Society's ChildS


Radar

2020 was a snack, 2021 is the main course of system failure

Charles Hugh Smith
of two minds.com
Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:00 UTC
system failure
One of the dishes at the banquet of consequences that will surprise a great many revelers is the systemic failure of the Federal Reserve's one-size-fits-all "solution" to every spot of bother: print another trillion dollars and give it to rapacious financiers and corporations.

Though 2020 is widely perceived as "the worst year ever," it was only a snack. The real banquet of consequences will be served in 2021. The reason 2020 was only a snack is that systems didn't break down in 2020. The reason 2021 is the main course is that systems will break down, and once broken, they cannot be restored.

I made the chart below to explain how systems fail and why they cannot be restored. Systems have numerous sources of potential fragility:

1. Systems can be tightly bound to other fragile systems, setting up the potential for a domino-like cascading collapse that starts with one system failure that then brings down every connected, interdependent system.

2. Systems can be hollowed out by self-interested insiders who mistakenly believe the system can survive endless looting.

3. Systems can be weakened by perverse incentives that provide strong incentives to under-invest in core functions and divert revenues to profiteering and extraction (stock buybacks, bonuses to managers, etc.)
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Bullseye

'Out of touch with reality': Tulsi Gabbard rips fellow Democrats after Congress imposes new rules on gendered language


RT
Tue, 05 Jan 2021 01:24 UTC
tulsi
© Reuters / Mike Segar
US Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is calling out her party for pushing through a new code of conduct that essentially denies women exist by requiring gender-neutral language in Congressional rules.

"It's the height of hypocrisy for people who claim to be the champions of rights for women to deny the very biological existence of women," Gabbard said on Monday night in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

New guidelines introduced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday and passed Monday by Congress in a party-line vote endeavor to "honor all gender identities" by making all pronouns and references to familial relationships gender-neutral. For instance, "seamen" has been changed to "seafarers," and House rules have been scrubbed of such words as "father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister." "Aunt" and "uncle" will be replaced by "parent's sibling." Lawmakers also must inculcate such words as "parent-in-law," "stepsibling" and "sibling's child" to replace "mother-in-law," "stepsister" and "niece." "He" or "she" references to House members are instead "such member," "delegate" or "resident commissioner."
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Snakes in Suits

'It's easy money': Nigerian scammer laughs about huge sums stolen from COVID welfare programs in bombshell interview

Brad Polumbo
Foundation for Economic Education
Mon, 04 Jan 2021 01:18 UTC
hacker
© Pixabay
State unemployment agencies aren't especially responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars even in the best of times. Yet when the COVID-19 crisis and government lockdowns put tens of millions of Americans out of work, Congress responded by pouring more taxpayer money into state-level unemployment systems.

The federal legislation enormously increased weekly payouts and expanded unemployment benefits to many new classes of workers, with little in the way of verification or qualification requirements. This welfare expansion was just reauthorized in the second major COVID-19 spending package, which Congress passed in mid-December. Sadly, lawmakers didn't bother to address the runaway fraud that had plagued the first round of COVID relief efforts.

An astonishing $36 billion has been lost to fraud in pandemic unemployment benefits, the Department of Labor reports. To put this figure in context, the entire unemployment system only paid out about $26 billion in 2019.
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Question

Danish govt backs delaying 2nd dose of Covid-19 vaccine like UK, despite safety concerns from Pfizer


RT
Mon, 04 Jan 2021 01:14 UTC
covid vaccine
© Mads Claus Rasmussen via REUTERS / Ritzau Scanpix
Denmark will follow the UK in delaying administering second doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 jab beyond the recommended 21-day period, despite safety warnings from the manufacturer against altering the vaccine regimen.

On Monday, the director of the Danish National Board of Health, Søren Brostrøm, told the news agency Ritzau it had updated its guidance so Danes could be given their second shot of the two-part inoculation up to six weeks after the first dose.

However, Brostrøm added that second doses of the Pfizer vaccine should still be given three to four weeks after the first, where possible, in accordance with the time period used in clinical trials to calculate the vaccine's 95 percent efficacy rating.

Meanwhile, on Monday, German health chiefs were attempting to secure independent advice about whether to delay the second shot of the Pfizer vaccine beyond the 42-day maximum limit set by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), according to Reuters.
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Arrow Up

Kyle Rittenhouse, Illinois teen, pleads not guilty in Kenosha protest killings

Todd Richmond
The Washington Times, Associated Press
Tue, 05 Jan 2021 22:14 UTC
kyle rittenhouse court
© Nam Y. Huh / AP
An Illinois teenager who fatally shot two people and wounded a third amidst sometimes violent summer protests on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges including intentional homicide.

Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, entered his plea in a brief hearing conducted by teleconference.

Prosecutors say Rittenhouse, who is white, left his home in Antioch, Illinois, and traveled to Kenosha after learning of a call to protect businesses in the wake of the Aug. 23 shooting by police of Jacob Blake. Blake, a Black man, was shot seven times in the back and left paralyzed.

Rittenhouse opened fire with an assault-style rifle during protests two nights later, killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz. Rittenhouse has argued he fired in self-defense. Conservatives have rallied around Rittenhouse, describing him as a patriot who took up arms to protect people and property, and raised enough money to make his $2 million cash bail.
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Attention

What if lockdowns were assessed the same way vaccines are

Rob Lyons
RT
Tue, 05 Jan 2021 19:12 UTC
uk lockdown boris johnson broadcast
© PA Images via Getty Images / Martin RickettA family in Knutsford, Cheshire, watch Prime Minister Boris Johnson making a televised address to the nation from 10 Downing Street, London, setting out new emergency measures to control the spread of coronavirus in England.
As a despairing UK enters its 3rd lockdown, would we actually do them at all?

Lockdowns are the measure of first resort for many countries in the battle against Covid-19, but had we properly looked at their devastating side effects, governments would not be so keen on them.

After months of trials and painstaking inquiry into questions of efficacy and safety, December saw two vaccines approved by regulators in the UK - first, one made by Pfizer and BioNTech and a second, developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca. There will continue to be great scrutiny of these vaccines to make sure there are few serious side effects and that they work properly.

But as people across the UK are told to stay at home, what would happen if the same process were applied to lockdowns and other restrictions - part of a group of measures properly known as 'non-pharmaceutical interventions'? If we followed the same template as for vaccines and drugs, we would ask (a) do they work and (b) do the side effects outweigh the benefits? Yet it seems that, in the rush to keep Covid at bay, politicians seem unwilling to seriously consider a proper assessment.
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Arrow Up

No criminal charges to be filed in Kenosha police shooting of Jacob Blake

Deneen Smoth
Kenosha News
Tue, 05 Jan 2021 22:04 UTC
jacob blake kenosha riot knife
Kenosha Police officer Rusten Sheskey will not be charged for the shooting of Jacob Blake.

Kenosha District Attorney Michael Graveley announced in a late Tuesday afternoon press conference at the Parkway Chateau that after weeks of studying the investigation into the shooting by the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation, and in a review by an independent use of force consultant, he does not believe charges against the police officer were warranted.

Blake's family has argued against the police narrative and called for criminal charges against Sheskey. Graveley also announced that no charges would be filed against Blake.

In making his decision, Graveley said he had to weigh several factors, but most of all, had to determine what could be proven in court.
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Bad Guys

Tell only lies

Robert Henderson
City Journal
Sun, 27 Dec 2020 20:42 UTC
self censor
The late Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center stated that an idea must fall within a certain range of acceptability to be politically viable. The Overton Window, as this concept has come to be known, describes the range of publicly palatable ideas at a given time, and it applies not only to politicians but to the general public as well.

Recently, however, the rules have changed. Imagine that you're throwing darts at a dartboard. You intend to hit certain sections and avoid others. You throw a bunch of darts and manage to hit your targets. Now, suppose that some other people come along and shift the rules of the game, changing which sections earn and lose points. In fact, they specifically make sure that your score has changed so that you lose points. Turns out that, under the new rules, you're a bad dart player.

The Overton Window has become the Overton dartboard. Every day, people throw darts at a board — each tweet, post, and public statement is aimed at hitting a mark. And each new moral fashion offers the opportunity to change their scores.
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Stock Up

Wisconsin Legislature announces resolution to be introduced on Thursday which will likely decertify state and award to President Trump

Joe Hoft
Gateway Pundit
Mon, 04 Jan 2021 20:58 UTC
wisconsin recount
© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesElection officials count absentee ballots in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Nov. 4, 2020.
Breaking news this evening:The state of Wisconsin has reportedly announced that it will introduce a resolution on Thursday morning to decertify the state's electoral college votes and award them to President Trump.


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Red Flag

How woke megacorp Walmart crushed the American dream - with a helping hand from China


Revolver News
Mon, 04 Jan 2021 20:41 UTC
walmart xi
Senator Josh Hawley engaged in a brief spat with the globalist megacompany Walmart last Wednesday. Hawley announced on Twitter that he would contest the results of the Electoral College on the Senate floor. In a response to Hawley's tweet announcing his decision, Walmart sent an unprovoked tweet calling Hawley a "sore loser." Senator Hawley immediately fired back at the megacorporation.


Walmart quickly apologized, attributing the tweet to an employee who meant to send the insult on a personal account. That's probably true, though it doesn't exactly make Walmart look great. Walmart has more than $500 billion in revenue every year, and it apparently allows random incompetent political obsessives to control its corporate communications. What if the employee had tweeted that Walmart was shutting down stores? What if they abruptly endorsed abolishing the police or told people to loot Walmart stores? The mind reels.

But who cares? That's all besides the point. Now is as good a time as any for American patriots to remember that Walmart, like other globalist American megacorporations, is not our ally.

Conservatives seem to be slowly waking up to the danger of Amazon. When online commerce is dominated by a single tech company with a market cap approaching $2 trillion, whose owner also operates America's most powerful newspaper, it's easy to see why a company so massive needs to be broken up or otherwise stopped.
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