Biden Can’t Overreach With Climate Agenda Because Orange Man Bad
For a couple of weeks now I’ve been kicking around a column idea in my head about living in a world that’s beyond parody. In the not-too-distant past, I had seriously considered launching my own parody site or at least running a Twitter parody account. Seven or so years ago, I could have done something like that in my sleep. Now I’d need a full writers room just to come up with stuff that’s more outlandish than the daily news.
The New York Times
During the Trump years, hundreds of government scientists and analysts left their jobs. The brain drain is hobbling President Biden’s climate agenda.
JPost: Israel will no longer allow Iran to continue its aggression with impunity, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned on a visit to the IDF Northern Command on Tuesday.
“Iran already knows the price that we exact when someone threatens our security,” he said. “The Iranians need to understand that it is impossible to sit peacefully in Tehran and from there ignite the entire Middle East. That is over.”
“I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws and bring you out with your whole army …” Ezekiel 38:4
Bennett’s remarks came several days after Iran launched a suicide drone attack on the Mercer Street, an Israeli-managed ship, killing a Romanian and a British national. The US, UK and Romania said they are certain Iran was behind the attack and that they would work on a response. Read More
Debkafile: At least three maritime security sources report that five civilian vessels, four of them tankers, were on Tuesday night, Aug. 3, under attack possibly hijacked by Iranian or proxy forces. One ship was identified as the Panama-flagged asphalt/bitumen tanker Asphalt Princess. They were sailing near United Arab Emirates shores when “a non-piracy incident” was reported by British maritime authorities.
Four of the ships warned they had lost control of their steering under unspecified circumstances and signaled their status as “not under command.” According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, this status may refer alternatively to a hostile force boarding the ship and taking command of the bridge or, possibly, a cyberattack on the ship’s steering mechanism and radar. Details surrounding the five commercial vessels’ plight ae still under investigation.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry disowned any part of the episode and, in fact, complained that reports of security incidents involving several ships near the UAE coast on Tuesday were “suspicious” and warned against efforts to generate a “false atmosphere” against the Islamic Republic.
The atmosphere in the Gulf region is, however, already pregnant with real tension as the US, Israel, the UK and Romania ponder a “collective” reprisal for the Iranian drone attack on the Israeli-operated Mercy Street off the coast of Oman last Thursday. Read More
The New American: Nearly three-fourths of COVID-19 cases associated with recent public events in a Massachusetts town — and four-fifths of hospitalizations — occurred in fully vaccinated individuals, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report released Friday.
“And you shall know thetruth, andthe truth shall make you free.” John 8:32
“During July 3–17, 2021,” wrote the CDC, “multiple summer events and large public gatherings were held in a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, that attracted thousands of tourists from across the United States.” (NBC News named Provincetown as the locale.) About halfway through the period, the Massachusetts Department of Health began noticing an uptick in the COVID-19 cases among people who either live in or had recently visited Provincetown. By July 17, the 14-day average COVID-19 incidence among Provincetown residents reached 177 cases per 100,000 persons, up from zero on July 3.
Here is where it gets interesting. Of the 469 cases of COVID-19 infection associated with the Provincetown events, 74 percent occurred in individuals who had received all the required doses of their chosen vaccine. At the time, only 69 percent of eligible Bay Staters had been vaccinated; nationally, as of this writing, about 57 percent of the population has accepted The Jab.
While the vaccines are supposed to minimize the symptoms of COVID-19, 79 percent of vaccinated people who caught the virus in Provincetown “reported signs or symptoms, with the most common being cough, headache, sore throat, myalgia [muscular pain], and fever,” the CDC noted.
When it comes to hospitalizations, things look even worse for vaccine proponents.Read More
LifeSite News: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) signed into law a package of extreme pro-LGBT laws last week that legalize knowingly spreading HIV and redefine LGBT individuals as “infertile” to grant them insurance coverage for ethically compromised fertility practices, among other things.
“It is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness, For a throne is established by righteousness.” Proverbs 16:12
On Tuesday, Pritzker signed House Bill 1063, which deletes a section of Illinois’s criminal code that banned consciously exposing people to HIV. The statute applied to drug use and sexual activity, as well as to donating blood or organs, and classified criminal transmission of the life-threatening infectious disease as a Class 2 felony.
Gov. Pritzker suggested that the changes will make Illinois “a safer and more inclusive state” and will “advance Illinoisans’ ability to live their fullest lives.” Read More
Zero Hedge: With asset prices so frothy, it is understandable that central banks would be wary of beginning to taper monthly bond purchases before it is clear that inflation has taken off. But they would do well to recognize that prolonging quantitative easing implies significant risks, too.
Third Seal: Scarcity on Earth
“When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales” Rev.6:5
Inflation readings in the United States have shot up in recent months. Labor markets are extremely tight. In one recent survey, 46% of small-business owners said they could not find workers to fill open jobs, and a net 39% reported having increased their employees’ compensation. Yet, at the time of this writing, the yield on ten-year Treasury bonds is 1.24%, well below the ten-year breakeven inflation rate of 2.4%. At the same time, stock markets are flirting with all-time highs.
Something in all this does not add up. Perhaps the bond markets believe the US Federal Reserve when it suggests that current inflationary pressures are transitory and that the Fed can hold policy interest rates down for an extended period. If so, growth – bolstered by pent-up savings and the additional government spending currently being negotiated in Congress – should be reasonable, and inflation should remain around the Fed’s target. The breakeven inflation rate also seems to be pointing to this scenario.
But that doesn’t explain why the ten-year Treasury rate is so low, suggesting negative real rates over the next decade. What if it is right? Perhaps the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant will prompt fresh lockdowns in developed countries and damage emerging markets even more. Perhaps more nasty variants will emerge. And perhaps the negotiations in Congress will break down, with even the bipartisan infrastructure bill failing to pass. In this scenario, however, it would be hard to justify the stock-market buoyancy and breakeven inflation rate.
One common factor driving up both stock and bond prices (thus lowering bond yields) could be asset managers’ search for yield, owing to the conditions created by extremely accommodative monetary policies. Read More
Zero Hedge: Less than two weeks go, the Daily Mail reported on Australian socialite Anthony Hess, who ‘unknowingly spread the Delta strain of coronavirus to at least 60 people in a single weekend’ despite being fully vaccinated.
And days ago, the Washington Postcited a CDC report which found that 75% of people infected during a Massachusetts COVID-19 outbreak associated with summer events and large public gatherings were fully vaccinated.
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. 2 Timothy 1:1-5
Now – as Democrat-run cities and states go back into quasi-lockdowns – former President Barack Obama has come under fire for forging ahead with his celeb-packed 60th birthday bash in Martha’s Vineyard despite official warnings against large gatherings during the pandemic. Read More
Debkafile: “We are in very close contact and coordination with the UK, Israel, Romania and other countries, and there will be a collective response,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday, Aug. 2, following the Iranian drone attack on an Israel ship on July 31 that killed two crewmen, a Briton and a Romanian. IDF Chief Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi meanwhile conferred on the subject with US CENTCOM head, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, while the UK was reported mulling “a range of options including a cyberattack on Iran.”
“I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws and bring you out with your whole army—your horses, your horsemen fully armed, and a great horde with large and small shields, all of them brandishing their swords.” Ezekiel 38:4
For Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the two arms of its national program – the drive for a nuclear bomb and regional destabilization for upholding its axis of influence – appear to be inseparable. Nonetheless, he blames Washington for combining the two in a single package in any negotiations for a revised nuclear accord, branding this as the prime cause of the deadlock in the Vienna track.
The supreme leader stressed this point in the ten complaints released by his office, shortly after the attack on the Mercer Street off Oman, in the form of a digest of an interview he conducted with Kazem Gharibabad, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency: He accused Washington of the following “anti-negotiation actions:”
The US tied the agreement to Iran’s acceptance of a para regarding future talks on regional issues. [namely, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen]
The US insists on putting ballistic missiles on the table to which Tehran is adamantly opposed.
The US refuses to lift its arms embargo. Read More
