – are now being felt by some U.S. dealers. For a sign of what may be in store, analysts said look no further than China, where auto sales plunged 79% last month.

“Sales are definitely falling,” said John Luciano, managing partner with Street Volkswagen in Amarillo, Texas, and chairman of Volkswagen’s national dealer council. “We’re waking up in a different world a little bit more every day.” At Russ Shelton’s Buick GMC dealership in Rochester Hills, Michigan, so far this month customer visits are down 30% while the service department has seen a 40% drop in business due to the outbreak. “When schools close, mothers get worried – and this stops economic activity,” industry consultant and former GM executive Warren Browne said. Cox Automotive now sees negative U.S. economic growth in the second quarter and has withdrawn its forecast for 16.6 million new-vehicle sales in the United States this year.

“We’re definitely voting. They voted during the Civil War. We’re gonna vote..”

• Next Week’s Primaries To Proceed Despite Coronavirus, Louisiana Delay (R.)

Louisiana on Friday became the first U.S. state to postpone its presidential nominating contest because of the coronavirus pandemic, while four states holding their primaries next week said those elections would go forward as planned. The Southern state said it would reschedule voting in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election because of the outbreak. Officials there said they would postpone their scheduled April 4 primary to June 20 “to best protect the health and safety of Louisiana voters and voting officials,” Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin said at a news conference. The four states holding their primaries on Tuesday – Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio – said in a joint statement they would proceed with their contests while taking steps to ensure public safety.

“Americans have participated in elections during challenging times in the past, and, based on the best information we have from public health officials, we are confident that voters in our states can safely and securely cast their ballots in this election, and that otherwise healthy poll workers can and should carry out their patriotic duties on Tuesday,” election officials from the four states said. “We’re definitely voting. They voted during the Civil War. We’re gonna vote,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters on Friday. Louisiana’s move poses a problem for the Democratic Party, which mandates all nominating contests must be held by early June or states risk losing delegates to the party convention in July.

[..] Biden’s attempt to connect with voters via a virtual town hall on Friday was plagued by early technical glitches that delayed its start and made most of his early remarks impossible to understand. The event provided the first glimpse into the challenges of running a virtual campaign. He used his opening remarks to discuss his plan for tackling the coronavirus crisis and pleading for citizens to listen to public health officials and wash their hands. He then turned to virtual attendees for questions and comments. The first person said, “Mr. Biden’s speech was garbled the entire time.”

People what the hell is happening.
pic.twitter.com/cdktiytvXX

— Imraan Siddiqi (@imraansiddiqi) March 14, 2020

Let Washington handle it, make it free.

• Major US Internet Firms Agree Not To Cancel Service Over Next 60 Days (R.)

The Federal Communications Commission said Friday that major internet providers – including Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc – agreed not to terminate service for subscribers for the next 60 days if they are unable to pay their bills due to disruptions caused by the coronavirus. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said after calls with more than 50 companies that they also agreed to waive any late fees residential or small business customers incur because of their economic circumstances related to the coronavirus pandemic. They also agreed to open Wi-Fi hotspots to anyone who needs them, the FCC said.

Millions more Americans are expected to work from home as employers and states urge people to telework to reduce the potential to spread the coronavirus outbreak. Others agreeing to take part are Alphabet Inc’s Google Fiber, Charter Communications Inc, CenturyLink Inc, Cox Communications, Sprint Corp, T-Mobile US Inc. “As the coronavirus outbreak spreads and causes a series of disruptions to the economic, educational, medical and civic life of our country, it is imperative that Americans stay connected,” Pai said in a statement. “Broadband will enable them to communicate with their loved ones and doctors, telework, ensure their children can engage in remote learning.”

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, praised the companies adopting the pledge, but said the FCC should do more. She called on the commission to “provide hotspots for loan for students whose school doors have closed” and should “work with health care providers to ensure connectivity for telehealth services are available for hospitals, doctors, and nurses treating coronavirus patients and those who are quarantined.” Pai also said he had asked providers that offer low-income consumers lower-speed cheaper service to increase speeds and expand eligibility. Comcast said Thursday it was raising its speeds for all its low-income users, while AT&T said it was waiving data caps for consumers that have plans with usage caps.

John Solomon promises more. Will there be elections, though?

• FBI’s Russia Collusion Case Fell Apart In January 2017 (Solomon)

Flynn’s motion is confirmed by a 2018 letter obtained by Just the News between Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and defense lawyers. It shows the DOJ exoneration memo was written after Flynn had been interviewed by FBI agents in January 2017 and after the government learned the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief had kept his old agency briefed on his contacts with Russia, something that weighed heavily against the notion he was aiding Moscow.

“According to an internal DOJ memo dated January 30, 2017, after the Jan. 24 interview, the FBI advised that based on the interview the FBI did not believe Flynn was acting as an agent of Russia,” Mueller’s team wrote in the letter. U.S. District Judge Emmett Sullivan so far has concluded that the exoneration of Flynn on the Russia collusion charge wasn’t relevant to his conviction since he pled guilty to a different crime, making a false statement to the FBI. But for the American public, such a revelation is momentous. Less than two weeks into Trump’s presidency the FBI had concluded his national security adviser had not been working as an agent of Russia.

While that was the view of federal law enforcement, the false storyline of Flynn as a Russian stooge was broadcasted across the nation, with leaks of his conversations with a Russian ambassador and other tales, for many more months. In an interview with Just the News and its John Solomon Reports podcast, Powell confirmed she was provided by letter three sentences from the DOJ memo but has been unable to get the full document. “It’s just horrible,” Powell said. “They gave us a little three lines summary of it and the letter and told us it existed but have refused to give us the actual document, which I know means there’s a lot of other information in it that would be helpful to us.” Powell also confirmed that Mueller was fully aware of a letter sent in early January 2017 to Flynn from Britain’s national security adviser raising concerns about Steele’s credibility.

The British government “hand-delivered” a letter to Flynn’s team that “totally disavowed any credibility of Christopher Steele, and would have completely destroyed the Russia collusion narrative,” Powell said. Flynn himself has no memory of receiving the communique, but people around him at the time do and confirmed the existence of the document, Powell explained. Flynn was questioned about it during his debriefings by Mueller’s team, she added. “I was told that a copy of the document would have been given to [then-National Security Adviser] Susan Rice as well,” she added. “So the Obama administration knew full well that the entire Russia collusion mess was a farce.”

Evangelical humor.

• ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ At DC Museum Of The Bible Are All Forgeries (NatGeo)

On the fourth floor of the Museum of the Bible, a sweeping permanent exhibit tells the story of how the ancient scripture became the world’s most popular book. A warmly lit sanctum at the exhibit’s heart reveals some of the museum’s most prized possessions: fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient texts that include the oldest known surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible. But now, the Washington, D.C. museum has confirmed a bitter truth about the fragments’ authenticity. On Friday, independent researchers funded by the Museum of the Bible announced that all 16 of the museum’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments are modern forgeries that duped outside collectors, the museum’s founder, and some of the world’s leading biblical scholars. Officials unveiled the findings at an academic conference hosted by the museum. “The Museum of the Bible is trying to be as transparent as possible,” says CEO Harry Hargrave.

“We’re victims—we’re victims of misrepresentation, we’re victims of fraud.” In a report spanning more than 200 pages, a team of researchers led by art fraud investigator Colette Loll found that while the pieces are probably made of ancient leather, they were inked in modern times and modified to resemble real Dead Sea Scrolls. “These fragments were manipulated with the intent to deceive,” Loll says. The new findings don’t cast doubt on the 100,000 real Dead Sea Scroll fragments, most of which lie in the Shrine of the Book, part of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. However, the report’s findings raise grave questions about the “post-2002” Dead Sea Scroll fragments, a group of some 70 snippets of biblical text that entered the antiquities market in the 2000s. Even before the new report, some scholars believed that most to all of the post-2002 fragments were modern fakes.

How long does it take to kill 50 million years?

• It Would Take 50 Million Years To Recover New Zealand’s Lost Bird Species (F.)

Long before people arrived in New Zealand, it was dominated by multitudes of unique birds. They were absolutely everywhere: big birds, little birds, colorful birds, flightless birds. In the absence of reptilian and mammalian predators, birds evolved to fill every available niche, from giant moas that stood 11 feet tall and weighed as much as 230 kilograms (510 pounds) that were the ecological equivalent of deer and antelopes, to the largest eagle that ever lived, which was New Zealand’s apex predator, functioning similarly to lions and tigers and other big cats. But after humans arrived 700 years ago, it took us only a few hundred years to drive more than half of New Zealand’s bird species into extinction, and more than 30% of the birds that survived our original onslaughts are threatened with extinction today. Nearly two-thirds could be under threat in the future.

Considering these dire circumstances, an international team of scientists wondered how long it might take for New Zealand to recover its full diversity of bird species lost to human actions. According to their recently published study, the researchers estimated this process would take approximately 50 million years (50Ma). Further, they found that, if bird species that are currently threatened are allowed to go extinct, it would take an additional 10Ma for New Zealand to achieve today’s (severely compromised) level of species diversity. “The conservation decisions we make today will have repercussions for millions of years to come”, said the lead author of the study, Luis Valente, a Research Associate at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.

“Some people believe that if you leave nature alone it will quickly recuperate, but the reality is that, at least in New Zealand, nature would need several million years to recover from human actions — and perhaps will never really recover.” New Zealand is home to a collection of odd birds, including the wrybill, a small shorebird whose bill curves sideways; the iconic kiwis, whose feathers resemble fur and which are the only bird species in the world to have nostrils at the tip of their beak; the flightless kakapo, which resembles a large moss-colored owl and is the heaviest parrot alive today; and of course, the kea, which is the world’s only alpine parrot and who is pushing the boundaries of our understanding of how astonishingly clever parrots can be. Despite this modern surfeit of avian biodiversity, it is just a mere whisper of what once lived on New Zealand, which was the result of many millions of years of evolutionary history.

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Debt Rattle January 7 2020

Jan 072020

January 7, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:12 am Finance Tagged with: Bizarro, Boeing, camels, Chelsea Clinton, China, coal, cultural burning, Democrats, forex, impeachment, Iran, McConnell, nukes, primaries 14 Responses »

Jack Delano Worker inspecting locomotive, Proviso Yard 1942

• China Pledges ‘Prudence’ In Diversifying Foreign Exchange Reserves (SCMP)

• Experts Urge Fed To Consider Radical Approaches To Fight Next Recession (MW)

• Iran ‘Not Interested’ In Having Nukes – UN Envoy (RT)

• McConnell Urges Lawmakers To Wait For Facts On Soleimani Killing (R.)

• McConnell Has The Votes To Block Democrats’ Impeachment Witness Demands (Hill)

• A Very Real Scenario Of A Protracted, Bizarro World Democratic Primary (Pol.)

• China Must Cancel New Coal Plants To Achieve Climate Goals (R.)

• American Airlines Reaches Secret Settlement With Boeing Over 737 MAX (R.)

• Chelsea Clinton Reaps $9 Million From Corporate Board Position (Hill)

• Australia To Kill Thousands Of Camels As They Drink Too Much Water (Hill)

• Australian Owners Say Cultural Burning Saved Their Property (Age)

• New Neural Activity Suggests Our Brains Even More Powerful Than We Think (RT)

Read between the lines. China suffers from capital flight. It can’t keep the dollars at home. But sure, it’s tempting to call this diversifying.

• China Pledges ‘Prudence’ In Diversifying Foreign Exchange Reserves (SCMP)

China will “steadily and prudently” diversify its US$3.1 trillion foreign exchange reserve holdings, the government agency managing the assets pledged in its 2020 work plan, suggesting a subtle policy change in the way Beijing uses its hard currency holdings. The careful approach would “promote the diversified use … and ensure the safety, flow, and preservation and appreciation of foreign exchange reserve assets,” China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement published on Sunday, which summarised the results of its annual work conference last week. It is the first time that SAFE, headed by Pan Gongsheng, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, has called for “prudence” in diversifying China’s reserve assets in its annual work conference statement.

The regulator also vowed to improve its management of reserves “with Chinese characteristics”, although it did not explain what that meant. SAFE added it would prevent risks caused by external shocks endangering “national economic and financial security” in 2020. China’s diversification strategy for its foreign exchange reserves – which generally indicates a reduction in holdings of US government bonds for other riskier assets – has gained speed in the past decade after the creation of a separate sovereign wealth fund in 2007. SAFE has created a special office of lending dollars to institutions like the China Development Bank to finance overseas projects and launched a number of overseas offices for investment.

In its 2018 annual report, SAFE revealed for the first time the share of US dollar denominated assets in its reserves portfolio for the period 2005 to 2014. Dollar assets accounted for 58 per cent of China’s total reserves by 2014 – the most recent data provided – down from 79 per cent in 2005, the report showed. By international standards, the share of US dollar assets in China’s reserves in 2014 was below average. The latest data from the International Monetary Fund showed that 61.8 per cent of the world’s reserves assets were denominated in US dollars at the end of the third quarter last year.

Ha ha! Larry Summers as the expert.

• Experts Urge Fed To Consider Radical Approaches To Fight Next Recession (MW)

Two monetary-policy experts, contradicting former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, said they wanted the central bank to consider new “radical” approaches to fight the next recession, out of a concern that existing tools might not be as effective as they were in the last crisis. In a Sunday morning panel at the American Economic Association annual meeting, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said the Fed’s QE program, in which the central bank would buy government bonds to bring down long-term rates, might not pack so much punch because the 10-year Treasury note is already close to 1%. “I’m less optimistic about the incremental efficacy of QE,” Summers said.

“I don’t think pushing 10-year rates down from 100 basis points to 50 basis points or 20 basis points has [a] significant incremental effect.” In a speech to the AEA on Saturday night, former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said he thought the Fed had to the tools, including QE, to successfully combat a severe downturn. Bernanke said he thought QE, and verbal guidance from the Fed, would be equivalent to a 300-basis-point easing of the central bank’s benchmark federal funds rate. Adam Posen, a former policy maker at the Bank of England, urged the Fed to consider “radical” approaches, including a new tool called “yield-curve control” to fight the next downturn.

The Bank of Japan has already been using yield-curve control since 2016 to fight deflation. “The BOJ has gotten it right. Yield-curve control is a success story,” Posen said. Under this policy, last used in the U.S. during World War II, the Fed would announce it intended to peg the 10-year Treasury rate at a specific low rate. Low rates would help spur activity. And with the Fed guaranteeing low rates, Congress could boost government spending. “It enables fiscal policy, it doesn’t judge it,” Posen said. It was used during World War II precisely because the government needed to boost fiscal spending.

A consistent point of view. The west makes sure nobody here believes it, but Iran has said the same thing for many years. It’s a religious issue. And just because we warp Christian values to allow for the inclusion of nukes, doesn’t mean they should do the same with the Islam.

• Iran ‘Not Interested’ In Having Nukes – UN Envoy (RT)

Prohibited by the supreme leader’s decree, nuclear weapons are inconsistent with Iran’s defensive doctrine, the country’s UN envoy said after Tehran announced the suspension of limits under the 2015 deal. Iran’s decision to lift restrictions on uranium enrichment – after a US drone strike killed General Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad International Airport – made headlines in Western media, with some speculating that the Islamic Republic could be seeking nuclear weapons. However, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, reassured the public that this is not the case – even though the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is now in jeopardy.

There is “no place for nuclear weapons in Iran’s defensive doctrine,” he told PBS Newshour, adding that the country is also abiding by the Non-Proliferation Treaty – a 1968 pact that aims for nuclear disarmament and sets standards for arms control. We are not interested in having a nuclear weapon, because we have a very clear, clear-cut religious edict by our supreme leader prohibiting nuclear weapons. Tehran has meticulously followed the provisions of the nuclear deal even, though it has received “almost nothing in return,” Takht-Ravanchi said. And while the European parties to the JCPOA (from which Tehran expected to receive benefits) “didn’t act in accordance with the deal,” Iran has chosen not to abandon it completely. “If Iran is given the benefits of the deal, we will go back to the full implementation of it,” the ambassador stated.

That’s not how social media work these days, Mitch. Everyone needs to form an opinion within seconds.

• McConnell Urges Lawmakers To Wait For Facts On Soleimani Killing (R.)

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday U.S. lawmakers should wait for the facts before criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to kill top Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad last week. “We can and we should learn more about the intelligence and thinking that led to this operation and the plan to defend American personnel and interests in the wake of it,” McConnell said at the U.S. Capitol after lawmakers returned from winter break. “Unfortunately, in this toxic political environment, some of our colleagues rushed to blame our own government before even knowing the facts. Rushed to split hairs about intelligence before being briefed on it.”

So that’s that?!

• McConnell Has The Votes To Block Democrats’ Impeachment Witness Demands (Hill)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has the votes to quash Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer’s (N.Y.) demands to require additional witnesses testify at the start of President Trump’s impeachment trial. Two key moderate senators, Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), on Monday evening backed McConnell’s position that the Senate should follow the precedent of the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial and defer until later in the process the question of calling additional witnesses. Collins told reporters at Monday evening votes that the Senate should follow the 1999 precedent and consider the question of subpoenaing additional witnesses and documents only after House impeachment managers and Trump’s defense team present their opening arguments.

She noted in a statement Monday that then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) adopted a resolution in 1999 to set out the rules for the proceeding that didn’t include any agreement for specific witnesses to testify. “The process moved to a period during which the Senate debated and voted that three witnesses should be deposed. I believe that this process — the Clinton approach — worked well,” she said. Murkowski also urged colleagues to follow the path laid out during the Clinton trial. “I think we need to do what they did the last time they did this unfortunate process and that was to go through a first phase and then they reassessed after that,” she told reporters.

A whole new game. Maybe Bloomberg still has a shot. But really, the time between Super Tuesday and the elections should be used to form a united front. Not going to happen. Trump is the only thing that keeps the Dems together.

• A Very Real Scenario Of A Protracted, Bizarro World Democratic Primary (Pol.)

Democrats are now beginning to confront a very real scenario where the nomination — and the winnowing — will not be decided in states where campaigns have been plowing ground for more than a year, but in places and calendar dates so deep into primary season that until recently they’ve received almost no attention at all. The Iowa field is bunched together with little daylight between a handful of well-funded candidates. Each of the four early voting states continues to present the prospect of a different winner. And, at the end of that gauntlet on Super Tuesday, a free-spending billionaire — Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor — is waiting to challenge whichever candidate or candidates emerge.

It’s a unique set of circumstances that has the campaigns — and party officials — scrambling to make sense of the reconfigured landscape. Looking at the possibility of a still-contested nomination even after Super Tuesday’s massive delegate allocation on March 3, Washington state Democratic Party chair Tina Podlodowski said mid-March will “probably matter more than ever before.” One strategist working with a presidential candidate said, “We’ve never had a situation where we get past Super Tuesday and there’s still five people in the field,” predicting that possibility this year. “We’re in bizarro world here,” the strategist said.

[..] “Super Tuesday is typically a wild scramble, and anybody who’s still surviving is usually limping a little bit in terms of money. They’re spread thin in terms of where to go,” said Doug Herman, a Democratic strategist. “Campaigns can’t pay to have simultaneous overhead in all of the early states and all of the next round of states with quality people. So they put all of their best people in early states and then cut and paste them into the next states.” For later states, said Matt Bennett, a veteran of the 2004 presidential campaign and a co-founder of the center-left group Third Way, “The strategy is wait and pray. There is no other strategy … I just think you basically ignore it, and then they’ll frantically run around in those states for a week.”

Look at per capita emissions. In the end that’s all that counts. Now imagine Europe, China and the US at the same levels as India. That’s our future.

• China Must Cancel New Coal Plants To Achieve Climate Goals (R.)

China must end the construction of all new coal-fired power plants in order to meet long-term climate goals in the most economically feasible manner, according to a study co-authored by a government-backed research institute. China’s energy strategy over the next decade is under close scrutiny as it aims to bring climate warming carbon emissions to a peak by 2030 and fulfill a pledge made as part of the 2015 Paris agreement. But with economic growth at its slowest pace in nearly 30 years, Beijing has continued to approve new coal-fired plants, raising fears the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gas is backtracking on its commitments.

Beijing is capable of phasing out coal to help meet a global target to keep temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050, but only if it embarks on a “structured and sustainable” closure strategy to minimize the economic impact, according to the study by Chinese government researchers and the University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability published on Monday. The report, which evaluated more than 1,000 existing coal-fired power plants, said China must first end new construction and then rapidly close older and inefficient plants. As much as 112 gigawatts (GW) does not meet environmental standards and could be shut down immediately, it said.

China currently has over 1,000 GW of coal-fired power, accounting for about 60% of the country’s total installed generation capacity. “Well-designed policies can help lower the cost of coal-power deep decarbonization,” said Jiang Kejun, research professor with the Chinese government-backed Energy Research Institute, one of the report’s authors. [..] Beijing promised last year to show the “highest possible ambition” when drawing up new climate pledges for the coming decade, but it has built 42.9 GW of new coal-fired power capacity since the start of 2018, with another 121 GW under construction.

We need a whistleblower.

• American Airlines Reaches Secret Settlement With Boeing Over 737 MAX (R.)

American Airlines said on Monday it had reached a confidential agreement with Boeing to address damages the airline incurred in 2019 due to the ongoing grounding of its fleet of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. American, the largest U.S. airline, said the compensation will be received over several years. The airline will use more than $30 million of the compensation for the airline’s 2019 employee profit-sharing program. American said it does not expect any material financial impact of the agreement to be realized in its fourth-quarter 2019 earnings and it will continue talks regarding compensation for damages related to the MAX grounding beyond 2019. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents American Airlines’ 28,000 flight attendants, said it welcomed the news about compensation, and was evaluating the details.

Et tu, Hunter?

• Chelsea Clinton Reaps $9 Million From Corporate Board Position (Hill)

Chelsea Clinton has reaped $9 million in compensation since 2011 for serving on the board of an internet investment company, according to Barron’s, the financial publication. Barron’s reported Sunday that Clinton has profited handsomely as a board member for IAC/InterActiveCorp, a media and internet investment company that has an ownership stake in 150 well-known brands, such as Vimeo, Tinder, Angie’s List and Home Advisor. Clinton, the only child of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has served on IAC’s board since 2011 and receives an annual $50,000 retainer and $250,000 worth of restricted IAC stock units, Barron’s reports.

She reported owning $8.95 million worth of IAC stock to the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of December. Barron’s notes that IAC’s stock has risen 89 percent, 50 percent and 36 percent in 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively, a far steeper rise than the broader stock market. Clinton’s public profile has proved a valuable commodity. She earned an annual salary of $600,000 working as a special correspondent for NBC News in 2013 and part of 2014. Clinton was named to the board of Expedia Group in March of 2017, a position that typically earned $250,000 in 2015, according to a report at the time by The Guardian. Both IAC and Expedia are controlled by Barry Diller, the business and television mogul, who is a friend of Hillary Clinton.

It’s all their fault, of course.

• Australia To Kill Thousands Of Camels As They Drink Too Much Water (Hill)

Officials will kill thousands of camels in Australia as they drink too much water amid the wildfires. Leaders in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in northwest Australia will send helicopters to kill up to 10,000 camels in a five-day campaign starting Wednesday, The Australian reported. The order to kill comes as a drought makes the camels more desperate for water, causing chaos in local communities. Marita Baker, an APY executive board member, told the newspaper that the camels were causing problems in her community of Kanypi. “We have been stuck in stinking hot and uncomfortable conditions, feeling unwell, because the camels are coming in and knocking down fences, getting in around the houses and trying to get to water through air conditioners,’’ she said.

The State Department for Environment and Water will send the helicopters up. The camels’ bodies will be burnt or buried if they are accessible, but in remote areas, their bodies will be left. The camels are also being removed due to concerns about greenhouse gas emissions, since camels emit one ton of carbon dioxide per year. The animal’s population also doubles every nine years if not regulated. The National Feral Camel Management Plan estimated about one million camels lived in three states and the Northern territory in 2010, according to the newspaper. One million camels is the equivalent of having 400,000 more cars on the roads, Tim Moore, chief executive of carbon farming specialists RegenCo, told the newspaper.

Think the white Aussies will change their ways now?

• Australian Owners Say Cultural Burning Saved Their Property (Age)

Aboriginal cultural fire practitioner Dennis Barber led a series of cultural burns on six hectares of bushland at Ngurrumpaa in 2015 and 2016 – the first burns in the area since a wildfire swept through in 1994. “There’s nothing more powerful than doing it and feeling like you’re doing the right thing, and seeing the results,” he said. Unlike hazard reduction burning, cultural burns are cooler and slower moving, usually no taller than knee height, leaving tree canopies untouched and allowing animals to take refuge from the flames. Small fires are lit with matches, instead of drip torches, and burn in a circular pattern. Mr Barber says the ancient practice is informed by thousands of years of traditional knowledge.

“It’s more than just putting the fire on the ground – it’s actually knowing the country, knowing what’s there … the soil types, the geology, the trees, the animals, the breeding times of animals, the flowering times of plants,” he said. The timing and frequency of burns depend on the environmental “system”. A former park ranger with 15 years’ professional firefighting experience, Mr Barber says he had a “light bulb moment” at a cultural burning workshop with Indigenous elders in far north Queensland in 2010. “Everything that I’d been doing as a professional firefighter, thinking that I was doing the right thing, was wrong, because I viewed fire in the landscape totally differently after that week,” he said.

“That’s where I got the bug to come back and actually spread that knowledge and see it happening in other parts of Australia.” The Wiradjuri man started Koori Country Firesticks in 2016 to promote cultural burning as an alternative to hazard reduction techniques in NSW. The organisation has culturally burnt around 50 hectares of land across the Hunter Valley and Sydney, mainly on private properties at the request of owners. But the 55-year-old has met plenty of resistance from governments, professional firefighters, national parks and even ecologists. “It’s been a little bit frustrating, but I’ve just decided I’m not going to let that stand in the way anymore,” he said.

Wait. If our brains are indeed more powerful than we think, why are we not already thinking that?

• New Neural Activity Suggests Our Brains Even More Powerful Than We Think (RT)

Scientists have discovered a new form of brain activity related to how cells process information. The incredible find suggests our brains might be even more powerful than previously thought, according to the team. The new research, conducted by German and Greek scientists and published in Science, centers on signals sent and received by the ends of neurons, known as ‘dendrites.’ The information passed by these parts of the brain is key to how the organ decides subsequent actions. Working with slices of human brain tissue, the team found unexpectedly complex electrical activity in the dendrites of human pyramidal neurons.

Modeling this activity then showed that single neurons were capable of solving computational problems which were thought to need a lot more brain power. “The dendrites are central to understanding the brain because they are at the core of what determines the computational power of single neurons,”said study co-author Matthew Larkum, a neuroscientist at Humboldt University of Berlin. “There was a ‘eureka’ moment when we saw the dendritic action potentials for the first time.” Little is currently known about how dendrites operate in other species, or if this kind of high-computational activity is uniquely human. However, it’s incredibly difficult to record dendrite activity in humans or animals while they’re alive, and Larkum says more research is needed to fill in these blanks.

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